Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California • Hacker News Board

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#81

Post by aaronblohowiak » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #59

btilly wrote: post #51

I have suggested this before, and I'll suggest this again. The whole problem could be solved if we gave people the choice of voting where they work rather than where they live. Currently every city wants all the businesses that they can get because businesses generate lots of tax revenues. Cities do not want apartments because that doesn't generate revenue, and locals object on the basis of NIMBYism. But when everyon…

> Cities do not want apartments because that doesn't generate revenue The property owners still pay tax on it don't they? I'm sure it is less lucrative per square foot than commercial development, but I assume it is still better than the revenue from the closed furniture store and parking lot, and after all you need people to patronize businesses.

Schools are more expensive than residential property tax raises — this is due to state-mandated limits on property tax rates, rate increases and such (prop 13 related.)

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#82

Post by ctdonath » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #48

ctdonath wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent 3 weeks in the US Midwest. There is plenty of land to use, thousands of square miles of empty rolling grassy plains. (Ex.: South Dakota averages 11 people per square mile.) Apply a little modern technology (solar/wind, water storage/purification, insulation, Starlink satellite internet) and nobody need complain of population density. There's a startup waiting to happen: self-sufficient high-tech prefab h…

If people are going to live anything resembling a modern American lifestyle, then gathering people together in cities has much lower environmental impact and lower infrastructure costs than spreading them around South Dakota. People don’t expect just electricity and plumbing, they also expect modern construction techniques, roads, police, fire suppression, emergency response, schools, full-service hospitals, telecomm…

Consider the environmental transparency: instead of utterly devastating an environmental region as does cities, encourage each family to own a mostly-untouched >5 acres, the high-efficiency home sporting solar roof & rainwater collection, wireless/satellite high-bandwidth internet, home & prolific electric car chargers, optimized Amazon/etc delivery, home/neighborhood schooling, work-from-home norm, etc. Environmental impact? between normalizing practically everything environmentalists call for (I'm not one), and there being not much of an environment to impact (have you seen the Dakotas?), the neo-futuristic American lifestyle can be achieved while minimizing environmental footprint/impact without the hideous expense & annoyance of overpopulated cities.

I think you massively overestimate the rural "subsidies". Make it easy to move rural and "go green" with minimal regulations, and you may find the problems nearly solve themselves.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#83

Post by Karrot_Kream » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

hnaccy wrote: post #76

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "first world lifestyle"?

The life style of a well-to-do member of America or Western Europe.

I think you'll find that not everyone wants this lifestyle, and trying to force everybody into it because you want it is a silly form of reductionism.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#84

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

ProblemFactory wrote: post #71

i_am_proteus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There I was, thinking I was the only one. It's insane. When I first got here from the east coast, I thought maybe there was some reason involving earthquake codes. And then I learned. I used to live in NYC, a city that's had its own difficulties adding new housing, corruption in the permitting process, considering too many areas "historic." But the Bay Area is something completely different. It seems that everyone wh…

> If zoning restrictions were relaxed, could house prices collapse? I don't see how that could be the case. The property value of a plot of land on which a 50, or even 5 story building can be built is much higher than the property value of a single-family home.

There's a substitution effect. If zoning restrictions are relaxed and developer turns an acre into a 50 unit condo complex, that developer reaps a huge windfall. But everyone else who owns an Eichler on a 1/4 acre has fewer buyers competing for their property.

It's sorta like when labor unions go away. The company that hires non-unionized labor at half the price and double the productivity reaps an enormous windfall. So do the employees, who were presumably in other, less well-paying jobs. Everyone else who chooses not to play the new game ends up out of a job.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#85

Post by hnaccy » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #77

hnaccy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're already over the carrying capacity if the world wants first world lifestyle.

Debatable, a large issue is land use and for all the land we have here in the US alone large swathes of it are used for single family homes promoting horrible density. We dump carbon into the air, have less arable land, and destroy more natural habitats than necessary because of poor planning and regulation. There is more issues to be solved, yes - but reversing wasteful land use is a HUGE component of preserving our…

If you think we can't sustain every couple/person on earth having a single family home then you're agreeing with my statement.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#86

Post by LargeWu » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #49

floren wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roll it out in say Rugby, ND and you'll even have an Empire Builder stop right there, with service to Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Chicago!

Looked. Prolific lakefront opportunities, lots of suitable roads in place. Base town already there. LinkedIn shows >25000 tech jobs in the state, many well into the $100k range (remember, extremely low cost of living). Just need someone to (profitably!) take on making it easy to move there.

I grew up out there. Lots of those 100k+ jobs are oil jobs. It's hard work, even if you aren't working directly on the drilling rigs.

It's incredibly easy to move there. My hometown of ~1,400 has something like a couple dozen vacant properties right now which you could probably buy for $150k or less because all the townies are moving out to the lake. But once you're there, there aren't a lot of good paying local jobs, there is very little to no culture, very few amenities. Not much to do unless you're into hunting and motorcycles. There's a reason it's sparsely populated.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#87

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #30

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't go on like this. What is the stopping point? Why is now the stopping point? > The inevitable conclusion of forever-growth is, indeed, that everyone piles in to microscopic communal living spaces I mean, or we become more efficient _now_, buy ourselves centuries more time on the planet, and then figure out a different solution, maybe involving terraforming other planets or something. Progress isn't linear a…

> maybe involving terraforming other planets This is like peak San Francisco housing conversation right here. Have you guys considering the radical idea of building a couple fucking apartment buildings instead? I mean, seriously.

It's easier to colonize Mars. No planning board.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#88

Post by throwawaysea » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

It's not peak housing dysfunction, but rather peak entitlement. Why is it important to accommodate people who might want to live in or move to an area despite local incumbents' wishes to not have their neighborhood change? Does everyone have the right to live anywhere they want to live without having to pay the necessary price to be there? For example, does everyone have a right to expect a residence on a Hawaii beachfront? And if not, why is it reasonable to portray a city or state as somehow lacking because it serves existing constituents?

It makes sense that the Bay area would be priced high given its tremendous desirability (which may be tapering off now). If people are willing to work there for low wages, then that is their choice - they have opted into a tradeoff they are OK with, and they/others should not demonize those who were already there and want to preserve their culture/way of life/standards of living. There are numerous affordable places to live in the US that are not [New York, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.] - you may not have every big city amenity you want, or maybe even be able to do the exact job you want - but such compromises are also just a regular part of life, aren't they?

To me the reframing of this issue as a policy problem, or a rich versus poor thing, or through use of pejoratives like "NIMBY" serves to distract from the plain truth, which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area and demand that local governance be replaced with top-down forceful governance (overriding local zoning policy). And the reality is proposals like the one around the missing middle will not solve the underlying issue - it just shifts the timeline around a bit until population growth brings us back to the same point anyways.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#89

Post by ImplicitNone » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

brent_noorda wrote: post #44

CPLX wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I don't know how to tell you guys, but from the perspective of an east coaster, the entire peninsula (including SF) looks like this. It feels like some kind of parallel universe where nothing makes sense. Like I hear about a housing crisis in SF but I go there and there are supermarkets surrounded by parking lots in the middle of the city. There are literal big-box stores like you'd see in the suburbs adjacen…

The cities of the Peninsula voted against getting a BART subway line decades ago, leaving them in the car-dependent, flat suburbs of the 60s

That's not true! Peninsula voters never got the chance to vote on the November 1962 BART referendum.

Instead, on April 12, 1962 the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors opted out, citing high costs and concerns over shoppers leaving their county for stores in Downtown San Francisco.

Keep in mind that Silicon Valley did not exist yet. There was no support for BART in San Mateo County-grassroots or otherwise. Many Peninsula civic leaders were also against it–including JR Clinton owner of the San Mateo Times (predecessor of San Mateo Daily Journal). Also opposing BART was David Bohannon the developer of the Hillsdale Shopping Mall, Tom Casey of the San Mateo Co Development Associations. They, and the San Mateo Times, published Op-eds arguing that BART was not needed; instead more freeway lanes was the proposed solution to congestion woes.

The neighboring Santa Clara County's obsession with building and publicly financing the Expressway System (Page Mill, Oregon, Central, Montague, San Tomas, Lawrence, Capitol) didn't help either.

You can read more about it in BART: The Dramatic History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System by Michael C. Healy.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#90

Post by option » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

i_am_proteus wrote: post #70

markbnj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cities do not want apartments because that doesn't generate revenue The property owners still pay tax on it don't they? I'm sure it is less lucrative per square foot than commercial development, but I assume it is still better than the revenue from the closed furniture store and parking lot, and after all you need people to patronize businesses.

Perhaps it's something to do with how California has lower property taxes (partially due to Prop. 13) and higher income taxes-- but those income taxes go to Sacramento, not to municipalities. In other parts of the country, municipal treasuries grow as volume and prices of residential units grow.

California does not have low property taxes. Tax = rate * assessed_value. assessed_value is huge if you purchased during last 7 years and goes up 2% every year