3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
story.californiasunday.com
3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
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Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#2> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care.
> There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey, the complex had strict rules governing who could reside in its units — and since the apartment was in Candido’s mother’s name, her children and grandchildren were barred from living there. The building’s sympathetic manager, however, assured them that it would be fine; with a yearslong waiting list to even enter the lottery for these subsidized rentals, they certainly weren’t the only ones, he said, who’d be living “off-lease.” Everything went well for about a year. But then a neighbor threatened to report the family. She’d started photographing the kids as they left and reentered the apartment each day, and the manager had no choice but to tell them to go elsewhere. “We were totally scared and shocked,” Brenda said, “and we knew that we needed to get out right away. If not, Candido’s mom might have been evicted, too.”
What heartless NIMBY does this? I am just shocked and appalled at the cruelty of this neighbor - it's impossible that she wasn't aware of the housing crisis in the area.
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#3> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care. > There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housin…
I rather assume that was why they were taking pictures in the first place.
I have a much harder time understanding why though...
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#4Just like mass murders, these stories seem to be popping up everywhere in the US.
I find it hard to understand how a country can be so good in some ways, but so terrible in others. Is it just because the successful truly extract all their wealth from the more unfortunate?
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#51. freeze property taxes on residential construction
2. local government is running out of funding
3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise
4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes)
5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases
6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants
7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable
8. NIMBYs introduce rent control
9. developers cannot recoup their investments and leave
10. households with (two) incomes become homeless
11. people start living in tent cities or their cars (we are here)
What a shitshow...
Freezing rents or property taxes just delays the negative effects and perversely make it harder to implement a long lasting solution. Frozen property taxes lead to high house prices which lead to high property taxes on the next assessment. At some point the theoretical property taxes become so large it is no longer possible to unfreeze property taxes because home owners cannot afford them. The threat of high property taxes would force NIMBYs to optimize for variables other than their home value. The goal would be to provide as much housing as is necessary to prevent yourself from being priced out of your neighborhood.
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#6> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care. > There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housin…
I rather assume that was why they were taking pictures in the first place. I have a much harder time understanding why though...
Probably because everyone else that lives there chose to live there because of the restrictions in the first place?
Super shitty, just that’s probably the reason.
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#71. freeze property taxes on residential construction 2. local government is running out of funding 3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise 4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes) 5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases 6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants 7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable 8. NIMBYs i…
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to build small developments, like duplexes or triplexes, which would help a lot here!
To give you some concrete examples; in Mountain View, adding a new unit of housing requires about $80k in impact fees and permit fees from the city, and the permits require bending over backward, since they're sometimes self conflicting. We've now banned natural gas, so homes have to be electric. The only way to heat electrically efficiently is heat pumps, but those are affected by noise ordinances, so it's tricky to place them. Solar panels are mandatory, but you need to pay for a permit to install them. Electric car chargers are mandatory. The fire code, city code, and state building codes conflict at times, so you sometimes have the fire inspection, then change stuff around for the city inspector, etc.
Everybody knows how broken it is, so everyone cheats, and inspectors sign off on temporary kludges, knowing full well they'll be changed right after inspection, but the i's must be dotted, and the t's must be crossed. But hey, "we're" doing something!
Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern political discourse.
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#81. freeze property taxes on residential construction 2. local government is running out of funding 3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise 4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes) 5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases 6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants 7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable 8. NIMBYs i…
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to…
One of the achilles heals of democracy. When the many or the older vote for their self-interest, sometimes those self-interests don't align with the well being of the younger generation or society at large.
You can't blame the older generation for voting in the interest of maximizing their home values and low taxes for themselves. But you also have to admit how unfair that is to the younger generation who have difficulty finding affordable housing and have to take on a greater property tax burden.
> Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern political discourse.
Why blame the politicians for doing what their voters wanted? Why not tar and feather the voters?
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#91. freeze property taxes on residential construction 2. local government is running out of funding 3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise 4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes) 5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases 6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants 7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable 8. NIMBYs i…
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to…
These governments aren’t stupid; they’re correctly representing the interests of the majority of their voters who a) are homeowners and b) strongly prefer suburbia.
Renters and people who appreciate density need to show up if we’re going to counteract that.
Re: 3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to…
One of the achilles heals of democracy. When the many or the older vote for their self-interest, sometimes those self-interests don't align with the well being of the younger generation or society at large. You can't blame the older generation for voting in the interest of maximizing their home values and low taxes for themselves. But you also have to admit how unfair that is to the younger generation who have diffic…
Politicians simply can't reflect the will of the voters, because voters aren't a homogenous blob. Here, they represent the wishes of a very slim majority, and go against the will of the greater majority quite frequently, since this is a representative democracy, not a direct one.
What we should think about is whether it's a legitimate use of power to limit what an entire city can do with its property. The nice, dense areas of the world didn't start out that way, they grew over time as new replaced old. We've stopped that cycle here, and the politicians are trying to freeze things as they are. We do indeed have a lot of home owners resistant to all change, but those aren't the majority. I'm a grey haired home owner here, and I go to council meetings to support increased density, increased property rights, etc.