171–180 of 461 posts
The SF board of supervisors has voted on resolutions opposing this bill several times now. If you care about housing and live in SF, take a second look at your supervisor. Their votes may not make a difference with respect to SB50 but they can certainly block housing in the city and too often they do.
There’s one thing that constantly confuses me with the housing crisis, which is why more people aren’t moving to other cities (or at least a lot faster than they currently are). Perhaps my mentality is different than most, but if I can improve my economic situation by moving elsewhere I will. I know for some people it is difficult to move because of family ties or costs associated with moving, but I would have though…
People don't move to a place because that place has cheap housing, otherwise people would be piling into the countryside. People move places with better economic opportunities for them and their families, generally that means jobs but it also means low crime, good schools, entertainment options and more. As for companies moving, there is good and bad about your hq being located close to other hqs and good and bad loc…
It’s also worth noting that this is true for people who are well past the “foot in the door” segment of their careers — even if one is able to move to a low CoL area thanks to remote-friendly policy at their current company, by doing so they’ll likely be locking themselves to said company for an indefinite period and greatly diminishing their chances at getting raises. Of course that doesn’t matter to everybody, but generally speaking it’s against one’s best interest to move away from the city despite savings on housing, commute, etc.
There’s one thing that constantly confuses me with the housing crisis, which is why more people aren’t moving to other cities (or at least a lot faster than they currently are). Perhaps my mentality is different than most, but if I can improve my economic situation by moving elsewhere I will. I know for some people it is difficult to move because of family ties or costs associated with moving, but I would have though…
This relationship seems to hold across a remarkable range environments. In the ancient times, in modern times, in the Renaissance, in American, in Europe, in Asia, in the first world, in the third world, and so on.
This is what makes bootstrapping a new city so difficult. Let's say your economic metro has 10 million people. even if you manage to coordinate 100 thousand leaving together, the new city will still have nearly 50% lower productivity than the old mega metro.
Density seems to boost productivity by making it easier to quickly spread innovations. Think about Silicon Valley. There are hundreds of tech companies in a single job market. New technologies and approaches. Employees switch companies every six months and bring the best practices to their new firms.
Take those same companies and disperse them across the continental US. Workers don't move firms because relocating is expensive, unpleasant and risky. Instead of bouncing between jobs every six months, people stay "loyal" to their local employer for decades at a time. Every time a new innovation is discovered at one firm, it takes orders of magnitude longer to diffuse across the industry.
Think of the major improvements in software engineering during our lifetime. Things like devOps, test driven development, microservices, rigorous source control, code review, open source, containerization, and the like. Silicon Valley adopted all of these practices years, if not decades, before the average IT department in Tulsa or Jacksonville.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Election turnout in SF is abysmally low. Those who do turn out are mostly homeowners who really want to keep the prices growing.
Nobody has ever lost a re-election race for SF district supervisor. It’s effectively a lifetime appointment.
There’s one thing that constantly confuses me with the housing crisis, which is why more people aren’t moving to other cities (or at least a lot faster than they currently are). Perhaps my mentality is different than most, but if I can improve my economic situation by moving elsewhere I will. I know for some people it is difficult to move because of family ties or costs associated with moving, but I would have though…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No problem. To an outsider like me, this seems like one of the worst features of Prop 13. Over time it separates people into two classes: those whose family has owned property for a long time, and everyone else who can't afford to buy a house because the taxes are prohibitive. (Even if you're very rich, it will make more sense to rent than to trigger tax reevaluation.) Call it neo-feudalism.
Taxes in CA are far from prohibitive, even with today's prices. The gap between affording something in the first place and being able to cover the tax is not that large. But the base prices are the killer. But that's also largely a factor of mostly high-income people moving in, while mostly lower-income people are moving out. Keep up the business climate that fuels the inward funnel of money, and you'll keep prices h…
Prop 13 benefits corporations, long term property owners, and people that inherit property. At the expense of renters, new home buyers, and beneficiaries of public goods and services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are Napa, Atherton, and Malibu filled with environmentalists? I'm so confused by your reaction, are there specific housing policies that are focused on the environment that have had bigger effects than things like prop 13? or cities with 30k jobs in a year but 300 units of housing (looking at you, mountain view)?
Atherton looks so funny from a satellite: https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 You can see the NIMBY lines so clearly.
There’s one thing that constantly confuses me with the housing crisis, which is why more people aren’t moving to other cities (or at least a lot faster than they currently are). Perhaps my mentality is different than most, but if I can improve my economic situation by moving elsewhere I will. I know for some people it is difficult to move because of family ties or costs associated with moving, but I would have though…
A surprisingly large number of adults live very close to their parents [1]. [1] https://source.wustl.edu/2015/12/most-americans-live-surpris...
What a mess. Sad to see "tenant" organizations yell and scream about gentrification and displacement, ignoring the fact that both of those things are happening right now.
SB50 would make the problem worse the way it’s structured.