Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 645 posts

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#391

Post by jelliclesfarm »

zacksinclair wrote: post #376
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #369

Let me the ask the YIMBY crowd this...what is stopping 2 dozen do you to pool funds together to build a community where land is affordable and have tailored amenities. And you can literally have your own transport to anywhere. Co-Own your shared vacation paradises. Private schools. Incorporated communities. Invest in farms and automation. You can grow your own food and use economics instead of govt bureaucracy to mak…

The "BY" in YIMBY is referring to our existing back yards. There's a significant gap between YIMBYs and what you described.

What has a 30 year old contributed that they claim to make decisions for those who are 70. Five years into employment and they expect to own a home? And want to displace retired seniors on fixed incomes who have worked for decades and paid 30 year mortgages.

The value of the house is not in $ but the number of man hours that go into it. Maybe tax the kids and grandkids who get tax free and tax saving inheritances. Property tax is as valorem. There is no value added to a home until it’s sold at the new higher price.

Property taxes are a way for the government to make sure that you never truly own your home 100%. They are not a means for young professionals to avail free public education for their own kids. It’s double dipping since they already availed free education paid for by the very same seniors who paid by taxes to support public schools and build city infrastructure.

I am sorry to know that those who want their kids to be in nice neighbourhoods cant afford to pay rent or pay for private schools, but that’s no reason to promote elder abuse by way of punitive property tax increases to displace them from their homes to build more.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#392

Post by x0054 »

rb808 wrote: post #380

Not luxury apartments. Projects. In the 50s and 60s NYC built loads of massive housing projects for the poorest people on welfare. This is something that is needed in California. Most of the homeless can't afford fancy new builds, the state should be building big cheap buildings to house the people who can't afford anything. Say there are 20k units required in the Bay Area, each building can have 20 floors, 25 aprts…

Have you seen what happens in those projects? I lived in Chicago and those were not a good place to live because of incredible levels of crime.

What we need is to stop clustering so much around SF and LA. There are lots of places in CA that are basically empty. What we need is more ways for people to make money remotely so they can live in lower density areas and still make good living. High density is not the answer, people need space and we have space.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#393

Post by papreclip »

staplers wrote: post #76

Articles like this and the subsequent comments always reinforce to me that the human domain will never, or perhaps can never support wildlife and fauna. As much as we like to grandstand against mass extinction of wildlife and deforestation, we will always cave to economical and social pressures of modern life which almost exclusively require resource extraction and destruction of the biosphere.

The haber-bosch process is the worst scientific advance human beings have ever made, much worse than tetra-ethyl lead, CFCs, or the atom bomb. It's not even possible to grow enough food to support the current world population without industrial nitrogen fixation for fertilizer. We've thrown things horribly out of equilibrium by proceeding in this manner and no amount of high density housing, paper straws, or solar panels is going to make things gravy

it's like the bacteria in a biological weapons lab learned how to place orders for and distribute more agar

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#394

Post by jelliclesfarm »

davidw wrote: post #360
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I request you to please cut and paste the part of the parent which I might have misunderstood? This is the parent, afaict: [..] notJim 2 hours ago | undown | parent | flag | favorite | on: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat push... Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed…

You could absolutely have more diversity by simply adding people , rather than displacing or removing anyone, which is precisely what the comment suggested.

Sure. You can add people. IF they can afford to buy in. Clearly they can’t...that’s not the problem of existing homeowners who aren’t ‘diverse’ enough for the younger generation.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#395

Post by tathougies »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #339

I have been asking someone..anyone..to give me an example of how building more housing leads to affordable housing. Like in real life.. Every high density over crowded over built city ..and this is global..is unaffordable. It has expensive utilities, higher taxes and bad declining infrastructure that the government can’t seem to replace or upgrade. We have pestilence, rodent infestations, higher crime, big government…

> Every high density over crowded over built city ..and this is global..is unaffordable. It has expensive utilities, higher taxes and bad declining infrastructure that the government can’t seem to replace or upgrade.

That's not true. Houston and Dallas are big cities without affordability problems. Sunnyvale, CA (quite dense, and becoming more so, but suffering from these NIMBY problems) is one of the safest cities in the country. Well below the average crime rate of many rural towns.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#396

Post by istjohn »

legitster wrote: post #39

There is a study that came out this year that I have been obsessed with: If zoning laws in San Francisco and New York City (just two places!) were frozen in place in 1964, the average American income today would be on average $3700 higher. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388?fbc...

It goes to show that housing is a national issue that needs national solutions. We need federal legislation.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#397

Post by tmh79 »

pruneridge wrote: post #340
mertd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have it backwards. Traffic is increasing because we're adding offices but no housing nearby. Therefore people need to pour in from further out. With higher density, alternate transportation options become viable and attractive.

Your argument does not account for people currently outside the Bay Area moving into the Bay Area because of cheaper housing. While people currently residing in far flung places would move closer to their work, the people living in other parts of the country aspiring to live in Silicon Valley would now move to Morgan Hill and Gilroy. Eventually, we will end up with the same housing crunch, except with twice the numbe…

If you look at the data for SF, 95% of brand new units are first occupied by people who have lived here for a at least a few years. New housing serves people who are already here.

What causes people to migrate to the bay is the office creation, not the housing creation.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#398

Post by aSplash0fDerp »

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #314
c0nfused wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer was and always will be to increase density not increase transit to the suburbs. This is how you get 2 hour commutes. The idea that you are not doing the driving doesn't make a 150 mile commute seem better to me. You can cap density by height like most European cities do or go up forever like Shanghai. But simply arguing suburbs + highways were the 1950s answer and will be the 2050s answer is missing the po…

Californians seem like people who would care about co2 and emissions, the only good solution is to build higher and denser, instead of long drives.

I've spent over an hour going 10 miles on the 405 recently, so hopefully they'll use the autonomous infrastructure to deliver work to the remote extensions/areas as well to turn back the clock on congestion a few decades in the existing cities.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#399

Post by klipt »

kbenson wrote: post #327
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses years ago and stayed put. Hmm, here I am thinking I don't really care about the skin color of my neighbors. It's none of my business. But, I try and not judge people on immutable characteristics like color and age.

GP could likely have replaced "mostly old white people" with "mostly the same demographic", but it doesn't convey the same information, even if you don't assume implied racism as you did. The important thing being conveyed is lack of diversity, not whiteness. In the United States, saying something is "mostly white people" conveys that other ethnic groups are not present for some reason (whether it be them self-select…

Although if someone visited a suburban area in Japan and complained that it had "mostly old Asian people", they'd probably be called racist.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#400

Post by bbreier »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #355
behringer wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?? San Francisco has the worst rent in the world, excepting Hong Kong. It's 600 dollars more a month than the average in New York. 2000 dollars more than Chicago... That's entirely due to the lack of high rise housing.

Or maybe it’s due to lack of income. How about what do in Singapore? 97% of the population lives in state owned apartments on 99 year leases. Affordable to luxury homes for all income levels.

How about some of the much denser megacities? For example, Tokyo, or Seoul? Both are far more affordable than the much less dense first tier cities of the US.
Post reply on HN