Why don’t we just make the poor people move? Once they leave to more rural areas, wages will rise from there being fewer laborers balancing everything out.
California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
41–50 of 213 posts
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#42No new house around me was sub 1500 sq ft... guess bigger is better. But all the other houses in the area built between 1950-1990 were all under that.
I would be perfectly fine with 800-1000 sqft and little yard but nobody builds this anymore. And if you have a basement for storage you need less garage too. Why do US houses rarely have usable basements?
Not saying this applies to everything, but the houses I lived in without usable basements were close to the water line, which would have made a full-sized basement a liability for the house.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#43The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
Absolutely crazy. 53 parking spaces for 10 units? Every unit gets 3 spaces and 2 guest spaces?
It's for public use...which was originally supposed to be paid(to help make the apartments affordable), but got turned into free parking. It was an odd turn of words, but was explained later on.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#44Amongst the various human rights, the right to build a house should be fundamental, but somehow it was lost to political forces.
I like strict building codes because they prevent for example fires, or catastrophic failure in a storm or an earthquake. I'm not so much in favor of the weird zoning laws many areas in the US seem to have.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#45The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize the entire "environmental movement" arose as the justifiable/defensible workaround for the Fair Housing Act in 1968: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=environmentali... e: I can't get the direct link to work properly, but press the blue "Search lots of books" button and it will work.
In 1968 the number of books on 'environment movement' here rockets up. It will be more compelling if there is a link between events related to housing regulations and the other massive upswing in 1985, and then the downswing in 1997.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#46The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m. community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011 in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the project." Nimbyism at its finest.
Why shouldn't a community be able to decide that they want quiet nights?
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#47The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m. community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011 in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the project." Nimbyism at its finest.
It may be, but there is a behavioral difference in different economic environments —though even within lower income communities many people who are forced to live there “put up with” these quality of life issues because they don’t have the ability to afford to live in communities that observe these standards. Not all that different from people complaining about the loudness of living next to college student rentals on Friday’s and weekends.
Truth be told I had a loud muffler back when I could barely afford my share of a three way apt rental. Nowadays I would find it hard to tolerate the noise I caused back then. But that was a diff neighborhood and it was accepted.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Housing seems to me to be one of the most government-planned markets due to the strict zoning laws, but I've only seen fairly lefty orgs advocating for relaxed regulation. I'm surprised there isn't more movement from libertarians along the lines that property owners should have more rights for what they can build on their land.
I think the libertarians are worried that their next door neighbor will drag in a trailer. Ideals are one thing, property values are another. Around here we have a lot of open space advocates that don't want any development (even though we are losing population and in a generation won't be able to fund our schools). I've often wanted to ask one of those folks (normally older with a nice older home) if they are so inv…
>why don't they knock down their house?
You kid, but redevelopment of less productive buildings is a pretty important part of preserving open space.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#49No new house around me was sub 1500 sq ft... guess bigger is better. But all the other houses in the area built between 1950-1990 were all under that.
I would be perfectly fine with 800-1000 sqft and little yard but nobody builds this anymore. And if you have a basement for storage you need less garage too. Why do US houses rarely have usable basements?
I think it depends on the area - pretty much every house in my local market has a basement.
Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low-income families often pack many people into a small apartment, so it's not unrealistic for one apartment to need 3 parking spots for two working parents and a working child, just as an example. I lived in a household like that growing up
You can look at this in a couple of ways: Forcing poor people to pay for parking makes their housing more expensive and is part of what is causing huge problems in California. When I lived in Austria, my wife and I lived in a place with no parking included, by choice. We found a public place about a kilometer away that was free. Kind of a hassle, but it was a good compromise for our finances back then. The government…
One thing you'll find about US culture: Even the most stringent, freedom-loving, anti-government types will fully embrace draconian and byzantine laws provided they're issued at the local level. If you want Laissez-faire at the local level without a cabin in the woods you must eschew local government and live in an unincorporated part of a county (and then move in a few years once that gets swallowed up by a growing metro area).