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California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

latimes.com

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Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#81

Post by renewiltord »

Haha, most government money projects in California are a mechanism to funnel tax money into chosen pockets. The interests in play encourage that because:

* Most Californians don't like other people living near them. They want to live like in the suburbs and it annoys them if that changes.

* They can fig leaf in 'environmentalism' or 'traffic' or whatever in order to do that. Sometimes they'll fig leaf in 'gentrification' and 'affordability'.

* They want to be able to complain about government spending but not really do anything about it. The best part is that this allows you almost all the real benefits of actually having government spending change: you still get the funneling, and you get all the social value of being against overspending.

* The last thing is that Americans as a whole hate being told they've been defrauded. It's like the worst thing in the world to be a sucker here. So the right response is always to pretend like you aren't being suckered. That's crucial. You can always choose to say things like "San Francisco is built upon 150 years of shipwrecks" or "America is a big country" or "California is diverse".

My hope is one day to embed myself in enterprise sales to government. It's the good life.

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#82

Post by ver_ture »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #61

Honestly I ran into partially related situation in NYC. I found a 1-bed apartment I liked at a nicer building, I decided to proceed and next thing you know I'm signing the lease. I read the lease and says a few very peculiar things: 1) the rent is 50% higher than what I saw being advertised/communicated 2) there is a massive discount that brings the rent down to what we agreed to on a separate page 3) this turned out…

So this is saying that you are "agreeing" to the full price, allowing them to one day charge you that full price? (While hooking you in with the 50% discount?)

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#83

Post by gotoeleven »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #61

Honestly I ran into partially related situation in NYC. I found a 1-bed apartment I liked at a nicer building, I decided to proceed and next thing you know I'm signing the lease. I read the lease and says a few very peculiar things: 1) the rent is 50% higher than what I saw being advertised/communicated 2) there is a massive discount that brings the rent down to what we agreed to on a separate page 3) this turned out…

The answer is clearly one more regulation to fix the loopholes in this regulation.

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#84

Post by nerfhammer »

nitrogen wrote: post #46
algeoMA wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

what percent of "low-income people" own motorcycles? what would the occupants of 10 apartments have to do such that a small city would no longer be said to be able to have "quiet nights" that could not be enforced against by any method other than excluding the apartments completely?

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#85

Post by throwaway0a5e »

clairity wrote: post #64
Lammy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

powerful forces aren't able to block decentralized developments dotting the country, but they're able to gather enough momentum to pass centralized and controversial regulations? that doesn't pass the smell test. that said, CEQA challenges have become a de facto tool in the nimby arsenal in CA.

More like "forces seeking to block development lend their backing to environmentalists because they realize that they share some common ground" but I agree that the blanket characterization of environmentalism is an exaggeration.

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#87

Post by dbspin »

pascalxus wrote: post #74

I know this will be downvoted because people aren't really interested in solving the real problem. We could fix the whole SF homeless population problem in the space of one parking lot. Just build micro apartments of 10'x10' feet. Make it 150' wide at the base: 15x15 = 225 x 40 stories = 9000 inhabitants. 100' feet might not be much, but it's a hella of a lot more space to live in than hong kong, where people barely…

You've just described a 560 foot tall prison cube. No cooking, toilets, corridors or walls apparently. Perhaps the inhabitants whose true crime was poverty, will be happy to inhabit your force walled thought experiment. Some would be reticent. But I foresee great things coming from this most lateral solution.

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#88

Post by stevehawk »

pavlov wrote: post #78

After moving to America a while ago, one thing that struck me is how a lot of things are designed as effectively regressive taxes: the poor pay more than the rich. I opened a basic bank account with a giant American bank. The account has an exorbitant monthly fee, something like $15, but it’s waived if you keep a sufficient balance or have a steady salary. So the only people who pay the crazy fee are the broke people…

Yea, don't do business with that bank. Not all banks do that.

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#89

Post by oldsklgdfth »

Mirioron wrote: post #57
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the right to private and personal property is in place (basically having some money) and trading. Then the right to build a house is a consequence. As long as you by land that doesn't have a lien on it you can build a house.

In theory yes, but there are so many asterisks attached to building a house. You need to run through a gauntlet of bureaucracy to even get permission to build on your land. All of this immensely increases costs and becomes a tool for limiting new housing.

In addition, property taxes apply. Which can be quite substantial.

Re: California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing

#90

Post by ipnon »

pascalxus wrote: post #74

I know this will be downvoted because people aren't really interested in solving the real problem. We could fix the whole SF homeless population problem in the space of one parking lot. Just build micro apartments of 10'x10' feet. Make it 150' wide at the base: 15x15 = 225 x 40 stories = 9000 inhabitants. 100' feet might not be much, but it's a hella of a lot more space to live in than hong kong, where people barely…

Your proposal is ridiculous but it illustrates the political source of housing shortages: The landed class has the right to say no, and the landless class has no right to say yes.
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