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

Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 187 posts

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#51

Post by techsupporter »

jasonv wrote: post #37
epistasis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The picture of a house they show nestled in the trees is incredibly dangerous, incredibly resource intrnsive, and just ecologically unsound. We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. Instead we lock down any new construction in cities, which requires the least amount of infrastructure and environmental damage, and instead let pretty much a…

> We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to A model/example where this has been done well? I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc. I thin…

> I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc.

So we...don't do that. Bluntly speaking, it's trivial: all of these issues are of our own making in America. We have hundreds of examples just in Europe of how to make car-lite, walkable, nice cities and towns and that's just on a single continent. And that's artificially restricting ourselves to a single continent with societies that look the most like ours. A quick pivot to most of eastern Asia will show much more variety in how to build those areas.

(I will pause here and throw right out the idea that "Europe is much smaller than the United States so we couldn't possibly..." There is no reason we cannot duplicate those same cityscapes all across the United States; we have sub-national states and counties for a reason.)

We are car-centric and spread out because we choose to be. So we either change those choices and make the commensurate political and financial changes to go along with it, or we don't and we accept the consequences of things like "large swaths of the West Coast burn to the ground" and "we are stuck in our metal boxes powered by carbon fuels or batteries backed by precious rare earth minerals." We already spent a couple trillion dollars propping up the stock market for nothing more than paper gains; the argument that we "can't afford it" is laughable.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#52

Post by haram_masala »

ssequeira wrote: post #24
chrisseaton wrote: post #14

I think a lot of people living in cities think there's only two options - living in an apartment downtown in a megacity, and living in a car-bound wasteland suburb. But there's a third option - towns. I know you have them in the US! I've been to a few of them. Walkable towns with coffee shops, restaurants, bars, culture, dating. You can even find a few in the Bay Area if you don't want to look too far. Isn't the smal…

What are some examples of Bay Area towns? It seems like everyone in my friend circle in tech lives in San Francisco and puts up (or used to) with the long commute.

Alameda comes to mind. Completely walkable, charming, great community feel. It's an island, so going over bridges or through the tube to go anywhere can be a bit of a hassle, but it's well worth it.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#53

Post by Barrin92 »

OzzyB wrote: post #19
alex_g wrote: post #4

"Many Americans — especially 30-somethings who remain employed — are ditching their tiny rental apartments in hip districts of expensive cities and moving to buy houses in more affordable cities or the burbs for a life of shopping at Home Depot and spending their Friday nights eating mozzarella sticks at Applebee's." oof, that's a savage take for NPR.

...for a life of shopping at Home Depot and spending their Friday nights eating mozzarella sticks at Applebee's, with their families . I added that bit. Funny, they always seem to forget about family, even when talking about 30-somethings from hip rental apartments.

replacing a wide and healthy social net with the family is probably one of the largest cultural diseases of American life of the last few decades

In a less abstract sense, roughly 50% of my close friends who did the the whole "move to the burbs, ditch the social life, start a family" and who seemed to go missing for years are now divorced. Roughly in line with the statistics I suppose.

I'd go as far as saying that in the majority of cases when people in their 20s or 30s do this it's some sort of mix of social pressure and biological clock panic than an actual authentic decision.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#54

Post by ghaff »

refurb wrote: post #31
nordsieck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder whether this trend will reverse in the next 1-3 years or this is the new permanent dynamic of the SF rental market. IMO, that's completely dependent on how much SF tech companies embrace remote work.

What confuses me is the home buying far outside urban areas. I understand that people will be working from home for 12 months, but buying a home an expensive transaction. If forced to go back to the office, these folks are looking at very long commute. I assume they: 1) know for sure they can wfh permanently, 2) are betting they will be able to wfh permanently or 3) are willing to quit when asked to come back to the…

Some companies have made statements. Others like mine, a lot of people were remote already. So, in some cases, it seems a pretty safe bet.

Now, of course, you are betting to some degree that remote work will continue to be sufficiently popular that you can switch jobs if need be. But the concentration of a certain type of job in the Bay Area actually isn't that representative of job density in general.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#55

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ipnon wrote: post #33
epistasis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The picture of a house they show nestled in the trees is incredibly dangerous, incredibly resource intrnsive, and just ecologically unsound. We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. Instead we lock down any new construction in cities, which requires the least amount of infrastructure and environmental damage, and instead let pretty much a…

Housing density is not generally a problem outside of the United States. Developing economies seem to have no bias against dense housing. I think this is because there is no politically powerful land owning class outside of the United States. So it is in the interest of the majority to have an abundance of affordable housing. This protects against global warming too.

Housing density is definitely a problem outside of the United States. Many countries handle it in much the same way, while others handle it by shoving their working class into what's basically a human rights violation. I've seen discussions of Singapore's good housing policy, for example, that fail to mention the worker dormitories with 10 or 20 people per room.

I certainly wouldn't claim the US has good housing policy, but there's no perfect solution to the conflict that arises when the market-clearing housing price in an area creeps above what most people can pay.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#56

Post by epistasis »

jasonv wrote: post #37
epistasis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The picture of a house they show nestled in the trees is incredibly dangerous, incredibly resource intrnsive, and just ecologically unsound. We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. Instead we lock down any new construction in cities, which requires the least amount of infrastructure and environmental damage, and instead let pretty much a…

> We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to A model/example where this has been done well? I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc. I thin…

The resistance comes from a tiny number of people, and is not representative of the majority. Blocking the wants of the people requires subversion of democracy and subversion of the housing market by a few very wealthy and connected and powerful people.

California and many other states’ governance has enabled a small number of people to veto what the majority wants. For example, all of SF’s safe streets program during the pandemic have been held up by the actions of only two people [1]. Two people subverting changes that are wildly popular just because is is change rather than maintaining the status quo. Similarly, Minneapolis’ legalization of triplexes city wide is popular with a majority of the city, [2] but during the government process the representation was quite different, and unrepresentative of the city. Yet that unrepresentative process is somehow considered “democratic”.

My question to you is that, if you don’t like living in SF, why are you interested unmaking sure others can’t live there? Do you assume they don’t like it? Do you assume that you know what’s in their best interests?

Sooooo may people love living in SF, in fact almost everybody who lives there loves it. It works well for them. Let the people that love it enjoy it. It will leave suburbia emptier for those who prefer suburbia.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Sa...

[2] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/crosstabs-MN-NH-NV-WI...

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#57

Post by dcolkitt »

refurb wrote: post #31
nordsieck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder whether this trend will reverse in the next 1-3 years or this is the new permanent dynamic of the SF rental market. IMO, that's completely dependent on how much SF tech companies embrace remote work.

What confuses me is the home buying far outside urban areas. I understand that people will be working from home for 12 months, but buying a home an expensive transaction. If forced to go back to the office, these folks are looking at very long commute. I assume they: 1) know for sure they can wfh permanently, 2) are betting they will be able to wfh permanently or 3) are willing to quit when asked to come back to the…

Isn’t this a case of the expectation creating the outcome. If half the employees bought homes outside commuting distance, what can the company do?

Seems like they’ll be forced to adopt remote first whether they like it or not. No company is going to be able to lay off half its workforce. The labor market for software engineers and most other professionals is still extremely tight. Until it’s otherwise, the workers are essentially in charge, and management will mostly have to accommodate.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#59

Post by ajmurmann »

epistasis wrote: post #17
ajmurmann wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really need to better price the negative externalities that come with these different choices into the market. Massive price increases for fossil fuels are an obvious step.

I agree, but if we have no alternatives to current development styles, then taxes can not correct the bad practices. We literally outlaw the alternatives to building in the WUI.

Agreed. I think those regulations cause so many societal problems, many of which are quite indirect and I am sure many of us don't realize. For example the decline of rural areas would be less of a problem if it would be a real alternative for people to find a better fortune elsewhere, but prices make this impossible unless you are already well off.

Re: Zoom towns and the new housing market for the two Americas

#60

Post by randycupertino »

dontremeber wrote: post #38

> Many Americans — especially 30-somethings who remain employed — are ditching their tiny rental apartments in hip districts of expensive cities and moving to buy houses in more affordable cities or the burbs... I suppose I fall into this category but even houses in the burbs seem more expensive than they should be. I’m specifically looking at up and coming towns, not any random burb but buying a house that’s literal…

I was thinking that the high-end vacation towns of the affluent would be a pretty good investment bet, because even when remote work isn't popular there still is high end demand for vacationers. Think places like Jackson Hole, Aspen, Maui, Nantucket, Newport RI, Hilton Head, Scottsdale, etc... could see places like that retaining their value no matter what happens.
Post reply on HN