681–690 of 754 posts
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A policy being associated with the CCP doesn't automatically mean it's wrong or that we can't learn something from it.
This one is
San Francisco's solution to everything seems to be to just keep raising taxes, and throwing money at things which don't work. At some point you have to realize that more money isn't always the solution, you actually have to fix your beurocracy. It's insane to me that the city with so many rich people and incredibly valuable companies is such a mess, your telling me that a small city with an incredibly wealthy populat…
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Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago so we don't have to wonder about this: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power…
Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values. The problem is twofold. 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting i…
Uh, no? Suburbs reaching further out, without the infrastructure to support them, are not a happy ending. High risers in the wrong places cause infrastructure overload too. Putting high risers in the right places will ruin someone's vista. Hardly unsolvable, but far from "just build more".
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I used to live in the Tenderloin in 2013 and it has actually improved a lot since marijuana was legalized and public restrooms added in - back then, there was a guy on every street corner trying to sell you something, and certain alleyways/corners where there was daily cleaning for piles of human waste. It's become much less dangerous but still quite depressing to walk through. I started talking to people living on t…
> "get tough on homelessness" attitude would be vilified by our political climate, so it won't ever be up to me. You and me both, the solution is really straightforward. I feel like homeless in general falls into 4 camps: camp 1 - drug addiction, this one would be to get people off the streets, Open rehab clinics, get them clean, and back into a functioning society. camp 2 - mental illness, This one would be opening…
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> or leave the city I would like it that we can as a society find ways to help homeless with their issues and manage their lives in a way that isn't just each city tossing them out. That said, I'm not against someone's honest decision to say, well I don't know how, and in the mean time, I want them out of sight so kick them out. But, and this is the but I feel is never discussed by those who propose that solution is…
Jailing them would actually be cheaper than what they currently do, as long as they are jailed outside of California, which spends much more per prisoners than other states.
It will work out well fiscally because giant companies will suck it up and pay, but it looks like a bad strategy from a forward-looking point of view. You want to incentivize future growth too, and you want to make sure that 20 years down the line, you have the new FAANGs of the world giving you millions in tax dollars, because history has shown that the largest of companies can eventually die out, and tech is full o…
As I say I'm asking from ignorance. I also realise I'm likely to get somewhat biased answers to that view point on HN.
"They" is third person, plural, subjective in English.
> Used to refer to the one previously mentioned or implied, especially as a substitute for generic he.
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Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values. The problem is twofold. 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting i…
> If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. There's actually another solution, but people don't talk about it: reduce demand. Break some windows. Have a few organized robbery parties. Hold monthly "Stabby Sundays" where you just stab people randomly. That'll drive down demand, and prices will drop like a rock. Obviously, I'm joking. Building more houses is th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values. The problem is twofold. 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting i…
> If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. There's actually another solution, but people don't talk about it: reduce demand. Break some windows. Have a few organized robbery parties. Hold monthly "Stabby Sundays" where you just stab people randomly. That'll drive down demand, and prices will drop like a rock. Obviously, I'm joking. Building more houses is th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago so we don't have to wonder about this: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power…
Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values. The problem is twofold. 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting i…
This comes up a lot, but is false. It's easy to have every single home become more expensive over time while the average unit remains affordable. Let me paint a picture of how it would work in a city where you can actually build new housing at higher density.
Family buys single family home in year A for $100k. Lives there for a while, then sells in year B for $200k. The buyer is a developer, who then constructs a larger building on that same lot consisting of 4 apartments that now each sell for $100k again. Original family gains in wealth, developer makes tidy profit, new families can still buy a place to live for $100k. All numbers inflation-adjusted, you pick A and B to make whatever return you think is reasonable.
This is how density increases happened almost everywhere, until zoning laws became the new way to keep racial minorities out of white neighborhoods, roughly mid-century, after restrictive racial covenants (i.e., "when you buy this house you agree not to sell it to anyone non-white") became illegal.
Note what you don’t get out of this arrangement: a neighborhood that doesn’t change for 40 years; the ability to live in the same type of house your parents did, in the same neighborhood, for the same price. But you could have the same amount of (indoor) space they did, and outdoor space through public parks and the like.
What’s not sustainable is everyone having a suburban style detached single family home without increasing density in perpetuity. That is what leads to this contradiction.
The non-density alternative is sprawl, where prices rise in long-established neighborhoods, and outlying new developments are where you can buy new houses for less—which is what you observe all over California.