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California population declines for first time in more than a century

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Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#481

Post by epistasis »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #168
epistasis wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't take much water to support more people, and adding more people might even reduce water demand. Getting rid of old fixtures with née construction drastically reduces water demand. Replacing single family lawns with multi family and shared lawns typically allows far more people to live on the same amount of land and at the same time use less water. Even as my town's population has grown, water use has dropped:…

> It won't take much water to support more people I don't think this takes into account the ongoing decreases in CA's current water sources. Some of those sources are shared by multiple, growing, states. > The bigger problem is water supply reliability, and that's going to need some serious attention whether or not new people come. This seems to undermine any arguments about not requiring much water to support more p…

If our water sources are decreasing, and building new infill housing for more people decreases water use, then more people's helps the water problem by changing our very infrastructure.

But more people will help our water situation in other ways too. Those new people also bring the resources with them to address a changing climate that has more water variability. Because of Prop 13, a static population will starve local governments of funds to deal with their water issues. We require new people to reset tax assessments and bring in funds.

A third way that more people help the water situation is that it wrests more control of water from economically exploitive water usages such as industry and towards more socially supportive uses. The current coalition of residents does not have sufficient political power to reform our awful water rights system. It will take an expanded electorate of residents to overpower the i democratic influence of the industrial uses of water that would be far better suited to other areas of the country.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#482

Post by epistasis »

0x000000E2 wrote: post #445
austincheney wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody says that but I have never seen a study indicating increased housing availability reduces housing price. Where I live, growth rate 22% decade over decade for the last three decades, housing prices increase directly proportional to the increase of housing quantity. That is until an area is filled at which point housing values will either skyrocket or flatten based upon desirability.

> That is until an area is filled Thats the issue with your approach. Supply and demand will cause housing in an area to be knocked down and replaced with denser housing. Townhouses, apartments, skyscrapers eventually. In some places this natural replacement cycle is feircly resisted and local governments are bent to the will of incumbents. HN leans heavily liberal but this is one place where conservative "small gove…

I agree with most of this, but "Local control" of housing of this sort is generally a conservative phenomenon. However, the bigger effect isn't typical left-right politics but instead the class-divide of homeowners versus renters.

Self-identified liberals are more receptive to nearby apartments than self-identified conservatives.

But the bigger effect is homeowners versus those in apartments. People in apartments are far more supportive of new apartments, and homeowners are less supportive, and this effect is bigger than the political divide.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#483

Post by epistasis »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #460
0x000000E2 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not true. If it wasn't for rampant NIMBY in Cali developers would gladly replace low density housing with skyscrapers. There's less space but you can always build up. But none of the Cali cities allow this. That's why despite California's huge population you don't see any cities with skyscrapers and traffic is so bad. Building upwards also solves the transportation issues. Look at places like Tokyo and Singa…

You could be right about vertical construction lessening the transportation burden, but there’s still the water issue. As an aside, I came across a Tokyo density map overlaid on a map of CA (Greater Tokyo Area, not just the city of Tokyo) and it would be like taking the entire population of CA and condensing it into the city of Los Angeles.

What water issue? People are not the problem when it comes to water, the problems are industry, agriculture, large lawns, and old construction.

Water usage in my small, coastal, mountain constrained town has decreased even as population has increased and number of connections to the water system have increased.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#484

Post by lsiebert »

newsclues wrote: post #367
lsiebert wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these" Yeah, the thing is there are political and regulatory efforts to deal with these, but most people don't hear/read about them, unless they are super wonky. So the people who tend to get involved are the wealthy people who benefit financially from the outcome, and the occasional non profit. The latter is where you can actually make an impact fo…

If you rely on nonprofits to solve homelessness, you are essentially allowing a nonprofit homelessness industry to exist and funding it with tax dollars.

I mean in a way that's fair. The way to solve homelessness is to provide housing, QED, not to have homelessness nonprofits.

It's impossible to solve homelessness with homelessness nonprofits, government programs for the homeless, as it's an outgrowth of factors like a high cost of living, generational poverty,the working poor lacking a living wage where they can save for emergencies, a lack of social welfare and health care programs, abusive homes, etc.

You have new people who were living paycheck to paycheck who are going to become homeless. Happens all the time.

You have queer and trans youths running away from abusive homes.

So lots of people being added regularly to the homeless population. And of course chronic homeless... because it becomes harder to get back on your feet the longer you are homeless.

The thing that really kills me, and I'm not exactly a marxist or anything, but there is absolutely enough money in America to solve homelessness, enough land to build on and enough money to build the homes. There is enough food to feed everyone (and 1 in 5 US families report not having enough food during covid 19).

We just don't distribute our resources well. The already wealthy got richer during covid 19, while many other Americans slipped deeper into debt/poverty, etc.

So yeah, we are left with our tax dollars funding these issues, because the system is set up to the benefit of some people, and to the detriment of others. And that's not just the way the world is, not some natural state of things, it's how our institutions and culture and laws and financial systems have been made in the US, and how they have been maintained and advanced by interested parties.

It doesn't have to be this way.

These are solvable problems, difficult but managible, which is why I encourage people to actually get involved, write letters, donate, organize and lobby, etc.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#485

Post by refurb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #417
refurb wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning is more expensive renting generally in the Bay Area. You’ll come out ahead owning if you own for 5-10 years and see appreciation. But SF housing dropped 30% in 2008. No reason it can’t happen again.

If you look at SF market history, you see mostly rapid growth with short term declines from peaks which are quickly erased. Is there risk? Sure, but its hard to find a 5-10 year period where you lose even if you hit the bottom of one of the drops, which are usually only a year or two from the peak.

10 years to recover from 2006 peak, not adjusting for inflation.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#486

Post by joejerryronnie »

epistasis wrote: post #483
joejerryronnie wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right about vertical construction lessening the transportation burden, but there’s still the water issue. As an aside, I came across a Tokyo density map overlaid on a map of CA (Greater Tokyo Area, not just the city of Tokyo) and it would be like taking the entire population of CA and condensing it into the city of Los Angeles.

What water issue? People are not the problem when it comes to water, the problems are industry, agriculture, large lawns, and old construction. Water usage in my small, coastal, mountain constrained town has decreased even as population has increased and number of connections to the water system have increased.

I’d be interested to see your sources and learn how increasing CA’s population will lead to less water usage.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#487

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #464
tptacek wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can only happen if the upper middle class people move away from somewhere else. There has to be some limit to how far away they'll commute to get access to suburban houses, right?

I had thought we were safe out here, a good hour and fifteen minutes from DC in traffic. But remote working has overturned those expectations.

Anecdotally: my house in Oak Park has barely appreciated at all since 2005, but my brother in Bolingbrook --- an hour outside of Chicago --- is making a mint on his house.

What's the property tax situation like where you live, versus the inner-ring counties?

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#488

Post by epistasis »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #486
epistasis wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What water issue? People are not the problem when it comes to water, the problems are industry, agriculture, large lawns, and old construction. Water usage in my small, coastal, mountain constrained town has decreased even as population has increased and number of connections to the water system have increased.

I’d be interested to see your sources and learn how increasing CA’s population will lead to less water usage.

Should have included those, apologies!

Check out page two of this PDF for the statewide picture; our use statewide urban water usage is going down, from a peak in 1995, even as our population increases:

https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...

I first became aware of this when lots of people were complaining about water use for a new apartment complex that included below-marker-rate units, as it seemed preposterous that Turns out that our city's urban water use had decreased quite a bit, despite a slowly growing population, as shown on page 25 of this PDF:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20484267-2020-annual...

There's a lot of really bad and environmentally counterproductive thought from the 1970s that needs to be fact checked. People don't require a fixed amount of resources, they require a fixed amount of services, and we have gotten better and better at providing those same services with far less resources.

This is the same as the hard energy versus soft energy debate from around the same time period. We don't care about total energy available to a person, we care about the services that the energy provides. So things like greater efficiency through insulating homes, switching to more efficient lights, etc, doesn't actually result in more energy usage.

The same surprising (to some) result applies for water, apparently! Swapping out all those old, bad water fixtures, and being better about lawn watering, makes a huge impact.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#489

Post by tibiahurried »

pbuzbee wrote: post #178

I feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It'…

I agree. The worse part is that at Federal level all tech bro are considered rich end up paying ton of taxes along with CA taxes, without any possibility to deduct anything because, you know, as long as you work in tech, you are rich by definition. I work in tech, I earn very good money, but can't afford to buy a home. I am planning to leave anyway, so at this point I don't really care much. But CA, along with its taxes, crazy regulations and nimby have made CA impossible to live for normal people. CA is for rich, period.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#490

Post by joejerryronnie »

epistasis wrote: post #488
joejerryronnie wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be interested to see your sources and learn how increasing CA’s population will lead to less water usage.

Should have included those, apologies! Check out page two of this PDF for the statewide picture; our use statewide urban water usage is going down, from a peak in 1995, even as our population increases: https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/... I first became aware of this when lots of people were complaining about water use for a new apartment complex that included below-marker-rate units, as i…

Thanks for the reply! More efficient water tech and less lawn makes sense and I look forward to drilling down into the details.
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