Americans are rethinking where they want to live • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#231

Post by tmaly » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

mwattsun wrote: post #197

foofoo4u wrote: post #91

I sure am. I live in San Jose (which resides in the Bay Area). Here’s why I am leaving. - $2,700 per month for a 500 sq/ft apartment. - Homeless people everywhere the moment I step foot out of my apartment. - Smells like urine on many sidewalks. - Literally half of the buildings are vacant or abandoned (in downtown). - Human feces on sidewalks and entrance to buildings. - Political and ideological homogeny. Keep your…

It's weird how subjective experience can be so different. I live in East San Jose a mile from downtown. I'm very happy with it. I love riding my electric bike around town and my only complaint is that for a supposedly high tech city the traffics lights are not even close to being syncrhonized. I can't related to most of your other complaints. Your other complaints are complaints you often hear from conservatives abou…

I am in CT and a local road near my house suffers from this light synchronization issue. I think it comes down to a city verse state road in my case.

I have often thought if lights were better optimized, we could save on gas usage in cars.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#232

Post by jermaustin1 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

Jerrrry wrote: post #206

jermaustin1 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently in the process of buying my wife's grandpa's house in rural Louisiana. It isn't on a lot of land (only 1.5 acres), but he's selling it to us "at cost" and that was how much it cost him to build it 20 years ago. We haven't decided if we want to live there full time and give up all the niceties we currently enjoy (a target within 10 minutes vs 2.5 hours, every type of ethnic food you can imagine, etc)., b…

>every type of ethnic food you can imagine I know it's hard to believe, but the only difference between a major metropolis and bum-fuck nowhere is the lack of ethnic food, and less stressful traffic. Almost all modern-niceties have been commodified to even the outer regions of the hills.

I've spent months at my wife's grandpa's house, they are lacking (at least without making a full day's trip) in almost every modern convenience.

What is funny though is once we close on it, he's loading up his 5th wheel and driving it to an even more remote property his friend owns out in Colorado. They are fully off-grid.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#233

Post by honkycat » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #209

If people on HN really want the urban life style to make any sense in America they need to start tackling the mental health / homeless problem. They talk about "the environment" but no one wants to talk about how my wife has to dodge human feces getting on and off public transportation. "It's just part of living in a vibrant city".... Give me a break.

This is just not true. Everyone is talking about the homeless problem all the time. NOBODY is happy about the homeless situation in our major cities.

I don't know a single city, liberal, moderate, or conservative, that has solved it.

I am just a single citizen, I pay out the ass for taxes, and nothing is being done to help these people.

At this point is appears there is no political will to do anything. Instead everyone walks in circles while funneling the money into porkbarrel spending, the police force, and roads.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#234

Post by socialdemocrat » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #93

sanderjd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason (besides inertia) that we can't have both. This is how thriving smaller downtowns are, single family homes within walking distance to amenities. It's just that all those areas get really expensive because there are so few of them. But there don't have to be so few places like that.

How do those smaller downtowns thrive? The few I know usually have rich populations that do not mind spending more than what Costco/Target/Walmart/big grocery stores sell at. All it takes is the big box stores to setup camp 10 minutes outside of town and almost everyone with a car will opt to save money and shop there.

In Europe many smaller stores are competitive by aiming for high turnaround. The cut down on the selection to the things that get sold fast. German Lidl and Aldi are based on these principles and known to have very low prices. In fact I think they outcompeted wall-mart when it tried to setup shop in Germany.

I remember quite good prices in the Netherlands as well which is quite densely populated and where people shop in downtown stores rather than out of town big box stores. The exception would be things like hardware and furniture.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#235

Post by diveanon » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #121

And part of it is what public schools are doing to our kids. My 6 year old is required to sit outdoors to eat her lunch in 40ish degree (F) weather, and is not allowed to socialized. My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids. I'm at my wit's end with these school administrators. Hoping to be in Wyoming in 6 months' time.

Your germ factory kids can still spread it.

How are we still having this conversation 2 years in?

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#236

Post by nradov » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #191

ben-schaaf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably cheaper. It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case. Car centric suburbs aren't just terrible for the environment, terrible for safety and terrible for transportation; they're…

This is a bit simplistic. There are a lot of other reasons housing is more expensive in dense urban areas: Low supply due to underbuilding. High costs due to difficulty in getting housing approved and forced BMR units. More expensive land price. Not needing to own a car saves you money. And, most importantly, proximity to jobs and services. Living in a dense urban area saves you the time of driving and commuting, and…

Living in a dense urban area doesn't actually save you any commuting time on average.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#237

Post by AdrianB1 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #156

Visit Texas or Florida first. I've lived in Texas and visited Florida many times. I've also visited San Jose. TX and FL are hell compared to CA. I don't care for CA either, but that's because of cultural (coastal) differences. The NorthEast is heaven on Earth.

Can you provide some details on why it is hell?

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#238

Post by n8cpdx » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #171

donatj wrote: post #77

I live just west of Minneapolis with my wife in a house that's been in my family for generations. I don't want to leave but the continuous stream of car jackings, home invasions, petty theft and seemingly random acts of violence have me rethinking this. Calls to defund the police sound pretty tone deaf when your elderly neighbor is assaulted in their own home and robbed.

FBI crime stats for Minneapolis proper don't look that much higher than the last 20 years, and considering that the metro population has almost doubled since 1990 you have to discount them per-capita. Are you sure it's not just that you are reading too much Nextdoor?

Crime stats are often on a delay.

I occasionally see people in Portland cite 2019’s crime stats as proof that things are fine and that you’re just bigoted against homeless people or whatever.

Portland didn’t get the 2020 numbers from the FBI until late September 2021, which at that point showed an 80% increase.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-2021-homicid...

Now we’re at nearly 80 homicides (if we haven’t crossed that, it will likely be this weekend) so far in 2021, breaking the 90s record.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-2021-homicid...

For a while the narrative as that crime was much less serious than is being portrayed in the news. In major American cities, that trend has reversed.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#239

Post by abnercoimbre » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #209

If people on HN really want the urban life style to make any sense in America they need to start tackling the mental health / homeless problem. They talk about "the environment" but no one wants to talk about how my wife has to dodge human feces getting on and off public transportation. "It's just part of living in a vibrant city".... Give me a break.

Seattle just elected more moderate candidates willing to tackle the homeless problem seriously [0]. We've never made it to the levels of bad described here, but we were headed there. Possibly stories from our CA neighbors spooked us (many transfer up here.)

It's unhealthy to escape to be where "your tribe" is. I love my city and I did feel represented with moderate voices winning this election cycle.

[0] https://compassionseattle.org/

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#240

Post by obstacle1 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

unexpected wrote: post #84

jacobolus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities. The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen. * Edit: subur…

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block. At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc. This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad…

Kids like suburbs just fine before they understand there's a big world out there outside the family unit. Often things fall apart after that phase.

> I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment

OK but that's a problem with a limited imagination, not how your kids would actually feel. Do you know that 90% of families in the world live in close quarters, in places like 2 bedroom apartments (or -- gasp! -- smaller)? Do you think all these kids really hate their lives because of the size of their apartments? Do you think young kids even realize that they "should" prefer a 3000sqft house to an apartment?

> this country is big and there's enough space for all of us!

Sure there's space, but space isn't really the issue. The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. Future generations are going to look back on our settlement patterns and think we were truly insane, hundreds of millions of people each with multiple personal cars spread out from each other such that cars are necessary to do even the most minor tasks. It's taken some incredibly opaque collective blinders for us to have ended up thinking suburbs are a responsible way of living.