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Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

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Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#111

Post by refurb »

nsnick wrote: post #19
maerF0x0 wrote: post #10

It skips some important points. The cost of living is high due to zoning laws and a lack of building. Subsidizing families' rent will just make existing landlords richer. It would just drive rents up further. What is needed to get fewer people bidding on the same unit. If landlords are finding <1 suitable tenants per vacancy then suddenly it becomes a renter's market.

This may not be too popular, but subsidizing housing for the poor in Silicon Valley will drive up rents for the people in the middle who are not receiving the subsidy.

This is a great point. Rent control just shifts increasing costs to the newest arrivals. If you were lucky enough to arrive early, you get all the benefit (generally).

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#112

Post by robotkilla »

cabalamat wrote: post #2

Didn't read due to ridiculous web design. I don't think I should have to click between every sentence, nor should I be subjected to a non-standard user interface.

would work better with auto loading trigger content on scroll or something. anything is better than this though. i'd prefer a regular article with graphs actually.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#113

Post by ForHackernews »

cjensen wrote: post #33
andy_boot wrote: post #11

Isn't the simple obvious solution just to build a lot more housing? More supply means lower prices.

No. The Valley is geographically constrained. The mountains enclosing it are too rugged to safely build on. The best you could do would be to permit high-rise housing which would provide some expensive housing to the high-end. A better idea would be to stop permitting any non-housing construction until the housing to job balance is restored.

This is untrue. High-rise housing can be quite affordable, if built in sufficient density. Everything in the Bay Area is laughably low density compared to the east coast (let alone NYC or even Tokyo or Hong Kong)

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#114

Post by whybroke »

mgraczyk wrote: post #20

This may not be the most popular thing to say, but ... Just move? If you are the head of a large household living in an area where the cost of living is too high to support your dependents, you would do a whole lot of good for them and yourself by starting new in some other part of the country. At the very least it would be wise to relocate across the Bay. I realize that people have families, social networks, and sma…

The value of your labor relative to housing is dropping every year too you know.

The notion of re-balancing forces is a nice simple story but the price of housing relative to income has risen nationwide for decades. There is a similar story for medical care and even food.

So yes it's fun to believe in the invisible hand and Adam Smith's 200 year old thesis. But the reality is that the value of all labor is simply being driven downward.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#115

Post by sp332 »

cjensen wrote: post #33
andy_boot wrote: post #11

Isn't the simple obvious solution just to build a lot more housing? More supply means lower prices.

No. The Valley is geographically constrained. The mountains enclosing it are too rugged to safely build on. The best you could do would be to permit high-rise housing which would provide some expensive housing to the high-end. A better idea would be to stop permitting any non-housing construction until the housing to job balance is restored.

The Valley is geographically constrained.

Which makes the 40-foot height limit insane. http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-density-thought... You could trivially build more housing by removing that limit. Some background: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Height_Limit_Revolt_Saves...

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#116

Post by refurb »

1053r wrote: post #52
nsnick wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, we need more government regulations and programs not less. Removing zoning laws can't possibly be the solution. Maybe we can have the government give housing to poor families, thereby taking housing stock off the market and reducing supply.

This is simple supply and demand. Everyone from liberal economist Paul Krugman [1] to SF board of supervisors member Scott Wiener [2] agrees that California and bay area housing policies are horrible. The only people who actually like these policies are the people who are benefiting from them, typically because they moved to a neighborhood decades ago and are either on rent control or "rent control for property tax"…

Considering how many folks have most of their net worth tied up in a $1.5M 1500 sq. ft. home in the city, there is going to be a TON of resistance to more building. Can you imagine the average price of a home dropping to $700K? Tens of thousands of folks would be underwater on their homes.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#117

Post by Domenic_S »

onion2k wrote: post #92
Domenic_S wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just think poor people should have to move out of their homes because rich people decided they want to live there. That isn't how this works, at all. When the number of people who want to live in an area > the area's capacity, prices increase. See: every metro area in the world. > Yeah, rich people get forced out of their homes because they can't afford them all the time. /s Rich people move to optimize their f…

That isn't how this works, at all. If rich people living around you only affected house prices then you'd be right, but they tend to push the cost of everything up. That's what drives poor people out.

This line of thinking is confusing cause and effect though. Silicon Valley started here because it was cheap. The whole area was agriculture and houses. Then computers took over the world and the success of the business here computerfied the valley. It made people who were already here wealthy.

It's like people think this situation is new, and poor people are the "real" natives of SV. If those damn facebooks and googles had left the valley alone everything would be great!

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#118

Post by larrys »

unreal37 wrote: post #108
larrys wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This may not be the most popular thing to say, but ... Just move?" The other question is (don't know the answer) how many people who owned homes (instead of renting) were able to cash in in some way on rising property values? My guess is that at least some of the people renting made the decision to not purchase and some of the people owning made the decision to not rent. Of the people who could choose an option. As…

One of the most shocking things I saw in the Philippines was exactly this. A mother living and working in a city as a nanny/maid, while her husband and children lived "back home" fairly far away. She saw them only a couple of times per year. That's some sacrifice she's making to put food on her family's table!

You also find that happens on certain cruise lines. A family works on a ship and send the money back home.

I am guessing that some people think that there is so much money sloshing around the Valley that taxes should be higher to take care of those in need. The potential problem there is that you simply encourage more people to stay or actually even more people to move to the area to take advantage of that benefit.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#119

Post by Frondo »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #56
codemac wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving is expensive too. If you're hand-to-mouth poor, you cannot afford a rental truck, let alone time off work and still feed your children. You will probably lose your job if you move, and not find another one where you land, especially if you're in the service industry. Good luck with that East bay -> peninsula commute on your minimum wage. The reason many cannot get jobs other places is due to felonies or other…

Assuming government resources are needed to be spent to help resolve this, would they not be put to better use helping individuals relocate to somewhere sustainable (especially those who would be making a living wage elsewhere) than to subsidize the difference year after year?

I wonder if anyone's asked those poor people what they want.

I've seen a few commenters here suggesting using government money to ship 'em out, or retrain or job-place them, but I wonder: what do the poor in Silicon Valley want for their lives? Do they want to be shipped out? To be retrained? Better wages? Cheaper housing?

These are people, after all, and are worthy of being involved in any discussion concerning their fate.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#120

Post by whybroke »

nsnick wrote: post #93
whybroke wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. There is a religious libertarian belief that somehow changing zoning laws will "fix" the problem. No numbers are ever given (maybe prices would stay level for a few years) And no one notices that the extremely dense housing of Manhattan did not make Manhattan cheap. If they want to fix the problem they'd need large tracts of very high grade housing rented non-profit, (never sold) on government land. The comp…

You have to ask yourself why Manhattan is now cheaper than San Francisco.

No, we need to ask is Manhattan affordable? Are Manhattan prices dropping? Did they ever?

A 10%-20% price difference is irrelevant and will just disappear in just a few years anyway.

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