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Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

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Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#191

Post by Mz »

jkot wrote: post #186
Mz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to understand my preferences. All you need to do is try to respect my right to decide for myself what is best for me. Thinking you have a superior answer for my life after reading a couple of comments by me on the Internet and saying I should move to another country because you don't understand my choices is beyond insulting.

Just trying to help. Sorry if it sounds wrong way.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHelpingMe

But thank you for the apology. It's a step in the right direction.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#192

Post by bydo »

cesarbs wrote: post #86
Kalium wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In SF, building regulations includes very powerful neighborhood groups with the ability to make arbitrary changes to projects. The net result of their involvement tends to be less housing at higher cost. There are also many areas zoned for a maximum height of zero feet. As for how to be involved, start by looking up who your city councilperson is. Talking to them would be a good start.

> There are also many areas zoned for a maximum height of zero feet. The smartass in me wants to say, "then build subterranean homes/buildings" :) Would suck in terms of natural lighting but it would be nice to see the faces of people who want those zones to be like that.

The super-rich already do this in London[1].

Though there is legislation in the works to limit maximum depth as well as height[2].

1 - http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/09/billiona...

2 - http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873238935045785595...

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#193

Post by Frondo »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #185
Frondo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't address my basic point at all: what do they want for their lives?

Your base point is a question? I assume you meant that your base point is something we should do with the answer to that question. Could you please restate your base point so I do not have to guess what that something is?

My point is, what these folks want for their lives matters in a discussion concerning their lives.

You've said, ship 'em out! Retrain them! If they don't want to do those things, do nothing. What I'm going for is: ask them, too.

It makes very little sense to try to have a conversation about solving a community's problem without listening to members of that community.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#194

Post by peterfirefly »

bobmagoo wrote: post #87
Domenic_S wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was sitting here trying to figure out how to say basically the same thing. Growing up my dad had a good job but we never were able to afford to live in $NEAREST_METRO_AREA, so we always lived a commute away -- sometimes a long commute away. Charity idea: provide moving & job placement help to get homeless or nearly homeless families into lower cost of living areas. I always have mixed feelings about stories like th…

Being a parent I have tons of empathy for how hard life is for single parents. That said, I really lost a lot of sympathy for the woman in the garage though, kids are hugely expensive (about a quarter million dollars to raise them to 18) and I just can't understand how she thought having a second kid would improve her situation. Obviously it could have been an accident or similar, but damn, maybe now isn't the right…

Surely those children have fathers?

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#195

Post by Kalium »

jcfrei wrote: post #125
1053r wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Absolutely agree. It baffles me why the tech companies in the area don't lobby aggressively for reduced zone regulations and restrict appeals to construction work. The whole bay area would profit massively from a more flexible workforce and less money being spent on rents (in addition to the construction boom).

Often they do. City residents resist. Palo Alto and Mountain View are good examples.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#196

Post by taco_emoji »

RIMR wrote: post #178
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…

I moved to Seattle for Tech work. It required 2 months of planning and less than $5k in expenses (for two people). I moved from Memphis, TN. Places like the Puget Sound and the Bay Area are going to keep getting populated with tech workers, and they are going to keep rising in cost. Moving isn't hard. It sucks to feel kicked out of the city you live in, but there isn't much that can be done. If you can't afford it, m…

> Moving isn't hard.

You think scraping together five fucking grand "isn't hard" for someone who's hand-to-mouth poor?

> If you can't afford it, move somewhere that you can.

"What if you can't afford TO MOVE" is the entire point of the post you responded to.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#197

Post by dragonwriter »

nsnick wrote: post #103
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Lets not forget that these people would be middle class anywhere else.

> Lets not forget that these people would be middle class anywhere else.

If they could magically keep their Bay Area income while being anywhere else, they might be.

But since they can't actually do that, I'm not sure what relevance that has.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#198

Post by Kalium »

nsnick wrote: post #130
refurb wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All of the value in their homes was created by government regulation. Complaining about the price of your home going down because government regulation is removed is like taxi medallion owners complaining about Uber. In both cases government unfairly created the wealth through regulating scarcity.

That may be true, but all they see is the value going down.

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#199

Post by peterfirefly »

kazagistar wrote: post #157
larrys wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's probably why all the solutions mentioned by the article were nationwide and not local. If you improve quality of life everywhere, then you can avoid that problem.

How do you then avoid attracting more people from abroad?

Re: Poor Kids of Silicon Valley

#200

Post by throwaway9324 »

RIMR wrote: post #188
nsnick wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the "poor" people are asking the wrong question. They are asking, "why can't I afford to live where I grew up?" The question they should be asking is, "should I live where I grew up?"

Exactly! A lot of people feel that they are entitled to live in the city they grew up in. They feel that the rising cost of living is unjust, and that they are the victims. What needs to be understood is that we cannot force the cost of living to drop, and we cannot force the median income to rise. Either search for a job that pays more, or search for a home that costs less. If that means moving away from where you g…

"we cannot force the cost of living to drop"

That's exactly what rent control does. I guess it's ok to not even try to make an argument on HN these days.

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