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Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

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Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#121

Post by TulliusCicero »

dragonwriter wrote: post #75
skewart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The desire to keep a city looking the same as it was decades ago does seem to be a powerful motivator for a lot of anti-housing people. It's always seemed a little perverse to me. Cities are dynamic, constantly changing organisms. Trying to keep a city from changing over decades is like forcing a 9-year-old kid to wear diapers and sleep in a crib because you liked the way it was as a baby and you never want it to cha…

> Cities are dynamic, constantly changing organisms. Try to keep a city from changing over decades is like forcing a 9-year-old kid to wear diapers and sleep in a crib because you liked the way it was as a baby and you never want it to change. Well, except that cities, even if viewed as "organisms", aren't people, they serve people, and its quite natural for people to want them kept in the state that they feel best s…

> its quite natural for people to want them kept in the state that they feel best serves their interests.

Eh, it's possible to take this kind of self-interest too far. Like by the same token, you could say, "well, it's only natural for non-poor people to shoot down programs that will help the poor, because it's not in their interest".

Like, expecting people to give up a little for the benefit of wider society is not unreasonable. We're not talking about forcibly seizing people's homes here, just about allowing their neighbors to sell to developers who will build more housing. That's not exactly a huge sacrifice.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#122

Post by hx87 »

ryfm wrote: post #110
hx87 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a call for thick walls (including/especially party walls, floors and ceilings) and triple-pane windows, not restrictions on density. Unfortunately, due to the real estate industry's fixation on square footage and granite countertops to the exclusion of any other measure of quality, that's not likely to happen in most places.

it might be hard due to HOA/condo rules; and if you rent the place than good luck trying to change anything there. and given the way condos built in the US/canada it's just impossible, i was pretty surprised when i saw a six floors condo built with wooden frame, something like that: https://imgur.com/usO1i9r

I have a hard time imagining HOA/condo rules working against soundproofing--if anything they'd be thrilled about it if you were willing to put in the money, since it improves the value of the property and community. Yeah, renters are out of luck, but too many landowners are too short-sighted to improve their properties and increase rent to capture the additional value.

BTW, wooden frames can be very soundproof, as long as you pack every wall and ceiling with heavy (i.e. rock wool or cellulose) insulation and ceiling and mount drywall on standoffs instead of directly on studs.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#123

Post by TulliusCicero »

ryfm wrote: post #100
Johnny555 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a townhouse with neighbors on both sides and never hear any of the neighbors (except for when their kids are playing in the back patio). Quality construction can go a long way toward giving you the privacy you desire. no need to separate houses by 30 feet of grass.

townhouse is almost a house in that regard, now try a highrise where you can't choose quality construction. once when i rented appartments on the sixth floor i had to call the police to stop an argument happening on the 4th floor in the middle of the night. and i'm not even talking about some kids showing off theirs 'sporty' bikes/cars at 2am.

The obvious solution here is to have zoning that mandates high-quality soundproofing. I don't think the pro-development crowd would object in the least if this was bundled with substantially higher density limits. That's the kind of regulation that's relatively unobjectionable.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#124

Post by taurath »

They link to missing middle housing... http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ as if thats the solution.

Having lived in the bay for a long time - there are many "middle" housing places. Just none of them are new. Duplexes, and multiplexes are almost always in the worst areas, because they're not big enough to allow for walking or being close by a lot of services, but are dense enough to be VERY easily annoyed at neighbors. The only thing they're good at is being cheap to build.

Townhomes are popping up frequently and offer a slightly nicer version, but I don't honestly see much difference between a townhome without a yard and a more dense mid-rise other than available floorplans. I'm all for more density, but what frequently happens is that they build in moderately dense housing but all the plots are walled off from each other, there's nowhere to walk and so you just have more and more cars and traffic on the road. Full density or bust, I say.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#125

Post by djcapelis »

xenadu02 wrote: post #113

Very few people bother to vote in non-presidential elections. I keep hammering this point to anyone I meet in the startup scene here in SF. If just 1% of you reading this right now (who live in SF) bothered to vote on a pro-housing basis, we'd immediately turn into a huge voting bloc that could not be ignored. You should shame your coworkers and remind people in slack channels too. A few thousand NIMBYs currently con…

I support the goals of increased density and more housing. I can't possibly vote the YIMBY slate though, and have advised friends not to as well. The YIMBY slate supports candidates who are the opposite of folks I'd like to see in government. The YIMBY slate endorses people who have voted to restrict people's ability to sit and lie in public places, voted against police reform and voted to make it illegal to be naked in the Castro.

I'm sorry, but those issues are important and for me, many of the people the YIMBY slate endorses are on the wrong side of it.

We don't have to sell out our values to be pro housing.

Down with height limits, down with protracted approval processes for construction, down with many of the things that hold back progress in the city. Let SF reach toward the sky.

But also, down with the YIMBY slate. It's just a set of candidates who aren't what I want to see in the city.

If the YIMBY slate wants to back actual tangible propositions or policy suggestions, I'm all ears. When they ask me to vote for people they selected because they think they might be "pro-housing" (as if anyone in SF is really anti-housing?) then I'm going to tell them the people I select to represent me are my business.

I'm happy to advocate for pro-housing policies. But I sure didn't and won't vote that YIMBY slate, and for the sake of the city I live in, I hope it's soundly defeated.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#126

Post by ChuckMcM »

baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change.

So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who had moved into the apartments near downtown Murphy street. They loved them, easy access to Caltrain, lots of things to do and places to go, they are excited about future growth.

The issue in Sunnyvale at least is that people don't seem to internalize that things change. They won't acknowledge that their cute little bungalow house used to be an orchard (where only birds and perhaps squirrels lived, had we given them a say at City Council there would be no houses anywhere!). They will argue strongly for their values and their memories and opinions of what is "right" and what is "wrong." Meanwhile we have people in their 20's and 30's who don't want to own a car, they want tight walkable spaces with an easy way to get to San Francisco or the airport. Now maybe 20 years from now those same people will be resisting even denser housing or something I don't know.

We could easily build 200,000 market rate dwellings on existing, unused, parcels in Sunnyvale and house close to half a million people in them. But for folks remember empty streets and quiet drives, those people are going to be really really unhappy.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#127

Post by ryfm »

hx87 wrote: post #122
ryfm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it might be hard due to HOA/condo rules; and if you rent the place than good luck trying to change anything there. and given the way condos built in the US/canada it's just impossible, i was pretty surprised when i saw a six floors condo built with wooden frame, something like that: https://imgur.com/usO1i9r

I have a hard time imagining HOA/condo rules working against soundproofing--if anything they'd be thrilled about it if you were willing to put in the money, since it improves the value of the property and community. Yeah, renters are out of luck, but too many landowners are too short-sighted to improve their properties and increase rent to capture the additional value. BTW, wooden frames can be very soundproof, as lo…

i mentioned it because i have an anecdotical evidence right now - a friend of mine is fighting with his HOA trying to replace windows in his appartments. The only solution he came up by today is to become a part of HOA committee and then change the rules they have. i have another solution in mind - to stay away from HOA in the first place.

i bet they can be soundproof but what i see here is that the builders are trying to cut every corner they can, trying to build as much as possible houses/condos which are sold even before the construction begins (http://www.seattletimes.com/business/home-prices-soar-again-...).

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#129

Post by guyzero »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #126
baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change. So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who h…

Well as an actual Sunnyvale resident the fears are slightly more rational: cars on roads, kids in schools and no increase in infrastructure to go along with the thousands of new residents.

Some of the buildings have less than one parking spot per apartment which in theory is supposed to help encourage people to use transit, in practice people fear it will lead to more street parking in adjacent residential neighbourhoods which already have pretty full streets.

200,000 dwellings in Sunnyvale would be a DoS attack on the city's infrastructure, not some new urban dreamland.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#130

Post by WWKong »

xenadu02 wrote: post #113

Very few people bother to vote in non-presidential elections. I keep hammering this point to anyone I meet in the startup scene here in SF. If just 1% of you reading this right now (who live in SF) bothered to vote on a pro-housing basis, we'd immediately turn into a huge voting bloc that could not be ignored. You should shame your coworkers and remind people in slack channels too. A few thousand NIMBYs currently con…

Why will home owners vote for pro-housing which reduces the ROI on their homes?
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