171–175 of 175 posts
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It won't be CA that goes to the bottom, just the Bay Area. LA and SD and Fresno and even Sacramento don't have the same problems.
LA and SD also have affordable housing problems. They aren't as pronounced as the Bay Area, but it's still an issue.
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>when demand outstrips supply adding a different type of supply (like an apartment building) won't depress prices materially (for detached single family residences). they're different market segments. That's not how the real world works. In the real world, people who want to live in a single family home also want to live in a low density area. No one wants a single family home if there's a bunch of apartment building…
in the real world, buying the houses across the street let's you decide what sits there.
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By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. People wouldn't do the jobs unless the pay and conditions were acceptable, so it would resolve itself one way or the other right? The unfortunate reality is that many people have little to no real choice in where they work or what they make. They live paycheck-to-paycheck and do jobs that do not come with any bargaining power. If they quit the…
>By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. No, that's not the logic at all. Remember, this problem is entirely local, and can't really be solved because the local politics are locked up by the local wealthy homeowners. Minimum wage and employee rights laws are usually either state or federal (or both). But the state and federal governments here have little power to fix the Bay Area's…
On the national scale, my issue with “let the chips fall where they will” is because of how I’ve seen this issue play out in some of the places I’ve live here in the North-East. People in the position to demand that their wages match the cost of living do so, but those who work the kind of jobs that afford no barging power (office cleaning crews for example) can’t. This exacerbates the income divide, as the people who have/make more money are the ones in the positions to demand the largest increases to account for the local cost-of-living.
If the job pool starts to dry up, local businesses start busing people in and/or push local governments to subsidize public transportation. People need jobs, the jobs are in the city, so you end up with an entire economic class taking hour long bus/car trips to and from work every day. Nobody with means ever ends up inconvenienced.
You then end up with an entire economic class who doesn’t get compensated for the time spent commuting, incurs other associated expenses and complications (miss the bus and you don’t get paid), and ends up segregated to lower-cost-of-living areas outside the metro, which always see less funding for schools, parks, hospitals, public works, etc.
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>By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. No, that's not the logic at all. Remember, this problem is entirely local, and can't really be solved because the local politics are locked up by the local wealthy homeowners. Minimum wage and employee rights laws are usually either state or federal (or both). But the state and federal governments here have little power to fix the Bay Area's…
Fair enough. I was extending your argument to the National level, as this same issue is playing out with slight variations in many of the major metro areas in the US. I’m on the East Coast, so I’m not familiar with the particulars of the local government structures in California and how that effects who and how those decisions get made. So, I withdraw my specific criticisms here. On the national scale, my issue with…
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Other than minor blips, long-term trend is positive. Check out the ten year trend at [1] [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/hong-kong/housing-index It may be an unpopular notion or maybe folks in SF are hoping to time the market, but the general trend across the globe is increasing price in desirable locales, barring natural disasters. So, yes, if a major earthquake hit SF, there would be a price correction :)
> Other than minor blips, long-term trend is positive. Check out the ten year trend The entire global equities market has been going crazy for the past decade, in no small part due to the historically low interest rates. Claiming that housing prices will keep going up is like claiming that the stock market will keep going up. Even if it is true in the long run, you can have recessions or depressions, some that may la…