Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 256 posts

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#181

Post by yks »

api wrote: post #31
CPLX wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I don't know how to tell you guys, but from the perspective of an east coaster, the entire peninsula (including SF) looks like this. It feels like some kind of parallel universe where nothing makes sense. Like I hear about a housing crisis in SF but I go there and there are supermarkets surrounded by parking lots in the middle of the city. There are literal big-box stores like you'd see in the suburbs adjacen…

It's quite sane if you bought property in the 60s-90s and are riding property appreciation to fortune.

And then you what, die in the appreciated property? If you want to make money, it's already very profitable for you to sell the house for condo development but no one is doing that. Instead residents write open letters about how they moved here in 1976 and under no circumstances will allow their neighborhood to be different than back then.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#182

Post by foobarian »

MiroF wrote: post #163
nostrademons wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved here from Boston. It honestly didn't seem all that insane to me, because Boston is crazier in nearly every dimension. The peninsula at least has 3-lane boulevards with a reasonable road hierarchy and traffic light timings. Boston has cowpaths branching off in every direction, controlled by stop signs that can literally back up for miles. The peninsula has block after block of Eichlers on 1/4 acre lots. Boston…

I'm also coming from Boston and this take is silly. Housing prices in Boston aren't Bay bad or even close to it.

I'm coming from the Boston _area_ because I can't afford to live in Boston or Cambridge. But guess what? There are comfortably sized houses available already under $400k 20 minutes out.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#183

Post by siphon22 »

yks wrote: post #181
api wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite sane if you bought property in the 60s-90s and are riding property appreciation to fortune.

And then you what, die in the appreciated property? If you want to make money, it's already very profitable for you to sell the house for condo development but no one is doing that. Instead residents write open letters about how they moved here in 1976 and under no circumstances will allow their neighborhood to be different than back then.

>Instead residents write open letters about how they moved here in 1976 and under no circumstances will allow their neighborhood to be different than back then.

I think this is the hardest thing to reconcile. I mean it's easy to get riled up against some rich white NIMBYs doing this kind of thing, but now replace those rich whites with x minority like Mexican-Americans who have lived in their Mexican-American majority Southern Californian neighborhood all their life in the same homes they've always been in. Imagine ripping on them for trying to preserve their neighborhood and therefore their culture. And for what? To make it possible for more people to move in and potentially make things worse for the people already there? If it's a minority-majority neighborhood, making it possible for more whites to move in is gentrification. How do you argue for that?

I'm not saying I agree with any of this by the way, just playing devil's advocate.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#184

Post by rsync »

nostrademons wrote: post #74
i_am_proteus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There I was, thinking I was the only one. It's insane. When I first got here from the east coast, I thought maybe there was some reason involving earthquake codes. And then I learned. I used to live in NYC, a city that's had its own difficulties adding new housing, corruption in the permitting process, considering too many areas "historic." But the Bay Area is something completely different. It seems that everyone wh…

I moved here from Boston. It honestly didn't seem all that insane to me, because Boston is crazier in nearly every dimension. The peninsula at least has 3-lane boulevards with a reasonable road hierarchy and traffic light timings. Boston has cowpaths branching off in every direction, controlled by stop signs that can literally back up for miles. The peninsula has block after block of Eichlers on 1/4 acre lots. Boston…

"The Boston area might refuse to let you put in new window panes if you live in a historic house ..."

That sounds like a really easy problem to solve ...

"Yes, children - of course you may play baseball in my front yard ..."

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#185

Post by foobarian »

MiroF wrote: post #166
scrumbledober wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to live outside of the bay area to think this way. I've grown up on the peninsula and think it's absurd. I'm a software engineer and if I ever want to buy a house I feel like I'll be forced to relocate away from family and hometown. My friend's 90 year old grandmother constantly complains about new housing development in the town we live in, but then also questions why my friend has to live with her an…

Every single homeowner I've talked to here has complained about the housing crisis, yet has been opposing development near their house. Incredible that people can be so willfully blind that they don't see how their own actions are contributing to the crisis. It's a real tragedy of the commons

If there was a law aggressively limiting the property tax rate, skyrocketing demand, and I happened to be in a house I got in the 70s... you better bet I'd be opposing development too.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#186

Post by rsync »

opportune wrote: post #98
throwawaysea wrote: post #88

It's not peak housing dysfunction, but rather peak entitlement. Why is it important to accommodate people who might want to live in or move to an area despite local incumbents' wishes to not have their neighborhood change? Does everyone have the right to live anywhere they want to live without having to pay the necessary price to be there? For example, does everyone have a right to expect a residence on a Hawaii beac…

>and they/others should not demonize those who were already there and want to preserve their culture/way of life/standards of living. This has a limit, namely, that we who move in are going to vote to change things, and the only way bay area property owners can prevent that is to not get rich off their property by selling or renting it at sky-high prices to new residents. To put their money where their mouth is and n…

"This has a limit, namely, that we who move in are going to vote to change things, and the only way bay area property owners can prevent that is to not get rich off their property by selling or renting it at sky-high prices to new residents."

This argument the two of you are engaged in would be more interesting and relevant, I think, if there were not a literal 50% off sale every 7-10 years in the bay area.

The busts will continue to come and the more you think "it's different this time" the closer we are to one. Conversely, I'll bet I could pick up print publications in the alternative press from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s wherein the same lamentations and accusations are leveled during the run-up to each peak.

I quote the lead article from the OP:

"... helplessness pervades many of my conversations with friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived for seven years ..."

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#188

Post by maxsilver »

nostrademons wrote: post #84
ProblemFactory wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If zoning restrictions were relaxed, could house prices collapse? I don't see how that could be the case. The property value of a plot of land on which a 50, or even 5 story building can be built is much higher than the property value of a single-family home.

There's a substitution effect. If zoning restrictions are relaxed and developer turns an acre into a 50 unit condo complex, that developer reaps a huge windfall. But everyone else who owns an Eichler on a 1/4 acre has fewer buyers competing for their property. It's sorta like when labor unions go away. The company that hires non-unionized labor at half the price and double the productivity reaps an enormous windfall.…

> If zoning restrictions are relaxed and developer turns an acre into a 50 unit condo complex, that developer reaps a huge windfall. But everyone else who owns an Eichler on a 1/4 acre has fewer buyers competing for their property.

That's not completely accurate. Yes, demand might fall, but even so price and value will still rise regardless.

If you build a 50 unit complex next door, as long as some of those 50 units sell, then everyone elses 1/4th acre will become more valuable, even if no one ever actually buys them, because land value in the US has very little to do with buyers or demand, and is exclusively valued by whatever property transactions happen to occur nearby it.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#189

Post by laurencerowe »

refurb wrote: post #134
carapace wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because we're hella young out here. Relative to the East Coast anyway (I mean, London has Roman ruins...) Do an image search for old timey SF and you'll see: the Sunset was sand dunes until about last Tuesday, etc. Dudes used to pan for gold out by Lake Merced. Also, this was the weirdo town. Bohemia on the Bay. Serious folk didn't really come here to be serious and sane. The old line was, "All the crazy people…

Your comment about SF being young is really true. Take a look at a 1950's picture of the east side of Twin Peaks and you'll see huge tracks of open land. This is ~2 miles from downtown. A lot of SF was built in the last 60-70 years. And also the trend of people wanting to live in SF is a pretty recent phenomenon. The population of SF in 2000 was the same as it was in the 1950's. People were leaving SF in droves 40 ye…

While this is true of SF itself the Bay Area as whole has been growing at a steady million per decade (one and a bit San Franciscos) for the past 70 years.

Other urban areas undergoing growth seem to have done much better by allowing more density. Unfortunately the California tax system incentivizes municipalities to build office space over housing. With the Bay Area's patchwork local organization and no metropolitan level layer of governance local municipalities instead play beggar-thy-neighbour as they promote only development that expands their tax base while the burdens of providing schools etc. falls to the municipality next door.

Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

#190

Post by yks »

siphon22 wrote: post #183
yks wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you what, die in the appreciated property? If you want to make money, it's already very profitable for you to sell the house for condo development but no one is doing that. Instead residents write open letters about how they moved here in 1976 and under no circumstances will allow their neighborhood to be different than back then.

>Instead residents write open letters about how they moved here in 1976 and under no circumstances will allow their neighborhood to be different than back then. I think this is the hardest thing to reconcile. I mean it's easy to get riled up against some rich white NIMBYs doing this kind of thing, but now replace those rich whites with x minority like Mexican-Americans who have lived in their Mexican-American majorit…

Btw, the letter I used as an example was definitely not from a minority person and not about SoCal neighborhood.

Regardless, these people are not "natives" who got SF entirely in its current state from God, it was growing up, as prosperous cities do, and neighborhoods were changing. So why should it stop its development in 1976, why are people who moved in to SF back then entitled to this? If you ask me, this is becoming uncannily feudal.

Post reply on HN