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Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

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Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#221

Post by ChainOfFools »

inglor_cz wrote: post #207
kneebonian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll throw out I also know a guy who is a developer, they have had enough bad issues working in Oregon alone that they have 0 intention of ever touching anything in CA with a 10ft pole, simply because it isn't worth it to deal with the hassle and the headaches.

Famously, the French corporation that builds high-speed railways abandoned the Californian project and moved to Morocco, claiming that Moroccan bureaucracy is much easier to work with.

well, Morocco is a monarchy, so wouldn't you pretty much have to just convince one guy?

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#222

Post by krisroadruck »

howinteresting wrote: post #197
throw009 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all very nice but the calculations would change quite quickly if people had to pay for the upkeep of the roads they use for their cars. Cities for the most part use their productive core to subsidise the unproductive suburbs until they inevitably go bankrupt when the roads build 40 years ago need to be replaced.

This. The preferences are obviously driven by the widespread subsidies provided to suburban living. Take that away and those preferences will shift rapidly.

Looking at your average suburb, there are about 110 houses on quarter acre lots per mile of paved 2 lane road within said suburb, plus an additional bit to connect to an arterial street (which also connects other suburbs) and back out to main drags that have businesses and such.

Starting with the street the houses are actually on, it costs approx $300-$500K to repave 1 mile of residential 2 lane undivided road. Using the upper end we've got $500,000 / 110 houses / 20 year lifespan = $18/mo per household. A rounding error against property taxes.

Now lets assume that per mile of suburb, you also have 3 miles of connecting minor arterial roads those houses also need to account for. These run $400-$800K per mile, and again we'll take the upper limit here. So $800K * 3 / 110 / 20 = $90/mo

So our grand total is $108/mo or $1,306/year. The average American pays $2500/year in property taxes already. I don't think the extra $108/mo is going to change peoples preferences for not being packed in on top of each other. I also don't think that these folks are contributing zero to this now. The gas at the pump is taxed and earmarked for road improvement, some of their property tax goes to it as well.

We can do the same thing for power, water, et cetera. Yes over the lifetime of suburban living a single person probably needs to account for something like $250K of extra infrastructure their sprawl requires, but that's not a lot to pay over a lifetime and a lot of it is already baked into the initial cost of their house (Builders had to pave those suburbs, wire & plumb the neighborhood and that cost is baked into those initial home sales).

I very probably can't make a similar argument for truly rural homes - but a lot of those are farms and I'm sure that complicates things quite a bit - as subsidizing rural farms benefits anyone who eats food from those farms.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#223

Post by amanaplanacanal »

mariosisters wrote: post #210
leereeves wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> behavior gets worse than you expect, in ways that beggar belief. Broken cars, RVs, mobile homes, and animals. How did that cause such trauma? I'd take all of that over an intrusive HOA.

Everyone says that until their neighbor’s hobby includes heavy machinery at 6am. Then they say “well no that’s this other non-zoning, non-HOA type of law we really do need”. But really, people want to do what they want, and other folks don’t get to. That’s the whole of it.

You've just described all of law, not zoning. Getting rid of zoning does not automatically lead to anarchy.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#224

Post by amanaplanacanal »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #156
chung8123 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want single family zoning because they enjoy it more. People wanting single family housing is what makes it valuable not the single family housing itself.

Yeah exactly. While I obviously care about my property value, my interest is in living amongst other property owning families.

Does zoning do that though? A single family home could be occupied by a renter or a homeowner, the same as a condo.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#225

Post by howinteresting »

krisroadruck wrote: post #222
howinteresting wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The preferences are obviously driven by the widespread subsidies provided to suburban living. Take that away and those preferences will shift rapidly.

Looking at your average suburb, there are about 110 houses on quarter acre lots per mile of paved 2 lane road within said suburb, plus an additional bit to connect to an arterial street (which also connects other suburbs) and back out to main drags that have businesses and such. Starting with the street the houses are actually on, it costs approx $300-$500K to repave 1 mile of residential 2 lane undivided road. Using…

It's not just the direct subsidies, it's also the massive amounts of free parking in both suburbs and cities that have distorted the built environment, and things like the mortgage interest deduction + the capital gains tax exemption that have made single-family homeownership cheaper than it would otherwise be.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#226

Post by pwinnski »

nemo44x wrote: post #146
pwinnski wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous that slave patrols existed and formed the basis for later police departments in the south. It is also ridiculous that labor-busting squads existed in the north, which formed the basis for later police departments in the north. The history is there, it is what it is, as ridiculous as that is. You might argue that modern police have far outgrown their origins, and then it would be up to…

Ancient Rome had police. Get real. Boston has the oldest police department. And although some slave states used police for it, it’s ridiculous to compare todays policing as anything like it.

Yes, the slave society of Rome had a police force within the city, which was mostly made up of slaves under supervision. The two main functions of this police force? Fighting fires and catching runaway slaves. So the gap between "police" and "slave patrols" has been nonexistent for a very long time.

I already mentioned that northern states had union-busting squads who formed the basis of modern police forces, so yes, I'm aware of Boston, too.

Once again, you use that word. I agree that it's ridiculous to compare today's policing to anything like historic policing or ancient slave patrols. Today's police are far less accountable, more violent, and heavily armed.

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#227

Post by pwinnski »

pwinnski wrote: post #226
nemo44x wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ancient Rome had police. Get real. Boston has the oldest police department. And although some slave states used police for it, it’s ridiculous to compare todays policing as anything like it.

Yes, the slave society of Rome had a police force within the city, which was mostly made up of slaves under supervision. The two main functions of this police force? Fighting fires and catching runaway slaves. So the gap between "police" and "slave patrols" has been nonexistent for a very long time. I already mentioned that northern states had union-busting squads who formed the basis of modern police forces, so yes,…

I guess there's been a long weekend, keeping us both away, but since you brought up ancient Rome, I keep remembering fun things from reading about this a couple of years back, inspired by Mike Duncan's excellent podcast on the history of Rome.

Within the great city, there were, as you pointed out, police. As I pointed out, they were mostly there for fire-fighting and as a slave patrol, and were themselves made up of mostly-slaves. But you might be thinking, what about investing crimes? That's what police do when there aren't traffic stops to make, right?

In that great city, if you wanted a crime investigated, you did it yourself. Evidence gathered? Find it yourself. If you wanted to accuse someone of something, you grabbed them and at least one witness and dragged them before a judge. So justice, what there was of it, was largely available to the wealthy, who could afford to hire people to drag other people before judges, and if you were a poor person wanting to accuse a rich person of a crime, well, good luck with that.

So modern cops might have a really poor clearance rate for most crimes, barely exceeding half even for murder[0], but at least they try, which is more than can be said for Roman vigiles urbani. And at least they pretend to be impartial, even if one can clearly see that crimes are prosecuted unevenly, and that US prisons are filled with more than their fair share of the poor.

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...

Re: Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama

#228

Post by nielsbot »

davidw wrote: post #184
nielsbot wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read this article, I think it might change your perspective a bit: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...

That's the same article I posted, above!

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