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To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

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Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#241

Post by flanbiscuit »

Cerium wrote: post #207
flanbiscuit wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe William Gibson described something similar to the self-building towers in his book Idoru[1]. I think they were called nanotech buildings[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru [2] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=83

Additionally Neal Stephenson describes vertically extruded nanotech buildings in "The Diamond Age".

I haven't read a sci-fi/cyberpunk book in a long time, I think I'm going to pick this up. Been meaning to read more of Stephenson's novels

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#242

Post by TomVDB »

dublinben wrote: post #234
TomVDB wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, and nobody claimed otherwise. But I can have the desire for the conditions to stay the same.

We have a way for you to express that desire. You can buy the surrounding properties and keep them exactly the same. See Zuckerberg's purchases in Palo Alto for example.

That'd be a great example if it weren't for the fact that Zuck didn't keep things the same at all: he wants to raze the surrounding houses.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#243

Post by zapita »

traytonwhite wrote: post #236
TomVDB wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy a house in a nice neighborhood with nice single family houses and well kept gardens and very little traffic. You like it that way. You pay a lot for that. You don't like it when some of those houses are replaced by an apartment complex. What is there not to understand?

The part where the person thinks they have some right to tell others what to do with their properly-zoned property while simultaneously refusing to pay for that right?

Woah. Someone said "all homeowners benefit from increased density in their neighborhood". Tom replied that as a homeowner he didn't feel he benefited from increased density, and explained why.

He didn't tell anyone what to do. What are you so upset about?

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#244

Post by Naritai »

matte_black wrote: post #150
sampo wrote: post #25

Just quoting the last paragraph. This is the kind of honesty people need. > Intellectual honesty requires taking numbers seriously. Either we prioritize making the Bay Area affordable for all of us or we don’t. The less housing we build, the more wealth will be trapped in high housing prices. Unless we decide to grow our housing stock to accommodate our economy, we are continuing to choose the interests of those who…

At what point though can we declare the choice has been made and just lean in to whatever conclusion has been decided? It seems like we’re always stuck in an indecisive state of choosing between the interests of the wealthy and the interests of the struggling, and we can never get out unless we make the “right” choice (which is always implied to be the interests of the struggling) Maybe the choice has already been ma…

Clearly everybody who already owns a home is heavily leaning into the 'make housing as expensive as possible' conclusion.

Where these sorts of articles comes from is observers who would like to change that narrative.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#245

Post by qihqi »

dublinben wrote: post #234
TomVDB wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, and nobody claimed otherwise. But I can have the desire for the conditions to stay the same.

We have a way for you to express that desire. You can buy the surrounding properties and keep them exactly the same. See Zuckerberg's purchases in Palo Alto for example.

Or you can vote municipalities that best aligns with what you desire.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#246

Post by la6470 »

traytonwhite wrote: post #236
TomVDB wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy a house in a nice neighborhood with nice single family houses and well kept gardens and very little traffic. You like it that way. You pay a lot for that. You don't like it when some of those houses are replaced by an apartment complex. What is there not to understand?

The part where the person thinks they have some right to tell others what to do with their properly-zoned property while simultaneously refusing to pay for that right?

Understand your pain but it’s the market that decides at the end .

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#247

Post by kelnos »

TomVDB wrote: post #228
beavisthegenius wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an SF resident, you people are ruining the city.

I'm ruining my city because I went to a bunch of open houses, choose a house that I like in a nice neighborhood and paid (a lot) for it? That's definitely an original kind of argument.

I think the parent was referring to: homelessness on the rise, lower-income residents being forced out, the need for many service workers to transport themselves to the city because they can't afford to live here anymore, housing speculation and foreign investment leaving units empty and driving up prices, etc. All of that "changes the character of the city", IMO for the worse. One reason (of many) for these changes is obstructionist behavior toward building housing and increasing density.

At least that's what I'd be referring to if I were to make the parent's argument.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#248

Post by kelnos »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #214
davidw wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving to areas of opportunity is about the most American thing ever. Do you think everyone should just stay where they happened to be born?!

No, not at all. But I don't see why wanting things to stay similar to when you bought the house is any more selfish than wanting to barge yourself into an area that may not be able to absorb the additional population.

I think it's a bit obtuse to suggest that someone who had the luck to be born a little earlier and move into an area somehow has some sort of a natural right to keep others out through obstructionist policies, and expecting them to act with compassion is somehow selfish.

But I suppose that's par for the course for the US, where individual expression and selfishness is valued over collective good.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#249

Post by khazhoux »

raldi wrote: post #211
khazhoux wrote: post #101

Or Google, Apple, Facebook could grow the next 200,000 jobs somewhere else? Everyone talks about housing affordability and NIMBYs and we get into class warfare and home-appreciation snobbery, but the simple thing I can't understand is how will the area's transportation infrastructure scale up? There's no credible solution.

Why can't we do what every other city with an extensive subway system did?

There may be seismic reasons.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#250

Post by kelnos »

TomVDB wrote: post #221
Spooky23 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the way it works. The reality is that the apartment building goes up and you house is worth nothing unless the government allows an eminent domain for your property or a developer with the bucks to buy out the neighborhood shows up. Until that happens, your house lost a third of its value because there's an apartment next door. If you're unlucky, rates go up and you're stuck.

I don't understand why you're being down voted. Is it really controversial to say that a regular single family house in a single family house neighborhood will go down in value when somebody decides to plant an apartment complex right next to do?

I think the downvotes are unwarranted, but the point being made is that in a land-scarce environment like SF, a developer would pay out the nose to buy your single-family home, tear it down, and build something with higher density... if the land was zoned for it.

Sure, once this happens enough times, and supply starts to meet demand, you're absolutely right in that a single-family home's value will drop when it's adjacent to an apartment complex.

(Then again, it could also be quite valuable to someone who wants a single-family home when the norm becomes larger complexes.)

Also note that the current value of your home is driven almost entirely by artificial scarcity. There's nothing intrinsic about it that makes it worth so much.

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