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Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

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Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#31

Post by gavazzy »

fineman wrote: post #29
gavazzy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time they're drinking a latte or beer, smack it out of their hands. After all, having your drink taken from you is morally equiavlent to never having it in the first place, right?

And you're going to pay for it? Because there's a big difference in simply not having a latte, and having paid for one only to have to knocked all over your shirt...

This is exactly what the speaker seems to be missing. Building homes required significant money in the first place; there's no such thing as a free house.

My point is that if Person A purchases something, and then Person B says that having that thing taken is equivalent to not having it in the first place, then Person B is ignoring the cost that Person A had to incur in the first place.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#32

Post by hueving »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #27
x0x0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an sf suburb. I talk to local homeowners in the dog park at night and they're all wildly opposed to density, often with a nice core of racism too (I'm white so white people say some wild shit to me; you hear references to "those people" and it's not that deeply coded.) The only thing that cheers me about all the nimbys where I live is all their kids are getting kicked out. Seriously. In 20 years when their…

it's not irrational to be opposed to density. Racism aside, density changes the character of the neighborhood and potentially lowers property values of existing homeowners. So, it's not surprising people are apprehensive

'character' is just code for 'I don't want to share' or even worse 'I bought in and if we make more housing, my price won't go up as much'

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#33

Post by hueving »

wahsd wrote: post #25
mc32 wrote: post #6

I hope she wins. I hope other people see her insight. I have not seen this kind of attitude against development in other countries. Sure, some speculators will make out on some locations near transit,and some will lose out a bit. Who cares, what we need are more units, in SF, down the Camino corridor from SF to san Jose. Build up, have BART go all the way down the el cam, and have local Surface-bahns. I'm tired of th…

What you don't see to realize is that what you describe will be only a momentary and fleeing improvement. The problem is the irrational and unnecessary concentration of opportunities in that area. So you build more buildings, create a housing glut even ... so now even more people move to the area because it's the only place where opportunities exist because it's where the wealthy sprinkle crumbs to their pest scurryi…

Anyone who calls the concentration of tech here 'irrational' doesn't understand anything about the benefits of networking. I pay a significant cost to be here because it is the tech capital of the world. That gives me the freedom to move between jobs easily, diversify my skills, and get raises.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#34

Post by ChuckMcM »

hugh4 wrote: post #14
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was coming to say the same thing. I think this is a good question to ask of the folks who object to building homes, "What if the people who lived in this town before you moved here had blocked the building of the home you are living in?" You wouldn't have had that wonderful experience you are trying to preserve because you would never have lived here." It is very sobering.

"Then I would have bought a different home, for slightly more money" But what if there had been no houses built here at all? "Then I guess I'd live somewhere else"

Cool, so when are you moving?

(only half kidding) But that is the right answer right? Once they admit they have the flexibility of living anywhere they want then they should exercise that power if the city council votes in ways they don't like right? I get that it is a very complex patina of things that make up change, and when you have lived somewhere 20 years to have it change inexorably makes you feel powerless, but change is the constant.

My experience so far in talking with people is that they somehow want to keep things the way they were when they got there, and can't internalize that this merely put a pin in spectrum of change they experienced, rather than stopped it or changed it. In Sunnyvale, it used to be all orchards so most people are living on what was once productive farmland, and by moving there they helped destroy hundreds of jobs of people who worked at the Del Monte fruit packing plant (now gone). So they were the bad guys, and now we have this new set of people who are asking for a denser, less car centric, sort of existence with a walkable space and good public transit. So who are "we", the current residents, to judge "them" by what they want?

Everyone wants a living and thriving city. And what it takes to be that changes over the years, people lose sight of that though.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#35

Post by Apocryphon »

hugh4 wrote: post #26
cbd1984 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord. The state is what allows a landlord to be a landlord in the first place, by making a society stable enough that property ownership is a matter of laws and contracts as opposed to guns and groups with guns.

Sure, the state is what allows you to be alive at all, because without it you'd probably have been killed by or enslaved by roving Mad Max style marauders. Therefore you owe your life to the State and they can demand anything at all from you and you shouldn't complain. Right?

Welcome to the social contract

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#36

Post by tmorton »

wahsd wrote: post #18
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was coming to say the same thing. I think this is a good question to ask of the folks who object to building homes, "What if the people who lived in this town before you moved here had blocked the building of the home you are living in?" You wouldn't have had that wonderful experience you are trying to preserve because you would never have lived here." It is very sobering.

Sorry, that's nonsense. The problem not only in the bay area is the irrational and unnecessary concentration of people. It is quite unsettling to me that just because some people don't like what you do on or with your private property that you feel entitled to impose yourself and your will upon them. It's really a kind of liberal tyranny that is not only sweeping this country but it seems at least the western world.…

The downvotes here are really inappropriate. I disagree with most of this comment, but it's well up to the standards of political discourse on HN.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#37

Post by erispoe »

wahsd wrote: post #18
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was coming to say the same thing. I think this is a good question to ask of the folks who object to building homes, "What if the people who lived in this town before you moved here had blocked the building of the home you are living in?" You wouldn't have had that wonderful experience you are trying to preserve because you would never have lived here." It is very sobering.

Sorry, that's nonsense. The problem not only in the bay area is the irrational and unnecessary concentration of people. It is quite unsettling to me that just because some people don't like what you do on or with your private property that you feel entitled to impose yourself and your will upon them. It's really a kind of liberal tyranny that is not only sweeping this country but it seems at least the western world.…

First, concentration of economic value in urban centers is a constant since the first cities appeared. That's what they are for. This is not the result of a government ploy. This is not a 10'000 years old conspiracy.

Second, no one is forcing homeowners to tear down their houses or do things they don't want to do with their private property. The debate is not about eminent domain. There are enough landowners willing to sell their piece of land to develop dense housing, enough developers willing to build it, and enough buyers or renters for the housing. The current nimbyism of trying to force your neighbors to conform to your little vision of what they should do or not do with their piece of land goes against the private property rights you advocate for. Let them build what they want to build on their property.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#38

Post by bsder »

wahsd wrote: post #25
mc32 wrote: post #6

I hope she wins. I hope other people see her insight. I have not seen this kind of attitude against development in other countries. Sure, some speculators will make out on some locations near transit,and some will lose out a bit. Who cares, what we need are more units, in SF, down the Camino corridor from SF to san Jose. Build up, have BART go all the way down the el cam, and have local Surface-bahns. I'm tired of th…

What you don't see to realize is that what you describe will be only a momentary and fleeing improvement. The problem is the irrational and unnecessary concentration of opportunities in that area. So you build more buildings, create a housing glut even ... so now even more people move to the area because it's the only place where opportunities exist because it's where the wealthy sprinkle crumbs to their pest scurryi…

> The problem is the irrational and unnecessary concentration of opportunities in that area.

The concentration is not irrational. That's the problem.

The concentration is driven by the fact that you will, not might, get laid off at some point if your job is in the tech sector. So, what happens is that everybody thinks about where their next job is going to be while getting hired for their current job.

If I somehow manage to land, say, a VLSI layout job in Pittsburgh, PA, there is no point in going there as when I get laid off, there is no other VLSI layout job. So, I'll have to go back to Silicon Valley. So, why should I leave Silicon Valley in the first place?

You might think that, okay, Pittsburgh is a problem, but what about Austin? Oddly, same issue. A hardware company wiped out most of its Austin site, set off a big scramble and those people couldn't land jobs because there are no other ones there (people think of Austin as tech--but it's not really hardware tech). I know lots of people who got hired in the "Big Data Analytics" startup fad who are now figuring out that they basically signed onto "Actuarial Science"--but, if they have a family, they really have nowhere else to go. The single ones are either changing fields (becoming a chef seems to be popular--go figure) or going to Silicon Valley.

Whereas, in Silicon Valley, you turn right at the last light instead of left, and you're at your new job.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#39

Post by icebraining »

cbd1984 wrote: post #20
jinushaun wrote: post #3

Love this quote: “Most people would be very uncomfortable tearing down 315 houses. But they don’t have a similar objection to never building them in the first place, even though I feel they’re morally equivalent. Those people show up anyway. They get born anyway. They get a job in the area anyway. What do they do? They live in an overcrowded situation, they pay too much rent, they have a commute that’s too long. Or m…

By that logic, we shouldn't be building houses, but hospitals, homeless shelters, orphanages, and retirement homes. After all, what kind of a monster tears down those things?

Building houses doesn't prevent building hospitals and etc. And if they are needed, of course you should.

Re: Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco’s suburbs

#40

Post by brudgers »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #5
jinushaun wrote: post #3

Love this quote: “Most people would be very uncomfortable tearing down 315 houses. But they don’t have a similar objection to never building them in the first place, even though I feel they’re morally equivalent. Those people show up anyway. They get born anyway. They get a job in the area anyway. What do they do? They live in an overcrowded situation, they pay too much rent, they have a commute that’s too long. Or m…

I was coming to say the same thing. I think this is a good question to ask of the folks who object to building homes, "What if the people who lived in this town before you moved here had blocked the building of the home you are living in?" You wouldn't have had that wonderful experience you are trying to preserve because you would never have lived here." It is very sobering.

In general [1], people who hate developers and/or development live, work, shop, and worship in places developed by developers. Someone subdivided and sold the land. The infrastructure of deeds, insurance and mortgages that makes the contemporary housing markets possible exists because development has and continues to take place.

[1]: In the United States.

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