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California population declines for first time in more than a century

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Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#301

Post by jjeaff »

cudgy wrote: post #254
linguae wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a lifelong Californian whose lived in Santa Cruz County for nearly nine out of the past 11 years, and as someone who wants to become a CS professor at a teaching university one day, I feel the exact same way. I love California and I don't want to leave the state. However, the housing prices signal to me that if I want to buy a house, I need to have a very high income and maintain it during the length of a 30-year…

Why is owning a house so important that people would move away from family to another state? Seems like there would be more important reasons. Also, professorships are notoriously difficult to obtain and many professors move to far away rural and otherwise undesirable locations for that “privelege”. I’ve known several distinguished professor couples (not in CA) that live separately to pursue their careers … think twi…

The high home prices also mean high rents. It's expensive to live in CA whether you own or rent.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#302

Post by sagarm »

Hypx_ wrote: post #227
raldi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would one need to rethink how society works? This is how all cities grew until single-family-houses-only zoning swept the United States in the 1970s. And if Tokyo can build skyscrapers, I don’t see why earthquakes would keep California from replacing 40’ SFHs with 40’ multifamily buildings.

Japan has a much better mass transit system and a culture that does not embrace the automobile like the US has. Plus, Japan has far more access to fresh water that California does. And Tokyo doesn't have that many skyscrapers. In fact, for a city of its size it has surprisingly few. Even if we could magically upgrade every SFH to a multi-family building we'll have very unlivable cities with infrastructure falling wel…

In SF pre-pandemic, it was already true that a minority of people drove themselves to work.

Drivers are just much more visible. A bus can transport as many people as an entire block's worth of vehicles.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#303

Post by _vertigo »

epistasis wrote: post #62
eganist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why no need for highrises?

High rises don't necessarily help much with adding additional population, the real key is consistently higher density being allowed. Barcelona is an absolutely beautiful city with amazing transit and amenities, all without any high rises at all. Really the key is to ban single unit detached homes, get rid of setbacks, get rid of parking minimums, establish parking maximums, even. Basically, the entire planning profes…

Is this really the future you want to live in? I would like there to be a sane tradeoff between density and proximity to the city center.

I stayed in an Airbnb in a central neighborhood in Barcelona (l'Eixample IIRC) and I found it to be pretty cramped quarters. I'm not sure how much difference there is between one apartment building and the next, but I have more space living in San Francisco right now and I still would like to have more. I personally would not like to live in SF if I had to live in housing that small.

I want a garage, I want another room in my apartment, and I want a driveway where I can wash my car. I also want to live in a thriving city with lots of interesting people to meet and things to do. I recognize that these are contradictory desires. I think the latter desire is more healthy for society, but I think there is definitely a reason I feel the former desire. It's because that's how I grew up.

I think that Americans, culturally, value space more than perhaps some other cultures do. I think that trying to fight against that is a losing fight. You will not get any policy passed if you lead with "banning single unit detached homes". That is far and away the most popular housing option in the United States and absolutely what the average American thinks of when they think about "buying" (vs renting). I walk by people living in their modern, rectangular condos big glass windows that let me see everything in their house at once and I cringe - who on earth wants to live in tiny terrarium that costs $4000 a month? Like it or not, most people feel this way about condos. Also like it or not, a lot of people basically think that these are the only two options, because that's all that they've seen.

I think we need to just allow the missing middle. There are people who like high-rise condos, and there are people who like single family homes, and there are probably a lot more people who, when presented with the financial advantages of the middle options, would choose something in between.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#304

Post by sagarm »

raldi wrote: post #52
cauliflower2718 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fire season is more like hell on earth than paradise, unfortunately.

The primary reason we have a fire season at all is that we don't let people build housing in California's existing cities and towns, and so instead they sprawl out into fire-prone areas requiring long-distance power lines. https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/wui-interface-intermi...

We need to stop subsidizing people who choose to live in the wildlands urban interface. It's a hazard to the rest of us.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#305

Post by throwawayboise »

wavefunction wrote: post #19
prepend wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems very unlikely that this census is corrupted. It’s also a census so the margin of error is not within a plausible margin of error.

The process was highly politicized and one party and the one in power while the census was administered stood to gain from sowing doubt, fear and confusion. I think the actual results gathering was handled normally but the idea of course was to depress census response rates.

This is election denialism in another guise. Do you trust our civic processes or do you not?

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#306

Post by defterGoose »

seryoiupfurds wrote: post #206
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a good solution for this. If the taxes get locked in, then you get the "2 neighbors with near identical houses paying totally different amounts in taxes" problem. If the taxes are not locked in, then you get the retired lifelong home-owner (or renter) on a fixed income, unable to afford the increasing taxes (or rents).

In other jurisdictions the solution is to allow the retired homeowner to defer property taxes, to be paid out of the eventual proceeds of a sale.

A sane, rational solution to a huge, massive problem? We wouldn't want any of those screwing up our politics, would we? /s

But really, Prop 13 is among the most ham-fisted damaging legislation you could possibly point to...

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#307

Post by prostoalex »

0x000000E2 wrote: post #241
pbuzbee wrote: post #178

I feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It'…

Most of California's problems go back to lack of housing and opposition to building more. Everyone wants to live in Cali for nice weather and jobs. If you stop people from building more housing your property value just keeps rising. Property costs are high because NIMBY blocking denser housing. Traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Homelessness is bad because houses are too expensive.…

> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted

Massive wildfires (vs small distributed fires) are the result of the policy framework that (a) prohibits preventative controlled burns (b) requires immediate containment of any new fire. The old (more flammable) undergrowth never has a chance to burn off and free up the space for (less flammable) new generation.

As a result CA is one of the most polluting states in the nation as far as co2 emissions https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfires-ca...

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#308

Post by colordrops »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #192
ohazi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i.e. the original sin that gave us this problem in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense to have the older, wealthier, luckier, "I got here early, therefore I'm set for life" generation pay $300/year, while the couple in their thirties who moved in two years ago, have a new baby, and can barely afford the mortgage and daycare despite both parents working in tech have to pay nearly $15,000/year. I know the ori…

I've never seen a good solution for this. If the taxes get locked in, then you get the "2 neighbors with near identical houses paying totally different amounts in taxes" problem. If the taxes are not locked in, then you get the retired lifelong home-owner (or renter) on a fixed income, unable to afford the increasing taxes (or rents).

A good solution would be to lower property taxes for everyone to something manageable, and increase taxes elsewhere, especially around loopholes for the wealthy.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#309

Post by periheli0n »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #67

I'm a PhD student at Caltech. I'd love to stay in CA and become a prof at one of the world-renown universities in the state. The cost for a nice house is > $800K in all of the cities hosting these universities; on top of that, the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.

Things really have changed when housing cost is a greater problem than getting tenure.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#310

Post by elevenoh »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #297
pbuzbee wrote: post #178

I feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It'…

But the places like Oregon and Washington which are booming as a result of "California flight" have all of those same factors with marginally different weights associated to each individual problem. In particular, Oregon has a higher tax rate than California does for high (~120K+) earners as a result of a lack of sales tax and correspondingly absurdly high income taxes. Oregon is booming . Blue state politics is not…

>Blue state politics is not what is driving people out of California

It's certainly part of it (wealth tax, non-nuanced small-biz killing lockdown, signalling > results) though.

Not all 'blue state politics measures/stances' overlap.

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