371–380 of 622 posts
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> For how long? Infinitely. Wages go up in nominal terms, too. What matters is the real housing price hovering around zero. (Slightly above, localized, is also fine if balanced by migration.)
Real "house price" for a given house should actually go down over time, because it gets older and worn down and just not quite as good as the new hotness.
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This theory falls down when you look at murders. They're down with all the others on that link, and they're highly unlikely to go unreported.
When people talk about "high crime areas" they are usually not talking about murder or arson. They're usually talking about large amounts of more "petty crimes" - because even in the murder capital of the US (currently St Louis) it is 64.54 per 100,000 residents. Just not that many overall and you probably won't actually know someone who was murdered, especially if you're more toward the richer parts of town. But the…
Well, yes, that's the problem. It's a perception easily manipulated, by media breathlessly covering the latest incident, interest groups like police unions making false claims, etc. Americans have a wildly incorrect perception of what crime has done over the last ~50 years.
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> Crime is rampant According to the data, crime in SF is lower that it was a few years ago: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ... > Drug use and filth is everywhere. Voters can’t seem to wrap their head around better housing policies to get people off the street. It’s disappointing, the entire Bay Area is guilty of this.
This delusion that if only we build houses, the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicted will magically disappear from the streets...is based on what exactly? What does "housing policy" mean in the context of streets lined with tent cities filled with drug addicts?
Houston has done it, and it can be done: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-...
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This theory falls down when you look at murders. They're down with all the others on that link, and they're highly unlikely to go unreported.
Looking at that link murders are down from 34 to 33, not exactly stunning success. Especially if a murder is ruled something else.
In fact, it looks like murders in San Francisco have been in roughly that range since 2009 (https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/murde...).
The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even before that. It is too expensive to live in the city. It is too expensive to commute to the city. It is too expensive to feed yourself in the city. Crime is rampant. Drug use and filth is everywhere. Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owner…
How's this compare in other cities? Just annecdotally speaking, I feel like I know a lot more people who used to live and work in San Francisco who don't anymore post pandemic, as opposed to friends of mine who left and came back to Austin/New York/Seattle
It was also dead.
Weekday morning skyway traffic looked like a weekend or a holiday. New office campuses … tumbleweeds. My hotel was almost empty.
That’s an enormous amount of (relatively recent) investment that is now of questionable value.
Still waiting for Vancouver real estate to follow suit but feels weird that in Vancouver its' socially acceptable for people without homes single out a certain ethnic group every cycle. Used to Japanese in the 1980s, Hong Kongers in 90s, Taiwanese in 00s and Chinese in 10s. This type of scapegoating doesn't seem prevalent in other real estate markets like California, their money is correct on high wage disparity betw…
At least from 2012-2018 - in my circles - everyone was blaming "Chinese cash-buyers" for a lot of problems.
I think 3 things:
1) Vancouver has a MUCH higher ratio of immigrants - especially immigrants that feel comfortable enough with their long-term situation - to purchase than in LA or San Diego. The Bay area might be close.
2) Although the percentage of foreign buyers is less than 10% in Vancouver and not the actual reason for the problem - that ratio is a lot higher than in LA, San Diego, or The Bay. It's closer to 1% in CA.
3) Most importantly, Vancouver's price to rent & income (after taxes) are BAT$HIT insane compared to California.
So although it's not the reason for Vancouver's high prices - and no one should be talking about it - it's not surprising that people talk about it more in Vancouver than in LA.
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> city officials are asleep at the wheel Eh, San Francisco's voters have been drinking crazy water for some time. New developments blocked by renters. Stringent building codes and environmental reviews defended by those who think they're being compassionate to the poor. Scolding tech companies for hiring in the city and then panicking when they stop hiring in the city. This obviously isn't all of them. But it's not l…
I wish I could find it, but I recall some research indicating that elected officials are very good at giving voters the stuff they want (even if it’s internally inconsistent) e.g. voters want more spending on education, healthcare and don’t want cuts anywhere else + plus want less deficit spending/balanced budget = impossible, but as the politician understood that they’d rewarded for increasing spending in your impor…
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> Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached homes when given other options. How is choosing a higher-quality of life option “wasted”? It's not. But it's wasteful in an urban core, where that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply.
> that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. Which is why SF is so poor and underdeveloped. > It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply. An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee.
No, it's one reason why some US cities are becoming increasingly unlivable for anyone outside the upper-middle class - those who sell your groceries, make your lunch or deliver your packages (to name only a handful of occupations).
> An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee.
Is suburban Tennessee an urban core?