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Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

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Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#501
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the people I know who left NYC also left because of housing costs, even though New York has been putting up new housing at an insane rate. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/mortgages/migration-study/

It doesn't help when there are insane regulations like dedicating double digit percentage of new units to be "affordable"/subsidized/section 8. Anyone with a full time minimum wage job would not qualify for "affordable" housing, you literally have to not work at all, it's such a scam.

Here in New York, at least, the eligibility for those units is based on the median income in the neighborhood where the building is. In some cases these affordable units end up with requirements that are pretty substantial, e.g. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/housi...

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was one of those who moved from the SFBay to Texas. Knowing that for what i'd need to save up for a down payment for a home in the bay is enough to buy a house in Texas cash was an extremely strong motivating factor.

Of course Texas has its downsides too.. the weather, the traffic (depends what city), less tech jobs to name a few?

Nowhere in the world is perfect. Everywhere is a compromise.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#503
post #353
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire idea is preposterous. The solution to affordable housing is oversupply of housing. Gov should incentivize new construction to reduce prices and let the market fix it.

The problem is that in most areas the government is primarily voted in by existing landowners, who don't want more housing, and don't care if lower-income renters are being forced out. The non-landowners are either not abundant enough, or only plan to live here for a short enough period of time that they don't bother to get involved in local politics.

While this is the whole "NIMBY" thing... is that really a problem? No one complains that Americans can't vote in Britains elections, to set their laws. The whole point of voting is that the people who actively live there get to decide what happens to their city.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#504
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love cities, think they are great, and live in the Bay Area myself. I don't know how old you are, but much of the flight to suburbs was due to the building of freeways and the fear of nuclear attack on cities. Younger people did not grow up with bomb shelters and duck and cover drills at schools, so living in a big city is not something they fear. If we have a nuke or two blow up a few cities today, there might be…

White people didn't leave cities because of the threat of nuclear attacks, they left because there was an incredible amount of racial unrest, violence, and rioting. There is a lot of research on the issue [0]. Climate change is a much larger threat to anyone under 30 than nuclear annihilation is, and the balance of evidence we have says that urban lifestyles (car free/car light, living in a multi family home) has a s…

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Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this forum, they did.

They used repeal and partial repeal interchangeably. Prop 13 also pushes undue costs onto new property development. Lower development costs equals fewer luxury condos. Were California to both build more and repeal Prop 13 fully it's unlikely that retired tech bros would be priced out of their houses. Even so one of the primary roles of a county assessor is to determine where tax breaks are suitable. Allowing the (typ…

Are you speaking for all of them?

I am unclear about what you said about ‘undue costs onto new property developments’. Why should existing home owners share the cost of new developments?? What are these ‘undue costs’?

The development company buys land or old property and builds on it. Then they sell it at a profit. They pay fees to the city for digging trenches and fixing sewers and water and gas and electricity connections. Some areas also pay for new schools and school rooms to be built so existing schools don’t get over crowded.

How is any of this the fault of existing residents? What benefit do they gain by making it cheaper for more people to move in into higher density developments? Older residents don’t use schools. Property taxes from high density high income zip codes don’t even benefit those paying it. No one understands the formula. Sacramento obfuscates the actual allocation. I have poured over the budget of school districts and my city‘s budget. It is a Ponzi scheme.

None of the taxes paid by the highest earning population comes back to them. It is redistributed to other less affluent non Silicon Valley zip codes. To avoid bringing attention to this, a spotlight is thrown upon senior owned properties because they are an easy target. And they are property owners with highly inflated but NON LIQUID FIXED ASSETS. Please note that this is very crucial.

A lack of critical thinking and inability to pull the govt spending at Sacramento is a failing of the younger working force demanding for repeal of prop 13.

Instead of questioning high density housing where only the govt benefits by increased property tax recipts that pad the huge deficit due to unfunded pension liabilities, there is a mob mentality to attack the most vulnerable and unrepresented minority who are senior property owners.

Why are they not asking for govt accountability? Why are they not asking for better infrastructure and better public transport to create sustainable density. Yes, low density and sprawl is unsustainable but the Bay Area is not sprawl. The more high density a city becomes, the more unaffordable housing becomes there. The economics and numbers is pretty obvious if anyone wants to look at it and be honest.

There is a startling lack of honesty and a stunning pretense of true intent ...I have always smirked when I heard the term ‘virtue signalling’ ..but I totally get it now.

Taxes should be minimal. Taxes increase should be at a stable and predictable rate. Taxes should be based on consumption.

‘Discretion’ is the mother of corruption. There are other solutions:

1. Limit foreign speculative investors 2. Schools must be locally funded with local property taxes. Any shortfall should come from a special fund. 3. Education should not be connected to speculative income that is property taxes. For this, cities should be able to govern themselves. 4. Less interference from Sacramento. 5. Infrastructure should be installed before approving high density homes. 6. Referendums from all residents before passing the local budget allocations. More local control..less central interference. 7. Tax payers should have weighted votes with local city budgeting decisions. Other wise it’s like asking your guests to spend your paycheck. 8. A more involved citizenry will have a vested interest in their community. 9. Better public transport networks. Our gas tax is a great example of misappropriation of taxes. It makes no sense that the surcharge on gas in Ca is used to rehabilitate prison population. It makes one not trust the govt. 10. Full transparency. If you go to transparentcalifornia dot com, all the salaries of govt employees will be public record. And yet, I still can’t crack the local funding formula of California where property taxes are allocated to California schools. I have made at least half a dozen calls to explain and/clarify doubts. Crickets.

Big govt, excessive taxation. This is the problem. Not prop 13..not senior citizens living in their homes that they paid for and built. And tragedy is that the people against them are the same people they educated with their tax dollars before the kids grew up and started cashing in their stock options.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#506
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second one, as far as I'm aware (not from California): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

Prop 47 is a ridiculous red herring. It raised the threshold for felony [whatever] to $950. To my knowledge that threshold hadn't changed in my lifetime, which is to say that the intent of the original statutes was that there should be a significant barrier to a felony charge. Meanwhile a misdemeanor can be punished by up to 364 days in jail. However police are generally unwilling to enforce misdemeanor statutes. A c…

It's not just prop 47 or the cops. The new DA just refused to prosecute a murder.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/SF-District-Attorn...

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#507
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hope you understand that it’s “progressive” policy which has caused crime to explode Crime has not exploded in California. California’s violent crime rate rose in 2017—but it remains historically low. The statewide property crime rate decreased in 2017. Crime rates vary dramatically by region and category. Violent crime increased in a majority of counties but property crime decreased in most counties. [0] [0] https…

I don't trust any property crime "stat" in any moderately sized city. Every single person I know whose had property crime happen to them which is in multiple cities and states doesn't even bother reporting it because the cops won't do anything so it's just a waste of time.

Insurance claims generally require a police report.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I could tell, everyone in Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio lives in gated communities with almost nothing in walking distance and very, very few people walking around.

Thats the same thing with California outside of SF and some parts of LA...

Eh you might as well consider some people living in SF/LA in a gated community. If you Uber/Lyft from home to work to your favorite restaurant you’re not really in the community.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#509
post #178
post #4

Sonoma County, CA here. We've lost more people from our county than any other in the state between 2017-2018 [1], and it is only continuing. From the few of these people I have spoken with - anecdotally: - None left because of the fire risk, specifically. [though some obviously did - 2] - Most left because of the cost of living: $600k avg home price. - Some also left because of political and human environment: We hav…

> Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it. I wonder if people considered voting the politicians who made these laws out. Judging from CA voting patterns, probably not. And then when it gets really bad, they move to another state and likely vote for the same policies that caused them to move in the first place.

Crime peaked when Pete Wilson was governor and California was a swing state. Since then, under Davis, Schwarzenegger, Brown, and now Newsom it has decreased significantly.

[0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mentioned Houston. I'm currently living in Houston, working as a SWE, and can attest to the pros of living here. Regarding your concerns, the city is quite demographically diverse from people of all walks of life. Summers do get hot and humid, but nothing unbearable. The winters are more than tolerable (its currently 68 degrees outside) as well.

I would argue Bay Area is one of the most diverse places on the planet. More so than Houston. In the Bay Area we have the following people: white, black, indian, vietnamese, chinese, korean, latinx, middle eastern, russian, polish, european, british, etc. Whites are a minority at many public schools in the Bay Area..and that is normal here. Yet people on HN love to complain about lack of diversity? Cons of Houston: -…

It’s not diverse if all the new residents work in the same industry and talk about the same things.
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