
Building a Housing Ladder: Lessons From, and For, Silicon Valley - prostoalex
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/urban-policy-2018-building-housing-ladder-lessons-silicon-valley-11511.html
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pascalxus
Maybe we're doing something wrong, but those charts severely underestimate the
percentage of income going towards housing. In San Jose, it says 12% of
families earning 150K are cost burdened. In SJ the avg townhouse/house now
costs 1.1 million with 200k down, that means you pay 60K per year just on
mortgage, plus 14K in taxes, (no longer deductible after state income taxes),
plus 4K in home owners insurance and possible HOA, plus another 3K in basic
utilities. The total is over 80K on 115K after tax income, making it 70% of
your total take home pay. And that doesn't even cover repair costs.

The only thing that can explain it: I suspect what's going on is that they're
averaging everyone out together, including those that bought over 20 years
ago. if the ones that bought over 20 years ago represent a sizable majority 60
to 80% or more then that would explain why they underestimate housing costs so
much.

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acover
Are there any example cities that improved housing affordability
significantly?

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claydavisss
Stopped reading when I saw the name "Carl Guardino" and so should you.
Guardino's lobbying has resulted in a litany of pointless and wasteful taxes
and fees that have served to enrich his org while producing nothing of value.

Its time Bay Area residents understand that the YIMBY-Industrial Complex
exists and is very effective (and not to be confused with legit and effective
YIMBY efforts)...SVLG is at the forefront.

If you have lived in the Bay Area since the 90s you have probably voted for,
and seen approved, literally dozens of transit and housing measures,
propositions, and bond floats. Yet the area continues to show dismal progress
in infrastructure....maybe its time to start asking where the money is going
from the last half-dozen measures before voting for a new one. SVLG benefits
from the fact that most residents in the area are relative newcomers so they
don't realize most of the goodwill measures they are voting for have been
floated and funded many times prior to their arrival.

Sure enough in the next election there are even more transit fees on the
ballot. Has the money from the recently approved Measure B even been allocated
yet?

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sjg007
It's like one quote. SVLG is not even relevant in the article.

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claydavisss
The rest is the standard new urbanist claptrap written by someone who seems to
know nothing of the Bay Area at all. Some gems:

\- Suggests strip malls replace parking lots with housing...citing the fact
that vehicles occupy 8x the space of diners. Its freaking SAN JOSE who is
going to eat at a restaurant with NO PARKING? Cue reliable HN responses about
public transit...NO people in San Jose do not take their family out to eat by
riding the bus. If you remove retail parking you just end up with no tax
revenues and blighted plazas.

\- The suggestion that infill development is cheaper since you don't need to
do sewers etc. Wow okay now I know the author is from NYC...99% of San Jose's
sewer infrastructure is probably 10 years past its replacement
schedule...theres no freaking way the city will let someone increase density
but ignore sewer work. In fact, this work will be substantially more expensive
than new work in the middle of a field. No different than software folks -
upgrading a running working system is much more difficult than greenfield
development.

\- Suggests schools have closed in San Jose due to under-enrollment. Uh no in
many cases this is the result of mismanagement of funds sometimes resulting in
lawsuits. See Alum Rock for many examples.

\- Same tired citations of nefarious moustache-twirling NIMBYs...who by now
have taken on the aura of a Bond villain.

pretty much the whole article is similarly useless

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sjg007
Metered street parking, city lots and underground parking all suffice.

With mixed use you get enough local traffic for restaurants who won’t use up
the street parking. Also see uber.

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jessaustin
I don't live there, but underground parking is almost never the right answer.
It's just too expensive.

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sjg007
All of the skyscrapers downtown have underground parking. You can make it
level one if you want.

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jessaustin
Skyscrapers require extensive excavation already, because you don't want them
to fall over. You might as well drop some parking in there, since it won't
double the cost as it would for a strip mall. It still won't "suffice",
because although you've added a couple hundred spaces (at the _most_ ) you've
also added at least a couple thousand more people who need to get to and from
the building.

