
California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/business/economy/housing-crisis-conor-dougherty-golden-gates.html
======
davidw
Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the
best things you can do on several fronts:

* It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out.

* It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things.

* It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job.

It's much easier to make a difference locally: in many places it's not hard to
get to know your city councilors, or state reps/senators. One of my prouder
YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our
state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to
4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.

~~~
exterrestrial
>It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or
those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more
productive place for a better job.

Please cite at lease one example in which this has ever been the case. I do
understand the theory behind your argument here, and I assume you are familiar
with (leftist) counter-arguments, so this is not an attempt to open a debate.
Rather, I want you to be right but until I see some solid evidence I am
unconvinced.

>One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning
to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which
legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.

This is a great example of how it seems to me that YIMBYs are anti-NIMBY in
the way Democrats are anti-Republican. Time and time again, it appears neither
groups are actually doing any thing ‘good for the people “on the margins.
Clearly, this policy benefits landlords more than anybody and the implication
is that this is besides the fact of lowering rent prices. Fine. But it is not
insignificant that all of these efforts primarily promote the perpetuation of
rent-seeking.

I watched from the front row as investors bought up Portland. It has been
about 6 years since it entered full-swing and rent prices are higher than ever
before. This is not good for people “on the margins”. In fact, most of those
people were not even on the margins before the investors came in. I am one of
them. I should know.

Of course, history is littered with cases of YIMBY theory failing urban
housing markets, so please show me an example of where your theories have
actually succeeded.

~~~
davidw
I think that if you're going to argue that supply and demand are not real for
housing, you'd need to supply some good evidence of your own.

There are a lot of ways to build more supply:

[https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-
your-...](https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-way-to-
affordable-housing/)

I find the 'Montreal' example the most compelling in that it's fairly "human
scale", but tastes vary.

~~~
Spooky23
Rental housing has price floor that distorts the market. Once a property
diverges from the requirements of housing subsidy programs, it usually gets
abandoned.

In most places new supply is high end and is making more housing available for
people who don’t lack access.

~~~
davidw
> In most places new supply is high end and is making more housing available
> for people who don’t lack access.

In most places, new cars are more expensive than used ones, but if you stopped
providing new cars, the price of the used ones would shoot up as everyone
started competing for a dwindling supply of cars.

Same goes for housing.

Also, it's a longer term process with housing, but 'filtering' is a real
thing: [https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2016/05/25/housing-
does-f...](https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2016/05/25/housing-does-filter/)

~~~
allovernow
>In most places, new cars are more expensive than used ones, but if you
stopped providing new cars, the price of the used ones would shoot up as
everyone started competing for a dwindling supply of cars

An unspoken consequence of cash for clunkers. Practically overnight 100k miles
was considered "low mileage", which was ridiculous before people started
needlessly trashing perfectly good used cars.

~~~
smogcutter
Eh, I’ve heard that before as well but I don’t know if it’s true. By the time
the program ended in 2009, cash for clunkers had taken ~700k cars off the
market. The same year, about 35 million used cars were sold in the US[1]. Cash
for clunkers was a rounding error.

[1] Had a hard time finding statistics for 2009, but it’s in here:
[https://www.niada.com/PDFs/Publications/2010IndustryReport.p...](https://www.niada.com/PDFs/Publications/2010IndustryReport.pdf)

------
legitster
There is a study that came out this year that I have been obsessed with: If
zoning laws in San Francisco and New York City (just two places!) were frozen
in place in 1964, the average American income today would be on average $3700
higher.

[https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388?fbc...](https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388?fbclid=IwAR2CVxKv_dajgwLfLZ5XnKVnx02o1ceYRHIGZ-8X2Ka7Cu6I-LpXEuC5FdQ)

~~~
aresant
Super interesting study and to further clarify:

"Our point is that a first-order effect of more housing in Silicon Valley is
to raise income and welfare of all US workers."

------
pascalxus
I completely agree with the sentiment to build more, much more housing. But,
in order to make that happen, we also need to:

\- get rid of or modify zoning laws (at least in places where growth will
happen)

\- reduce regulations on builders

\- ensure that there are plenty of builders for health competition (so that
consumers don't get ripped off)

\- provide protections for builders from Sue happy NIMBYs (some kind of legal
protection that prevents builders from being sued and penalizes NIMBYs that
try to stand in their way).

The benefits of building more are so numerous:

\- every house that gets built reduces costs for everyone else as well, as the
stress of under supply lessens

\- it's easier for people to get to work and find work

\- easier for companies to higher people

\- more jobs getting created, not just from people able to get to work but new
jobs getting created from all that construction

\- It'll help the environment immensly! Everyday, I see the 580 - 5 lane
highway clogged up with cars crawling by at 10mpg, probably getting very low
MPG over a very long distance (this is where most of the CO2 pollution is
coming from, at least in the US!)

\- over the long term even people with houses already will pay lower property
taxes (decreasing values reduce prop taxes)

\- as the number of average miles driven per commute comes down, there will be
less and less traffic.

~~~
quotemstr
Another beneficial change would be repealing proposition 13. Because
proposition 13 essentially bans property tax increases for property owners, it
creates a perverse incentive to drive property values as high as possible with
restrictive zoning. Without proposition 13, property taxes would rise along
with the land's economic value, creating an additional incentive for property
owners to let the market naturally shift land use to higher-density housing.

~~~
RangerScience
There's good reasons to keep part of it. I figure: You get to have the Prop 13
effect on one property - notionally, your home, but since it's difficult /
gameable to determine which place is "your home", fuggedaboutit, and just say
"pick one".

Because yeah, it'd suck to lose your home that you're supposed to own because
your neighborhood got pricey.

~~~
myvoiceismypass
How does one “lose their home” if the value (to resell to others) goes down,
but they aren’t moving & still living there?

~~~
mlyle
They're saying that if the value goes _up_ you can have to pay increased
property taxes that you now can't afford.

~~~
rcpt
It's really not a bad problem to have.

~~~
mlyle
As a purely economic position, sure, it's not awful... But if you're going to
chase retirees out of communities they've lived their entire life that's kinda
unfortunate.

~~~
rcpt
Meh. We chase old renters out all the time and they don't get hundreds of
thousands of dollars in windfall profits along the way.

------
Lendal
This story reminds me of when I was a kid and the school bus would come. Often
there were no seats because every seat was taken--one kid each. There was
plenty of room there, but the kids who got on the bus first would ban together
to prevent new kids from sitting.

Today these kids have grown up and own homes in the suburbs. New kids need to
move in, but the kids who got there first refuse to let them build. That's
what this story is about.

~~~
riazrizvi
I'm a renter but please, this is about families protecting the value of the
primary asset that they hope to live on in retirement. Home assets don't
skyrocket in value when there is lots of supply. If we frame this thing as
reasonable-needs-of-renters vs unreasonable-wants-of-homeowners, then everyone
is going to remain at loggerheads.

~~~
logfromblammo
The house that the owner lives in is not an asset. It's a durable consumer
good.

Wanting your home to appreciate in value forever is like expecting your
20-year-old car to sell for more than its sticker price. It really only works
for art installations, created by a collaboration of architect, engineer, and
builder, with some living space inside.

Framed in these terms, most families do not have any significant assets, and a
hefty chunk of their resources dedicated to maintaining their gigantic
shelter-providing consumer appliance.

~~~
riazrizvi
So you're saying that a house is not a good investment? That despite a trend
in increasing property values over the long term, as we have seen in the data
since .. the beginning of cities, that a price correction is coming where
homes will return to ... prehistoric levels? I don't see it. Instead look at a
sample of home prices in the last twenty years in the Bay Area for example,
and graph it against the value of a sample of cars bought in 2000.

I suppose it's no surprise that tax laws everywhere do not classify homes as
durable goods that depreciate in value.

~~~
trianglesphere
It's the distinction between the building and the land. Buildings usually
depreciate over time, but the land appreciates. In the bay area, the value of
the land is significantly more than the building which is why so many people
tear down houses and rebuild. Where land is cheaper people don't tear down and
rebuild houses that have more life in them when they buy a house.

Residences are mainly exempted from depreciation, but commercial real estate
is allowed to be depreciated because buildings do have a useful life.

~~~
njarboe
Although recently in the Bay Area construction costs have skyrocketed so much
that in the last 5 years my home replacement cost (for insurance) has about
doubled causing the land value to actually drop.

------
cnst
> In backing every single project in the development pipeline that day, Ms.
> Trauss laid out a platform that would make her a celebrity of Bay Area
> politics: how expensive new housing today would become affordable old
> housing tomorrow, how San Francisco was blowing its chance to harness the
> energy of an economic boom to mass-build homes that generations of residents
> could enjoy. She didn’t care if a proposal was for apartments or condos or
> how much money its future residents had. It was a universal platform of
> more. Ms. Trauss was for anything and everything, so long as it was built
> tall and fast and had people living in it.

What a great article, I'm glad that not all is lost in SF Bay w.r.t. the
housing crisis.

TBH, I'm amazed how the above points seem so controversial in SF Bay. It's as
common-sense as it gets. Build more, always. Denying market-rate housing
projects because they don't have income-restricted units doesn't help anyone
in any way; I'm all for free-speech and stuff, but anyone who's trying to
argue any such points that interfere with adding more capacity to the market
and which make zero economic sense should be escorted out of the meetings.

------
danbmil99
Go ahead and build, but make damn sure you are being rational about people's
behavior when it comes to driving and transit.

My ex moved into a condominium complex that has exactly zero parking spots or
loading docks for visitors, and no parking for half a mile in either
direction. It's an absolute total fail. Neighbors rat on each other to get
each other's cars towed because they get so upset. It's literally impossible
to have a party there or even invite friends over because they simply cannot
park and there is no transit available anywhere near there. There aren't any
bike lanes either because it's a financially strapped city and the complex is
near the border of a rich city that explicitly does things to make it harder
to get between the two townships.

I'm just saying, both hands have to know what each other are doing and people
have to make rational decisions at the municipal level.

~~~
foota
...Bellevue?

~~~
lazyasciiart
I don't think you can physically get half a mile away from the nearest
available parking in Bellevue.

~~~
foota
That's true, guess that shows you which side of the lake I live on :)

------
uniformlyrandom
How about we talk about building infrastructure? The whole Bay Area is
building like crazy, and yet the roads are getting worse (more building? more
traffic lights!). Public transportation is a big joke around here. Caltrain
from South San Jose to Mountain View? We have the tracks, we have the train...
the train just does not go this route on weekends.

We have the same situation as a startup focused on developing a product. We
have abidance of developers, and very few infrastructure engineers. When we
start deploying what we have built, we are going to have a bad time.

~~~
rjkennedy98
Show the stats that Bay Area is building like crazy. I am so sick of people
saying things like New York and Bay Area and California are building like
crazy. No they are not. There is not one stat that shows that. Period.

~~~
samspenc
I'm not sure about the Bay Area, but at least for New York, it looks like
building is picking up: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sees-biggest-
home-buil...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sees-biggest-home-
building-boom-in-years-11580654688)

"Despite a weak outlook for residential real estate, the number of building
permits issued in New York City for new homes surged last year to the highest
pace since 2015. It was the second-highest total since the end of the last big
building boom in 2008. Permits for 26,547 units of housing were issued in
2019, about 27% more than the year before ..."

~~~
rjkennedy98
So New York is building a lot because they are building more than any time
since 2015? Almost as much as they built in 2008? Is this a joke?

------
fortran77
The answer _is_ building more. (I'll say this before the people on Hacker News
who are opposed to all private property suggest that "prop 13" is the problem.
It's not.) The problem is they don't build enough. Build build build!

They need the California State Government to overrule local zoning limits. We
need to allow dense housing near rail lines and major roads. And I think that
anywhere a single-family detached home currently exists, a 2-family home
should be allowed.

Build more housing! It's that simple. Prices will fall fast.

~~~
aty268
I'm from Texas, and I don't understand the stigma against developers building
more housing. It drives down prices, and increases competition. Why would
California citizens ever be against this?

Edit: The reason is because homeowners are competing with developers, so their
own asset depreciates when supply increases. I was just thinking from the
perspective of renters.

~~~
rossdavidh
Speaking as someone who lived in Bay Area California for a few years, and
Texas for several decades now, the first thing to know if that not all
California has the same attitude on this, for much the same reason that Waco
and Austin have different attitudes on a lot of things. In the Bay Area, there
are geographical (water and hills) limits to expansion, whereas in Texas when
you build more, it usually is out into the abundant open land at the edge of
the city.

Also, it is quite often the case that when you build, it is either: 1) made
for high-income dwellers, thus not reducing prices, because the high-income
and low-income housing markets are often effectively separate markets, like
cars and semi-tractor trailors. ...or... 2) the people living nearby, do think
it will drive down prices, including the price of their own house, which is
their only effective form of savings. If their $400,000 house becomes a
$300,000 house, yeah their property taxes may go down, but they lost $100,000
in savings they intended to sell and live on elsewhere after they retire.

~~~
Robotbeat
> 1) made for high-income dwellers, thus not reducing prices, because the
> high-income and low-income housing markets are often effectively separate
> markets, like cars and semi-tractor trailors.

This is really a misnomer (and it is the _linchpin_ of NIMBY arguments,
especially in the Bay Area). If high income housing is not built, then high
income people will inhabit and buy up the middle income housing, who in turn
will inhabit and buy up low income housing, if they can find any at all.

You can see this clearly in the Bay Area. You have tiny houses going for like
a couple million dollars.

In such an environment it's _impossible_ to build stuff (at least, legally)
that ISN'T high income housing as high income people are the only people who
can afford _any_ kind of housing in the area.

"But it's only made for high income dwellers." Build a cheap (but code-
compliant) 600sqft studio in the Bay Area? Around $900/ft^2 would be the
market price. It's only affordable to high income folk. A _studio_. This
161sqft studio in San Fran is $2300/month:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/smallest-apartment-for-
rent-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/smallest-apartment-for-rent-in-san-
francisco-price-photos-2019-9#beyond-that-the-studio-has-one-window-and-a-
space-heater-according-to-the-listing-the-unit-comes-with-a-dishwasher-and-in-
unit-laundry-but-we-couldnt-find-them-in-the-listing-photos-or-frankly-
imagine-where-they-could-possibly-fit-6)

How is it even possible to build housing that _isn 't_ for high earners in San
Francisco?

The only way to change is to build a LOT more and keep building. Or, I guess,
destroy the entire local economy.

------
DoreenMichele
_Mr. Falk looked at Mr. O’Brien and said, Dennis, look, I don’t even know you,
but you have to eat something, even if it’s one grape, before I’ll talk to
you. That at least got people laughing, and pretty soon everyone acceded to
the bread and cheese and grapes._

The negotiation scene is great stuff. It's gold.

Another very important line:

 _People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices._

I have been told repeatedly on the internet that the cost of housing has
nothing whatsoever to do with homelessness. Homeless people are viewed by many
as "junkies and crazies" who just have a personal problem and are not
negatively impacted by the housing situation in the US. I've seen people deny
that there even is a housing crisis in the US.

------
pruneridge
What happens when more people move into the area from the rest of the country
and start driving to work from their newly built housing units? Silicon Valley
has, at best, poor coverage of Caltrain and no coverage for BART in South Bay.
If let’s say 10,000 more families move to San Jose into new housing units and
they all need to commute to Palo Alto for work, how exactly would they do that
without choking up the already clogged freeway network? Caltrain is already
packed beyond imagination during rush hour. Each year, the rush hour commute
time between Palo Alto and San Jose increasing by 5 minutes and that’s with
limited net population growth in the area. Imagine if the population influx
increased 2X or 5X. Housing is not an isolated problem. Due to decades of
lobbying by the auto industry and a crippled public transportation strategy,
what America really has is a transportation and infrastructure problem.
Without solving that, the housing problem will never be truly solved and
building new housing will degrade the quality of life of everyone in the area
- both newcomers and existing residents.

~~~
dkhenry
This is the most common argument I hear against building, but I am firmly
convinced that the reason you have the commute problem in the Bay area isn't
because of the number of people, but because the resistance to building has
forced development further and further out.

Consider that there is still housing growth, but its in South San Jose, Morgan
Hill, and Gilroy. Those people all have to drive past Los Gatos, Cambell,
Cupertino, San Jose, and Sunnyvale to get to Mountain View. All your doing is
increasing the amount of Miles people have to drive, and that in term
increases the amount of time they spend in their cars, and clogs the roads. If
you built houses in Mountain View or Palo Alto, none of those people would be
on the roads, and if they were it wouldn't be for nearly as long. You don't
have to take my word for it take a look at average commute times in the bay
area, those increases aren't due to a 2x increase in Mountain View, its due to
a 2x increase far outside with people driving in.

Public transportation is great, but the solution is to build houses near where
people work, that means San Francisco and Mountain View.

~~~
jayd16
The market has shown people are willing to make the commute. Not only would
you need to induce the current commuters to move, you also need to ensure they
aren't simply replaced by more commuters, which isn't necessarily a given.

~~~
aga98mtl
The market has shown that there is extreme demand at the center. We need to
build at the center.

There is a fixed amount of people at any point in time in a metropolitan area.
Building at the center will not make new people appear. It removes people from
the commuting crowd.

------
xivzgrev
This is a great point, never thought of it that way

When it was Ms. Trauss’s turn to speak, she argued that the entire notion of
public comment on new construction was inherently flawed, because the
beneficiaries — the people who would eventually live in the buildings —
couldn’t argue their side.

------
earhart
FWIW - I’d love to see increased density where I live in Seattle, but the
people who support it seem to ignore all the other stuff that has to go with
it - e.g. more school capacity, better transit, requiring parking in new
developments because people still have cars and the on-street parking can’t
scale to meet new developments...

Bringing that stuff up gets me called a NIMBY; it sometimes seems like
anything that might make it more expensive for developers to build more
housing is a crime against humanity. :-/

It sometimes feels like all we’re really doing is enabling developers to mine
our quality of life for their own profit, without actually creating enough
housing to make a dent in the problem.

~~~
aabhay
Yes, this is something in dire need of a solution in SF. There are not enough
primary schools in the city to support even the people that currently live
here (there’s a lottery system where students aren’t even guaranteed a spot in
a high school).

I would love to see the city of SF get denser, but building condos isn’t the
only answer.

------
pneill
It's very complicated. People have conflicting ideas - one the one hand, they
want affordable housing (ie their rent to go down) or the other, not in my
backyard.

Worth a view The Insane Battle To Sabotage a New Apartment Building Explains
San Francisco's Housing Crisis
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4)

------
DonHopkins
This is what I chant when I'm waiting for my code to compile. I was hoping
this was an article about how to make it compile faster.

(Edit: the original title was "Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build
Build Build Build Build Build Build"! ;)

~~~
pixxel
In Steve Ballmer’s voice I hope.

([https://youtu.be/Vhh_GeBPOhs](https://youtu.be/Vhh_GeBPOhs))

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/39Yh4](https://archive.md/39Yh4)

------
aSplash0fDerp
As mentioned in the comments, housing/shelter has a different meaning
depending on your perspective (renter/owner, single/married, young/old or
import/local resident).

Unless we define housing types/building codes for specific subsets, it'll most
likely be just more of the same development/investments.

With many major metro areas bursting at the seams, I think they need to break
ground on new 21st century cities and identify a way to lower the populations
as a solution/initial step, rather than adding more deck chairs to the ship.

This gives the economy a new canvas to work with and the opportunity to move
forward 100% with sustainable priciples without being encumbered by the pre-
existing conditions plaguing NIMBY strongholds.

With desalination and autonomous vehicles becoming a bigger part of the modern
economy, California could build horseshoe/teardrop shaped autonomous highways
from the coastline cities hundreds of miles inland that allow modern logistics
to fillin the gaps with public transportation and servicing basic needs
(water, sanitation, public services) and accomodate new suburban models to
house an ever-growing population. Outside of the earthquake zones, the can
build the high-density housing they need to solve a good portion of the social
crisis.

Extending cities with autonomous loops may not be the best answer, but the
existing city planning models need more pioneering strategies if they want to
seed future growth.

~~~
c0nfused
The answer was and always will be to increase density not increase transit to
the suburbs. This is how you get 2 hour commutes. The idea that you are not
doing the driving doesn't make a 150 mile commute seem better to me.

You can cap density by height like most European cities do or go up forever
like Shanghai. But simply arguing suburbs + highways were the 1950s answer and
will be the 2050s answer is missing the point.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
Californians seem like people who would care about co2 and emissions, the only
good solution is to build higher and denser, instead of long drives.

~~~
aSplash0fDerp
I've spent over an hour going 10 miles on the 405 recently, so hopefully
they'll use the autonomous infrastructure to deliver work to the remote
extensions/areas as well to turn back the clock on congestion a few decades in
the existing cities.

------
infecto
Fuck California and fuck the Bay Area.

Just a bold statement. I wish for change but i don't see it happening. I love
the weather, love the environment and sometimes love the people here but after
living here for a number of years, I am started to not understand it. I pay
pretty high taxes to live here. We have the most embarrassing property tax
laws that include business property. I walk to work and walk through so many
homeless camps filled with poop, trash and needles. Many of our communities
have failing roads, some of the worst I have experienced in the world. The
roads have started groups such as "pot hole vigilantes". In most of the
communities I never see a police presence. We say we are green and love the
environment but we have made little progress on public transportation since
the 70s. I mean hell, we cannot even get a quick rollout of new BART cars. So
we want to hate on building new roads but we have no new public
transportation. I am starting to run out of reasons to participate in
California.

~~~
dominotw
looks like you are describing a specific part of 'bay area' . lots of burbs
don't have these issues.

~~~
illvm
Even Mountain View has these issues. Not to as near of a degree as say SF,
Oakland, or Berkeley, but almost all of the above I've witnessed in Mountain
View.

So, I wouldn't say OP is describing a specific part. It's rather pervasive all
over.

------
staplers
Articles like this and the subsequent comments always reinforce to me that the
human domain will never, or perhaps _can never_ support wildlife and fauna.

As much as we like to grandstand against mass extinction of wildlife and
deforestation, we will always cave to economical and social pressures of
modern life which almost exclusively require resource extraction and
destruction of the biosphere.

~~~
readarticle
There isn’t a single pro wildlife/forest view expressed in this article,
what’s being _explicitly_ fought against here by YIMBY, and later Falk, are:

 _... letters to elected officials, and at the open microphone that Mr. Falk
observed at the City Council meetings, residents said things like “too
aggressive,” “not respectful,” “embarrassment,” “outraged,” “audacity,” “very
urban,” “deeply upset,” “unsightly,” “monstrosity,” “inconceivable,” “simply
outrageous,” “vehemently opposed,” “sheer scope,” “very wrong,” “blocking
views,” “does not conform,” “property values will be destroyed,” and “will
allow more crime to be committed.”_

If preserving wildlife and forests can be equated with preserving suburban
lifestyles and property values, then yes, it’s perhaps already lost and we
should all be quite sad.

~~~
reading-at-work
> If preserving wildlife and forests can be equated with preserving suburban
> lifestyles and property values

It can't, and shouldn't, be equated to that. Denser urban living, i.e.
building more housing in cities, reduces suburban sprawl. That's a good thing
if you care about the environment.

------
tayistay
Lafayette, the town in the article, is nearly an hour away from SF by train.
Should we really be building more housing relatively far away from the jobs?
The trains and roads are packed. What about focusing on high density housing
that's closer to the jobs in Oakland and SF? Isn't it better for people to be
able to walk to work or ride a bike?

I'm not asking rhetorically.

------
subsubzero
Fun Fact: if three cities(San Jose, San Francisco, NYC) in America were to
loosen up housing planning rules, America's GDP would be 4% higher, that is
incredible in of itself, source: (paywall -
[https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/16/the-wests-
bigge...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/16/the-wests-biggest-
economic-policy-mistake?frsc=dg%7Ce))

Although I think California especially needs new housing, the bay area in
particular has a housing issue which is somewhat artificially created due to a
number of large (google, facebook, etc) and smaller tech companies requiring a
"buts in seat" mentality and a philosophy that all "important" jobs be based
in the bay area near their HQ's. Its really quite sad as a job that can be
done anywhere is forced to be located in one of the most expensive areas on
earth.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Prices have hit their limits, and companies are more willing to entertain the
idea that qualified talent exists outside of the Bay Area. Remote work is
growing, and some portion of that growth is certainly attributable to the Bay
Area housing market.

------
joe_the_user
Article: _" Hitting that number will require building more everything:
Subsidized housing. Market-rate housing. Homes, apartments, condos and co-ops.
Three hundred and fifteen apartments on prime parcels of towns like
Lafayette."_

I feel weird sort of agreeing with the wealthy home owners in _outlying_ small
towns. Why should the state adopt a "more of everything" policy? The American
and California model of low-density suburban building is completely broken and
"more of everything" is basically saying more of the same. A higher density
approach with the building concentrated in the centralized cities and perhaps
some of the "towns" surrounded by city (Menlo Park or Brisbane).

I mean, it's obvious false that "more of everything is the only way to meet
the goal". Of course, you could build that much housing in higher density
urban areas.

~~~
rowborg
It's a fair point. What makes Lafayette a good place to build without
increasing sprawl or traffic that it is right on a BART line. "More of
everything" should probably be caveated with "more of everything near public
transit".

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
In this future, is there nowhere for those of us who just want to some damned
trees and nature and quiet and dark where we live? You buy a quiet place where
you can see they sky, but it gets expensive so newcomers replace it with what
you left originally, so you leave again to a quiet place where you can see the
sky, but it gets expensive so newcomers replace it with what you left
originally, so this time you wise up and move somewhere with likeminded people
who zone it for trees and quiet and dark, but then that gets expensive too, so
newcomers rally for zoning reform before tearing it all down again...

Different people value density differently, but apparently my willingness to
pay a premium to live somewhere with lower density makes me an evil NIMBY.

------
stewaleex
Tech doesn't need a location, it should branch out, away from stupid policies
that drive housing prices up

------
gdubs
Honest question: how do we address the housing crisis in the Bay Area without
turning it into Los Angeles?

~~~
themagician
Rezone the area around Golden Gate Park and turn it into a dense metropolis.

You could 10x the density around there and be able to support the population.
You’ve got wide streets, services, and it isn’t landfill.

Honestly though, I feel like it isn’t really a crisis. It’s mostly rich people
fighting with other rich people over whose backyard to build in. There are no
real YIMBYs, just people who want to live in certain areas they don’t
currently live in.

Most of the poors have already been displaced. We pretend like they are the
focus because it’s good for politics, but the reality is the diversity is
already gone.

~~~
thedance
Every property within 1/4 mile of the N-Judah streetcar line should have over-
the-counter, by-right zoning approval for 7-story buildings with zero parking
and no setbacks.

~~~
i_am_nomad
I used to live right near the park, 1/4 mile from the N-Judah. The
infrastructure in that area can barely support the housing stock that exists
right now.

------
_hardwaregeek
Having been born and raised in a major city, I'm certainly biased, but I truly
believe that suburbs should go away. Every part of a suburb seems so insular,
so wasteful, so outmoded. A one family house requires maintenance, heating and
wiring that would be so much more efficient with even the smallest apartment
complex. Lawns are ridiculous, especially in the parts of the country where
grass is not indigenous. Why the hell are we spending so much water and energy
to maintain a goddamn green rectangle?

HOAs don't seem to do much besides execute petty laws. Neighborhoods, while
they can be diverse, will never approach a city in terms of allowing people of
different backgrounds, races, etc. to interact. There's a particular reason
cities vote more democratic than suburbs: It's hard to vote for such hateful
policies when you interact with the people effected every day.

I get that there's this nostalgia or rather inertia about suburbs. I get that
people grew up in a one family house with a lawn in their nice homogeneous
town. But it needs to go away.

~~~
sokoloff
"I get that some people like it, but I don't, so it needs to go away."

~~~
_hardwaregeek
More like this thing that people like is energy inefficient, produces
pollution and leads to more homogeneous, less diverse communities. And
therefore it should go away.

------
annoyingnoob
I'm all for more housing but we need to make sure we have the appropriate
infrastructure to support it, water, sewage treatment, roads, etc.

The city I live in has been growing a lot, but so has traffic and crime.

~~~
woodrow
Do you live in California? If so, your city's infrastructure may be struggling
due to the county's lagging property tax revenue, which in turn is a result of
Prop 13.

~~~
annoyingnoob
Not exactly, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mello-
Roos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mello-Roos)

Mello Roos more than doubles my Prop 13 property taxes. My neighborhood gives
way more than its fair share. The schools suck, the roads are too narrow, I
could go on. Its poor planning and probably out-right corruption.

------
foxx-boxx
At some point high prices should force companies to move their operations,
hence price should drop.

------
tomohawk
> He had now argued, and paid for, both sides of the same case.

And this is why we need the English Rule. We're the only industrialized nation
that does not have some form of it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_%28attorney%27s_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_%28attorney%27s_fees%29)

------
foxx-boxx
You should always respect people who was there first. When money talks, bs
takes the bus: new tenants are needed to support bankrupt pension system
anyway.

Even international law admits that.

High cost of real estate should force many people to sell their homes and
leave to cheaper places.

------
dmode
The fact is that American laws and policies are being set-up to serve only
constituent - older baby boomers. This is especially true at the local level.
I went to a city council meeting for my city, and it was 90% older white
folks. Although the city is young and 60% Asian. There was constant stream of
anti-development voices, with hardly anyone to counter them. This is almost
non representative of the majority view, but younger people with work,
commutes, and kids simply cannot attend these meetings. I have heard recently
that SF is moving towards a representative focus group model to get community
input instead of this random council meetings. That is the path forward.
Abandon these open forums that only serves retirees. Increase outreach, create
focus groups, and be more representative of the city's makeup

~~~
dominotw
depends on who owns the houses. I live in a suburb in bay area where
population is almost all house owners are indian and chinese. They have the
same preferences as "older baby boomers".

Are you implying that if in your case if they were reversed we would see some
sort of different outcomes? Asians are more open to getting their house values
going down by new development?

~~~
dmode
I am just saying that input should be taken from a population that represents
the city by moving away from a process that biases input

------
downerending
I might be hopelessly naive, but why not do the new growth somewhere else? The
BA is pretty obviously "full" already, and adding more housing of any kind
isn't going to make it better.

~~~
lthornberry
The BA isn't "full" by any reasonable measure. See this list of US cities by
population density for comparison:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_density).
San Francisco is 21st on the list, at 17,246 people per sq mi; the next
densest city in the Bay Area is Daly City, which is 49th at 13,703 people per
sq mi.

By contrast, NYC has 27,016 people per sq mi; the densest suburb of Boston
(Somerville) has 18,431; West Hollywood has 18,297.

There's plenty of room for more people in the Bay Area, if denser housing is
allowed.

~~~
downerending
It's subjective, of course, but when I worked in NYC, I was able to commute
from an area with a density more like 2,000 per sq mi. Maybe an hour each way.
That's what I think of as "not full".

I believe I looked for something like that in the BA and it doesn't really
exist.

------
ngcc_hk
That is internal struggle. But one must look at any external struggle. If you
have people moving in without any means of stopping, just build build build
would only help that much

------
truebosko
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200214180644/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200214180644/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/business/economy/housing-
crisis-conor-dougherty-golden-gates.html)

~~~
corentin88
Not sure what you want to express with this link?

~~~
rhinoceraptor
It gets around the NYT paywall.

------
jngreenlee
Text please?

~~~
glaberficken
[https://pad.riseup.net/p/BS4bd3KJQR7-DeHuBI-Q-
keep](https://pad.riseup.net/p/BS4bd3KJQR7-DeHuBI-Q-keep)

------
foxx-boxx
Instead of trying to buy Greenland from wealthy socialist Europeans, Trump
should buy some tropical islands, like Madagascar for instance.

California can move it’s operations to these cheaper places.

------
thenightcrawler
build build build

------
Kenji
Haha I thought this was about compilation. This headline is how I spend about
a quarter of my day.

------
jaequery
click bait gone wild

Edit: looks like the title changed now

~~~
mc32
It’s like they wanted to riff on the failed ‘08 candidate for the vice
presidency but couldn’t allow themselves to do it.

~~~
Ididntdothis
To me it sounds like “developers, developers, developers”

But I am glad that the media is reporting this. California is slowly killing
itself with its housing policy. I live in an area where there are only people
who are either rich retirees or whose parents have bought real estate before
the market went crazy. And these people kill any effort to build more. It’s
basically impossible for regular people to live here.

------
jayd16
This might be an unpopular question but why is everyone certain that more
housing will cut homelessness when these California cities are already quite
dense (not the most in the world but more than most of the US)?

Why don't we assume more housing will not simply bring more non-homeless from
elsewhere? The homeless are certainly not the most competitive home buyers.

~~~
zacksinclair
More housing is not a panacea for homelessness - but supply and demand are
real. Increasing supply will decrease equilibrium price; this increase in
affordability is one measure (of the many necessary) to help homelessness.

~~~
jayd16
>Increasing supply will decrease equilibrium price

Hmm but this is not a given is it? I think many would move to SF if housing
was only slightly cheaper.

~~~
zacksinclair
It is a given and is basic economics. Supply and demand curves certainly apply
to housing.

Increasing housing shifts the supply line to the right - which satisfies
greater demand at a lower price, all else equal. That is what "many would move
to SF if housing was only slightly cheaper" means in economic terms.

Shifting the demand curve to the right is not driven by quantity of housing,
but instead by things like quality of life, supply of jobs, etc. Its the
difference between the slope of the line and its position.

~~~
jayd16
>It is a given and is basic economics. Supply and demand curves certainly
apply to housing.

Yes but the angle of those curves are important. There are elastic and
inelastic demands for resources. There can be unfulfilled demand at the
current equilibrium price. Its basic economics.

------
rb808
Not luxury apartments. Projects. In the 50s and 60s NYC built loads of massive
housing projects for the poorest people on welfare. This is something that is
needed in California. Most of the homeless can't afford fancy new builds, the
state should be building big cheap buildings to house the people who can't
afford anything. Say there are 20k units required in the Bay Area, each
building can have 20 floors, 25 aprts per floor, that's just 40 buildings, say
one in each suburb.

Here are NYC ones, the biggest prjects are 1000-2000 units each
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Housing_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Housing_Authority_properties)

~~~
x0054
Have you seen what happens in those projects? I lived in Chicago and those
were not a good place to live because of incredible levels of crime.

What we need is to stop clustering so much around SF and LA. There are lots of
places in CA that are basically empty. What we need is more ways for people to
make money remotely so they can live in lower density areas and still make
good living. High density is not the answer, people need space and we have
space.

~~~
tmh79
The reason we have a housing crises is because people want high density
living. Our market crises is a literal refutation of your proposed solution.

~~~
x0054
What proof do you have for that? Why isn't it more likely that what people
actually want is good paying jobs without having to spend 2 hours in traffic
every day?

Say you have 2 options, one is to live in a lower density area with plenty of
playgrounds for your kids, space to decompress and have fun, and a good paying
job that you can do from home or close by.

Option two is being shoved like sardines into a 20 story high density
apartment building for the privilege of what? What's the point of high density
living? So you can all die from a pandemic faster? Or so you can eat at fancy
restaurants unhealthy food?

Are you sure that your bubble isn't shaping your opinion?

~~~
tmh79
"What proof do you have for that?"

rural areas are depopulating and cities/metropolitan areas are rising in both
population and inflation adjusted real estate prices, both in the US and
around the world.

Say you have 2 options...

This is a false framing. For most, the choice is between lower density area
with a long usually car based commute or a higher density area with a shorter
non car based commute. Things become more complicated when you have a life
partner and you both have jobs, then you need to minimize the commutes while
maximizing the job opportunities for both of you, and that happens best within
cities.

"shoved like sardines into a 20 story high density apartment building"

this is also false framing. Some of the highest density neighborhoods in the
united states are filled with 3 story buildings, like triple decker homes (ex:
somerville MA) that are essentially 5k sqft homes 3 story homes subdivided
into 3 units, one on each floor.

"What's the point of high density living"

The point of high density living is that it takes you less time to get to the
things you want to do, it allows you to live without using a car to get
everywhere, it allows for higher specializations of places, ex higher
densities can support a niche board game store and gathering place, it allows
a higher group of people to live within your commute shed so that you have
more opportunities to make friends.

The past 5000 years of human history has included a nearly universal and
constant theme of people moving from the countryside to the city. Post WWII
America was a slight abberation from that, but we're back on trend like the
rest of the world.

------
zhirafovod
Housing:

* European way - build centrally design urban cities, with infrastructure, schools, public transportation, community spaces, recreation/business spaces.

* American way - let for-profit developers build luxury houses around enormous google/fb/other tech giant campuses, and let struggling communities to figure out how to live with it...

Medical care:

* European way - build an efficient medical system which is paid by taxes, affordable to everyone.

* American way - let medical system to be a for profit business and put a burden of medical insurance for all on the medium income population and let them figure it out

Good news on the housing - the companies reached the plato of the salaries for
the bay area employees and many actively moving to the other urban areas which
should spread the stress from the bay area. Its is 21st century, and if a
company can't establish an effective distributed collaboration processes, it
does not deserve to be a leader in high tech space.

~~~
int_19h
On healthcare, this isn't true simply because of how drastically different
approaches are across Europe. There are countries there that have something a
lot like ACA, just better implemented (Switzerland). There are countries with
true single payer nationalized systems (UK). There are countries where
healthcare is run by a bunch of private non-profit coops for most people, but
those who want to can opt out into a fully private system (Germany). These all
work much better than what US has, but not all of them are paid entirely or
even mostly by taxes.

~~~
zhirafovod
yeah, I've exaggerated a bit with the comparison, thanks for correcting. I
think it will be right to say, that a decent medical care is a right, not a
privilege, in most of the European countries. And the private hospitals come
to play when you want a premium services. But even then you know the price
list most of the services, or it is all included for a reasonable price.

In either case, I see quite a different approach - attempt to provide social
oriented services by just relaying the problems on the working population,
instead of owning the problem and solving the proper way.

------
jelliclesfarm
I have been asking someone..anyone..to give me an example of how building more
housing leads to affordable housing. Like in real life..

Every high density over crowded over built city ..and this is global..is
unaffordable. It has expensive utilities, higher taxes and bad declining
infrastructure that the government can’t seem to replace or upgrade.

We have pestilence, rodent infestations, higher crime, big government and more
taxes.

I also don’t understand the fairness of a non house owning young majority with
little or no financial intelligence or experience due to being educated by
free public education and state nannyship getting to vote on imposing punitive
high taxes aimed to displace the very people whose taxes and employment
history and financial savvy that actually funded said free public education.

Clearly this means that we have done a bad job of public education using
property taxes. In fact, most of the wealth is accrued due to immigrant net
worth and who didn’t even avail the free public school education.

Wasting more public money on public education and using property taxes to fund
said education is the real problem that needs fixing. There is no end to
taxation. Especially because those who are not home owners can force more
property taxes on the minority who own it.

Put another way..why should someone who can’t handle their personal finances
be allowed to make decisions at govt level. This would never happen with
employment. How can the unsavvy have-nots have a say about punitive taxation
upon the haves who get to gain nothing from the punitive taxes. This is
especially crucial to ask considering that the government in Sacramento has a
piss poor track record on managing money and shown a lack of transparency.

~~~
tathougies
> Every high density over crowded over built city ..and this is global..is
> unaffordable. It has expensive utilities, higher taxes and bad declining
> infrastructure that the government can’t seem to replace or upgrade.

That's not true. Houston and Dallas are big cities without affordability
problems. Sunnyvale, CA (quite dense, and becoming more so, but suffering from
these NIMBY problems) is one of the safest cities in the country. Well below
the average crime rate of many rural towns.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
1\. [..]In Sunnyvale, CA you have a 1 in 611 chance of becoming a victim of
violent crime. Violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery and assault. With
regards to property crime, you have a 1 in 62 chance of becoming a victim.
Property crimes include burglary, theft and vehicle theft.[..]

2\. Dallas and Houston are not in the same category as Bay Area. Texas is not
California.

3\. Crime in California stats are unreliable due to passing of Prop 47. Crimes
are not reported or recorded or booked due to not wanting to incarcerate
people. This has actually increased petty crimes all over Bay Area(I don’t
know about other cities in CA..I do know about my backyard however)..you only
have to subscribe to NIXLE to see that even those reported is increasing.

The cops won’t even come to an ongoing crime scene unless someone’s life is in
immediate danger.

Wrt San Francisco..just type ‘Chesa Boudin’ in google news to see what’s
happening in San Francisco. This is our lives and our backyards and built upon
our tax dollars and work. It’s being auctioned away by those who have no stake
and have never contributed to it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47)

~~~
tathougies
> Dallas and Houston are not in the same category as Bay Area. Texas is not
> California.

You're right, they're both much larger cities. The Dallas metro area is the
4th largest in the US, the Bay Area is 12th. So Dallas is bigger.

> In Sunnyvale, CA you have a 1 in 611 chance of becoming a victim of violent
> crime. Violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery and assault. With
> regards to property crime, you have a 1 in 62 chance of becoming a victim.
> Property crimes include burglary, theft and vehicle theft.[..]

According to [https://www.areavibes.com/sunnyvale-
ca/crime/](https://www.areavibes.com/sunnyvale-ca/crime/) you have a
255/100000 (my number is higher than yours BTW) likelihood of being a victim
of a violent crime. Nationally, it's 381/100000 or 1 in 263. Thus, sunnyvale
is safer. It is known to be safer even since before 2014 when California crime
statistics were screwed up. The historical data is available online.

You are a troll.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
There is no way I can have a conversation with someone who resorts to childish
name calling and making it personal.

I know my backyard. You don’t.

------
Koremat6666
Either ways my recommendation is to make a informed choice of NIMBY vs YIMBY.
It appeared so far that NIMBY is winning and large number of people support
NIMBY. This need not be because all these are evil people who oppose three
points but might have legitimate reasons for their stand.

Make an informed choice rather than blindly picking sides.

~~~
jdc
Why don't you fill us in on what those reasons might be instead of making
strawman arguments?

~~~
Koremat6666
>A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the
impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an
argument that was not presented by that opponent.

I do not think strawman argument means what you think it means.

I am not even refuting YIMBY argument. I am suggesting that since there is a
NIMBY group which has already been successfully achieving their goals and
appears to be in minority on HN, everyone should spend some time understanding
their arguments as well before supporting YIMBY. Informed choice is critical
than mindless support.

I am not even trying to refute YIMBY here. I am only pointing out that HN
might be an echo chamber to make an informed choice.

~~~
bbreier
Why don't you fill us in on what those reasons might be?

------
jelliclesfarm
Let me the ask the YIMBY crowd this...what is stopping 2 dozen do you to pool
funds together to build a community where land is affordable and have tailored
amenities. And you can literally have your own transport to anywhere. Co-Own
your shared vacation paradises. Private schools. Incorporated communities.
Invest in farms and automation. You can grow your own food and use economics
instead of govt bureaucracy to make it all work.

A satellite community of multiple such youthful communities is a win-win for
all. That’s what real estate companies do, but they profit enormously from it
with little value. They are building on top of existing infrastructure and not
passing the monetary benefits of it and pocketing it for their purposes.

I am not being flippant because I have spent a few years on such a model. A
community of 6000 can be supported in 600 acres that will actually not only be
self sustaining but can also be income producing if you add farms and value
added businesses for those who don’t wish full time jobs. There are monetary
and communal benefits. There will be less reliance on govt and less wastage of
resources.

120 is a good number because it would satisfy the Dunbar number limits. It
shouldn’t be difficult to have a nice proportion of ageing, young and middle
aged populations for diversity.

It’s just a modern tech supported version of eco villages and ..dare I
say..cults. But they fail because they never take the necessary survival
factor of monetary stability and most eschew technology. These don’t have to
and will be better supported.

~~~
istjohn
Because the great value of cities lies in the network effects that arise when
hundreds of thousands of people live and work in the same neighborhoods. Ideas
cross-polinate, spawn, and mutate creating wealth. And the value produced by a
city increases super-linearly, perhaps exponentially, as population density
increases. Policies that place artificial limits on city densities choke off
that engine of wealth.

It may be possible to create an extremely dense, high population, productive
charter city with an enormous investment of capital, but it would be far
easier to simply remove the restraints that hold back our existing cities.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
It’s not easy clearly if it means that someone else has to pay the price of it
without any benefit.

If you want older people/property owning seniors on fixed incomes to move out,
pay them. It’s as simple as that.

The truth is that most cannot pay. The value of the dollar they earn is
imaginary. The whole system from Wall Street to wages to taxes is a Ponzi
scheme.

Land has value. Water or access to water has value. Inherent value. Everything
else is value-added. So you have to pay more for a resource that is fixed or
shrinking while population increases.

It’s very simple. Buy it off people. OR. It’s far cheaper to add value upon
affordable land and water. To not build on something available and abundant
and to not ADD value to it is a poverty of creativity and intelligence. To
want to evict older citizens or punitively tax them to displace them to take
their land and water is not only lazy but also immoral.

~~~
istjohn
Immoral is forcing thousands of people to live on the streets in squalor
because people don't like change.

No one is calling for Grandma to be evicted. Property taxes for residents
could be allowed to accumulate unpaid until sale or transfer of a property.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
People don’t have to live in squalor in expensive Bay Area. They can move. But
there is a red carpet in Ca for homeless from other states to live because
they are the poverty porn displayed to milk more taxes. Oldest trick in the
politicians handbook to impose more taxes. It’s always ‘compassion’ isn’t it?
The reason to extract more taxes and usually championed by those who don’t
have to contribute anything.

So if accumulated property tax will remain unpaid, how does any of it help
keep people ‘off the streets and no in squalor’?

What is the Big Plan?

If people are going to be taxed after their death, is it like a death tax?
Forced charity?

Theft by proxy? This is literally thuggery. The current youth population and
the government are working hand in hand as fellow thugs. And engaging in elder
financial abuse.

However, there is a solution. One can impose hefty inheritance taxes. One can
impose higher tax bracket for foreign owned properties. I would like to see
that rather than citizens turning against citizens of their own country.

Further..has any of the YIMBYs sat in city council meetings and looked at city
and county budgets. Or the state budget? There is a LOT of money. There are a
lot of infrastructure improvements to be made that will make life better for
everyone. And yet Sacramento does nothing.

None of the young non home owning YIMBY professionals ever question that.
Perhaps because they have been indoctrinated in public school and taught fake
economics. They have literally been hand fed to believe that nanny state is
the best and higher taxes will solve everything. Perhaps it is this lack of
financial literacy and responsibility that is causing them to be the
handmaidens of the govt bureaucracy to act as thugs against middle class
senior citizens.

Over crowded schools, inefficient DMVs, pot holes on roads, congested
freeways, tolls on every stretch of freeways leading to Silicon Valley..Bart
is a joke. Homeless on streets after billions spent. And more density on top
of this inefficiency?

------
Invictus0
If California were its own country, would it try to build more housing or
would it put up a border wall and halt immigration? It's clear to me that
Californians would choose the latter, and I don't really blame them. Deep
down, everyone hates change, especially the type of transformative change that
is taking place in these California suburbs.

What does Lafayette owe the people of San Francisco?--or more accurately, the
people that are not from California that chose to move to San Francisco? The
revolving door that defines California immigration today, where wealthy young
software developers go in and middle/lower class native Californians go out,
is what is hollowing out the population, shifting the culture, and causing the
homelessness problem, and building more housing isn't going to fix that.

~~~
komali2
If they wanted to halt immigration, why would they build a border wall? That
would be a highly expensive and ineffective way to halt immigration, for
fairly obvious reasons.

~~~
logfromblammo
One could halt immigration--or at least the kind of immigration that most
anti-immigration people complain about--in a naive and oversimplified fashion
by raising the minimum hourly wage of noncitizen permanent residents to the
median annual household income divided by 2000 (~$32/h), raising the minimum
hourly wage for temporary residents with a work-permitting visa to 125% of
that (~$40/h), and raising the minimum wage of persons without any official
immigration status to 150% (~$48/h) of that. In order to get a job that pays
less, a person would have to show their visa, residency card, or proof of
citizenship. For jobs that pay more, who cares, as long as they support local
business and pay taxes?

Don't deport anybody. Don't build a wall. Just make any businesses that hire
at lower wages, without first verifying citizenship or immigration status, pay
the workers all their back wages.

The economics shape and are shaped by human behavior.

~~~
komali2
Wait I don't get it, why wouldn't everyone just pretend they're undocumented
immigrants to get the highest pay?

~~~
logfromblammo
Because they would lose the job to someone who can legally work for less.

------
i_am_nomad
YIMBY should more properly be called YITBY (yes in their back yards).

~~~
fra
Many of us are homeowners. Speaking for myself, I simply believe affordable
housing for all is more important than my property value.

~~~
notJim
Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My
neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses
years ago and stayed put. Not that I have anything against them, but I'd love
to have a more diverse, younger neighborhood. More neighbors also means more
customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in
walking distance. More neighbors would eventually also mean better public
transit, because the ridership would demand it. I think the selfish benefits
of more housing are often overlooked due to fear of change.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>Also a homeowner, and I'm a YIMBY (or PHIMBY) for selfish reasons as well. My
neighborhood is mostly old white people, because they bought their houses
years ago and stayed put.

Hmm, here I am thinking I don't really care about the skin color of my
neighbors. It's none of my business. But, I try and not judge people on
immutable characteristics like color and age.

~~~
kbenson
GP could likely have replaced "mostly old white people" with "mostly the same
demographic", but it doesn't convey the same information, even if you don't
assume implied racism as you did.

The important thing being conveyed is lack of diversity, not whiteness. In the
United States, saying something is "mostly white people" conveys that other
ethnic groups are not present for some reason (whether it be them self-
selecting to not participate or because of exclusion). The purpose is almost
always to note diversity or lack-thereof, and assume that the person is making
a value judgement about the people because their skin is white is to
completely miss the point.

For example, if you bought a pack of starbust candies, and they were almost
all orange, you might note or complain that they were almost all orange. I
would do so, and orange is my favorite flavor of those. The issue is, I desire
the diversity of colors and flavors, and _too much_ orange is not as good as
what the added variation brings.

So, "mostly old white people" as a negative doesn't mean old people are bad,
or white people are bad, or old white people are bad, but that _mostly_ old
white people are not as good as a group that has more variation in it.
"Mostly" is the word you should be focusing on, not the other ones.

~~~
klipt
Although if someone visited a suburban area in Japan and complained that it
had "mostly old Asian people", they'd probably be called racist.

~~~
kbenson
I think that depends on the context. If I was visiting that neighborhood in
Japan to assess whether I wanted to live there, I think it might not come
across as racist as much as similar to how I outlined the prior statement,
with some variation because Japan is both a much more homogeneous society, and
one where the population as a whole is shifting towards being older on
average.

I would also argue that a lot of times people are called racist (or called out
for saying racist things) these days are likely because people are also less
likely to give others the benefit of a doubt for their actions or words. This
is likely complicated in that it appears some people that do harbor racist
views feel more emboldened to speak them, but I'm not sure how to pick apart
how much is one and how much is the other.

