
3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home - samfisher83
https://story.californiasunday.com/homeless-families
======
imtringued
1\. freeze property taxes on residential construction 2\. local government is
running out of funding 3\. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise 4\.
government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes) 5\.
area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases 6\. housing
fails to keep up with growing number of migrants 7\. rent and home values rise
quickly and become unaffordable 8\. NIMBYs introduce rent control 9\.
developers cannot recoup their investments and leave 10\. households with
(two) incomes become homeless 11\. people start living in tent cities or their
cars (we are here)

What a shitshow...

Freezing rents or property taxes just delays the negative effects and
perversely make it harder to implement a long lasting solution. Frozen
property taxes lead to high house prices which lead to high property taxes on
the next assessment. At some point the theoretical property taxes become so
large it is no longer possible to unfreeze property taxes because home owners
cannot afford them. The threat of high property taxes would force NIMBYs to
optimize for variables other than their home value. The goal would be to
provide as much housing as is necessary to prevent yourself from being priced
out of your neighborhood.

~~~
oppositelock
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I
live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has
made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are
expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web
of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so
huge that it's not worth trying to build small developments, like duplexes or
triplexes, which would help a lot here!

To give you some concrete examples; in Mountain View, adding a new unit of
housing requires about $80k in impact fees and permit fees from the city, and
the permits require bending over backward, since they're sometimes self
conflicting. We've now banned natural gas, so homes have to be electric. The
only way to heat electrically efficiently is heat pumps, but those are
affected by noise ordinances, so it's tricky to place them. Solar panels are
mandatory, but you need to pay for a permit to install them. Electric car
chargers are mandatory. The fire code, city code, and state building codes
conflict at times, so you sometimes have the fire inspection, then change
stuff around for the city inspector, etc.

Everybody knows how broken it is, so everyone cheats, and inspectors sign off
on temporary kludges, knowing full well they'll be changed right after
inspection, but the i's must be dotted, and the t's must be crossed. But hey,
"we're" doing something!

Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern
political discourse.

~~~
closeparen
These governments aren’t stupid; they’re correctly representing the interests
of the majority of their voters who a) are homeowners and b) strongly prefer
suburbia.

Renters and people who appreciate density need to _show up_ if we’re going to
counteract that.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If renters and those who appreciate density are never close to the majority of
constituents, how does showing up help?

~~~
DataWorker
That’s democracy. The residents get to choose what happens in their community.
If they don’t want to fill the Bay Area with slums and housing projects, they
can make that choice and keep people out.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Agreed about democracy. Can’t force upzoning and density if existing
population doesn’t want it and votes against it.

------
tropdrop
> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay
> home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure
> than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s
> mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more
> convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care.

> There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the
> County of Monterey, the complex had strict rules governing who could reside
> in its units — and since the apartment was in Candido’s mother’s name, her
> children and grandchildren were barred from living there. The building’s
> sympathetic manager, however, assured them that it would be fine; with a
> yearslong waiting list to even enter the lottery for these subsidized
> rentals, they certainly weren’t the only ones, he said, who’d be living
> “off-lease.” Everything went well for about a year. But then a neighbor
> threatened to report the family. She’d started photographing the kids as
> they left and reentered the apartment each day, and the manager had no
> choice but to tell them to go elsewhere. “We were totally scared and
> shocked,” Brenda said, “and we knew that we needed to get out right away. If
> not, Candido’s mom might have been evicted, too.”

What heartless NIMBY does this? I am just shocked and appalled at the cruelty
of this neighbor - it's impossible that she wasn't aware of the housing crisis
in the area.

~~~
Aeolun
I rather assume that was why they were taking pictures in the first place.

I have a much harder time understanding _why_ though...

~~~
tehwebguy
Probably because everyone else that lives there chose to live there because of
the restrictions in the first place?

Super shitty, just that’s probably the reason.

------
Aeolun
Just like mass murders, these stories seem to be popping up everywhere in the
US.

I find it hard to understand how a country can be so good in some ways, but so
terrible in others. Is it just because the successful truly extract all their
wealth from the more unfortunate?

~~~
nojvek
Welcome to the US. How else do you think we have such a massive income
disparity ? We’re a wealthy country but the wealth is in very few hands.

~~~
pkaye
A lot of the people in this forum are part of the wealth. People talk about
how after just a few year of working they are making $400k at a FAANG like its
now big deal. That is a lot of money compared to the people around them.

~~~
ldoughty
See my other comment on this thread, it's not just about the money... it's
about the cost of living.

Making $100k+/year now is "easy" in the tech sector, move to any of the major
cities. Unfortunately homes cost $750k+ or you take an unpaid part-time job in
commuting to the office (2-4 hours/day, 5 days a week).

And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service
industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to
C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar
home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of
the parents stay at home even!

~~~
pkaye
> And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service
> industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to
> C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar
> home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of
> the parents stay at home even!

So do you not consider the $400k FAANG compensation a huge disparity vs the
service industry pay? Is it only at the C-level and senior manager/owner level
that it becomes a problem?

~~~
ldoughty
I do, I just believe that level of pay is at higher levels of the company more
often. Not everyone at those companies gets that level of compensation.

In addition, My argument was trying to point out that there's multiple levels
to this issue, and saying low level employees is the problem is ignoring the
fact __senior leaders __decide to stay in these big cities despite the fact
their own employees can 't find homes, or commute as a part time job.

------
eshack94
Here's a novel idea (/s): Move cities.

~~~
knolax
Anyone wanna move to California City? If enough of us do it at once we can
jumpstart the growth cycle.

~~~
hakfoo
I always figured with modern technology we don't need to have _all_ of the
federal government in the DC/VA area.

I'd scatter each department to a different rust-belt or similarly hollowed-out
city, creating a permanent economic base and allowing redevelopment to jump
start.

~~~
ldoughty
That's my argument for internet everywhere to. You physically can't have work
from home employees if, in 2019, they have to pick between 3Mbps or a 25GB
data cap.

And if more people worked remotely, stress on large cities is reduced.

I actually liked the concept of wework -- a shared office to work in that is
not at home -- to bad there was serious issues with the company. With enough
places like this, you can still move people out of cities.

~~~
brianwawok
The top issue of WFH is not internet speed. It’s a lot deeper than that. I
could WFH on 1 mbit pretty easy, git commits and slack are low bandwidth.

~~~
Hackbraten
Then again, many workers depend on video calls or video conferences, which
easily require a multiple of that bandwidth. Regular security updates are also
important. Those add up nowadays, and if they’re slow to download you tend to
skimp on them.

~~~
downrightmike
requiring video makes no sense

~~~
ldoughty
Not all employees can communicate by text or voice alone. Body language is
very important to a lot of people when communicating... I prefer video calls,
though I don't require it.. but you can't easily tell an employee is having a
rough day or is not following what you're saying on verbal/text cues alone...
Or they say they get it in text but they really are not sure (and seeing their
face or posture might have communicated that they "kinda" understand)..

Many people need the human-to-human interaction.. and many people don't. If
you and your boss and direct reports are all happy connecting in text, great!
But a huge portion of the population wants to see the other person when
communicating

------
pruneridge
More construction is not going to solve this problem. The laws of supply and
demand do not apply to American coastal real estate

~~~
opportune
It sounded like this particular family was doing ok until the wife lost her
job when she was on maternity leave (wouldn’t happen if maternity leave were
actually protected), so they started illegally subletting, and then they got
kicked out of their illegal sublet. Yeah it’s clear they basically had no
savings at that time though, other than the car.

I read the article a few hours ago but I think I remember them saying like a
quarter of the kids in the Salinas public school system were homeless? I agree
that in general, people should be responsible about having children. But let’s
be clear: a quarter of a city’s kids being homeless is indicative of a deep
systemic problem. That’s not something that we should simply accept as natural
because they are poor.

Of course, the big issue which they touch on briefly is that the whole
“affordable/subsidized housing” crap is not even close to reaching the scale
it needs to be at to address the problem. You can’t solve a housing shortage
by selling $10 for $3 to a couple thousand people.

