We live in a country the size of Western Europe with climates ranging from tropical to frozen tundra most of which are full of cheap land and housing if you don’t mind living a bit out of the way… and you picked Texas?
When a longtime Californian leaves California, they make a big stink about it like it's a zeitgeist and parlance of our times. And they only move to Portland, OR or Austin, TX. There have been a few to move to New York City, but that is seen as selling out. Lastly, a handful to Colorado but no one has an opinion on that therefore they are ex-communicated until they return to either California, Portland, or Austin.
do you "recommend" any hilarious biker bars in the SF Bay Area? I only know one and it had a Pabst vending machine in the back. I didn't have a patch or a rider or really any black leather so I never checked it out. Or a motorcycle. Or have ever been on a street legal motorcycle.
Don’t go to biker bars, there’s a couple pullouts in Oakland Berkeley where people tend to stop and chat.
The warehouse in Port Costa is a known hangout though.
Yeah thought that should be obvious. Not every republican is a white nationalist but these people made no secret about their vote, or their belief in great replacement theory, or their views that non whites aren’t fit to hold government office.
> Lastly, a handful to Colorado but no one has an opinion on that therefore they are ex-communicated
No, I did it and there is a big stink about us showing up in Boulder or Denver in large numbers and driving up the price of real estate enough to know we are persona non-grata amongst 'natives'--which is to say those who moved there in the late 90s or early 2000s and reaped the most benefits from said real estate spikes. It's a trope, and if you lived there or spent time there you'd know that.
I personally moved back to EU, after living in various countries for four years, and was way better received than most of the US--I'm Californian and lived in HI and CO. Granted, I was well welcomed by my local community in the startup World, but outside of that it was clear you were the scapegoat for all that was going wrong.
Personally I think the crux is that housing is less constrained in the EU and lower salaries keep things from getting completely out of hand, and their aging population coupled with significant Covid deaths meant their was an excess in vacancy and several of them sought to attract digital nomads (albeit with lengthy and tiresome processes) with attractive visa programs in order to cash in the WFH diaspora.
It is a beautiful place, I'm visiting there with my wife now, we come several times a year. It does have issues though, education is lacking, there is a real lack of opportunity so you'd better have a good remote job, not really any international flights in and out, you have to hop to a bigger airport like DIA or one in California, and it's pretty monocultural.
I left CA for TX about a decade ago. I like the heat but it became unbearable. Worse yet, COVID and Trump made the people unbearable. (Doesn't matter which side you're on, everyone forgot their manners and won't shut up about things.)
We left after almost 10 years. We're in NH now. There are still people who won't stop talking about their personal politics but it's a lot fewer. There are signs during voting season but that's most of it. People here seem to be genuinely friendly and not Bless Your Heart "friendly."
I wouldn't go back to CA without a major change in the economics and I'd never go back to TX because it's just going to get hotter and people will likely just keep getting worse.
Eugene or Portland Oregon, Pittsburgh area, northern Ohio, Maine, Santa Fe or Albuquerque, Colorado Front Range, Madison Wisconsin, maybe Milwaukee, maybe West Lafayette Indiana, maybe Chattanooga, just off the top of my head.
The maybes are places that were nice to visit but I don't know very well.
If you moved to Texas specifically to get a bigger house for your money, then of course you are going to hate it.
We moved to Austin-adjacent and downsized on the house. We put away about 100$k from the sale of our previous house, and used the rest for downpayment, netting us a <$1000 mortgage payment per month. During the periods of heat or cold, we now just peace out and travel, because we have ample cash to do so and still manage to put away for retirement. Currently chilling in Miami till middle of next week.
The rest of the time, weather is nice, plenty of good food, plenty of things to do.
> During the periods of heat or cold, we now just peace out and travel, because we have ample cash to do so and still manage to put away for retirement.
that's nice but is it a good long term solution? i presume you don't have any kids. i wonder how this approach would work once you have kids and they start school. or maybe you do have kids but they are much older and moved out or no plans for kids idk.
I’m a life-long Texan (more or less), and this sounds like totally logical analysis. I love living in Texas, but I don’t particularly care for our state government, but it also doesn’t affect me enough to affirmatively desire to leave the state. I’d love to live in California but not sure I could afford the lifestyle I’d like to maintain. In fact, quite sure I couldn’t - CA is a great place!
Thank you for this take. I don’t live in California, but most of my family has this attitude of “California is the worst! Look how expensive it is.” It seems as if supply and demand has decided it’s a great place to live.
Edit: Not sure why this take would upset anyone. I didn’t say it was necessarily good or bad to live in California. All I said is that the average price of a home seems to dictate that people enjoy living there more than many other states.
Yeah, every time I go home to the Georgian suburbs I have to patiently explain that—while San Francisco certainly has its fair share of obvious and well-publicized problems—if it were really all that bad, people wouldn't be lining up to pay exorbitant amounts in order to live there.
Are they lining up really, any more? I know some tech companies are trying to coerce people back into the bubble, and force them to cram into a narrow valley in central CA, where high rises are generally shunned, just so they can spend 10-20 hours a week commuting into an open office distraction zone, but, remote work is sticky. People are not coming back in the numbers they were. And it's no longer difficult to raise money outside of Silicon Valley either. The next gen of startups will begin as remote companies and will remain as remote companies throughout their existence.
Feel like the cultural center of gravity has left CA and it's in the early stages of a long decline. Detroit once had similar prominence in industry as the valley did for the past few decades. Motor City was a booming hub of manufacturing and music. And over the course of a few decades, it deteriorated. Jobs left. Local government got dysfunctional. Manufacturing left. Crime soared. Houses abandoned. Property values fell on relative and absolute basis.
At any rate, CA is running on the fumes of its former self, when it was younger, more agile, less burdened by dysfunctional politics, had more opportunities for young people and young families.
CA is a naturally beautiful state. But it's got deep-seated issues and there's almost a sense of an unfixable malaise, living there.
Haha, did someone actually tell you the weather is fine? I was born in Texas and I've lived in Austin for 13 years and I've always thought the summers are unbearable.
Although my perspective is tempered with what I experienced around the gulf, in Mississippi and Florida. The humidity there is so bad I literally don't think it's fit for human settlement.
I’m from the PNW but my dad went into nuclear power so I had the privilege of living in Vicksburg Mississippi for four years as a teenager. I don’t get it. Also tried Austin for a summer when in grad school…, my dashboard melted before I realized you really need those sun protection thingies.
San Francisco is one of the most humid cities in the US (so much that mold can be a problem in some cases). Relative humidity is on average higher than Wash DC --but lower than Port Arthur, TX.
> San Francisco is one of the most humid cities in the US
Yes, but its neither particularly hot (so it doesn't tend to be muggy), nor particularly cold (its cold for the densely populated parts of California, but that's not saying much), so the humidity isn't much of a problem.
Hence one of the reasons it waa attractive before it was a center of the tech industry.
I am not sure if you are speaking from experience or looking at weather data, but in 13 years I have never seen indoor humidity high enough to make mold likely. Higher humidity with cool temperatures does not feel like high humidity with high temperatures, which can be unbearable. I sweat profusely in the latter conditions and not all all in the former.
Lived in the Presidio, all my neighbors plus our house has a pretty big mold problem, likely from the humidity. When we called maintenance, the answer was to manage airflow and yeah, it’s the presidio, stuffs gonna mold.
To be fair, the Presidio is the foggiest/most humid part of SF. Any part of the city & broader Bay Area directly touching coast line attracts dramatically more moisture than anywhere even a few hundred meters inland. Even in the Marina district half a mile away mold isn’t an issue afaik
To be double fair, it sometimes felt that the Presidio was only technically part of SF. We used to joke that it was really Marin's foothold on the peninsula.
It may have to do with a combination of location (like around great highway, for example) and age of the buildings, design and along with materials used in construction. Modern/ish buildings are likely unaffected.
No, it's very noticeable. Instead of being hot and damp you've got cold that chills you to the bone and you're still really sticky and damp. It doesn't hurt that things stay very foggy so you can pretty much see the humidity (but not the silver painted trams).
Yes, there are a lot of microclimates here and I suppose in some mold could be likely.
To that point though, most of the neighborhoods I have lived in have had little to no fog. Russian Hill being the exception. I’m not sure how much of a difference that makes in indoor relative humidity or chance of mold.
San Francisco is moist. But respectfully, it is not the hot humidity that drives you to to find air conditioning and plan you day around staying inside to avoid.
Idk if the second part is really fair - as a Texan turned SF resident, I can understand how the Texas heat can be alarming at first. But if definitely didn’t stop us from going outside, doing things, holding sports practices (outside the rare 115 degree day), etc.
The AC is appreciated, but you get acclimated to the heat. And anecdata of one, but I really miss the heat / humidity.
Texas civilization does predate AC after all for at least a couple centuries ;)
> San Francisco is one of the most humid cities in the US (so much that mold can be a problem).
I've lived in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia and mold has never not been a problem in those states. I have never lived in San Francisco though so I can't compare.
A friend of mine lived out in the upper 40s for a bit. I don't think mold was an issue for the building so much as it was for their poor dog that perpetually had some sort of skin condition in 'till they both moved somewhere more arid. San Francisco is a peninsula so you're surrounded by large bodies of water on most sides, of course it's going to be really humid. Winter is brutally humid especially if you're west of Twin Peaks.
That’s odd, I was just in Savanah and every place I went there smelled like mold. It was overpowering in one store I went into, where a local remarked that you don’t notice after awhile.
That sort of reminds me of Bali: their new airport already smelled like mold a year after opening. I lived in the south for a few years but I never remember smelling mold so thickly.
That easternmost part of the state is the "piney woods" and it's lovely compared to the concrete island that is Dallas. The forests have a mitigating effect on heat.
The westernmost part of the state as well: I live 3 hours outside of El Paso near big bend national park at an elevation of ~4000. The winters are chilly at night; the summers are MUCH better than Dallas/Austin/Houston.
I like the heat here in TX. I moved from Michigan, where I also enjoyed the cold (but not the lack of sunlight, affinis Seattle). Saudi Arabia was a bit too hot for my taste, but Texas summers are very enjoyable to me. I may be an outlier, but I genuinely enjoy doing things outside in the Houston summers.
I grew up in Los Angeles, and moved to DFW from Seattle, I'm solar powered, while houston is a little too hot for me, DFW is quite pleasant. As it turns out I'm solar powered, I'd love to go back to Los Angeles, but I'll never be able to afford it again.
But DFW is hotter than Houston? Houston is more humid and can sometimes feel warmer, but DFW is typically 5-15 degrees hotter on the same day in Houston, and the heat there is comparatively bone dry.
As someone who grew up in Los Angeles (California; it's a dry heat) it's a drier heat and not as bad to be out in. I do the state fair every year and hardly notice the temp.
I'm a southerner (not TX, but living in TN currently) and I really dream of making it to CA some day.
The south is cheaper for a reason, and CA is expensive for a reason. You get what you pay for. Red State governance is truly abysmal, the climate is terrible, and there is precious little BLM land to explore.
If enough people leave CA to reduce the price (or enough people move to the south to raise the price here) I'd gladly move to the west coast.
And yet the economic growth of the red states, particularly in last few years has outpaced the blue states. Not to mention the tons of people moving into red states. Hence there are many that disagree with your assessment.
I’m sure you‘ll miss Tennessee’s no state income tax once you move to California.
Sounds like me! I'm moving back to CA after ~2 years in Dallas. I didn't hate Dallas, but my fiancee does. But yeah the weather is awful: 115 degree summers, below-freezing winters.
Here in SoCal the other year we were almost hitting 118 in August (killed almost all of my potted succulents, baked the roots) and that's BEFORE including the concrete factor.
I'm a Texas native. The temps in Texas are nothing like what California gets.
On the other hand, the rockhounding is far, FAR better out here in Cali. But you aren't doing that in the summer. You could do that in Texas in the summer out in the Llano uplift region.
It's hot, but 115-degree summers is an exaggeration. The high is usually around 100 degrees (still too hot, of course). I do much prefer the weather in California.
That's why I tell disbelieving Californians that we have better weather in Texas than they do: When we have nice days, we appreciate it, whereas when they do, they don't even notice .... :-)
(Source: Spent several years in California long ago.)
While people remain in denial about how nice it is to only have 2-3 months of livable outdoor weather a year, housing prices will always tell the truth
Housing isn’t really a “market” that can be efficient at pricing in all information because it’s different for everyone (relatives, taxes, jobs, immigration, race, etc).
The places you listed have milder weather, and far less sunshine than most of the US but they also have hundreds of years of extra history and development. Moving from the US to there has far higher friction cost than moving between states.
You had to eat the second six months of a year lease on a house, maybe lost your deposit, too; plus you paid to move an entire family from California to Texas; then paid again to move from Texas to California. Then had to find another place to live in California and pay another deposit there.
Having helped a friend move from California to Texas recently, it sounds like at least a $40,000 mistake.
Typically, you can break your lease with one month payment. And you don't lose your deposit. That's not how deposits work.
Actually, it's how many of the leases I've had worked, and I've lived in dozens of states.
Probably cost 4K, not 40K.
It cost my friend $11,000 to move his one bedroom apartment from Southern California to Texas last year using Mayflower. And he was just one person, not a family.
Moving an entire family from California to Texas and back costs a minimum of $20,000; unless you're traveling like the Beverly Hillbillies.
> Actually, it's how many of the leases I've had worked, and I've lived in dozens of states.
In the majority of states, the landlord has a duty to mitigate losses, which means you are only on the hook as long as the landlord is unable, making a reasonable, good-faith effort, to rent the unit.
And usually any part of a deposit not used to pay for damages beyond nornal wear and tear or rent for which the tenant was legally liable must be returned.
(The lease may assert something else, but where these laws are in place such terms have no legal effect.)
Funnily enough, lots of folks have moved states. I moved my family from Washington to California.
Lease - 2K. 3rd party Furniture transport - 2K. 10 day hotel stay 1.5K. 5.5K total cost.
You have already admitted that the 40K was double what it would have supposedly cost your friend. Time for you to divide it by a further 50%. Also, the statement that you would have to pay out your entire lease cost is, frankly speaking, ridiculous.
Congratulations on having signed leases in dozens of states. How many dozen states would that be? 2 dozen? 3 dozen?
$150/night is about as cheap as you'll find in the Bay Area. It'll be too small for a family, probably in a shitty area. A few years ago you might've been able to swing that, but now? No.
When you are moving, you don't have to stay bang in the center of bay area. You can stay in Dublin or Morgan Hill while you look for a year long lease in the bay. Also, I moved 10 years ago. 20K to move is an absurd number that the poster pulled out of his ass, along with "living in dozens of states".
Btw, I did manage to find a 180$ per night deal in the bay area at Hyatt house, complete with a kitchenette and utensils recently for a friend.
You could stay in Fresno too, but the point is staying in a hotel in the Bay Area is expensive. A decade ago things were significantly less expensive out here.
Sure you can find hotel rooms for $150/night, but for moving a family? As I said they're going to be too small or in too rough of a neighborhood. For instance the Extended Stay in San Rafael starts around $120/night after all the taxes and fees. It's also downwind of a sewage treatment plant, right next to 580, and in a fairly industrial area.
At that price point in the city you've got options with, e.g. Travelodge, and you can choose between being right next to the freeway or in the middle of the meth epidemic. For a single occupancy room $150 would potentially get you something comfortable, but for moving a family? Not so much.
These numbers are from /dev/urandom or perhaps /dev/null, or maybe they hired white-glove movers and car transporters and flew first class to their destination or something. I moved Chicago to Seattle for like $2-3k all-in (counting plane tickets) in 2017, leaving only couches and beds behind (just wasn't worth bothering to move the cheap Ikea-grade stuff I had). Seattle-Vancouver in 2018 and, a year later, back, were each ~$1-2k all-in by U-Haul and elbow grease, discarding almost nothing either direction.
Moving isn't cheap, but on even relatively junior tech salaries, provided some savings or access to credit, it's truly not a life-altering event the way $40k would be.
Like everything else, moving has gotten more expensive. But I did manage in June of 2022 manage to move from Boston to outside Atlanta for maybe $2500 -$3000 between the hotels, food, shipping my stuff down, gas, etc
That's still considered a luxury moving experience by most. Most people rent a U-Haul for a few hundred dollars and have maybe a few hundred more dollars in gas and hotels.
Moving a true household worth of stuff, good quality furniture, then paying people a living wage who won't treat your stuff like ikea garbage, yeah it's very expensive. My wife got a relocation package that paid for the movers and packing, car shipping, plus $20k cash on top for incidentals, and we burnt through every dollar. I have no idea what the company paid Allied to pack and move all our stuff but it probably wasn't cheap. $40k seems very realistic.
In comparison I moved Dallas to SF as a single guy in a 26' uhaul truck and I think my costs all-in were $5000 for truck/gas/incidentals plus another $5000 for first and last months rent, utility deposits and all the random stuff that comes with relocation. So $10k to move all-in as a single guy.
I moved to Texas from VA and absolutely hated the area. The state politics, the weather, the layout. Lived there for four years and only just recently moved back to Seattle where I can actually have reasonable public transit and weather.
I feel like most of the people that leave for Texas will end up feeling the same.
Which US state doesn't have problems with bugs though? I know none hold a candle to Australia but it seems like each has its own unique problem with bugs.
The entire western coast of the US (cali to Washington) has far less bugs than the east or Midwest. I assumed it was the drier climate but Seattle area doesn’t have a lot of bugs either.
After moving west, I found in identical weather conditions, the west is better to be outside because it will have less bugs.
Ah, I see you're yet to encounter Texas roaches. Additionally, Texas is number 2 on mosquito prevalence after Florida, along with other biting insects. As a bonus, Texas is also home to recluse spiders, whose bites can cause necrosis.
Texas is no Australia when it comes to dangerous critters, but of all the American states, it's in the top 2, and gives Florida a run for its money.
California is a great state in many ways, but it'd be a stretch to say it's even half assed a solution to its housing problem: they've quarter assed it at most. And it does someone no good for a state to be great in many ways if they can't afford to live there.
The situation has been dire for some time, but all they do are small incremental steps towards building more housing, it's nowhere close to what's necessary. Unfortunately, the NIMBY, anti-housing sentiment is very strong.
Well they did just pass a bunch of laws last year to upzone the whole state, crush NIMBY zoning BS and lower permitting requirements for dense development near transit stops.
Builder’s remedy is already being applied against NIMBY communities like Santa Monica and Redondo beach, no take backs.
It takes time to build the homes and see the impact but it’s hard to say that they’re not moving strongly in the right direction.
Sure they’re doing it 20-30 years later than they should have but they’re certainly not sitting on their hands right now.
Newsome knows he needs to show that he really addressed the massive headline problem that everyone hears about California before he can have a serious crack at the presidency, or else he’s never going to overcome the “California bad because mismanaged by Democrats”
> Well they did just pass a bunch of laws last year to upzone the whole state
Have you seen the particulars of that law that upzoned the state? It's actually extremely weak:
"* Benefits homeowners NOT institutional investors. Recent amendments require a local agency to impose an owner occupancy requirement as a condition of a homeowner receiving a ministerial lot split. This bill also prohibits the development of small subdivisions and prohibits ministerial lot splits on adjacent parcels by the same individual to prevent investor speculation. In fact, allowing for more neighborhood scale housing in California’s communities actually curbs the market power of institutional investors. SB 9 prevents profiteers from evicting or displacing tenants by excluding properties where a tenant has resided in the past three years."
Translation: will be used only sparingly, because it's illegal to do it with a standard case of a corporation replacing existing housing with more housing. How many owner occupiers are interested in this and can afford this kind of redevelopment?
"Respects local control. Homeowners must comply with local zoning requirements when developing a duplex (height, floor area ratios, lot coverage etc.) as long as they do not physically preclude a lot split or duplex. This bill also allows locals to require a percolation test for any duplex proposed to be on septic tanks."
Translation: still lets local NIMBYs restrict density.
"It takes time to build the homes and see the impact but it’s hard to say that they’re not moving strongly in the right direction."
It's the right direction yes, but as you say, it's the kind of thing that should've been the response to the much weaker housing crisis of 20-30 years ago, not the much more serious one now.
local NIMBY density restrictions still have to comply with all the other state laws regarding submitting plans to increase housing units.
If the state says no that’s not enough units you are just jerking us around, then the municipality is out of compliance and builders are basically autopermitted to build whatever they want (oversimplifying but look at builder’s remedy - it’s already being applied).
One of the important wrinkles is that there’s no take backs, once the city is back in compliance they can’t go back and stop things that were permitted in the meantime. It’s a very serious “fix it on your own terms or we’ll fix it for you and you won’t like it” approach.
Santa Monica is getting like 5000 new housing units all at once, 800 of them affordable housing, in tall apartment buildings because they threw a fit and refused to get in compliance and they found out just how serious the state is.
NIMBYs wail and gnash their teeth but all it does is expose that their “plans” are all a load of BS smoke and mirrors to max out boomer property values. If the plans were good enough, they’d be in compliance with the state and get to keep the “character of their neighborhood” or whatever.
I take a dim view of "approve more density or we'll sue you". That's more than nothing, sure, but it'll inevitably lead to less housing than just outright requiring various upzoning rules, as various cities do the minimum or even less and fight things in court.
Like, the state already had targets set for cities for a long time, and most cities just kinda ignored them. I know the newer regulations have more teeth, but when you know the other party is hostile to helping people to begin with, it makes more sense to me to explicitly set all the rules up front.
> I take a dim view of "approve more density or we'll sue you".
That's not the rule.
The rule is “approve developments such that you meet state housing requirements or lose your ability to deny planning approval to otherwise legally-compliant developments”.
There is no suing involved: the requirements are known up front, and the consequence of not meeting them is automatic.
> Like, the state already had targets set for cities for a long time, and most cities just kinda ignored them.
Yes, that's why they changed the consequences from just “lose access to certain funding, and lose preference points in applications for other funding” to be that plus losing the ability to block housing developments.
Yeah, one of the reasons I like builders' remedy is it flips the courts' status quo bias on its head - the thing that's tired up in court is city limitations, not construction. That endless delay, even then anti-construction interests lost in the end, was still enough to kill projects economically.
Super weird comparatively as a regulatory framework, but uniquely suited to dealing with California-style procedural obstructionism.
It’s not “approve more density or we’ll sue you” it’s “approve more density yourselves or literally any state-compliant development is auto approved and you have no recourse, also state compliance is easier now.”
If you follow this stuff, these changes are the ones that have finally broken the impasse with these towns - it’s literally already working. The state has come in hard and fast to show it’s for real.
> It it'll inevitably lead to less housing than just outright requiring various upzoning rules
Sure but I’m sure they did their homework and figured out that would be harder to pass in legislature, defend in courts, and defend politically. Giving the towns some chance to increase housing units their way is more politically defensible.
I think it’s gonna turn out to be a pretty darn good solution, better than waiting longer for a more optimal one.
The laws being passed aren't enough. They have a bunch of caveats (SB-9, for example, has a long list of disqualifiers) that limit the utility of any particular bill and making actually using it difficult. The builder's remedy has been on the books for what, about thirty years? Only now is it starting to see some use.
California needs to dramatically cut back on its land use restrictions and figure out how to streamline everything. Even a typical (nominally uncontroversial) single-family home can take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to entitle before anybody even breaks ground. It's madness.
Unfortunately, it's simply not in the culture of the people of the state to want to pursue cost-efficiency or reductions in bureaucracy.
California has not even ¼-assed it. The governor stated in 2018 that we were short 3.5 million homes, which might be approximately correct or at least in the ballpark, and as a state we were going to build them by 2025. That pace should have been 2 million homes by now, but only about 350k units were actually built.
Where does one build 3.5 million houses? The housing needs to be where jobs / etc, are. It should also be where resources are. A good deal of the state has water issues regularly; additional part of the state can't keep the power on due to - heat waves, fires, over use, winds, cats farting.
The rural county I live in has open jobs, but a sizeable chunk of the work force is either seasonal (logging, etc) then coast on unemployment for the off season or don't actually want to work. Those that do, are flaky as all get go. (My partner and I own a small business in the county).
What does this have to do with housing? Covid and growth of a near by metro area (about an hour away) have pushed people to buying up what was previously cheap (yet affordable) housing. Small cabins that would be going for ~75k or a bit more 7 years ago are pushing over $200k now. The local community college as well as natural disasters further puts pressure on the housing situation. How about building more? Well, insuring housing when large fires have come through? Hard to come by. Building costs have also gone through the roof.
Housing is needed in this particular county (and surrounding) but isn't being built.
Just replacing a lot of old urban single-family homes with triplexes would be enough to get significantly ahead of housing issues in many major US cities, including in California.
Unfortunately, the sheer regulatory expense of new housing is such that it's not worth it for anyone to try any project short of big apartment/condo buildings.
The demand for new housing in California is high enough to absorb pretty significant costs and I'd be willing to bet regulatory expense is not even in the top 3 factors driving building costs (and definitely not the top 2), so saying it's "not worth it" seems like it ignores the top of the market (which tends to be the market migrating in to CA) that's willing to pay a premium for what they want where they want.
With some of the recent changes to building policies I think we're going to find out that NIMBY local policy and regulation aren't the fundamental problem, but we're up against the limits of how capital naturally engages with building projects: chasing demand towards the high end of the market and staying well back from diminishing marginal returns.
When I look at the link, it seems to contain a spreadsheet with no information, but let's say $150k is true.
Market prices of homes in places like Freemont tend to run from the high 6 figures through the low 7. Knock off $150k and we have maybe a 20% price reduction (probably closer to 15%). Nice to have but hard to figure out how that represents the largest portion of anything.
Land homes sit on costs more than $150k, maybe north of twice as much in Freemont-like areas (unless the lot is weird, inaccessible, or otherwise has issues that make it difficult to build on).
I'm not sure how one is going to get total materials and labor to come in less than $150k for most single family homes in CA. Maybe with small square footage and a good deal of luck with labor and materials? You tell me how to build for less than $120/sqft and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's all ears.
Seems to me to get regulatory expense to be the single largest item for building a home, we'd have ignore land, then play the game of lumping together all such expenses while splitting out building and labor, and even then I'm still not sure how it actually adds up.
I don't think anyone is proposing to installed another 8 million people in Mendocino. Places like San Francisco and the East Bay have tons of water rights because they were originally outfitted for tens of millions of residents before being suddenly down-zoned around 1970. The East Bay Municipal Utilities District currently serves less demand for water than it did in 1980 because of systemic efficiency improvements, despite the fact that the served population increased 50% since then.
Also, there is the small fact that apartment dwellers use a tiny fraction of the water of people who live in detached houses.
In short, there is plenty of water in various major metropolitan areas.
I'm not sure what place you are describing but a place like Chico could easily double their population, and should do so. There are a string of silly towns that are squatting on ideal locations (Chico is one). The state should use its budget to incentivize growth in those places. A town like Chico, or Lodi, or Stockton, or even Sacramento should get slathered in cash if it builds housing in a smart way. The state should pick up the tab for things like pipes and roads and utility undergrounding in smart growth cities.
No. Established cities tend to be not in flood plains due to survivor effect. Chico, Lodi, Sacramento, and even Stockton are above 100-year floor areas for the most part. Typically the most flood-prone areas are the oldest parts of old downtowns and the newest sprawl where they are gobbling up marginal land.
(California has nowhere to build they say... see above link.)
Build several hundred high-rise apartments with several thousand of residents each. There you go. Housing for a million people in the space of not even a square mile probably. Add in generous amounts of entertainment venues, coffee shops, live music, some parks, and a bunch of office buildings.
This is called the Napkin Fallacy. When you write down some solution to a long standing social problem on a napkin in a coffee shop, and then instead of asking
"What is wrong with my solution, that it hasn't been adopted?"
you ask
"What is wrong with the world, that it hasn't adopted my solution?"
The world needs a lot more people asking the first question rather than the second. Virtually no one should be asking the second question. As the saying goes "For every problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." That's usually the napkin solution. When you stop to really think about what is wrong with the napkin solution, you start down the path of solving real problems. It is highly unlikely that long standing social problems have napkin solutions.
As a slightly toxic corollary to the Napkin Fallacy is the Virtue Fallacy, which tries to answer the second question with
"It is because the world is run by bad people"
This is bad not only because it is an easy way to avoid the difficult work of understanding why the napkin solution doesn't work, but also because it caricatures one's opponents, and it is close to self-deification. While the saying "Let God be true, but every man a liar" is sound, the saying "Let me be true but every man a liar" is unsound. There is generally nothing about any of us that makes us better than others. Do not assume the world is run by people worse than you.
When it comes to housing, the napkin solution is correct. There are no technical or practical problems with it. To many, there are aesthetic and social problems with it, and we choose to prioritise those. That’s not a given.
All problems requiring this type of collective action are social problems.
There are many vacant houses in the U.S., and many cheap houses -- pretending this is about shortage of physical housing is just foolish.
This is about shortage of desirable housing, and instead of stopping to ask what are the mechanisms that cause desirable housing (for you) to be so expensive, you just assume the problem is like a shortage of lumber or "space" or something equally irrelevant. If you build lots of affordable housing in Livermore, what would happen is that Livermore would stop being desirable for you, and you would end up wanting to live in some satellite area that was created outside of Livermore in which the exclusivity was maintained. Then good jobs would move there, because over the long term, the jobs follow the skilled workers and not the other way around. Then your utopian project in Livermore would find itself turned into a low income area where there is a shortage of good jobs, and most of the good jobs are elsewhere, in more exclusive areas, that are within commuting distance of the Lab. Then the Lab would find itself having trouble hiring enough people, and it would open satellite offices elsewhere. Then you would complain about a shortage of housing there, and want to rinse and repeat, not understanding why your intervention failed to solve the problem.
A good example is San Francisco. Most tech jobs were in Santa Clara county, not San Francisco. But a lot of tech workers enjoyed living in SF and did a long commute. Then tech companies realized they could hire more easily if they opened offices in San Francisco. Then companies began to be founded there, etc. All of a sudden, lots of tech jobs in SF. The jobs follow the skilled workers, and skilled workers have a lot of options in terms of picking where they want to live. They vote with their feet, and the jobs follow. How did the jobs end up in Santa Clara? Or Belmont. Through a similar process. Jobs chase high skilled people.
So you have to come to grips with why people that have a lot of choices choose to live in expensive, more exclusive areas. Why does the average high income person really not want to live in a neighborhood with a lot of poor people? Or, for that matter, even average income person? Why this hatred towards average people (something that can easily be found even on this site)? Why are they willing to commute elsewhere, and even take a pay cut, to be in a more exclusive area that is surrounded by other high income people? (And so signals to employers to open an office nearby). This is a social issue, not about lack of nails or space or a shortage of lumber.
I think we have opposite assumptions here. Afaict, young upwardly mobile professionals love density and (income++) diversity. SF was kinda sketchy before it got gentrified by tech, no? Tenderloin was bad, I’ve heard? The notion that people primarily move from less to more exclusive places don’t match with what I see. And people who are actually poor can’t afford new construction, so poor people (and the real social problems they often have) aren’t going to move into unsubsidised new-builds. Will upper-middle class people move away from an area just because craftsmen move in? Area you sure you’re not getting the causality the wrong way around? High-income people move out of area for various reasons not related to their neighbors, property values fall, lower-income people can afford to move in. That sounds more plausible to me.
I do have some arguments in favor of your position, but they’re mostly specific to the US: 1. Many people’s primary retirement plan and emergency fund is often their house, so property values are exceptionally important to them. 2. School funding per student goes down if less wealthy parents move to the district. 3. Violence in poor neighbourhoods can get really bad. None of this is God-given, though, which is why nimbyism isn’t quite as bad in many other countries. And while important, these factors don’t seem to be dominant.
I think you are ignoring the racial angle here. San Francisco became trendy because it was a major urban center, a walkable city, with less than a 6% black population, and that population was relegated to the Bayview area, which of course did not become popular with tech workers as a residential destination. You have a similar situation for Seattle. And Austin. Or Portland. But why is there is no big tech gentrification happening in South Chicago? Or DC? Or Houston? Or Gary, Indiana? Or St. Louis? Show me one urban core area that has more than, say, a 20% African American population that is popular as a target for tech gentrification. I'll wait.
The fact is, there just aren't that many cities that fit this bill, and those that do experience rapidly rising real estate prices. As with many issues, race is a taboo factor operating behind the scenes in determining which neighborhoods are targets of gentrification and which are not. When you create a lot of low income housing, people viewed as more undesirable move in and the high income earners go elsewhere. Then you rinse and repeat. But of course the problem is not that there's a shortage of housing or even a shortage of affordable housing. Median value of owner occupied units is $245K, which is 3.5x the median household income[1]. That's perfectly affordable. But the median home value in a major urban city with less than a 10% African American population is a different story. So there's a shortage of housing in our diverse society that has the "right" kind of demographics. As we become more diverse, the number of locations that are predominantly white or asian will get more and more scarce -- and more and more expensive.
You see a similar situation in Sweden, which accepted a large number of migrants and put them on the outskirts of major cities, and of course the house prices of units in the urban cores that were free of migrants skyrocketed. People are paying to not live in areas with large migrant populations. So all of a sudden housing is becoming 'unaffordable' in Sweden. But the unspoken part is that housing with few migrants is become unaffordable, not all housing. Again, this is a social problem, it's not a problem of a shortage of lumber or space.
So building more low income housing doesn't have the effects you believe, in terms of increasing the amount of housing in highly desirable areas. It will have the opposite effect, by removing one area that has the desired demographics, it makes the remaining islands even more desirable and thus even more expensive. At least this is my reading of history. It was very clear, after the race riots of 2020, how home prices in predominantly white/asian enclaves began to rapidly increase, at which point those who wanted to live in these enclaves began complaining about a "housing crisis" because they could not bring themselves to complain about a racial crisis.
But hey, I could be wrong -- housing in St. Louis or Detroit is still affordable. I'll wait to see tech workers scramble to move there, rather than, say Salt Lake City.
There is gentrification in some of the southern Chicago neighborhoods. If you're asking why there isn't much in Englewood or Grand Crossing, it's because Chicago is geographically huge, and decades of redlining tore a giant gash in the west and south sides of the city that will take many, many more decades to heal. There simply isn't enough demand, across the entire city, to make high-end development in Grand Crossing viable. Gentrification is pushing harder against the west than the south side right now, is my impression.
I don't know what all is happening in Sweden, but what happened in Chicago wasn't an organic process; it was deliberately engineered.
> There is gentrification in some of the southern Chicago neighborhoods
Fun Fact: The Obama Administration was instrumental in tearing down a number of low income housing projects in Chicago and exporting them to nearby cities in Illinois, in an attempt to "unlock value" in downtown Chicago housing by removing poor black families. This has had limited success, although South Chicago is still overall a no go zone for gentrification. This explains the slight gentrification you are referring to. There were multiple lawsuits over this, as the nearby suburbs did not want to receive these housing projects, and were basically forced into it by the Obama administration. This was portrayed not as an effort to enrich administration-connected housing developers in downtown Chicago, but rather as an effort "integrate wealthy suburbs" so that they do "their fair share".
Bottom line, you have to be aware of race and what is really going on when you complain about "lack of affordable housing". There is, of course, plenty of affordable housing. But not where you want to live.
There is plenty of affordable housing all over Chicago, which is why it's going to be awhile before Grand Crossing has a Sweetgreen. Housing on the west and south sides of the city are, by CA/NY/WA standards, beyond "affordable". The median home price in Portage Park is somewhere around $350k --- freestanding houses, yards, low crime, Chicago property taxes, Blue Line connectivity. The median home price in Grand Crossing? $120k.
Public housing projects as implemented by cities like Chicago were a failed experiment. The people that used to live in those places get Section 8 vouchers now, and live in houses on blocks like mine. They're better off, and the city is better off.
Recently a study evaluated one Canadian city's strong efforts to build housing. It was found that prices didn't go down because the builders colluded to build far less housing in the surrounding area, keeping overall supply down, and prices up. That's in their interest. The napkin solution is correct ... unless Marx is right about how elites behave.
California is a great state? I guess the mass exodus over the last several years is just simply people leaving in excitement.
California is not great. It hasnt been great for a long time. It's hostile to anyone who is not the elite while also mascarading as a progressive paradise. The problem with people leaving is they export the same politics that got California to it's position as a working class hostile state. In the most common states, Oregon, Nevada, and Texas Californians are looked at with great disdain. It tells you something, at least, when even a left-leaning state like Oregon doesn't want you.
Dude, as someone who left, California is a great state and I never would have left if I could afford to live there. Only a small portion of Oregon is left leaning, and people who feel they are being squeezed out by Californians of course are going to feel antagonistic and try to justify that antagonism in their heads as more than just fear.
I live in one of those states. I have watched my state go from an alright place with affordable housing, good liberal laws, etc to a complete shit show in the last decade. Where I am is beginning to feel more like California every single day. Dramatically more taxes, far more expensive houses, far worse roads, increasing stretched police forces, less personal rights, etc. It's a nightmare. People like me aren't antagonistic because people moved here. We're antagonistic because the same shit that brought you the absurd taxes, expensive houses, poor roads, terrible policing, overbearing politics, etc is being exported en masse by these very same people. The average person living here cannot afford to live here because, according to my realtor friend, majority of home purchases come from Californians and they don't just buy one. Ignoring all else the income asymmetry is causing strife to people who cannot afford to live when the chickens come home to roost.
I live where I live and travel to California so often I more or less live there for several days a week. The only thing great about California is the weather.
It's simple, assimilate or stay over there. You left California for a reason - why bring the garbage to every other state? Your voting is the reason California is a dumpster fire in almost every major metro. Walking down Santa Monica, or almost anywhere in San Francisco smells like human waste. You cannot tell me California is "nice". At least the Californians coming here aren't exporting the smell.
It's not a problem to everyone. For example, it's not a problem to many homeowners that the value of their homes keep going up and to the right.
Living in California is expensive, in more ways than just housing. Not everyone can afford it. Just like not everyone can afford a new BMW. In my corner of the state, people who increasingly cannot afford to live here are noisy. I mostly don't engage because I'm aware that I will simply receive vitriol and anger for sharing my views. But quietly, I'm ok with it. They can move if they want to. I love it here and having fewer people on the fringes of society as neighbors isn't really the worst outcome to me.
Edit: and this why I don't engage. I'm out. Merry Christmas everyone.
Yes, if we made it illegal to manufacture new lawnmowers or sofas or iPhones, then the value of the existing lawnmowers, sofas, and iPhones would skyrocket, which would be (at least in the naive accounting [0]) very good for the current owners of lawnmowers, sofas, and iPhones -- but hopefully you can see how ridiculous that is as policy.
[0] I say "naive accounting," because it's not so great if you ever need to buy a new lawnmower, sofa, or iPhone or if you hope your kids will someday be able to. And it's not so great for your city in the long run if making ordinary products illegal results in drastically lower levels of productivity, etc, etc.
Of course allowing more housing impacts people. And people on their iPhones impact me -- when they're behind the wheel, when they're talking loudly in a restaurant, when I can't get their attention in a shop. The towers impact me (they're ugly and ubiquitous and use valuable spectrum). And lawnmowers? Those impact me, too! They're loud and stir up dust. I'm struggling to think of anything objectionable about sofas, but that just means 2/3 of my totally-arbitrary examples have significant impacts on others. And, because those examples were totally arbitrary, we could easily substitute three far more objectionable products.
You live in a society. Of course the things other people do impact you. That's a low bar, easily met, and not interesting enough to justify a ban on new housing. The impacts have to be overwhelmingly harmful to justify prohibition. Apartment buildings clearly do not meet that standard. You might not like apartments, but I love them, and banal preferences shouldn't drive policy in a free society.
Sure, that's the beauty of democracy though. Everyone gets an equal say. Seems like not enough of the voting population agrees with you and as such no new houses are built. America is a huge country though, plenty of very affordable housing elsewhere. Everyone doesn't get to just have what they want where they want it though, that's capitalism for you.
In the United States we have a Constitution that enumerates a set of Rights about which nobody gets to vote. It doesn't matter if you (or even 99% of all people) think it should be illegal for me to express this opinion, for example; you don't get to vote on that.
Private property rights in my view quite clearly fall under this rubric and it's only because of a few laughably bad SCOTUS decisions that this is even a live debate at all. For most of our history this was well understood.
If given the chance, most people will vote to ban new construction in their neighborhoods. I presume that if given the chance significant percentages of the population would also vote to ban certain kinds of speech. In neither case do I believe those positions are made legitimate by virtue of having majority support.
> In the United States we have a Constitution that enumerates a set of Rights about which nobody gets to vote
No, it doesn't, since people actually do campaign on changing the Constitution. I mean, unless you specifically and exclusively mean “the right to equal representation of your State in the Senate”, and even that is debatable, since you could vote for someone who proposes removing that limitation on amendments from the Constitution.
I agree for the most part but government is always going to have the power to regulate what property in city limits can be used for. This prevents things like me opening a shooting range or a night club in a single family home neighborhood. Laws are put in place to prevent a worsening of living conditions for people that already live somewhere. 100% with you on free speech though. Government has no right to control what we say. I would go even further and ban companies being able to fire people for expressing unpopular or even racist opinions away from work. I'm a jew and if a dude is a Nazi on his free time but professional in the office he should remain unfired. Applies to speech only, if he's breaking the law via assault, arson, etc. then sure, fire him.
In any -ism.you could build an apartment on your own land[1]. It's capitalism that turns it into capital which allows you to rent it out or sell it as property.
1. to the extent that land can be owned under a given mode of production.
Tenants existed before capitalism. Marx discusses this in Capital when he discusses the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The ownership class changed (from the Lord to the landlord) but the relationship continues to exist. The idea of using an asset to generate returns on the asset is indeed a capitalist concept but housing is but one aspect of that.
It's in important distinction because even post-capitalist dialectics need an answer for the need of housing.
If I did not want more people to live near me, I would simply not live in the most economically productive region in the country. People who hate other people are free to sell their homes and move to the country.
Why introduce "hate other people" into the discussion? Would you maybe allow that what some people actually "hate," are jammed highways and thoroughfares, not enough parking, and everything crowded? To the extent that people have a say (a vote) in zoning regulations, people are entitled to voice their opinion about the population density of the area where they live.
You get anger and vitriol because your views are part of the problem. NIMBY’s pull up the ladder and try to turn a nice semi-affordable car into a Porsche then tell everyone “sorry, it’s just expensive to be here. Not my fault!”
It's not a problem to me, that's the point. By saying I am a part of the problem, what you really mean is that my views are an obstacle to you getting what you want.
> Most of us aren't even asking you to do anything or pay higher taxes - just stop screwing it up for everyone whose income isn't as big as yours
It's true people don't have to "do" anything, but they are still affected by QOL decline: increase in traffic, not enough parking, schools get crowded, everything gets crowded, etc. So it's not a no-op.
But by buying a house they're not buying the whole city and the right to prevent others from living there.
If these are REALLY the objections, we could find ways to mitigate these issues.
A reasonable discussion could be had about how fast neighborhoods should change, or what reasonable expectations buyers should have about the neighborhood changing over what period of time around them.
However, if more people move in, their single family home in the period of 10-20 years will probably double in value and they'd probably be able to sell it and move to the outskirts of the now-expanded city with a similar character to what they had before, which has become the center of the growing city.
What if people simply don't want refugee camps in their back yard? You are assuming that an improvement for you is logically an improvement for others. It's not. Your opinion is worth as much as everyone else's; 1 vote
> There are an awful lot of suburbs in the Bay Area that would be massively improved in character by replacing a handful of mansions with refugee camps.
Not even refugees would want to live near refugee camps
Once again, you don't get to decide for me what 'the problem is'. You're just framing what you want as objectively what should be. But you're incorrect to frame it that way. You want what you want. I want what i want.
It's more than just framing. It's one set of people telling another set of people what they can and cannot do with the land they own. That seems to be a bit of a tie breaker. The parent you replied to wasn't telling other people what to do with land they owned, he was objecting to people telling him what he could do on land he owned (within reason, like a duplex/triplex, or an accessory dwelling unit).
There's no principal like safety behind how restrictive many of these rules are, unless you count fear of people in different economic demographics to be a reasonable justification. It's a difference of opinion.
People who want more flexible zoning are growing in number, these are people who can't find an affordable place to live or are otherwise not happy with the changes made to zoning in the last 75-100 years, and they are driving changes in more and more localities.
The basics of economics are that housing prices is a function of amount of housing and number of people who want housing. NIMBYism is about keeping the amount of housing low, thus pushing prices up.
On a side note, how can you be mad at people who have a home, are raising their kids and don't want an apartment building smacked down next to them and their kid's schools flooded with hundreds of extra students?
Thing is, people aren't asking you (and people like you) to do anything, but simply to stop actively blocking things (like building new homes). You're getting the vitriol because you're simply sharing your views. You're getting it because based on your views, it seems like you support measures that actively blocks progress for others.
For the most part everyone arguing in favor of ideas championed by the left are unable to engage in rational argument they always engage by attempting to personally insult and label the other as bad or selfish. As someone that has always voted Dem prior to this past midterm, this style of argument actually drove me further right. Got to the point where I decided that if an idea can't be championed on it's merits it's probably not something I'm interested in
Sad but true that progressive "people deserve to live decently in my city" ideas are at odds with the "I'm fine so stop talking about how there's a problem".
I'm working on an entire comedy set about how many of my peers care more about dissecting the wording of shit rather than actually furthering a cause. Those idiots aren't going to affect my ideology, though I am sometimes cancelled for the hilarious reasons (i.e. mentioning Joe Rogan).
Lastly, I got ran out of a bar for saying I think people deserve health care. Labeled a communist with no job and that I'm not welcome there. Lol!
I find it problematic that so many people reject your opinion, in particular because I suspect they are probably downplaying the degree to which it parallels the way most Americans think about where they live, to one degree or another.
Your logic isn’t unsound, but it will increasingly come across as unreasonable because not everyone in the workforce has the option of finding employment and accommodation elsewhere.
Make it unaffordable in a city for service workers to live, and there will be no one to host your night out on the town. No one to serve your dinner, or to tear your venue ticket, or to play live music.
I know what you mean but I still disagree. Is it _illogical_ to care for the disabled, elderly, widows and orphans in their affliction? I walk past people in need all the time but I don't justify it. Logical is subjective according to the person's wants and needs.
Given that I know the local authorities will drag their feet and it'll take 5+ years for anything to actually be lived in and most stuff will be expensive to live in - yes. But that's already happening.
So if people keep leaving then the property values go down. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.
Imagine property values start plunging, people can't leave, they just start abandoning houses, soon you get vast swathes of abandoned houses which lead to increased crime and urban decay.
Decades from now people will shake their heads and talk about the golden days of California and the problems with the silicon belt.
You're missing why people want to live here in the first place. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world, with one of the best year-round climates in the world. If prices start going down, people will move here. For those reasons.
You’ve described most of the country outside of job centers. There’s very little rural housing available and people crowd into job centers and drive up costs. Unless you own property or make a high salary, housing is unaffordable in all 50 states.
TLDR: I'm fine so what's the problem? I'm the victim! I can't speak my hilarious beliefs because people will "engage" aka challenge my poorly thought out and constructed opinions.
As a San Francisco area homeowner and a BMW owner, I believe every human deserves a roof over their head.
Edit: Please don't discuss the things I've said. My BMW is the victim! Merry Christmas.
> It's not a problem to everyone. For example, it's not a problem to many homeowners that the value of their homes keep going up and to the right
"Increasing price of cars during pandemic not an issue for people who already have cars."
Yes, people are upset that the government pushes policies that hurt people, and that make no sense generationally (intentionally targeting rising property values is just a generational ponzi scheme).
If your stance is apathy or even pleasure upon seeing the suffering caused by bad policy, it's no wonder you're being downvoted.
> If your stance is apathy or even pleasure upon seeing the suffering caused by bad policy, it's no wonder you're being downvoted.
There was absolutely nothing in the comment to imply he derived "pleasure from seeing suffering." You are making that leap in bad faith.
I think the build-or-not argument might be more productive if the "YIMBY" side would acknowledge that a massive increases in housing density (and therefore population density) does have an effect on existing residents.
> But quietly, I'm ok with it. They can move if they want to. I love it here and having fewer people on the fringes of society as neighbors isn't really the worst outcome to me.
Maybe pleasure was the wrong word, but they certainly seem to enjoy the terrible situation. It's not very far off, and saying that you're okay with and even love the current setup that helps you at the expense of others isn't a great look.
> would acknowledge that a massive increases in housing density (and therefore population density) does have an effect on existing residents.
Obviously it does, just like increasing the supply of anything has an impact relative to the option of constrained supply.
Realistically, the real solution is radical upzoning at the state or even federal level. Upzoning individual neighborhoods and cities exacerbates the negative side effects of upzoning by concentrating them in small areas. If the population increase is broadly spread out, it'll be much less of an issue.
This is “gross” decline, the backing data has a “net” migration of -113k. NY actually had a much higher net decline at -180k which translates to a 3x higher decline as a percentage (0.9% vs 0.3%). This isn’t necessarily a CA thing as people keep positioning it, it’s a high taxes among other things (like housing, and high mobility)
California has had a net decline to domestic (intra-US) migration for quite some time; pre-COVID, it was more than compensated by international immigration.
NY is harder to measure, since families move to CT and NJ all the time.
Jersey city has massively ramped up development and is filling demand generated by families who want to move out of their NYC shoebox. The entire NJ-PATH route has been expanding rapidly the last decade or so.
Actually, 8/10 of NY state's biggest cities (barring Syracuse, Rochester) are within a commute distance from neighboring states/countries. Although the bottom 9 combined, add up to 10% of NYC's population. So they don't really matter.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. I live in Oregon and know of at least 15 families that moved to Idaho, Arizona, Texas, etc. because they didn’t like Oregon’s approach to Covid.
Well CA might have the best jobs in the world & great weather , for people to move away from there speaks mountains about the issues plaguing the city.
Agreed. It turns out the data they report from actually has that exact thing in it: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-... -- I believe this change rate appears calculated against their 2020 census data and not the estimates from 2022.
States with most negative change rate: California (-0.9%), Illinois (-0.8%), Louisiana (-0.8%), West Virginia (-0.6%), Hawaii (-0.5%)
Five most positive change rate: South Dakota (1.5%), Texas (1.6%), South Carolina (1.7%), Idaho (1.8%), Florida (1.9%)
Interestingly three states did not have enough change to register: Kansas, Michigan and Vermont.
It would also be interesting to see churn rates. A place could be stable count wise, but actually turning over people fast and running out of suckers (kinda like Amazon warehouse employee base)
Also, that’s not the title I’m seeing when I click the link, it’s — California’s population shrinks for third straight year as high costs stress households — which is a lot less editorial.
The second lowest of five bands is not “the middle band”.
I would agree that it is not particularly notable; a lot of the headlines are “look at the big numerator and ignore the big denominator, because narrative agenda”.
My comment about CA being in the middle band assumes the states were divided into 5 quantiles, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile, and that the upper (>=1.10%) and lower (<=-0.50%) quantiles are the extremes.
It's the consequences of this. A shrinking tax base meaning the government has to cut back on programs and services. It means reduced infrastructure spending and maintenance. These have down the road effects.
If you have a shrinking/fleeing population you can see what ends up happening by looking at the rust belt.
If people are fleeing a state that often means that the problems are so bad people are willing to overhaul their entire lives to get away from it. This indicates problems have gotten very bad and now you have fewer resources to address them than before.
Basically when you state population is shrinking it indicates it has the largest challenges it's faced with the continually fewer and fewer resources to address them. At that point it requires a legendary genius and heroic effort to overcome the problems occuring.
> If people are fleeing a state that often means that the problems are so bad
But much of the outflow is quite easily explained by the Covid shift to remote work allowing everyone in the Bay Area to take their high salary savings and buy houses wherever they fantasized about living.
You can’t really directly compare to previous migrations because those all involved making a career-impacting change. This one required merely overcoming the activation energy of a house move. So the signal about the “cost of staying put” is much weaker than in the past.
This is not to claim that Silicon Valley / SFBA doesn’t have problems, just that the analogy to Detroit probably doesn’t work without significant caveats.
It's not a problem immediately but that's the thing when you are talking at scales like this it is a matter of decades not years to forecast issues. If the remote work hypothesis holds true that means the biggest advantage silicon valley had, a high concentration of engineers and founders is no longer there it's dispersed all across the country and the competitive advantage begins to evaporate at the same time VC money is drying up because of an economic contraction.
You can continue to believe and argue that it isn't happening and that Cali is still a great place and continue to cover your ears and scream at the reality but the fact is that when I moved a year or so back the new church I started attending was composed about 1/4 of people that had left California in the past few years, with it moving to 1/3 if we include Oregon and Washington. (And no it's not some sort of sampling bias that Californians love my Church) all of them described the various problems with CA that make it sound pretty much unlivable. So continue to believe there is no problem. It seems that Silicon Valley insists on relearning the lessons of the rust belt.
I think you have to remember to apply marginal thinking and consider sampling bias.
At the margins, the people who move away are the ones who were already unhappy with “issue x” but had not actually left.
Now that “cost of moving” decreases, or “cost of staying” increases, the cost/benefit of moving becomes positive for those marginal residents, but stays negative for those that love where they are.
Clearly plenty of people don’t find it to be unlivable, indeed it’s still objectively ($/sqft to buy) one of the most desirable places to live in the country even despite the problems.
This is also completely consistent with small towns seeing a large influx of people fleeing CA; it doesn’t take a high % of the most-populous state leaving to make a substantial difference in all of the small desirable towns.
I do agree that the remote trend needs to be followed closely; it’s great for senior engineers at big companies, but I wonder if startups and juniors at large companies are soon going to realize that mentoring and rapid collaboration is really hard remote, and we’ll see the pendulum swing back a bit. Or maybe we will solve those problems and the agglomeration effect of the Bay Area fully dissolves.
I agree. I’m confused when I hear about calls to “address” the issue. People leaving isn’t a problem, the real problems are the reasons people move away.
Nothing wrong with decreasing population, but when your richest citizens are leaving, and poor migrants are coming in, then you start having fiscal problems, particularly for a state that has decided to fund itself with income and sales taxes rather than property taxes.
Another reason why property tax is a more stable funding source -- unlike income, you can't take it with you. There is a whole list of reforms that California needs to undertake to recognize the new reality it's in, and shifting itself to being funded primarily by property taxes is one of the biggest necessary changes. The second biggest change is significantly scaling back spending and decreasing its vast administrative bureaucracies.
A "majority" of any sizeable group is not going to be rich. What is important for fiscal impact is that the rich are leaving, not that other people are also leaving.
If you want to see data, we can look at IRS data:
"New York’s tax base shrank by $19.5 billion while California lost $17.8 billion as a result of workers fleeing those states during a time when lockdown measures allowed employees to work remotely, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Other high-tax jurisdictions such as Illinois ($8.5 billion); Massachusetts ($2.6 billion); New Jersey ($2.3 billion); and Maryland ($1.9 billion) also saw an exodus of workers during 2020.
The states that reaped the benefits of the “wealth migration” include Florida, which gained an additional $23.7 billion in gross income; Texas, which gained $6.3 billion; Arizona, which took in $4.8 billion more; North Carolina ($3.8 billion); South Carolina ($3.6 billion); and Tennessee ($2.6 billion)."[1]
Ending Prop 13 would not cause "significantly scaling back spending and decreasing its vast administrative bureaucracies." Instead it would have the opposite effect. All other taxes would stay the same, but now they'd have this additional source of money.
This may be difficult to understand, and I can accept if you refuse to believe it, but it's possible to say that two steps are needed without the first step also accomplishing the second.
"e.g. 1) switch to more funding on property taxes and 2) reduce administrative bloat"
Shockingly, this does not make the two steps "self-contradictory".
I mean, how do you communicate with someone that has no ability to make quantitative estimates? Yes, getting rid of prop 13 would require the administrative complexity of one specific job of one department to increase. No, this does not contradict the goal of reducing administrative waste. Fire a million bureaucrats (15% of the population of California works for state and local government), shut down 20 departments, and the 1000 people you need to hire for prop 13 rollback will not reduce the overall goal.
And by shifting responsibilities, you could easily do this without hiring anyone else - almost all states have a value-based property tax system, and this includes states with extremely lean administrative load compared to California, so your claim that following their model is some self-contradictory nut to crack is specious.
Lol if you think the net is outbound. Most of those people were replaced. Who else is going to pay the high rent? The only option when rent is too high for HENRY is to pack in as many poor workers as possible. Viva congestion!
California is NIMBYism at its worst: the far left opposes more housing, the far right opposes more housing, and the center is sick of traffic from more housing.
> California is NIMBYism at its worst: the far left opposes more housing, the far right opposes more housing, and the center is sick of traffic from more housing.
It's the banality of evil.
It's not that homeowners are conspiring to create unaffordable housing, it's just that they all just care about the benefit to themselves of rising home prices and maintaining the comfortable exclusivity of their neighborhoods. Everyone hopes someone else is fixing the problem.
Collectively, each city wants some other city to build more affordable housing. It's not a political issue. It's the haves vs. the have nots, just as it's always been.
The only solution is to have the state organize a plan that forces many cities in the bay area to build denser housing is some of their prime locations -- I'm thinking like way Palo Alto's downtown and Caltrain station area is surrounded by single-family suburban houses. Some of which are on huge lots! Any areas surrounding public transit corridors like that should be immediately built up into multi-story housing complexes.
Who are the people moving out? Primarily those without money or assets to stay. People who tend to skew younger.
So you drive out the younger, start a feedback loop where more young people leave, inverting the population pyramid. This is accelerated by the lower birthrate.
Congrats, you now live in a place where young people are overwhelmed by grey pressure and the only realistic alternatives are decreasing quality of services, or siphoning wealth to push for more services. The latter solution nullifies most benefits stubborn NIMBYs amassed for themselves a few decades before they got old.
I don't understand the hate towards market rate housing. Want the market price to come down? Build more supply. We're so far short of healthy levels of stock, however, that there's no relief in sight with merely-modest pro-housing policies. We need something akin to post-ww2 levels of construction.
The argument I've seen is that basically because we'll never have that post-ww2 levels of construction - building more market rate housing only pushes existing tenants out of the city. You have to usually tear down existing housing and then build new. So, the old tenants get pushed out and then new housing comes in but it's a lot of investment properties and whatnot... So, the cost of housing doesn't actually go down.
If we had post-ww2 levels of housing development but with mixed use residential then I'm thinking we'd have more of an agreement but that's the issue... No one thinks that will ever happen. So, they advocate for more government housing because that will improve more lives of lower income folks.
Not true at all. The far left objects to gentrification, where the supply of housing nominally increases but prices continue to go higher. Short-term rentals and properties being kept vacant for land speculation are two factors. The far left hates landlords and property speculators, for more or less the same reasons Adam Smith did.
Please don't mischaracterize what I wrote, I clearly stated my belief to the opposite. In years of being in and around the far left, I have never seen anyone try to prevent the permitting or construction of new housing. Arguing that housing needs to be affordable to address the problem of homelessness is not opposition.
Your original claim is just not factual. No rhetorical flourishes are gonna change that.
Also explains why Texas is growing the quickest. It turns out that population is basically the integral of new home starts. Who could have predicted this, except every YIMBY I know who has been screaming about this for 25+ years?
Yeah crazy to think that people like cheap houses and no income tax /s.
But in all seriousness. The ROI on California taxes has to be one of the worst deals in the country. I can’t think of another state (maybe NY) that does so little with so much.
I’m not talking about tax burden, I’m talking about tax ROI. Essentially what you get in return for your taxes. You could argue that Texas is objectively a worse state to live in tax-wise because you essentially get nothing in return for your taxes. Not even a fully functioning power grid (that you still have to pay usage rates for). So tax rates are low, but return on what you do pay is even lower.
But I’m talking about California. They have high tax rates across the board, certainly not the highest as you’ve pointed out. However, even with high rates, the citizenry gets almost nothing in return.
What service specifically do you believe that comparable states provide but California lacks? Considering the fact that the bulk of taxes and services are local, I am moderately satisfied with fire fighting, law enforcement, education, libraries, parks, sanitation, transportation, and the state poet laureate. Each could be improved in some way, but I think that is true in any state.
I get a nice road system both in the terms of condition and reach from TX, don't know what else is state supposed to give me. Can't complain about the grid too, though I get the electricity from the city it's pretty reliable and cheap. I did not get state electricity in CA either, but the city's utility in LA was much less reliable and much more expensive. I suppose states have their input here through banning the construction of power plants.
I'm in 94022 (served by PG&E) and in July 2022 there was a 13% chance I would lose power on any given day. I had more than 40 total hours of down time that month.
No clue what it is now but the state tax was 5.3% in the 00’s when we lived in mass. Prop tax was typical for house prices. It has a high tax rate reputation but this might be as bad as one thinks.
A lot of people are going to be surprised when they buy a decent home in Texas and end up getting slammed by property taxes. Or you buy a home in the middle of nowhere and have to deal with the worst infrastructure around.
Texas also has a ton of NIMBYism. That's the same root sentiment for "Don't California my Texas" which says "You may be a resident, but you better not do something I don't like" -- same mentality.
I see this same resistance when it comes to building non-single family homes, and Texans are instead thinking more lanes + more sprawl is going to solve the influx of people. Then they lament pricing and make claim that long time Texans have more of a right to live here than new people. I'm sorry but for a capitalist and freedom loving state, it sure is echoing some of the exact same things that helped California's demise.
AFAIK Austin has been one of the fastest rising (and now falling) real estate markets. People have been rushing to Austin since before COVID in 2020 and but also participated in the great dispersion.
100%. Land use policy in CA (and the US more generally) is insane. Suburbia/car-dependency is a terrifically bad policy decision that CA _heavily_ bought into. We may need to wait for the boomers to die out a bit more before we can fix it.
San Francisco's budget for homelessness is over 500 million per year. If that isn't enough money to address the problem in one city we clearly need radically different solutions.
People are doing the math. If you make enough money in California you pay 10% of your income in taxes. First of all, what do you get from that 10% you pay that don't get in other states with lower or no income taxes? For the people paying the taxes the answer is not much. People also fail to account for the fact that the 10% they are paying is 10% of their GROSS income, not net after federal taxes. So if you are already paying 30% of your income in taxes that 10% can be a material increase in the quality of your life. It's the equivalent of receiving 16% more net income. Also subtract what you pay in increased food prices and increased housing costs you will be saving much much more by leaving CA.
People in California seem to believe that other parts of the country with lower taxes are hell on earth, they aren't. When I moved to San Francisco, I had many conversations with people denigrating my home state of Florida. In retrospect I can see this for what it was, a coping mechanism for having to live in such a terrible place and pay an absurd amount of money for the privilege of doing so.
The reason California has seen such economic success can be attributed to proximity to the fastest growing economies and largest manufacturing hubs in the past 30 years and a little luck. If you really need to live on the west coast, Washington state is a much better option.
The problem is that there is nowhere near as many SWE jobs in other states as in Bay Area. I just moved to the Bay from Munich and I miss Germany a lot, but the career opportunities are here in California. Admittedly, I don’t enjoy my life as much as I did in Munich where I could walk, cycle and enjoy great city life. However, I knew all that before I moved here and it was a calculated decision: the career opportunities I have here are way better than anywhere in the world. If I could live somewhere else and take the career prospects with me, I would definitely consider it. But remote work is not as available as people predicted and IMO it also takes away from the ability to grow in the company in many ways.
Yea, California is overpriced and has many problems, but if one saves here enough then moving anywhere with plenty of savings is very comfortable in the future. There’s nothing wrong with willing to live in other places but there’s a good reason people move to California.
Why do you think I moved there myself? The jobs didn't exist anywhere else. Thankfully that's changing. If you are a valuable employee, one trick you can do is after working at a company for a year ask them to let you work remotely. If you are good they will let you.
Additionally, I think companies and investors are catching on. If I give a company $100 million I don't want $10 million to go to avoidable state income taxes and another $20 million to go into landlord pockets via inflated rent prices (commercial and residential), I want it to go into the business.
I lived in Florida for a while. Between the ultra-conservative retirees and the over-representation of the tragically hilarious on-point stereotypical poor white rural southerner I thought it was an awful place to live. I get a lot of value for the taxes I pay in California: schools that aren't prohibited from discussing certain scientific topics ("climate change") and that aren't outing LGBQTP+ kids to other kids' parents in letters, for one example. Anyone who holds up Florida is a positive place to move to instantly loses credibility to me.
Ok, so you think being in a bubble with people that agree with you is worth 16% of your income a year. Meaning if you work 30 years you need to work 4.8 years longer to retire. This doesn't take into account investment returns.
I think earning 1.5X - 3X the wage for the same job as one would in Florida overcomes the tax and COL burden in most cases for which this discussion is applicable. The lowest economic tiers are another matter: but their mobility is limited anyway.
Edit: also, bubble? In what sense? Tech? Sure: there's definitely an assumption about the use and understanding of tech here. Politically? Hardly--this place is an oddball mix of libertarianism, hand-wringing liberalism, apathy, and tons more. It's also not a cultural bubble; the exact opposite in fact, especially compared to Florida.
People inflate the amount of state income tax they have to pay in California. Yes the rates are high but so are the deductions.
Some years ago I had to deal with California income tax for various reasons. I think at that time you had to earn over 50K to hit 9% marginal. In my state you hit that at about 16K. And this is after deductions where California had a ton more. I believe one needed an income of over 100K before the amount they paid in taxes exceeded that of my state.
I think overall taxes are undercounted in California because the state taxes absolutely everything. California has the highest income tax and highest sales tax in the US. Throw in the grocery bag taxes, and all the other random taxes in that state you are just paying an absurd amount for nothing.
California has the highest income tax only if you earn a lot. For most earners it definitely is not the highest income tax state.
Median household income is $84 K in California. The tax rate is only 6%. And in reality it's less due to having more deductions. Contrast with Oregon where the tax rate is almost 9% for anything over 10K.
California ranks 9th for overall tax burden.
And property tax is ridiculously low, although that is offset by the high property values.
As a random data point: In my state, I got zero tax benefit for having a kid - and my household income is under $200K. I'm too "rich". I haven't checked, but I'm sure in California I'd get some deduction for the kid.
Sure, tax burden rankings usually aggregate state and local taxes.
> California cities top the charts for sales tax.
The maximum combined local sales tax rate in California is 3% (There's a 7.25% state rate, on which local district rates can be added to a maximum of 10.25%).
No California cities are in the top 50 for sales tax in the US. [0]
> A lot of these overall tax burden rankings miss that!
It is certainly possible that some might, and its always important to check the methodology, but of those with disclosed methodology, I can't recall encountering the problem.
Nationwide (as of 2021), three out of five of the cities with the highest effective sales taxes are in California. Californian cities are very much over-represented on this list.
I was wondering why there was a marked difference between the latter list which has 3 CA cities in the top five, and that of the parent post which excludes California from the top 50 taxed cities. And it seems that 0) the latter list only counts cities over 200K population, plus 1) the former list counts the Special Tax districts within Missouri cities as separate cities, so e.g. St. Louis city/county by itself counts as 13 entries in the Top 50 taxed "cities."
Please don't editorialize titles. The submitted title ("340k people moved out of CA in 2022, most of any state") was misleading, as hellisothers pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119430).
If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
I like California a lot but with the cost of housing what it is I know I’ll probably never put down roots. We can talk policy this and that until our heads are spinning but at the end of the day I need to live my life.
I have my eye on Chicago. There’s always something going on, it’s very multicultural, and housing is extremely affordable.
At 300k to 400k, how many could be accounted for by lockdown/student effects? Australia where I live is 26m down by similar order of magnitude that many due to insufficient in migration, and drops on tertiary students from overseas. (Queensland, my home state which is very like California according to some, is a net inwards growing population. People like Sunshine and beaches)
How much is net decline by excess deaths? Probably a low 20k-30k figure (based on AU excess mortality. Web says 28k), but perhaps CA population had excess older demographic Sunbird type people and they relocated?
It would also cut across all classes. I wonder how much is work forced translocation, by the company more than the individual. If Boeing (bad example I know given its Seattle not Los Vegas, so ignore the out of state issue please) stopped an entire line but jobs open up on the east coast for other production lines then internal relocate is cheaper than hire local sometimes.
The Californian economy is huge. Is it maybe moving to fintech and IPR with labour cost out of state?
Hardly surprising, considering that the state has failed massively to tackle homelessness and is perpetually on the edge of ecological ruin. Massive, long-lasting drought that may turn the most fertile soil in perhaps the entire world into a dustbowl, and failure to bury power lines + casual arson causing massive wildfires that regularly burn down lots of property. Of course, this doesn't even account for the major problem that will ruin the entire west, which is the rapidly shrinking Colorado river and its watersheds.
The law and order situation in the cities is also poor, and open drug use has turned LA, SF and Oakland into urban hellscapes that are an eyesore.
The entire country is in a phase of migration to the south. Westward migration continues but the main trend is migration to the South which is relatively unencumbered by wacko environmental regulation prone to abuse and a lower tolerance toward crime. Also has a better water situation I suppose and overall courteous and friendly people also.
How smug are Californians that those who always disagree with them always “must be Republicans”? They really said people are leaving the state because of “political reasons” (ie, “they’re Republicans, aka, ‘non-regrettable attrition’”)? Couldn’t be all of the other reasons could it.
I say this as a California native who left for a litany of reasons, last of them being the politics.
The only people I know personally who left California in the last 2-3 years were pretty apolitical but definitely left-leaning socially. Around a dozen of them. All left due to the cost of living, none were ever "accused" of being republican. To me it sounds like you are mostly regurgitating some toxic Twitter-talk.
I've lived in the Bay Area for my entire life and am considering leaving only because it's not progressive enough. The Bay and most of California is only progressive on inconsequential social issues. Housing? Homelessness? Fucking Houston Texas is more progressive than us.
Frankly, I blame the venture capitalists. They have turned what was once a vibrant region I loved into a soulless husk of itself though money. Our local politics have become unbearaable. Anything that would slightly impact a VC donor is immediately shot down.
What does it mean to be progressive? All the woke movement we see now in Europe has been imported from US. We just copy paste stuff even when it makes no sense because we do not share the same history.
Example; British activists imported all the BLM stuff, including "Defund the Police". Unfortunately, police in Britain are already quite underfunded and don't have a lot of the negative aspects of American police.
Not to defend this very poorly-named movement, but I think the main idea wasn't about defunding the police but about redirecting some of the funds from the police to other social services. Which again, in the case of the British police makes far less sense.
Welcome to Bulgaria, my friend. The most progressive country in the World!
In all seriousness, if the parent commenter is expecting modern US woke-inspired progressive policies to be driving decision-making anywhere in Europe, they will be disappointed. (I don't like throwing the word "woke" around but have no better way to summarize the difference between the modern progressive movement and the original progressive movement in the US).
Bulgaria has single payer health care, it's to the left of most leftist states in the USA.
And it's funny you recognize the usage of "woke" as problematic, but you still use it. Actual liberal politics means schools, roads, health care, climate, etc. It means a social safety net and labour protections. All of that are universal in Europe while most of it is completely lacking, as I said in even the most "liberal" parts of the US.
Confusing policy (what matters) with social media arguments about what a woman is defined as is a distraction. It's meant to divide people that otherwise agree. Don't play into that game.
Bulgaria has a _terrible_ single payer health care system, an astonishing level of corruption, a powerful mafia that basically controls the government, widespread racism against the gypsies, dislike for anything LGBT, and many more not so liberal things. Cherry-picking the single payer health care system is silly.
If you haven't noticed, I am talking about modern-day progressives, not liberal policies. The term "woke" describes best the difference between liberals/the original progressives and the modern type of progressives obsessed with race, sex, gender, and such.
By the "original movement" I mean Woodrow Wilson and such, which was not neo-liberal. The modern progressive movement is still left-leaning, at least by American standards (yes, quite different from European).
Born and raised in the Bay Area. I've lived in some nice places in SF, LA, and Seattle. I also spent two years in the Netherlands which was by far the highest quality of life experience I've had precisely because it was more progressive.
I really hope you thoroughly investigate this concern before moving to Europe. It's far less "progressive" in some aspects than the Bay Area. In most European countries if you are a mentally ill individual screaming at night in the middle of the city you will either be arrested (and likely hospitalized) for disturbing public order or beaten up by someone local. There are very few places in the world where it's a widely held view that we can just dump mentally ill people on the street if that's what they want.
Progressive politics in the US sadly transformed from mostly socially and economically-oriented (Wilson, Roosevelt) to an amalgamation of Marxism (Boudin), capitalism, wokeism and social impotency that satisfies no one.
The funny thing about homelessness is that its a material issue. When you address the material root causes, homelessness disappears. So does mental illness, which is why the correlation between these issues and GINI coefficient is so strong.
> Progressive politics in the US sadly transformed from mostly socially and economically-oriented (Wilson, Roosevelt) to an amalgamation of Marxism (Boudin), capitalism, wokeism and social impotency that satisfies no one.
This sentence is incomprehensible. Progressive politics has turned into Marxism and capitalism?
> The funny thing about homelessness is that its a material issue.
This is funny indeed. But for a different reason than you think. Bay Area progressives like yourself became so embedded into capitalist thinking that they discarded everything else from a working social system. Everything is solved with money (i.e. capital). Homelessness - money. Mental illness - money. Drug addiction - money. Racism - money. Crime - money.
It's no surprise that you did not understand my last statement - you are the prime example of it. Marxist because it's a class war, we just need to get rid of the rich and everything will be great. Capitalist because we can solve _everything_ with more money (ignore social responsibilities, opportunities, community, fairness). Wokeist because all inequality is caused by racism, sexism and other -isms. It's an amalgamation so intoxicating that even when you read the description, you don't realise it's about you.
> all inequality is caused by racism, sexism and other -isms
All inequality is caused by... all examples of inequalities? As a class reductionist I dislike wokeism as much as the next guy but this statement is meaningless.
its impossible to actually respond to any of the arguments you're making because Marxism = class war and capitalism = more money displays a complete lack of understanding of basic economics. Its not even clear what you're arguing against.
I could rephrase my point the third time but don't think that would help.
The fact that you both reject the idea that class war is central to Marxism and call yourself a "class reductionist" in the same sentence only further demonstrates your lack of introspection.
I left because it was becoming intolerable. The politics were driving a lower quality of life for me. I’m not on the red or blue team. The problem is there is no longer political balance. Without a check on power, quality of life which includes costs but not limited to money were getting progressively worse.
When $100k electric cars go racing down the HOV lane on 101, you have multiple lanes of stop and go ICE cars. A complete inversion of the efficiencies of each platform.
Careful, I have said the same and many assumed it meant I'm far right. The extent of my conservative beliefs are wanting very small government, being anti-war, and wanting a balanced budget. I'm pretty egalitarian otherwise but I don't think that's enough to appease those who invest their lives in identity politics.
> I don't think that's enough to appease those who invest their lives in identity politics.
This is the weird one for me - I'm not sure how it took over the left to where younger people are confused that my father was a serious leftist/communist before identity/racial politics took over, and since he totally rejected identity politics they assume he was some sort of right-winger, which is bonkers if you knew him.
Your first problem is thinking there was ever a “left” in the US to begin with.
Democrats are a center party - at best. They’re neoliberal at their core.
What’s the best way to get people advocating for left oriented reforms? Break them up. How? Identity politics. Get them to fight each other.
Congrats - you’ve managed to keep power between two neoliberal parties that agree on most everything. (And everything they don’t agree on - it’s mostly for show because money is the number one thing they’re both most concerned about!)
> The Public Policy Institute of California reported that between 2015 and 2021, 413,000 adults cited housing as a primary reason they moved out of state; a majority of those leaving were middle- or low-income people. The institute’s state survey found that 64% of adults in California say housing affordability is “a big problem” where they live. The out-migration may be partly attributable to work-from-home policies instituted during the pandemic
It's not so much 'people who left California are Republicans" but more, 'people who post on social media about how they're leaving California -are- Republicans".
California is basically Georgia with 2.5 Atlantas. Of course it can afford to lose Republicans, there are Republicans being born in every corner of the state to replace them. It’s not safely anything, it’s a competitive battle for political control, remember Arnold? (Whispers: this is how it’s supposed to be)
Also, Do smart people really think the nation’s richest collection of businesses owners, VCs and executives are a bunch of lefties?
> It’s not safely anything, it’s a competitive battle for political control, remember Arnold?
Arnold was (with Steve Poizner as Insurance Commissioner) one of the last two Republicans to win in California statewide 16 years ago. Its been 25 years since Republicans held a majority in either House of the legislature, in the past 21 years, 17 years have had Democratic trifectas (control of the Governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature). Its been 26 years since the Republicans had control of either house of the legislature. Voter registration in California is 46.77% D, 23.93% R, 6.08 Other Party, 23.23% Independent.
My big hope for WFH was that it would allow all the people who don't even like the Bay Area to finally leave and bring rents down (reducing demand being the only other way besides building to reduce rents).
Quality of life goes down every year here and it becomes more lawless feeling. There are rampant homeless camps in most big cities--Oakland looks worse than a third world country. I can't even imagine running a small business here and what a nightmare it would be.
California is a beautiful place and I love living there. My experience as an immigrant has highlighted a number of problems though that nobody talks about. It is an extremely expensive place to have a normal quality lifestyle. People endlessly ghost you, waste your time, burn you out and burn your money, trick you with their fake friendlyness. Everyone has a game plan that you only find out later. It is much less open to immigrants and diversity than you think. It is much less likely you will be funded than you think. It is much less certain someone will take a chance with you than you think. In silicon valley people have a very narrow mindset about building businesses and are clueless about what is happening elsewhere and what is worth funding and what not. California mostly seems to run on marketing. Living in an expensive place is no problem IF companies are willing to give you business or a high paying job. Unfortunately because of the endless ghosting and fakeness all your savings might be gone before you start making money. I think this is the real problem of California. I have had very few people hand me opportunities here, so the “taking chances” and “risk taking” seems to be long gone or maybe that’s done only when they already know you for many years which basically means that nepotism is a major factor in success. I still love California and I’m thankful I’m here. But the cost combined with slow speed of doing business and making decisions resulting in real income are a problem. It basically means you already need to be semi rich which is really not what the spirit of silicon valley should be.
Here’s a US Census chart of population change across all 50 states (shown as percent of population). It sounds like a lot of people, but as a percentage of total population it doesn’t seem like California is particularly notable.
I moved to Texas during the pandemic, primarily because I didn't want to live in a city with heavy lockdowns or with most people risk averse. I think it's great that different cities had different responses, but my preference was to live somewhere that chose normal life over preventing the spread.
I moved back at the beginning of 2022 though, primarily because SF had reopened enough. I suspect that there are many people like me, although I also suspect that this change is not going to reverse any time soon.
My friends from IT sector left California exactly two years ago (just saw their memories on Facebook). There were a group of six. They did it on a private jet. There was no comment about housing prices, only about, I quote, "crazy commies took over the beautiful state".
I don't know a lot about California politics, but maybe housing crisis is just a symptom of something more?
Making western nevada and much of the mojave habitable would go a long way. Artificial rivers and lakes, importing sand and desalination (at scale to develop more sustainable water systems not on its own) and bullet trains would be ideal. The money and tech is there just not the collective will.
Places like Parhump NV, Bishop CA and Reno,NV have huge potentia as population centers.
It's so nice there from the mojave to the eastern sierra range and tahoe. Bullet train connecting these areas to PNW and coastal CA plus more water is needed. Why wouldn't you live the towns I mentioned above if LA and SF are 1-2 hours away at most and Seattle is half a day away at most even from LA?
The bay is the most expensive real estate in the US, coastal CA in general is already impossible to develop new grand things because if NIMBYism and the coastal commission. Let's say that wasn't a problem, how much would it cost to replace a few acres of single family housing in the bay area with high-rise apartment? Now imagine doing that a lot more. Now take that money and imagine how much you could do in the places I mentioned.
To solve housing for millions, there simply is no realistic way anytime in the next few decades in coastal CA that is both profitable, can get past local law and scales enough to actually solve any problem and of course a ton of money would need to be available all while risking bad decisions by anti-development parties.
It's simply easier to build where there is a small number of people and wide undeveloped land.
Births outnumber deaths in California, and yet the U.S. Census Bureau says the population shrank again as more than 300,000 people moved out of the Golden State.
The federal agency released these new numbers Thursday showing a third consecutive year of decline.
In 2020, California’s population contracted for the first time in state history, a drop that contributed to the state losing a seat in the House of Representatives.
Obviously click bait title - comes out once per month - usually FoxNews. But I whole heartedly encourage people to leave. Housing is expensive - earthquakes - liberals ick. Much better in Texas. You can own whatever gun you want. Want to shoot animals - Texas has hogs galore - you can hire a helicopter and shoot the from the air. Life couldn't get much better:)
It is, but yesterday's high in SF was 55° with a low of 48°. LA's high was 83 and a low of 54. Global climate change will probably turn our summers super toasty, but this past week's bomb cyclone makes me grateful I'm living here. Not sure it's worth $3.2k for a 2 bed, but I'll take the good things I can get.
Like I said, I'll take whatever upsides exist. Wildfire season this year was mercifully light, so that's good. Thanks to other goings on in the world I have a stockpile of N95 filtration masks, but California takes emissions so seriously that auto manufacturers make special versions of their cars to sell here, which has alleviated the LA smog problems from the 90's. But I don't know that air quality is something that most Californian's live in fear of. I was the outlier 3 years ago for wearing an N95 during wildfire season.
My suspicion is the housing market sorely needs investment forcefully pushed out of single family housing and (maybe/less convinced) cooperative apartment complexes forcefully pushed into market. There’s a single cooperative in my entire state and they’ve stopped taking applications due to the wait list. In any event, it’ll be interesting to see what the end of this decade and beginning of the next looks like as the Boomer held homes start to open up. Will the population demographics change to need fewer or more homes?
(Btw, that is altogether way too long to wait.)
I tried to bootstrap the rent/mortgage trade off discussion to some older gen-Zers and millennials at work recently. Couldn’t get far at all until I got talked over about the financial superiority of owning. Frustrating times.
I am glad to be a part of this trend in 2022. Good bye Californian suckers. Hello Texas. No more mooching off of my money, handing it to illegal aliens.
You might think this translates to less population congestion, but the reality is they want to raise rents and pack 4-8 immigrants or migrant laborers where previously one or two people lived. The wealth of California is dependent on cheap labor to obtain. They would have to sell if even the leaf blower guy was paid real wages. Rich and poor only, no mids.
So few days of good weather. Maybe worth it to some, but a bigger house was not worth it to me at all. We moved back in 6 months.
So many people want to live in California which causes more issues