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That's... not really how it works. Or, you could also argue that's what the area has been doing for the past 40 years, and look at the current state of housing.

That's... not really how it works. Or, you could also argue that's what the area has been doing for the past 40 years, and look at the current state of housing. EDIT: I didn't downvote you, but I will elaborate: there's very little you can do to stop people from moving to California, short of forcefully putting them on buses and sending them away (which is what some cities actually do[1][2]). What you can do is figure out a plan before they show up to provide them decent housing for a fair price, or else they'll figure something out, something likely to be illegal/extremely uncomfortable/look a lot like homelessness. Some anecdotes: one friend of mine lived in a house-boat in Berkeley for 2 years while going to college. Another lived out of his van in Los Angeles. These are regular young people, both born in California, trying to make things work. It has been extremely hard to build new buildings in hotspots throughout the state for quite a long time. You could argue that preventing growth to meet demand is, in a sense, what it means to "stop growing" (short of turning folks away at the state line). This is what I meant by my comment. 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html 2: https://thinkprogress.org/nevada-gets-sued-for-dumping-homeless-patients-with-mental-illnesses-onto-buses-271e5c518016 https://thinkprogress.org/nevada-gets-sued-for-dumping-homel...

muninn_ 9y ago
But how many people are going to move there to live in a bus? I certainly wouldn't. If property values get too high I'll just not move there. I don't understand this mentality where everybody thinks they should be able to afford to live in the best cities in the country, especially in California. It's just simple supply and demand. If housing prices get too high and people can't afford to live there they will live somewhere else. Period. Now that's an oversimplification. There is a lot to be said for mixed income communities and whatnot, but just saying "oh I can't afford to live here this sucks" is not good enough.
- closeparen 9y ago
  I don't understand this mentality where everybody thinks they are entitled to prevent others (from the same country, no less!) from moving in to their community. It's not "supply and demand" until the supply caps come off. It's just policy set by the entrenched.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    No different than any other prevention, or rule. Why shouldn't they be able to? If you moving to my community and doing whatever causes damage to the value of my property that's no different than doing damage to anything else. It's their community they set the rules. Why have communities or governments, or even countries for that matter? Fundamentally they do the same things. Why should I not be able to just come live in your house or just build a house in your backyard? Oh you have a great view? Let me just build a huge nonsense wall here and live in a small shack or something. Why not?
    - closeparen 9y ago
      We have laws and governments to protect public safety (from hazards such as violence, unsafe driving, unsafe building design, fire, communicable disease, environmental toxicity, etc.), to enforce property rights over what people actually own, to provide essential services such as water, sewer, police, firefighting, and education, and to look after the interests of those who can't get their needs met in the market. There's not much precedent around protecting the scarcity of assets as a job for government. Maybe taxi medallions? >Why should I not be able to just come live in your house or just build a house in your backyard? Because I own my backyard. On the adjacent lots, if you can buy them, knock yourself out. No one owns their view, unless they actually own a view easement. The government has no business enforcing property rights that don't exist. >Oh you have a great view? Are you seriously suggesting that someone else should be prevented from living the life they want, the job they want, affordable rent, enough space to raise children, etc. to protect someone else's view? That's an unbelievably fucked up level of dystopian.
      - muninn_ 9y ago
        K so I'll buy the houses surrounding yours and build some huge barbwire walls, then on the outside of the walls I'll just paint them with horrific images, just gross stuff that anybody would find disgusting to look at. You spent 1.5mm on that house, and now because it's surrounded with these walls the property value is cut to basically nothing. House appraised as worthless, financial ruin for you. But hey fuck you right? >Are you seriously suggesting that someone else should be prevented from living the life they want, the job they want, affordable rent, enough space to raise children, etc. to protect someone else's view? That's an unbelievably fucked up level of dystopian. Me me me me me. I want an affordable house, with enough space to raise children, affordable rent, the job that I want and I want to live right next to Breckenridge so I can ski all the time! Oh and I want a short commute, freshly paved roads, bike lanes, HUGE parks, the best schools, and free community events. That's the life I want. So I guess I get to move in and start demanding those things? Sorry. Life doesn't work that way. Whether it's somebody's view, or the neighborhood they moved in to, you aren't entitled to things like that. Housing will be expensive in desirable areas. You don't get to just move in and complain it's expensive. Move somewhere else or deal with it. Ridiculous.
- lukeschlather 9y ago
  I think you both have the causality backward. Vanishingly few people are moving to California to live in a bus. People are moving to California to get better jobs, and most of them can comfortably afford to live in California. The people who are ending up in buses have lived in California since housing was cheap enough that they didn't have a problem, or since they were children. People who can't afford to live in California anymore also can't afford the cost of moving. So they end up on the street and unable to find work or leave the state.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    I know you and the other poster are using "California" as a shorthand for "Coastal California", but the Central Valley and the Inland Empire are very affordable.
  - parineum 9y ago
    > The people who are ending up in buses have lived in California since housing was cheap enough that they didn't have a problem, or since they were children. Most of the people I know who complain about the housing cost in California are young people who make considerably less money than their parents do but expect to be able to maintain the lifestyle they had growing up. That's incredibly unrealistic and I doubt that's ever been attainable unless you're exceedingly wealthy. When my parents moved to the area I grew up in, it was not even close to the desirability that it is when I eventually moved out. I've done what they did. I bought a house further away in a less expensive neighborhood because I can't afford to live there. The amount of young people who think they have a right to move in the opposite direction and maintain their lifestyle is strange to me. Tons of people I know moved to bigger, expensive cities out of college/high school but they had to live with 3 roommates to do so. Eventually, when you want your privacy back, you have to move away. For most young people, you can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to where you choose to live.
- wbl 9y ago
  Why should existing residents have the power to prohibit the construction of apartment buildings, duplexes, and town houses by their neighbors?
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    Why shouldn't they?
    - Nav_Panel 9y ago
      Because they only are responsible for the property they own and not the property/land next door? It might make financial (or even quality-of-life-related) sense for a property owner to fight against construction next door, but I can't think up any reasonable or legal justification for why a property owner should have the power to prohibit construction next door...
      - muninn_ 9y ago
        It's just a matter of degree. You're drawing an arbitrary line here. Nobody is prohibiting anybody from construction, they're prohibiting certain types of construction. You can build a house, it just has to follow the rules and guidelines that the community has established. It's a pretty common thing in the United States. There are historical neighborhoods for example. People pay a lot of money to live in these neighborhoods. You can't just waltz in and tear down an expensive house and turn it into a property with a couple of trailers on it. The area has housing problems, no doubt about it, I'm not arguing that they don't, but there is clear legal, and social precedent for establishing rules for communities throughout the United States.
        Nav_Panel 9y ago
        > It's just a matter of degree Indeed. Communities can collaborate to keep things the way they'd like them by leveraging local networks. One particular and exciting example of this sort of policy is Redlining[1]. Agreements such as height limits aren't as bad (and are less explicitly racist), but it's a similar sort of idea. I understand the reasons why someone would want this for their neighborhood (and in most neighborhoods throughout the USA it's not a big deal), I just think in these examples where there's extreme tension between external demand and the desires of current residents, something has to give. > There are historical neighborhoods for example. People pay a lot of money to live in these neighborhoods. You can't just waltz in and tear down an expensive house and turn it into a property with a couple of trailers on it. I'm not against historic neighborhoods in general. I live in NYC and am aware of multiple, but I feel that some, such as parts of the West Village, have been harmful to the city as a whole. The point of a historic neighborhood should be to preserve exceptional period architecture: for example, the Upper East Side historic district in the low/mid 60s preserves a particular style of late 1800s row houses[2]. Many parts of the West Village that are historic are preserving a bunch of shitty 1 or 2 story buildings constructed when the area was a slum in the teens and 20s, after half the neighborhood was torn down to build the IRT 7th Ave Line (i.e. the 1/2/3 train) that would be covered as 7th Ave South[3]. To use a historic neighborhood as a chance to "preserve community" is, I think, an extreme distortion of intent (although the ultimate result for many well-positioned historic areas is preserving a particular sort of extremely wealthy community). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining 2: https://ephemeralnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/east61ststreethouses.jpg https://ephemeralnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/east61s... 3: https://i0.wp.com/www.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/7av_w4.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/201... (note the 1 story structures and general architectural hodgepodge)
deleted 9y ago
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jdavis703 9y ago
The thing is living in alternative housing is also generally illegal in the state. Someone in a Redwood City tiny house was forced to move because they were blocking the view and creating a public nuisance (besides that most places don't even allow for mobile homes or live-in RVs). Living out of your car/van/truck is also potentially illegal. This is truly becoming a state where only the rich are allowed to live.

muninn_ 9y ago

But how many people are going to move there to live in a bus? I certainly wouldn't. If property values get too high I'll just not move there. I don't understand this mentality where everybody thinks they should be able to afford to live in the best cities in the country, especially in California. It's just simple supply and demand. If housing prices get too high and people can't afford to live there they will live somewhere else. Period. Now that's an oversimplification. There is a lot to be said for mixed income communities and whatnot, but just saying "oh I can't afford to live here this sucks" is not good enough.

closeparen 9y ago
I don't understand this mentality where everybody thinks they are entitled to prevent others (from the same country, no less!) from moving in to their community. It's not "supply and demand" until the supply caps come off. It's just policy set by the entrenched.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  No different than any other prevention, or rule. Why shouldn't they be able to? If you moving to my community and doing whatever causes damage to the value of my property that's no different than doing damage to anything else. It's their community they set the rules. Why have communities or governments, or even countries for that matter? Fundamentally they do the same things. Why should I not be able to just come live in your house or just build a house in your backyard? Oh you have a great view? Let me just build a huge nonsense wall here and live in a small shack or something. Why not?
  - closeparen 9y ago
    We have laws and governments to protect public safety (from hazards such as violence, unsafe driving, unsafe building design, fire, communicable disease, environmental toxicity, etc.), to enforce property rights over what people actually own, to provide essential services such as water, sewer, police, firefighting, and education, and to look after the interests of those who can't get their needs met in the market. There's not much precedent around protecting the scarcity of assets as a job for government. Maybe taxi medallions? >Why should I not be able to just come live in your house or just build a house in your backyard? Because I own my backyard. On the adjacent lots, if you can buy them, knock yourself out. No one owns their view, unless they actually own a view easement. The government has no business enforcing property rights that don't exist. >Oh you have a great view? Are you seriously suggesting that someone else should be prevented from living the life they want, the job they want, affordable rent, enough space to raise children, etc. to protect someone else's view? That's an unbelievably fucked up level of dystopian.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      K so I'll buy the houses surrounding yours and build some huge barbwire walls, then on the outside of the walls I'll just paint them with horrific images, just gross stuff that anybody would find disgusting to look at. You spent 1.5mm on that house, and now because it's surrounded with these walls the property value is cut to basically nothing. House appraised as worthless, financial ruin for you. But hey fuck you right? >Are you seriously suggesting that someone else should be prevented from living the life they want, the job they want, affordable rent, enough space to raise children, etc. to protect someone else's view? That's an unbelievably fucked up level of dystopian. Me me me me me. I want an affordable house, with enough space to raise children, affordable rent, the job that I want and I want to live right next to Breckenridge so I can ski all the time! Oh and I want a short commute, freshly paved roads, bike lanes, HUGE parks, the best schools, and free community events. That's the life I want. So I guess I get to move in and start demanding those things? Sorry. Life doesn't work that way. Whether it's somebody's view, or the neighborhood they moved in to, you aren't entitled to things like that. Housing will be expensive in desirable areas. You don't get to just move in and complain it's expensive. Move somewhere else or deal with it. Ridiculous.
lukeschlather 9y ago
I think you both have the causality backward. Vanishingly few people are moving to California to live in a bus. People are moving to California to get better jobs, and most of them can comfortably afford to live in California. The people who are ending up in buses have lived in California since housing was cheap enough that they didn't have a problem, or since they were children. People who can't afford to live in California anymore also can't afford the cost of moving. So they end up on the street and unable to find work or leave the state.
- linkregister 9y ago
  I know you and the other poster are using "California" as a shorthand for "Coastal California", but the Central Valley and the Inland Empire are very affordable.
- parineum 9y ago
  > The people who are ending up in buses have lived in California since housing was cheap enough that they didn't have a problem, or since they were children. Most of the people I know who complain about the housing cost in California are young people who make considerably less money than their parents do but expect to be able to maintain the lifestyle they had growing up. That's incredibly unrealistic and I doubt that's ever been attainable unless you're exceedingly wealthy. When my parents moved to the area I grew up in, it was not even close to the desirability that it is when I eventually moved out. I've done what they did. I bought a house further away in a less expensive neighborhood because I can't afford to live there. The amount of young people who think they have a right to move in the opposite direction and maintain their lifestyle is strange to me. Tons of people I know moved to bigger, expensive cities out of college/high school but they had to live with 3 roommates to do so. Eventually, when you want your privacy back, you have to move away. For most young people, you can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to where you choose to live.
wbl 9y ago
Why should existing residents have the power to prohibit the construction of apartment buildings, duplexes, and town houses by their neighbors?
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Why shouldn't they?
  - Nav_Panel 9y ago
    Because they only are responsible for the property they own and not the property/land next door? It might make financial (or even quality-of-life-related) sense for a property owner to fight against construction next door, but I can't think up any reasonable or legal justification for why a property owner should have the power to prohibit construction next door...
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      It's just a matter of degree. You're drawing an arbitrary line here. Nobody is prohibiting anybody from construction, they're prohibiting certain types of construction. You can build a house, it just has to follow the rules and guidelines that the community has established. It's a pretty common thing in the United States. There are historical neighborhoods for example. People pay a lot of money to live in these neighborhoods. You can't just waltz in and tear down an expensive house and turn it into a property with a couple of trailers on it. The area has housing problems, no doubt about it, I'm not arguing that they don't, but there is clear legal, and social precedent for establishing rules for communities throughout the United States.
      - Nav_Panel 9y ago
        > It's just a matter of degree Indeed. Communities can collaborate to keep things the way they'd like them by leveraging local networks. One particular and exciting example of this sort of policy is Redlining[1]. Agreements such as height limits aren't as bad (and are less explicitly racist), but it's a similar sort of idea. I understand the reasons why someone would want this for their neighborhood (and in most neighborhoods throughout the USA it's not a big deal), I just think in these examples where there's extreme tension between external demand and the desires of current residents, something has to give. > There are historical neighborhoods for example. People pay a lot of money to live in these neighborhoods. You can't just waltz in and tear down an expensive house and turn it into a property with a couple of trailers on it. I'm not against historic neighborhoods in general. I live in NYC and am aware of multiple, but I feel that some, such as parts of the West Village, have been harmful to the city as a whole. The point of a historic neighborhood should be to preserve exceptional period architecture: for example, the Upper East Side historic district in the low/mid 60s preserves a particular style of late 1800s row houses[2]. Many parts of the West Village that are historic are preserving a bunch of shitty 1 or 2 story buildings constructed when the area was a slum in the teens and 20s, after half the neighborhood was torn down to build the IRT 7th Ave Line (i.e. the 1/2/3 train) that would be covered as 7th Ave South[3]. To use a historic neighborhood as a chance to "preserve community" is, I think, an extreme distortion of intent (although the ultimate result for many well-positioned historic areas is preserving a particular sort of extremely wealthy community). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining 2: https://ephemeralnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/east61ststreethouses.jpg https://ephemeralnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/east61s... 3: https://i0.wp.com/www.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/7av_w4.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/201... (note the 1 story structures and general architectural hodgepodge)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jdavis703 9y ago

The thing is living in alternative housing is also generally illegal in the state. Someone in a Redwood City tiny house was forced to move because they were blocking the view and creating a public nuisance (besides that most places don't even allow for mobile homes or live-in RVs). Living out of your car/van/truck is also potentially illegal. This is truly becoming a state where only the rich are allowed to live.