13 ms·

I always find it interesting to hear what people believe they deserve. In these comments you can hear the "I deserve to live in a house with my family of 4 in P

I always find it interesting to hear what people believe they deserve. In these comments you can hear the "I deserve to live in a house with my family of 4 in Palo Alto". Do you really deserve that? Says who? That would be like me showing up in NYC and saying I deserve to live in a penthouse on 5th Ave. No I don't. There is plenty of wide open space outside the Bay Area.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dalbasal 9y ago
I suppose that's what this discussion is about. Who deserves what. I don't think anyone really has suggestions that enable anyone to by a family home in Palo Alto. But, the question is do local residents deserve the right to keep out newcomers. Who has what rights (who deserves what) is not an abstract truth we discover. It’s decisions we make.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  But then you're asserting that those who live in Palo Alto don't have the right to govern their community. They aren't keeping out newcomers at all, in fact, there are houses for sale in Palo Alto. For some reason people think that living in that area should be affordable. It shouldn't be. Live somewhere else.
  - Zach_the_Lizard 9y ago
    Houses are for sale, of course, but suppose I passed a law requiring all new houses to be mansions. I'm talking palace of Versailles level amenities, out of reach for all but the most wealthy. It's true that anyone is legally allowed to live here. It's also true I've excluded, by legal fiat, almost all Americans. I've declared my lifestyle superior to all others and no one else can live here except those who enjoy the same. Palo Alto is not as extreme. But it still limits the number of houses, tells everyone what lifestyles are legally permissible (don't forget to include parking or yards!), and excludes vast swaths of Americans. This isn't good governance. It's not healthy for the region, and it's not healthy on a national basis. This is why many nations take away zoning power from localities and move it to regional or even national levels. It's also why we don't have the power to vote for who lives next to us, at least explicitly. That would be local governance, but quite cruel and prone to abuse. Why do we give localities this right to implicitly vote out people? I would argue it is just as cruel and misguided as voting to ban your neighbor
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      Again, why shouldn't the be allowed to do that? I want to live on Harvard/MITs campus and live next to the smartest people in the world (at least some of them) and have a nice little 3 br house on a half acre. These high home prices keep me out it's not fair!! This simply cannot work. The most desirable areas in the world are going to have high prices that exclude "normal people" period. > Houses are for sale, of course, but suppose I passed a law requiring all new houses to be mansions. I'm talking palace of Versailles level amenities, out of reach for all but the most wealthy. This actually happens all the time. Every time a new subdivision is built in the suburbs this is exactly what happens. Hell, even new condos being built in my small city in the downtown area do this. So unless you're going to mandate that every single development that will house human beings stratifies the cost such that each income level can afford the exact same setup and you don't allow people over that income level to purchase housing, then you will never solve this "problem". Does it suck and is it not fair that you're not mega rich and can afford to live in Manhattan or in the hippest part of SF? No. That's just a market economy. I also can't buy a Ferrari and have to drive a Honda around. Can I afford a 1.5mm shack in SF? Sure. Why would I do that when I can afford a 1.5mm giganto-mansion on the Great Lakes? City ordinances, national ordinances, any of those are fundamentally the same thing. You're just arguing about what's most prolific because that's in your field of vision. Why can't I buy an affordable house in Switzerland? Why are they keeping average Americans out? Why can't I afford a 2br/3b flat in Paris next to the Louvre? Why don't they just fill that place up with skyscrapers? etc. etc. Maybe people want to keep their neighborhoods how they are? Maybe the charm that makes a place what it is has value, and should be protected? Why should they lose tens-hundreds of thousands of dollars in value because other people want to move next to them?
      - deathanatos 9y ago
        If everyone adopted this attitude, there'd be nowhere to live. All of the reasons you enumerate are people wanting to live in an area that makes it valuable for them; I think there's a fair number of people in the Bay Area that don't really care to live here particularly, but this is where the tech industry has decided to concentrate a ridiculous amount of its jobs. Job markets in other metropolises like Boston are a tenth the size of the Bay Area's. Not only is moving across a continent incredibly non-trivial, but finding a job at the other end is as well. And that's for populous areas like Boston or NYC where the land is cheaper, but not by much; you move to somewhere actually cheap and the job prospects are just simply not there. California also has better employment laws than other places. Not everyone here is here because we want to be "next to the Louvre": some of us just want to make a living.
  - dalbasal 9y ago
    When did I assert anything? I just framed a question.
- matwood 9y ago
  > But, the question is do local residents deserve the right to keep out newcomers. Also, when does someone become 'local'? All the time on Nextdoor I see, "we need to stop the building", "traffic is bad", "there are too many people". Yet, the loudest complainers are people who literally just moved to my town in the last year. The building, etc... is what allowed them to move here in the first place so don't complain about it now. SF is not the only city experiencing these issues, although they are amplified. Nearly every nice weather coastal city in the US is growing out of control right now as people flee much of the center of the country.
runamok 9y ago
The bay area cities allowed lots and lots of commercial real estate but relatively little residential (apartments and homes) to be built more or less in the entire bay area. Where were those workers supposed to live? A decent article detailing the mismatch between people coming vs. housing starts: http://www.paragon-re.com/Supply_Demand_Money_and_Demographics http://www.paragon-re.com/Supply_Demand_Money_and_Demographi... Other metro areas have balanced these competing needs much better. A lot of the laws proposed still require any proposals to follow the existing zoning (a law championed by the governor last year is one example), etc. but just prevent a few motivated individuals from blocking growth.
PopsiclePete 9y ago
And I "deserve" to commute for over an hour to my nice awesome office that's in San Francisco from some distant suburb, because - why? Why do I "deserve" such punishment? Because someone was born at the right time and place 70 years ago and could afford a place in San Fran working a blue collar job and now fuck everyone else, he got his? Why? Why sacrifice all future generations on the altar of some baby boomer's "retirement plan" (said property?) I'm not aware of any country or city (besides London) that does this to young people. It's insane to be making over $100,000 anywhere in the world and be expected to pay $5000/month for a studio just because building some high-density housing would diminish some entrenched gentry's view of the ocean. The NIMBY's can all go and shoot themselves in the face, as far as I'm concerned.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dalbasal 9y ago

I suppose that's what this discussion is about. Who deserves what. I don't think anyone really has suggestions that enable anyone to by a family home in Palo Alto. But, the question is do local residents deserve the right to keep out newcomers. Who has what rights (who deserves what) is not an abstract truth we discover. It’s decisions we make.

muninn_ 9y ago
But then you're asserting that those who live in Palo Alto don't have the right to govern their community. They aren't keeping out newcomers at all, in fact, there are houses for sale in Palo Alto. For some reason people think that living in that area should be affordable. It shouldn't be. Live somewhere else.
- Zach_the_Lizard 9y ago
  Houses are for sale, of course, but suppose I passed a law requiring all new houses to be mansions. I'm talking palace of Versailles level amenities, out of reach for all but the most wealthy. It's true that anyone is legally allowed to live here. It's also true I've excluded, by legal fiat, almost all Americans. I've declared my lifestyle superior to all others and no one else can live here except those who enjoy the same. Palo Alto is not as extreme. But it still limits the number of houses, tells everyone what lifestyles are legally permissible (don't forget to include parking or yards!), and excludes vast swaths of Americans. This isn't good governance. It's not healthy for the region, and it's not healthy on a national basis. This is why many nations take away zoning power from localities and move it to regional or even national levels. It's also why we don't have the power to vote for who lives next to us, at least explicitly. That would be local governance, but quite cruel and prone to abuse. Why do we give localities this right to implicitly vote out people? I would argue it is just as cruel and misguided as voting to ban your neighbor
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    Again, why shouldn't the be allowed to do that? I want to live on Harvard/MITs campus and live next to the smartest people in the world (at least some of them) and have a nice little 3 br house on a half acre. These high home prices keep me out it's not fair!! This simply cannot work. The most desirable areas in the world are going to have high prices that exclude "normal people" period. > Houses are for sale, of course, but suppose I passed a law requiring all new houses to be mansions. I'm talking palace of Versailles level amenities, out of reach for all but the most wealthy. This actually happens all the time. Every time a new subdivision is built in the suburbs this is exactly what happens. Hell, even new condos being built in my small city in the downtown area do this. So unless you're going to mandate that every single development that will house human beings stratifies the cost such that each income level can afford the exact same setup and you don't allow people over that income level to purchase housing, then you will never solve this "problem". Does it suck and is it not fair that you're not mega rich and can afford to live in Manhattan or in the hippest part of SF? No. That's just a market economy. I also can't buy a Ferrari and have to drive a Honda around. Can I afford a 1.5mm shack in SF? Sure. Why would I do that when I can afford a 1.5mm giganto-mansion on the Great Lakes? City ordinances, national ordinances, any of those are fundamentally the same thing. You're just arguing about what's most prolific because that's in your field of vision. Why can't I buy an affordable house in Switzerland? Why are they keeping average Americans out? Why can't I afford a 2br/3b flat in Paris next to the Louvre? Why don't they just fill that place up with skyscrapers? etc. etc. Maybe people want to keep their neighborhoods how they are? Maybe the charm that makes a place what it is has value, and should be protected? Why should they lose tens-hundreds of thousands of dollars in value because other people want to move next to them?
    - deathanatos 9y ago
      If everyone adopted this attitude, there'd be nowhere to live. All of the reasons you enumerate are people wanting to live in an area that makes it valuable for them; I think there's a fair number of people in the Bay Area that don't really care to live here particularly, but this is where the tech industry has decided to concentrate a ridiculous amount of its jobs. Job markets in other metropolises like Boston are a tenth the size of the Bay Area's. Not only is moving across a continent incredibly non-trivial, but finding a job at the other end is as well. And that's for populous areas like Boston or NYC where the land is cheaper, but not by much; you move to somewhere actually cheap and the job prospects are just simply not there. California also has better employment laws than other places. Not everyone here is here because we want to be "next to the Louvre": some of us just want to make a living.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  When did I assert anything? I just framed a question.
matwood 9y ago
> But, the question is do local residents deserve the right to keep out newcomers. Also, when does someone become 'local'? All the time on Nextdoor I see, "we need to stop the building", "traffic is bad", "there are too many people". Yet, the loudest complainers are people who literally just moved to my town in the last year. The building, etc... is what allowed them to move here in the first place so don't complain about it now. SF is not the only city experiencing these issues, although they are amplified. Nearly every nice weather coastal city in the US is growing out of control right now as people flee much of the center of the country.

runamok 9y ago

The bay area cities allowed lots and lots of commercial real estate but relatively little residential (apartments and homes) to be built more or less in the entire bay area. Where were those workers supposed to live? A decent article detailing the mismatch between people coming vs. housing starts: http://www.paragon-re.com/Supply_Demand_Money_and_Demographics http://www.paragon-re.com/Supply_Demand_Money_and_Demographi... Other metro areas have balanced these competing needs much better. A lot of the laws proposed still require any proposals to follow the existing zoning (a law championed by the governor last year is one example), etc. but just prevent a few motivated individuals from blocking growth.

PopsiclePete 9y ago

And I "deserve" to commute for over an hour to my nice awesome office that's in San Francisco from some distant suburb, because - why? Why do I "deserve" such punishment? Because someone was born at the right time and place 70 years ago and could afford a place in San Fran working a blue collar job and now fuck everyone else, he got his? Why? Why sacrifice all future generations on the altar of some baby boomer's "retirement plan" (said property?) I'm not aware of any country or city (besides London) that does this to young people. It's insane to be making over $100,000 anywhere in the world and be expected to pay $5000/month for a studio just because building some high-density housing would diminish some entrenched gentry's view of the ocean. The NIMBY's can all go and shoot themselves in the face, as far as I'm concerned.