5 ms·

This is, for those unfamiliar with the situation there, not actually an exaggeration, but literally what one of my friends was doing. It had been converted to a

This is, for those unfamiliar with the situation there, not actually an exaggeration, but literally what one of my friends was doing. It had been converted to a "cottage" and it was one room with a bathroom in the corner. FWIW it was pretty cute, but it was about $2k a month and had no dedicated parking. Climate control was "it gets hot in the sun, open the windows to cool it down" plus a space heater she had. The people living there bought the house decades ago and paid less on the mortgage for the entire property than what they rented out the cottage for. How do we fix this?

zipfle 9y ago
We could try to regulate away the good fortune of the people who bought the house, or we could try to convince the tech industry that they actually don't all need to be colocated, alleviating competition for resources in that area. What I've observed about human nature suggests that neither would be very popular.
- justin 9y ago
  Or we could build more housing
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    Or you could move somewhere cheaper
    - Decade 9y ago
      That actually does happen. And then we have the twisted situation where the economists say the economy is great, practically zero unemployment, even construction workers are scarce in California; and at the same time workforce participation rates for working-age males is the lowest it has ever been. Given how terrible idle males tend to be, this is worrisome. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-labor-force-men-20161121-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-labor-force-men-201611... People used to move to cities for the opportunities. Now it's increasingly difficult to do so. For lots of reasons we need to make it possible for people to move to the cities and thrive.
      - seanp2k2 9y ago
        Suburbs in most places = medium-low pay but fairly cheap housing country = cheap housing, no [tech] jobs Metro areas (more dense than suburbs, less dense than cities...e.g. most of the Bay Area) = expensive housing, medium or high pay Cities = extremely expensive, high pay (for tech jobs) Pretty much every scenario seems to be "optimized" to have techies paying 30-50% of their monthly income to housing. You can't really win, but you can attempt to maximize the real dollar amount you end up left over with with each month. Working remotely is "cheating the system" and is therefore largely disallowed, or "work from home" is allowed only to quell some degree of outrage. Literally the industry that invented video chat doesn't [want to] understand how to use it to work remotely.
  - taysic 9y ago
    I agree with building more housing. There are a decent amount of empty lots in Berkeley... and a smallish downtown area that could be revamped. However, even in best case scenario with a bunch of new housing, unless people start selling their single family houses to get replaced by higher density housing, I don't see housing prices going down a ton.. it won't be cheap but it may be more accessible to the middle class.
    - davidw 9y ago
      > selling their single family houses to get replaced by higher density housing That's exactly what would happen in a normal market.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
Not need housing where it's expensive. If you cannot increase supply, you must destroy demand.
- koolba 9y ago
  Can you use student loans to pay for housing? If so, fuck that!
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Not that I'd suggest it, but you could use personal loans or credit cards instead; at least those debts can be defaulted on and wiped clean.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      FWIW in almost 10 years of living in half a dozen apartments between 2 states, I've never had the option to pay by CC. It's always check or money order, and if you miss a payment, cashier's check.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Balance transfer, usually provided as a paper check or cash directly deposited into your checking account at a teaser interest rate for 12-18 months.
- taysic 9y ago
  I agree. I don't see Berkeley growing too much outside of the downtown simply because it has a lot of character that people are attached to - and lots of wealthy people that are retired or just aren't looking for change. Still, there are still empty lots around so loosening the process to get housing approved would help. However, the long term fix I think should be that UC should stop annually increasing the number of students it accepts to UC Berkeley. I know this probably would never happen - but I don't see another solution. Why not benefit another aspiring area of California? Berkeley will not grow so where will the students go? Similarly, if the Bay area has decided it doesn't want to grow upwards, then there should be more incentive to grow outwards. There should be a cap on the amount of office space growth in any given city unless housing grows equally... again I doubt this will happen. But I think it would be smart. People go where the money is, then comes the infrastructure, then comes other small businesses, etc.
koolba 9y ago
Raise property taxes and allow people to build low rise apartments. That will both provide money for local schools and force the increase in efficient usage of land.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  >Raise property taxes That's difficult in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
  - koolba 9y ago
    I didn't say it was easy or politically viable. It's almost funny how bad that law is for young people.
    - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
      It was voted in by Boomers, what do you expect?
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > It was voted in by Boomers, what do you expect? Boomers weren't the politically-dominant generation at the time Prop 13 was passed. I know people like to pretend all of history is divided between "Boomers" and "Millennials", but at the time of Prop 13, leading edge Boomers were in their late 20s and trailing edge Boomers were tweens. It's less accurate to say that Prop 13 was voted in by Boomers than to say Trump was elected by Millennials. Prop 13 was voted in largely by the “Silent” and “Greatest” generations. Insofar as Prop 13 is unfair to young people, Boomers were the first young people that were on the recieving end of the unfairness.
  - icantdrive55 9y ago
    I'm getting tired of defending prop 13. I guess it's a combination of projection, and our poor educational system? (Yes--I wish they talked about housing, property taxes, and political fiscal waste in school--any school? Repeal Prop 13. See what happens. Watch the politicians spend that money on everything other than housing. Hell--west Marin in California would be loaded with housing units if not for the millions of dollars Supervisor Gary Giacomonni spent fighting for his cause. He wanted to change the zoning to 100 acres per home. And with that big piggy bank of tax payer money, he pulled it off. In his last interview, he admitted if not for prop 13, that area would have highways, and thousands of homes, and apartments. We need to encourage developers to build apartments. Not luxury condos, but apartments. I actually given up on housing. I think we are at the point we need to make being homeless not a crime. We need to open up federal, state, local parks, and county land to camping, until we figure out this housing problem. I guarantee we will be talking about housing in ten years, and most of our income will be paying enormous amounts of rent.
Spooky23 9y ago
Move. I own a 2,000 square foot home with spacious city lot for 1/3 of that shed. The Bay Area is cool if you bought a house in 1996. Now? You're crazy.

zipfle 9y ago

We could try to regulate away the good fortune of the people who bought the house, or we could try to convince the tech industry that they actually don't all need to be colocated, alleviating competition for resources in that area. What I've observed about human nature suggests that neither would be very popular.

justin 9y ago
Or we could build more housing
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Or you could move somewhere cheaper
  - Decade 9y ago
    That actually does happen. And then we have the twisted situation where the economists say the economy is great, practically zero unemployment, even construction workers are scarce in California; and at the same time workforce participation rates for working-age males is the lowest it has ever been. Given how terrible idle males tend to be, this is worrisome. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-labor-force-men-20161121-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-labor-force-men-201611... People used to move to cities for the opportunities. Now it's increasingly difficult to do so. For lots of reasons we need to make it possible for people to move to the cities and thrive.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      Suburbs in most places = medium-low pay but fairly cheap housing country = cheap housing, no [tech] jobs Metro areas (more dense than suburbs, less dense than cities...e.g. most of the Bay Area) = expensive housing, medium or high pay Cities = extremely expensive, high pay (for tech jobs) Pretty much every scenario seems to be "optimized" to have techies paying 30-50% of their monthly income to housing. You can't really win, but you can attempt to maximize the real dollar amount you end up left over with with each month. Working remotely is "cheating the system" and is therefore largely disallowed, or "work from home" is allowed only to quell some degree of outrage. Literally the industry that invented video chat doesn't [want to] understand how to use it to work remotely.
- taysic 9y ago
  I agree with building more housing. There are a decent amount of empty lots in Berkeley... and a smallish downtown area that could be revamped. However, even in best case scenario with a bunch of new housing, unless people start selling their single family houses to get replaced by higher density housing, I don't see housing prices going down a ton.. it won't be cheap but it may be more accessible to the middle class.
  - davidw 9y ago
    > selling their single family houses to get replaced by higher density housing That's exactly what would happen in a normal market.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Not need housing where it's expensive. If you cannot increase supply, you must destroy demand.

koolba 9y ago
Can you use student loans to pay for housing? If so, fuck that!
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Not that I'd suggest it, but you could use personal loans or credit cards instead; at least those debts can be defaulted on and wiped clean.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    FWIW in almost 10 years of living in half a dozen apartments between 2 states, I've never had the option to pay by CC. It's always check or money order, and if you miss a payment, cashier's check.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Balance transfer, usually provided as a paper check or cash directly deposited into your checking account at a teaser interest rate for 12-18 months.
taysic 9y ago
I agree. I don't see Berkeley growing too much outside of the downtown simply because it has a lot of character that people are attached to - and lots of wealthy people that are retired or just aren't looking for change. Still, there are still empty lots around so loosening the process to get housing approved would help. However, the long term fix I think should be that UC should stop annually increasing the number of students it accepts to UC Berkeley. I know this probably would never happen - but I don't see another solution. Why not benefit another aspiring area of California? Berkeley will not grow so where will the students go? Similarly, if the Bay area has decided it doesn't want to grow upwards, then there should be more incentive to grow outwards. There should be a cap on the amount of office space growth in any given city unless housing grows equally... again I doubt this will happen. But I think it would be smart. People go where the money is, then comes the infrastructure, then comes other small businesses, etc.

koolba 9y ago

Raise property taxes and allow people to build low rise apartments. That will both provide money for local schools and force the increase in efficient usage of land.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
>Raise property taxes That's difficult in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
- koolba 9y ago
  I didn't say it was easy or politically viable. It's almost funny how bad that law is for young people.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    It was voted in by Boomers, what do you expect?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > It was voted in by Boomers, what do you expect? Boomers weren't the politically-dominant generation at the time Prop 13 was passed. I know people like to pretend all of history is divided between "Boomers" and "Millennials", but at the time of Prop 13, leading edge Boomers were in their late 20s and trailing edge Boomers were tweens. It's less accurate to say that Prop 13 was voted in by Boomers than to say Trump was elected by Millennials. Prop 13 was voted in largely by the “Silent” and “Greatest” generations. Insofar as Prop 13 is unfair to young people, Boomers were the first young people that were on the recieving end of the unfairness.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  I'm getting tired of defending prop 13. I guess it's a combination of projection, and our poor educational system? (Yes--I wish they talked about housing, property taxes, and political fiscal waste in school--any school? Repeal Prop 13. See what happens. Watch the politicians spend that money on everything other than housing. Hell--west Marin in California would be loaded with housing units if not for the millions of dollars Supervisor Gary Giacomonni spent fighting for his cause. He wanted to change the zoning to 100 acres per home. And with that big piggy bank of tax payer money, he pulled it off. In his last interview, he admitted if not for prop 13, that area would have highways, and thousands of homes, and apartments. We need to encourage developers to build apartments. Not luxury condos, but apartments. I actually given up on housing. I think we are at the point we need to make being homeless not a crime. We need to open up federal, state, local parks, and county land to camping, until we figure out this housing problem. I guarantee we will be talking about housing in ten years, and most of our income will be paying enormous amounts of rent.

Spooky23 9y ago

Move. I own a 2,000 square foot home with spacious city lot for 1/3 of that shed. The Bay Area is cool if you bought a house in 1996. Now? You're crazy.