5 ms·

This is going to be a massive thread I predict. There's a big world out there. If you can't afford California, or you don't want a 2 hour commute with a $180,00

This is going to be a massive thread I predict. There's a big world out there. If you can't afford California, or you don't want a 2 hour commute with a $180,000 salary, then DO NOT LIVE THERE. It's that simple. Are you skilled, and you can't afford or don't want to afford to live in California? Give up the damn weather and move somewhere else. I don't even care if it's because the laws cause unaffordable housing, just don't live there. Besides, if you drop the housing prices so much that anybody can afford to live in California, how great do you think it's going to be there? The issue with a place like California is that there are almost always going to be more people that want to live there, than there is space. If you build more/better/affordable housing, more people will move there, then what?

adam_seeliger 9y ago
Bingo.
jdoliner 9y ago
> If you can't afford California, or you don't want a 2 hour commute with a $180,000 salary, then DO NOT LIVE THERE. It's that simple. This is great advice, it really is that simple. You have very little voice in California but you have plenty of exit. > The issue with a place like California is that there are almost always going to be more people that want to live there, than there is space. This doesn't seem quite as obviously true to me. While there's lots of people who want to live in California, along with all it's other bountiful resources California has a lot of space. We could, in theory, house many more millions of people before we really started hitting true space limits. It's not infinite of course, but the resources are very underutilized right now. Or at least they appear to be to my eyes.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  I mean, if developers plan right, you could add people in a more efficient manner, but good luck bulldozing the suburbs and getting rid of cars. Those are the main issues. It's not so much that I don't believe it is possible, I don't think there is the will for the people of California to give up their cars, and their suburbs for Tokyo-style living. I strongly believe that California needs far fewer people, and more efficient/better housing. I don't think more people + more housing is a sustainable solution. Of course this isn't the popular narrative, but I think it's true.
ghaff 9y ago
California has been popular for various reasons for a long time. But it's really since the recovery from dot-bomb that things have gotten out of control. Zoning etc. is part of the issue. But by all accounts, the (not so great) public transit--especially in SF itself--is pretty near capacity as, obviously are the highways. Can this capacity be increased over the timeframe of a couple decades? Probably. But there's nothing in the 5-10 year horizon that's going to make a [EDIT: not so big] difference other than a combination of people choosing to not live there, incremental housing construction, incremental public transit improvements, and incremental increases in congestion.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Well maybe Baby boomers cashing out.. maybe.
- eastbayjake 9y ago
  I'm hopeful that autonomous buses make this extra capacity possible. The main problems are unpredictable/long waits and overcrowding; the proposals I've seen involve smaller (<20 passenger) buses that run much more frequently and can fit more people into standing-room space because automated drivers have better planned acceleration and longer braking. It's so much cheaper and easier to add hundreds of small buses to the peninsula's streets than to build rail or subways. Another crazy low-footprint idea: connecting our city of hills with an aerial gondola network. https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671214/a-mass-transit-proposal-to-connect-a-city-using-aerial-gondolas https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671214/a-mass-transit-proposal...
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Honestly? Sounds like magical thinking about how self-driving will make things possible that aren't with a relatively low-paid human driver today. And probably wouldn't be available for a few decades anyway. Small buses are available in a lot of countries today.
    - eastbayjake 9y ago
      Unionized MUNI drivers make three times the SF minimum wage [0] before overtime so they're not "low-paid" by any means, but yes if money were unlimited we could achieve a smaller-but-more-numerous bus strategy... the ride will just be really jerky and require more seats at lower capacity, in addition to costing a prohibitive amount of money. And "a few decades" seems extremely conservative when we're already testing driverless buses in San Francisco today [1] [0] https://missionlocal.org/2014/06/is-32-an-hour-too-much-for-muni-drivers/ https://missionlocal.org/2014/06/is-32-an-hour-too-much-for-... [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-autonomous-bus-idUSKBN16E08I http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-autonomous-bus-...
akanet 9y ago
I think this is an incredibly fatalistic attitude. California is also great for many reasons beyond "great weather". Lots of people want to live here for family, emotional, or safety reasons. I've met so many gay and transgender people (tech workers and otherwise) who have told me they just don't feel safe where they're from.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Excluding some areas/situations, I'd just say grow thicker skin. There isn't anything particularly special about California with respect to LGBTQ and it certainly isn't a good justification for living there. You can be gay in Pittsburgh or Chicago or D.C. just as well as you can in Portland or L.A.. There are definitely family and emotional considerations and that's fair, obviously there are reasons other than the weather to live in California - that wasn't my point, rather, my point was that a lot of people want to live there and you can't expect to just get this somehow incredibly affordable cost of living you'd get in Kansas or something in California. If you could, we would ALL be living there. People need to realize that location and where you live can be a luxury, and you have to pay proportionally for that luxury. I can't go move to Boulder or something on a $30,000/year salary and expect to ski year round then complain that I can't afford housing. The world simply does not, and should not work that way.
matt_m 9y ago
This is a common sentiment. How far does this concept go though? If a neighborhood gets too expensive, you can move without much trouble. The whole city and commuting area gets too expensive? Move again, but now find new company/personal relationships. What about all cities for <industry> get too expensive. Change careers maybe? At the very least the supply of housing should expand until it's proportionate to the amount of office space (jobs) in the area (although apparently office space is more lucrative for municipalities than housing, so we get more of it). It isn't unique to California either, most cities in the US with good job markets (NYC, Boston, Washington DC, LA, etc) have seen housing prices shoot up. I'm not sure it's true that building more housing has no effect on prices, Seattle has had a lot more housing built and apparently they haven't had quite as extreme price increases, although they also have a thriving tech industry. Raleigh/Durham has been growing incredibly fast but adding a lot of supply too. And more people moving in surely must lower the price at least where they are moving from, so if several places build prices can't go up everywhere. It might be late / politically difficult to address the issue in California, but the escalation of housing costs is such a common problem that the solution can't always be "move away from <job center>". Of course how to manage growth without excessively burdening existing residents or communities is another matter, but hopefully not impossible? Development doesn't have to go everywhere, but surely it should go somewhere? At least around transit hubs would make sense.

adam_seeliger 9y ago

Bingo.

jdoliner 9y ago

> If you can't afford California, or you don't want a 2 hour commute with a $180,000 salary, then DO NOT LIVE THERE. It's that simple. This is great advice, it really is that simple. You have very little voice in California but you have plenty of exit. > The issue with a place like California is that there are almost always going to be more people that want to live there, than there is space. This doesn't seem quite as obviously true to me. While there's lots of people who want to live in California, along with all it's other bountiful resources California has a lot of space. We could, in theory, house many more millions of people before we really started hitting true space limits. It's not infinite of course, but the resources are very underutilized right now. Or at least they appear to be to my eyes.

muninn_ 9y ago
I mean, if developers plan right, you could add people in a more efficient manner, but good luck bulldozing the suburbs and getting rid of cars. Those are the main issues. It's not so much that I don't believe it is possible, I don't think there is the will for the people of California to give up their cars, and their suburbs for Tokyo-style living. I strongly believe that California needs far fewer people, and more efficient/better housing. I don't think more people + more housing is a sustainable solution. Of course this isn't the popular narrative, but I think it's true.

ghaff 9y ago

California has been popular for various reasons for a long time. But it's really since the recovery from dot-bomb that things have gotten out of control. Zoning etc. is part of the issue. But by all accounts, the (not so great) public transit--especially in SF itself--is pretty near capacity as, obviously are the highways. Can this capacity be increased over the timeframe of a couple decades? Probably. But there's nothing in the 5-10 year horizon that's going to make a [EDIT: not so big] difference other than a combination of people choosing to not live there, incremental housing construction, incremental public transit improvements, and incremental increases in congestion.

sjg007 9y ago
Well maybe Baby boomers cashing out.. maybe.
eastbayjake 9y ago
I'm hopeful that autonomous buses make this extra capacity possible. The main problems are unpredictable/long waits and overcrowding; the proposals I've seen involve smaller (<20 passenger) buses that run much more frequently and can fit more people into standing-room space because automated drivers have better planned acceleration and longer braking. It's so much cheaper and easier to add hundreds of small buses to the peninsula's streets than to build rail or subways. Another crazy low-footprint idea: connecting our city of hills with an aerial gondola network. https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671214/a-mass-transit-proposal-to-connect-a-city-using-aerial-gondolas https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671214/a-mass-transit-proposal...
- ghaff 9y ago
  Honestly? Sounds like magical thinking about how self-driving will make things possible that aren't with a relatively low-paid human driver today. And probably wouldn't be available for a few decades anyway. Small buses are available in a lot of countries today.
  - eastbayjake 9y ago
    Unionized MUNI drivers make three times the SF minimum wage [0] before overtime so they're not "low-paid" by any means, but yes if money were unlimited we could achieve a smaller-but-more-numerous bus strategy... the ride will just be really jerky and require more seats at lower capacity, in addition to costing a prohibitive amount of money. And "a few decades" seems extremely conservative when we're already testing driverless buses in San Francisco today [1] [0] https://missionlocal.org/2014/06/is-32-an-hour-too-much-for-muni-drivers/ https://missionlocal.org/2014/06/is-32-an-hour-too-much-for-... [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-autonomous-bus-idUSKBN16E08I http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-autonomous-bus-...

akanet 9y ago

I think this is an incredibly fatalistic attitude. California is also great for many reasons beyond "great weather". Lots of people want to live here for family, emotional, or safety reasons. I've met so many gay and transgender people (tech workers and otherwise) who have told me they just don't feel safe where they're from.

muninn_ 9y ago
Excluding some areas/situations, I'd just say grow thicker skin. There isn't anything particularly special about California with respect to LGBTQ and it certainly isn't a good justification for living there. You can be gay in Pittsburgh or Chicago or D.C. just as well as you can in Portland or L.A.. There are definitely family and emotional considerations and that's fair, obviously there are reasons other than the weather to live in California - that wasn't my point, rather, my point was that a lot of people want to live there and you can't expect to just get this somehow incredibly affordable cost of living you'd get in Kansas or something in California. If you could, we would ALL be living there. People need to realize that location and where you live can be a luxury, and you have to pay proportionally for that luxury. I can't go move to Boulder or something on a $30,000/year salary and expect to ski year round then complain that I can't afford housing. The world simply does not, and should not work that way.

matt_m 9y ago

This is a common sentiment. How far does this concept go though? If a neighborhood gets too expensive, you can move without much trouble. The whole city and commuting area gets too expensive? Move again, but now find new company/personal relationships. What about all cities for <industry> get too expensive. Change careers maybe? At the very least the supply of housing should expand until it's proportionate to the amount of office space (jobs) in the area (although apparently office space is more lucrative for municipalities than housing, so we get more of it). It isn't unique to California either, most cities in the US with good job markets (NYC, Boston, Washington DC, LA, etc) have seen housing prices shoot up. I'm not sure it's true that building more housing has no effect on prices, Seattle has had a lot more housing built and apparently they haven't had quite as extreme price increases, although they also have a thriving tech industry. Raleigh/Durham has been growing incredibly fast but adding a lot of supply too. And more people moving in surely must lower the price at least where they are moving from, so if several places build prices can't go up everywhere. It might be late / politically difficult to address the issue in California, but the escalation of housing costs is such a common problem that the solution can't always be "move away from <job center>". Of course how to manage growth without excessively burdening existing residents or communities is another matter, but hopefully not impossible? Development doesn't have to go everywhere, but surely it should go somewhere? At least around transit hubs would make sense.