11 ms·

‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

72 points by cepth 9y ago

drwicked 9y ago
Adding to the problem, the NIMBYs everywhere mean that no one builds new RV parks anywhere and the extant RV parks ramp up rents and regulations (your RV has to less than 10 years old) to push out the lower income people. This exact thing happened to me in Austin.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I hear the same argument on this site every time poverty and homelessness in Silicon Valley is brought up, but I really don't understand it. Massive capital concentration is leading to only a few cities in the country experiencing economic growth, and your solution is to just build more housing in those few areas? Why not do something about the capital concentration? Why not do something to push some of those jobs into the Midwest? That would sure lower housing demand in those few cities, and would lead to a more equal country overall.
  - davidw 9y ago
    > your solution is to just build more housing in those few areas Yes: http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-way-to-affordable-housing/ http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...
    - pascalxus 9y ago
      this is a very good post. I wish every voter in CA and SF would read this.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    Massive capital concentration is one of the reasons the valley, SF, and to a lesser extent Seattle, Austin, and New York, are creating so much. Capital concentration leads to higher pay, which leads to smart people coming, which leads to cool products, which leads to an increase in the economic productivity of a society. I don't see why anybody should "push" jobs away. That would make both the jobs and their employers less desirable. There are few instances where central government control of economic allocation led to innovation. Even China and Singapore generally is pretty laissez faire about who does what where. It's not like the Korean government is trying to push industry out of Seoul, even though real estate there is insane. Free markets created the Bay Area and SF (arguably the lack of enforcement of non-competes did), but that's another example of the government backing off. It's not like Communist Russia was a hotbed of innovation.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      The issue with this is that it's going to create massive political instability if there are a few megacities with massive poverty in every other state. There are already signs that our political system is already destabilizing. What makes you think this wouldn't amplify that?
      - jimmywanger 9y ago
        The alternative is government mandated poverty. The government hardly ever creates wealth. They can create the conditions for wealth creation by getting the heck out of the way. To be a bit dramatic, Venezuela, PRK, Sudan, and Cuba all have incredibly low wealth inequality. Except for the rich and corrupt, everybody else has just about the same as everybody else, which is nothing, based on government policies. Hong Kong is cutthroat with high levels of inequality, but it's also an engine of economic growth. Would you really rather like in Sub Saharan Africa than Hong Kong? EDIT: And massive wealth and capital concentration brought us Amazon and Google. In exchange for newly minted millionaires being "equal" to us, would you rather live in a world without those technologies - next day shipping and Google Maps and Search?
        caseydurfee 9y ago
        "The government hardly ever creates wealth. They can create the conditions for wealth creation by getting the heck out of the way." Yes, we're aware that's how it works in shitty novels about trains from the 1950's. Here in the real world, every single technological innovation in the iPhone was created by the US Government, or with the assistance of US government-funded basic research. This book breaks the whole thing down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State Google Maps is a particularly terrible example. It wouldn't exist without GPS, a technology invented by the US government. Hong Kong's government puts billions of dollars a year into technology research. That's not a good example, either. Furthermore, HK has lower income inequality than Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Burundi, The Gambia, Swaziland, Botswana, CAR, Sierra Leone and Namibia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... . So your statement "everybody else has just about the same as everybody else" in sub-Saharan Africa is total bullshit. Japan and Scandinavia have relatively low rates of income inequality (especially compared to sub-Saharan Africa). Are you saying those countries are less innovative than Namibia (highest income inequality in the world)? Finally, the idea that the sole difference between "Sub Saharan Africa" (a region that encapsulates over a billion people and over 40 countries which you regard as a monolith) and Hong Kong is due to "government policies" is childishly ignorant. Africa is not a country.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    Which cities are you thinking of? I bet you're leaving out a bunch of cheaper places that are also growing in the southern US/Texas region, among others.
  - adamsea 9y ago
    The answer to your question is poverty. Several studies have shown how poverty has serious negative mental consequences, and how poverty makes everyday tasks significantly more challenging. Especially for someone who grew up poor and is poor as an adult. https://ivn.us/2014/05/23/the-psychological-effects-of-poverty/ https://ivn.us/2014/05/23/the-psychological-effects-of-pover... > Recent studies suggest that the mental strain undertaken by the poor far surpasses previously expected amounts. This strain can easily affect one’s ability to succeed in school and/or work, and can even influence one’s ability to pay bills on time. Specifically, poverty affects such cognitive functions as decision-making, memory, focus, patience and even awareness. The scientific reasoning for these shortcomings is linked to the brain’s finite ability. Thus the limited brainpower resulting from poverty infringes on the ability of such people to complete everyday tasks. The problem with many people’s understanding of the stress of poverty is that they neglect to include the added stress that most U.S. adults face on a daily basis. Such triggers include work, money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, and sleep deprivation. In fact, 76 percent of U.S. adults correlate work and money to their top stress indicators. https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/webinars/neurobehavioral-effects-poverty.pdf https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/webinars/neurobehaviora... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201210/the-effects-poverty-the-brain https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201210/the-e...
santaclaus 9y ago
> serving the very people whose sky-high net worth is the reason housing has become unaffordable for so many. Well, that and decades upon decades of meager housing construction.
pascalxus 9y ago
This nightmare has been building for 4 decades and it's finally reaching a breaking point. Here's my recommendation: - Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building. - Zone much more residential areas - Remove all height restrictions - invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs - dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we need to move those companies to locations that can handle the influx of workers - declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations. There are good reasons why this trillion dollar PROBLEM/pain point/industry has been completely ignored by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. We need to understand those reasons and mitigate those concerns.
- eru 9y ago
  You don't even need to remove all height restrictions (even though it might be useful). See http://urbankchoze.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/japanese-zoning.ht... for an overview over the Japanese system. One of the key features is that the different zones allow much more different uses in Japan.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  "- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building." This would end disastrously. "All those earthquake safety regulations, those are really preventing me from building." "Those environmental regulations, the ones that stop me from polluting everywhere, those are really preventing me from building." "- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations." See above. Most of those regulations were put into place for a reason. Also, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire
  - pascalxus 9y ago
    We can't simply assume that removing those regulations will result in a disaster. Look at the actual data. Find, the regulations which limit the most building - maybe they're not even safety related. many parts of CEQA for instance does nothing to help the environment but has prevented huge amounts of housing. And for those that are safety related, maybe there's a way to alter them or at least get rid of them just temporarily until the homeless emergency has been mitigated. Anything is better than leaving people out on the street - in any case, that's not a decision you or i should make, but rather the people it affects.
johnsprial 9y ago
No surprise that there are next to no comments on this article. All you object orientated money worshippers should be ashamed!
acheron9383 9y ago
This is mostly the result of the severe underdevelopment of new housing in the last 20 or 30 years, due to neighborhoods preventing any sort of development to stymy gentrification. The situation is made worse by the disincentivisaiton of selling any property because of Prop 13. Why would you ever move if your property taxes would increase by an order of magnitude? All the market distortion has led to predictable outcomes, the new tech employees living in the old crappy housing for exorbitant rents, and the poor pushed onto the streets.
- chk_ur_autism 9y ago
  The lack of new building is not to stymy gentrification, it's rent seeking/protectionism of existing assets. Nearly everyone in the Bay who owns a home has sunk a significant portion (likely greater than 75% of their wealth) into their wood-and-drywall tickytack shack. They'll protect it by rejecting new housing at all costs.
- gt_ 9y ago
  I’m not very familiar with Prop 13, but can speak for situations in Oregon which seem quite different. Maybe prop 13 is why. Quickly surging economies create active markets which encourage owners to sell, renovations to happen, and old tenants to be removed for the purpose of raising rent. In Portland in the past 3-4 years, there were quite a few studies done on how this happens and how it is especially risky in places with less families because those left without housing suddenly often have no place to run to. Going back to your point about Prop 13, the Portland issues I just described seem to be recovering by a lot in the last 6 months. I am pretty sure it wasn’t necessarily because of new building though, because the new building in Portland is nearly all luxury condos.
PatientTrades 9y ago
The main problem is population growth. Even if housing is built specifically for poorer and lower income individuals, middle class families looking for hosuing will inevitable trickle in causing demand and prices to rise naturally. Once again poor individuals will be on the street. The same cycle keeps occurring in cities across America. Properties designed for the poor end up getting bought by middle and upper class individuals, seen this in Washington D.C. and New york firsthand.
- ng12 9y ago
  That's why low-income housing is an oxymoron and any project for "below market rate" housing is a political stunt. You can't cheat supply and demand.
  - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
    You just have to keep building. At some point there is enough housing to meet demand at reasonable prices.
angmarsbane 9y ago
In my town, not Silicon Valley, the biggest complaint about new buildings is the increase in traffic. Traffic in my area is already horrendous. I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings.
- chk_ur_autism 9y ago
  Would you vote on raising your property taxes to support better infrastructure? What if that went to better public transportation? These things largely get voted down, particularly on the most NIMBY area of the Peninsula: Mountain View, Palo Alto, Atherton (particularly egregious), Menlo Park, Redwood City.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings. There is opposition in San Francisco [1] (and Oakland) to development directly on top of BART stations... I don't think parking is the primary concern for those opposing new construction in the bay. [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/21/16178682/monster-on-mission-district-condo https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/21/16178682/monster-on-mission-...
- davidw 9y ago
  Part of the problem is the horribly messed up development patterns the US has embraced over the last 70 years https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
- r00fus 9y ago
  Automobile infrastructure simply does not scale. Roads and parking are a massive waste of space and ongoing maintenance. Gas stations are superfund sites waiting to happen. The entire car-culture and the industries that profit from that culture would need to be fought to improve transportation along with new buildout, and to the large extent, car culture has won (parking is part of local building codes, and a large part of state/federal funding for roads). I'd like to hear how transport could be improved without transitions to mass-transit and increased walkability.
ryanackley 9y ago
There are easier locations to live on $15/hr in California and the USA than Silicon Valley. Some of the people featured in the article have vehicles which implies mobility. I wish the article focused more on the reasons people choose to stay in a place with a ridiculous cost of living that they can't afford. That seems like the real story to me. I'm sure there are valid reasons like family or other things but it's not mentioned at all.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Those locations don’t pay $15/hr. if you can find a job, and you probably can’t. Employment is rising in densely populated areas and not so much in rural areas. This is a little different on the east coast, but that’s a more significant moving investment. Other services like healthcare in rural areas has eroded to barely existent. I can speak from experience in Oregon. Moving costs money, something they don’t have. Finding a new job costs time and money. They’ve got neither.
  - deadmetheny 9y ago
    Cities that aren't on the coasts exist, you know. $15/hr jobs in Midwestern cities aren't outlandish by any stretch.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      We're talking about someone who's struggling to get by in SV. Where are they going to get the money to move their family to the Midwest?
      - deadmetheny 9y ago
        This is true, but it is also not not the point I am addressing.
      - ameister14 9y ago
        Well, if all your possessions are in an RV, moving your family to the midwest costs gas - that's pretty much it.
tw1010 9y ago
Part of me is empathetic with this whole story, obviously. But another part of me finds it strange that there is such a huge emphasis on the homelessness situation in SF. It's as if we're only paying attention to this because of the huge inequality density in the city. But the truth is, homelessness is a problem everywhere. It just doesn't feel like an efficient (from a utilitarian perspective) use of resources to focus efforts here instead of where the money can act as the biggest lever. It's as if we mostly care about reducing the visual appearance of the problem, than care about most effectively minimizing the problem in aggregate.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > It's as if we mostly care about reducing the visual appearance of the problem There are real public health consequences to high concentrations of people living without proper sanitation -- see the ongoing, major hepatitis outbreak in San Diego, for instance.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    So it's only an issue when the public health of the rich is at risk? Because it seems to me that's what your comment is implying.
    - arkades 9y ago
      No, he’s saying that homelessness in high population density areas has secondary effects that you don’t see in low density areas.
      - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        Right, with the implication that only homelessness with those secondary effects is the only homelessness that should be addressed.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  It's paid attention to pretty much everywhere. Down in southern California, the homeless problem in LA and Orange County gets covered pretty regularly. I suspect you hear more about SV homelessness here because this is a pretty SV heavy forum.
Jimmie_Rustle 9y ago
> “How about for us people who are serving these tech people?” Saldana said. “We don’t get the same paycheck that they do.” I don't understand this attitude. You expect the same paycheck as someone who has invested a lot of time and effort to make it in a very competitive field? She also lives in an RV with her '3 adult sons'... 4 adults should be able to come up with the money to rent at least an apartment even on minimum wage.
chrischen 9y ago
> Mountain View, a city of 80,000 which also is home to Mozilla and 23andMe, has committed more than $1 million over two years for homeless services, including money for an outreach case manager and a police officer to help people who live in vehicles. Why are local governments treating these people as dysfunctional when the dysfunction is in the government in its ability to provide an environment that is safe, stable, and affordable for otherwise functional members of society.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I don't get it. Is your premise is that every person making minimum should be able to live anywhere they want in the US, and if they can't the government is responsible?
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    This isn't really an abstract problem that requires reductio ad absurdum type arguments. I grew up in the UK and I visit the valley sometimes. There are several things you immediately notice: 1) Every building is incredibly short. 2) Every building is spaced very far apart. 3) Every road is incredibly wide. Even fairly unimportant roads, the sort that have rinky dink little cafes on them, will often have three lanes in each direction or more. The Valley has a homelessness problem because the people who live there refuse to let anyone build tall, dense housing complexes. There's so much space here you could crush the homelessness and poverty problems instantly by just relaxing zoning rules, it wouldn't even take a social housing programme. But instead all the space is taken up with tiny low rise buildings surrounded by enormous parking lots.
    - alexandercrohde 9y ago
      Yes, but why should they? If a community likes wide roads, low traffic, short buildings, are they somehow obligated to knock down those buildings so that other people can live there?
  - closeparen 9y ago
polotics 9y ago
America the lousily-organised.

72 points by cepth 9y ago

Adding to the problem, the NIMBYs everywhere mean that no one builds new RV parks anywhere and the extant RV parks ramp up rents and regulations (your RV has to less than 10 years old) to push out the lower income people. This exact thing happened to me in Austin.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
I hear the same argument on this site every time poverty and homelessness in Silicon Valley is brought up, but I really don't understand it. Massive capital concentration is leading to only a few cities in the country experiencing economic growth, and your solution is to just build more housing in those few areas? Why not do something about the capital concentration? Why not do something to push some of those jobs into the Midwest? That would sure lower housing demand in those few cities, and would lead to a more equal country overall.
- davidw 9y ago
  > your solution is to just build more housing in those few areas Yes: http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-way-to-affordable-housing/ http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...
  - pascalxus 9y ago
    this is a very good post. I wish every voter in CA and SF would read this.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  Massive capital concentration is one of the reasons the valley, SF, and to a lesser extent Seattle, Austin, and New York, are creating so much. Capital concentration leads to higher pay, which leads to smart people coming, which leads to cool products, which leads to an increase in the economic productivity of a society. I don't see why anybody should "push" jobs away. That would make both the jobs and their employers less desirable. There are few instances where central government control of economic allocation led to innovation. Even China and Singapore generally is pretty laissez faire about who does what where. It's not like the Korean government is trying to push industry out of Seoul, even though real estate there is insane. Free markets created the Bay Area and SF (arguably the lack of enforcement of non-competes did), but that's another example of the government backing off. It's not like Communist Russia was a hotbed of innovation.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    The issue with this is that it's going to create massive political instability if there are a few megacities with massive poverty in every other state. There are already signs that our political system is already destabilizing. What makes you think this wouldn't amplify that?
    - jimmywanger 9y ago
      The alternative is government mandated poverty. The government hardly ever creates wealth. They can create the conditions for wealth creation by getting the heck out of the way. To be a bit dramatic, Venezuela, PRK, Sudan, and Cuba all have incredibly low wealth inequality. Except for the rich and corrupt, everybody else has just about the same as everybody else, which is nothing, based on government policies. Hong Kong is cutthroat with high levels of inequality, but it's also an engine of economic growth. Would you really rather like in Sub Saharan Africa than Hong Kong? EDIT: And massive wealth and capital concentration brought us Amazon and Google. In exchange for newly minted millionaires being "equal" to us, would you rather live in a world without those technologies - next day shipping and Google Maps and Search?
      - caseydurfee 9y ago
        "The government hardly ever creates wealth. They can create the conditions for wealth creation by getting the heck out of the way." Yes, we're aware that's how it works in shitty novels about trains from the 1950's. Here in the real world, every single technological innovation in the iPhone was created by the US Government, or with the assistance of US government-funded basic research. This book breaks the whole thing down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State Google Maps is a particularly terrible example. It wouldn't exist without GPS, a technology invented by the US government. Hong Kong's government puts billions of dollars a year into technology research. That's not a good example, either. Furthermore, HK has lower income inequality than Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Burundi, The Gambia, Swaziland, Botswana, CAR, Sierra Leone and Namibia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... . So your statement "everybody else has just about the same as everybody else" in sub-Saharan Africa is total bullshit. Japan and Scandinavia have relatively low rates of income inequality (especially compared to sub-Saharan Africa). Are you saying those countries are less innovative than Namibia (highest income inequality in the world)? Finally, the idea that the sole difference between "Sub Saharan Africa" (a region that encapsulates over a billion people and over 40 countries which you regard as a monolith) and Hong Kong is due to "government policies" is childishly ignorant. Africa is not a country.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Which cities are you thinking of? I bet you're leaving out a bunch of cheaper places that are also growing in the southern US/Texas region, among others.
- adamsea 9y ago
  The answer to your question is poverty. Several studies have shown how poverty has serious negative mental consequences, and how poverty makes everyday tasks significantly more challenging. Especially for someone who grew up poor and is poor as an adult. https://ivn.us/2014/05/23/the-psychological-effects-of-poverty/ https://ivn.us/2014/05/23/the-psychological-effects-of-pover... > Recent studies suggest that the mental strain undertaken by the poor far surpasses previously expected amounts. This strain can easily affect one’s ability to succeed in school and/or work, and can even influence one’s ability to pay bills on time. Specifically, poverty affects such cognitive functions as decision-making, memory, focus, patience and even awareness. The scientific reasoning for these shortcomings is linked to the brain’s finite ability. Thus the limited brainpower resulting from poverty infringes on the ability of such people to complete everyday tasks. The problem with many people’s understanding of the stress of poverty is that they neglect to include the added stress that most U.S. adults face on a daily basis. Such triggers include work, money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, and sleep deprivation. In fact, 76 percent of U.S. adults correlate work and money to their top stress indicators. https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/webinars/neurobehavioral-effects-poverty.pdf https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/webinars/neurobehaviora... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201210/the-effects-poverty-the-brain https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201210/the-e...

santaclaus 9y ago

> serving the very people whose sky-high net worth is the reason housing has become unaffordable for so many. Well, that and decades upon decades of meager housing construction.

pascalxus 9y ago

This nightmare has been building for 4 decades and it's finally reaching a breaking point. Here's my recommendation: - Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building. - Zone much more residential areas - Remove all height restrictions - invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs - dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we need to move those companies to locations that can handle the influx of workers - declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations. There are good reasons why this trillion dollar PROBLEM/pain point/industry has been completely ignored by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. We need to understand those reasons and mitigate those concerns.

eru 9y ago
You don't even need to remove all height restrictions (even though it might be useful). See http://urbankchoze.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/japanese-zoning.ht... for an overview over the Japanese system. One of the key features is that the different zones allow much more different uses in Japan.
s73ver_ 9y ago
"- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building." This would end disastrously. "All those earthquake safety regulations, those are really preventing me from building." "Those environmental regulations, the ones that stop me from polluting everywhere, those are really preventing me from building." "- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations." See above. Most of those regulations were put into place for a reason. Also, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire
- pascalxus 9y ago
  We can't simply assume that removing those regulations will result in a disaster. Look at the actual data. Find, the regulations which limit the most building - maybe they're not even safety related. many parts of CEQA for instance does nothing to help the environment but has prevented huge amounts of housing. And for those that are safety related, maybe there's a way to alter them or at least get rid of them just temporarily until the homeless emergency has been mitigated. Anything is better than leaving people out on the street - in any case, that's not a decision you or i should make, but rather the people it affects.

johnsprial 9y ago

No surprise that there are next to no comments on this article. All you object orientated money worshippers should be ashamed!

acheron9383 9y ago

This is mostly the result of the severe underdevelopment of new housing in the last 20 or 30 years, due to neighborhoods preventing any sort of development to stymy gentrification. The situation is made worse by the disincentivisaiton of selling any property because of Prop 13. Why would you ever move if your property taxes would increase by an order of magnitude? All the market distortion has led to predictable outcomes, the new tech employees living in the old crappy housing for exorbitant rents, and the poor pushed onto the streets.

chk_ur_autism 9y ago
The lack of new building is not to stymy gentrification, it's rent seeking/protectionism of existing assets. Nearly everyone in the Bay who owns a home has sunk a significant portion (likely greater than 75% of their wealth) into their wood-and-drywall tickytack shack. They'll protect it by rejecting new housing at all costs.
gt_ 9y ago
I’m not very familiar with Prop 13, but can speak for situations in Oregon which seem quite different. Maybe prop 13 is why. Quickly surging economies create active markets which encourage owners to sell, renovations to happen, and old tenants to be removed for the purpose of raising rent. In Portland in the past 3-4 years, there were quite a few studies done on how this happens and how it is especially risky in places with less families because those left without housing suddenly often have no place to run to. Going back to your point about Prop 13, the Portland issues I just described seem to be recovering by a lot in the last 6 months. I am pretty sure it wasn’t necessarily because of new building though, because the new building in Portland is nearly all luxury condos.

PatientTrades 9y ago

The main problem is population growth. Even if housing is built specifically for poorer and lower income individuals, middle class families looking for hosuing will inevitable trickle in causing demand and prices to rise naturally. Once again poor individuals will be on the street. The same cycle keeps occurring in cities across America. Properties designed for the poor end up getting bought by middle and upper class individuals, seen this in Washington D.C. and New york firsthand.

ng12 9y ago
That's why low-income housing is an oxymoron and any project for "below market rate" housing is a political stunt. You can't cheat supply and demand.
- Harvey-Specter 9y ago
  You just have to keep building. At some point there is enough housing to meet demand at reasonable prices.

angmarsbane 9y ago

In my town, not Silicon Valley, the biggest complaint about new buildings is the increase in traffic. Traffic in my area is already horrendous. I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings.

chk_ur_autism 9y ago
Would you vote on raising your property taxes to support better infrastructure? What if that went to better public transportation? These things largely get voted down, particularly on the most NIMBY area of the Peninsula: Mountain View, Palo Alto, Atherton (particularly egregious), Menlo Park, Redwood City.
santaclaus 9y ago
> I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings. There is opposition in San Francisco [1] (and Oakland) to development directly on top of BART stations... I don't think parking is the primary concern for those opposing new construction in the bay. [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/21/16178682/monster-on-mission-district-condo https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/21/16178682/monster-on-mission-...
davidw 9y ago
Part of the problem is the horribly messed up development patterns the US has embraced over the last 70 years https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
r00fus 9y ago
Automobile infrastructure simply does not scale. Roads and parking are a massive waste of space and ongoing maintenance. Gas stations are superfund sites waiting to happen. The entire car-culture and the industries that profit from that culture would need to be fought to improve transportation along with new buildout, and to the large extent, car culture has won (parking is part of local building codes, and a large part of state/federal funding for roads). I'd like to hear how transport could be improved without transitions to mass-transit and increased walkability.

ryanackley 9y ago

There are easier locations to live on $15/hr in California and the USA than Silicon Valley. Some of the people featured in the article have vehicles which implies mobility. I wish the article focused more on the reasons people choose to stay in a place with a ridiculous cost of living that they can't afford. That seems like the real story to me. I'm sure there are valid reasons like family or other things but it's not mentioned at all.

gt_ 9y ago
Those locations don’t pay $15/hr. if you can find a job, and you probably can’t. Employment is rising in densely populated areas and not so much in rural areas. This is a little different on the east coast, but that’s a more significant moving investment. Other services like healthcare in rural areas has eroded to barely existent. I can speak from experience in Oregon. Moving costs money, something they don’t have. Finding a new job costs time and money. They’ve got neither.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  Cities that aren't on the coasts exist, you know. $15/hr jobs in Midwestern cities aren't outlandish by any stretch.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    We're talking about someone who's struggling to get by in SV. Where are they going to get the money to move their family to the Midwest?
    - deadmetheny 9y ago
      This is true, but it is also not not the point I am addressing.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      Well, if all your possessions are in an RV, moving your family to the midwest costs gas - that's pretty much it.

tw1010 9y ago

Part of me is empathetic with this whole story, obviously. But another part of me finds it strange that there is such a huge emphasis on the homelessness situation in SF. It's as if we're only paying attention to this because of the huge inequality density in the city. But the truth is, homelessness is a problem everywhere. It just doesn't feel like an efficient (from a utilitarian perspective) use of resources to focus efforts here instead of where the money can act as the biggest lever. It's as if we mostly care about reducing the visual appearance of the problem, than care about most effectively minimizing the problem in aggregate.

santaclaus 9y ago
> It's as if we mostly care about reducing the visual appearance of the problem There are real public health consequences to high concentrations of people living without proper sanitation -- see the ongoing, major hepatitis outbreak in San Diego, for instance.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  So it's only an issue when the public health of the rich is at risk? Because it seems to me that's what your comment is implying.
  - arkades 9y ago
    No, he’s saying that homelessness in high population density areas has secondary effects that you don’t see in low density areas.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Right, with the implication that only homelessness with those secondary effects is the only homelessness that should be addressed.
s73ver_ 9y ago
It's paid attention to pretty much everywhere. Down in southern California, the homeless problem in LA and Orange County gets covered pretty regularly. I suspect you hear more about SV homelessness here because this is a pretty SV heavy forum.

Jimmie_Rustle 9y ago

> “How about for us people who are serving these tech people?” Saldana said. “We don’t get the same paycheck that they do.” I don't understand this attitude. You expect the same paycheck as someone who has invested a lot of time and effort to make it in a very competitive field? She also lives in an RV with her '3 adult sons'... 4 adults should be able to come up with the money to rent at least an apartment even on minimum wage.

chrischen 9y ago

> Mountain View, a city of 80,000 which also is home to Mozilla and 23andMe, has committed more than $1 million over two years for homeless services, including money for an outreach case manager and a police officer to help people who live in vehicles. Why are local governments treating these people as dysfunctional when the dysfunction is in the government in its ability to provide an environment that is safe, stable, and affordable for otherwise functional members of society.

alexandercrohde 9y ago
I don't get it. Is your premise is that every person making minimum should be able to live anywhere they want in the US, and if they can't the government is responsible?
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  This isn't really an abstract problem that requires reductio ad absurdum type arguments. I grew up in the UK and I visit the valley sometimes. There are several things you immediately notice: 1) Every building is incredibly short. 2) Every building is spaced very far apart. 3) Every road is incredibly wide. Even fairly unimportant roads, the sort that have rinky dink little cafes on them, will often have three lanes in each direction or more. The Valley has a homelessness problem because the people who live there refuse to let anyone build tall, dense housing complexes. There's so much space here you could crush the homelessness and poverty problems instantly by just relaxing zoning rules, it wouldn't even take a social housing programme. But instead all the space is taken up with tiny low rise buildings surrounded by enormous parking lots.
  - alexandercrohde 9y ago
    Yes, but why should they? If a community likes wide roads, low traffic, short buildings, are they somehow obligated to knock down those buildings so that other people can live there?
- closeparen 9y ago

polotics 9y ago

America the lousily-organised.