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California always amazes with its goals, decade after decade of leadership among the states. Building is promoted to improve affordability. Building is discoura
by yostrovs 9y ago
California always amazes with its goals, decade after decade of leadership among the states. Building is promoted to improve affordability. Building is discouraged to preserve the environment and maintain a local culture. Building is promoted to provide new transportation options. Building is discouraged to reduce congestion, contain sprawl. Building and not building at the same time helps California maintain its unique logical and psychological balance.
- numbsafari 9y agoIt’s as though California is a giant state with a diverse population, both politically and geographically, with lots of competing interests that, over time, has gone through various political and leadership changes that reflect that diversity.
- Wohlf 9y agoApparently not, because 97% of the NIMBYs are winning.
- IntronExon 9y agoThe state is diverse, but perhaps typically the people with serious power are far less diverse. There are many voices, but only a subset get to be heard in a way that matters.
- api 9y agoThe instant you sign a mortgage it becomes in your economic best interest to limit the supply of housing. Housing cannot simultaneously be affordable and a good investment. Homeowners on average tend to be more politically engaged, so homeowners dominate state and local politics. As for why every prosperous state doesn't have this problem as badly as California you can add prop 13 which hugely limited property tax increases for existing homeowners. This eliminated one of the major checks on real estate hyperinflation. You can further add the fact that the San Francisco Bay Area (the region with the highest prices by far) is geographically constrained and the fact that earthquake risk imposes additional site preparation and construction costs. It's really a perfect storm for real estate price insanity, specially in the Bay Area. It's less insane in SoCal but still pretty high, especially when compared to median income in LA County and San Diego. SoCal is less geographically constrained.
- wickawic 9y agoYou can be a homeowner and also not be a misanthrope at the same time. The min/max attitude of tech workers has always disgusted me in his regard. Edit: I don’t retract my statement, but at the time of posting this my parent comment only contained the first paragraph. I agree with most points brought up
- api 9y agoAverages matter a lot. You can be magnanimous but it doesn't take that many greedy bastards to have an effect. I also think closet classism/racism plays into it. California has a liberal facade but there's a lot of "we don't want those kinds of people" in our neighborhood sentiment below the surface. Making sure housing is unaffordable for minorities and the poor is a great passive-aggressive way to implement segregation without having to admit it.
- CodeWriter23 9y agoThe poor would never be able to afford food at the Gelson’s in those areas.
- theseatoms 9y ago> The instant you sign a mortgage it becomes in your economic best interest to limit the supply of housing. In the long-run you want economic development to happen though.
- briffle 9y agoI don't really get this mentality. Yes, its good to have your home go up in value, but when you sell, are you moving to South Dakota? If not, then the houses your hoping to move into have ALSO gone up in value. The difference being that nobody can afford 'starter homes' at the low end, so people have a harder time selling them, and moving up to a nicer house.
- eweise 9y agoA lot of people view their home as part of their retirement plan. Buy house, raise kids, retire and sell house. Buy new house outside of work center. House prices in places like Redding CA are in the 200K range. Same house in the bay area is around 1million.
- tryitnow 9y agoSuperficially, this may be the case, but when it comes to land use, entrenched interests tend to win - and those interests are the current homeowners who block new growth. In short, it's a lot easier to not do something than to do it and in an environment of diverse, competing interest, the easiest route is the likely winner.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoThat's not an excuse. CA is anything but politically diverse. The people of LA, SF and surrounding cities have done a very thorough job of consolidating power and marginalizing everyone else. The source of your problems is in the mirror.
- geodel 9y agoIt is an example of Doublethink [1]. "Doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts.." I believe this site is also full of that all the time. From metered usage of all resources but internet, doctors vs bankers pay and so on. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoDoublethink is when an individual holds mutually contradictory views. There are 40 million people in California.
- theseatoms 9y agoThen what's it called when two counteracting policies produce outcomes that are strictly worse than no policy at all?
- slothtrop 9y agoIs it not more accurately a fight against sprawl and call to increase density in city cores?
- DataWorker 9y agoTo think in terms of a false dichotomy like building/not-building just reduces a very complex policy area down to something so oversimplified as to be meaningless. It’s like asking, “technology good or bad?” Not very useful.
- swsieber 9y agoOh, you mean building with discretion.
- mmanfrin 9y agoProgress is messy.