4 ms·

You can rationalize almost any injustice with "if you don't like it, move away". And telling an entire generation that they shouldn't be allowed to live, or rai

You can rationalize almost any injustice with "if you don't like it, move away". And telling an entire generation that they shouldn't be allowed to live, or raise families, in the Bay Area is an injustice.

Spooky23 9y ago
We live in a market economy. The fact is, the SF Bay area is a housing shitshow, mostly because of a boom economy, which will end. Nobody was talking about this crisis in 2002 when the economy hit the skids, and all of the wacky California policy issues with property taxes and development challenges were all there. I don't live in California. I live in an urban environment in a neighborhood a mixed 1-4 family freestanding units. A major component of my property's valuation is that neighborhood cohesion. When you hear people characterizing turning potting sheds into shitty rental units as some sort of victory for social justice, you're hearing a movement that is poised to be upsurped by well capitalized real estate developers. I grew up in Queens, NYC, which has pretty loose zoning controls. My neighborhood, which in the 80s was a mix a 1-2 family detached and attached homes, changed dramatically, starting with the 80s real estate boom and continuing in waves in the 90s boom and the 2000's boom. The end result is a mix of cut-up single family homes and a bunch of teardown situations where nasty condo units eliminated open space, made parking a nightmare and killed the community. The only happy stakeholders are the real estate people who walked away with millions and left a mess for the residents and the city to deal with.
- closeparen 9y ago
  If we lived in a market economy, the market would find the most efficient use for each parcel. We don't. We live in a centrally planned economy with respect to real estate, and the central planners have got their priorities backwards. Your framing of the residents of high-density housing as not "stakeholders" or "the community" is a common NIMBY talking point, but the condo/apartment dwellers whose humanity you choose to deny are not less deserving of space than you. If the "well-capitalized developers" want to help people like me (who were born too late to own city land) fight for the right to occupy space, I'll take it.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Sure we do. It’s much more efficient to have some engineer pulling down crazy money to buy existing housing stock or move in with 6 roommates as compared to ripping down and replacing buildings. It just sucks for everyone when there are thousands of those engineers sucking the oxygen out of the city. You could say the same things about the $2000/mo trailer parks in South Dakota when gas booms. I live 4,000 miles away. My humanity doesn’t require that I have an apartment on 5th Avenue. Instead, I own a home where high quality housing runs around $100/ft. Fundamentally, the reason you don’t live in Cleveland or Buffalo is that aerospace and other industries left and moved to California 80 years ago, largely because it was cheap to buy an Orange grove. Capital and the investment culture of tech is why SFO is the way it is. Until that changes and Google Omaha starts impacting demand, you are stuck. Markets are about control. Not fairness, not what is right. If you don’t control the votes, and don’t control the land, you don’t have a stake.
    - pcwalton 9y ago
      The fact that only engineers and similarly well-off individuals can afford to buy property in the Bay Area is because of NIMBYs. More NIMBYism will only make the problem worse. If you prevent wealthy people from buying new homes, they'll just buy old ones instead. This isn't a theoretical concern. In fact, it's precisely what has been happening throughout the SF Bay Area.
- Romanulus 9y ago
  What is your point, though? I own a home in the third most expensive city in Canada... there are some serious housing shithshows around here, too. If things get any worse I would consider selling and moving, similarly if I was in the rental market side of things. I have no compelling allegiance to this area that makes me feel like I am entitled to the land or deserve to live here for some reason the same way I don't feel upset if I have to move my hand off of an ever-increasing hot metaphorical stove-top. What do you mean by your first statement? There are many types of market economies; this one seems to be state-driven (into the ground).
- pcwalton 9y ago
  The SF Bay Area is a "housing shitshow" because there is too little supply for the demand. That much we agree upon. The idea that we just have to wait for the "boom economy" to end for the housing prices to fall to reasonable levels is not backed up by any evidence. Even the dotcom collapse of the oughts and the Great Recession didn't have enough of an effect on Bay Area housing prices [1] to make them affordable. Furthermore, there's plenty of evidence that this isn't a bubble—the demand is driven by well-established tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple that aren't going anywhere. > The end result is a mix of cut-up single family homes and a bunch of teardown situations where nasty condo units eliminated open space, made parking a nightmare and killed the community. Speak for yourself. I happen to like those "nasty condo units". In fact, I just bought one in San Francisco (in a building that replaced a disused industrial warehouse) after nearly a decade of saving—which was necessary largely because of NIMBYs driving down supply. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to do that, and I fully intend to buck the trend of homeowner-driven NIMBYism and encourage more development in the area so that others in my generation, as well as future generations, can afford to live here. [1]: https://www.paragon-re.com/trend/annual-trends-overview-san-francisco-real-estate https://www.paragon-re.com/trend/annual-trends-overview-san-...
Romanulus 9y ago
Did I say that families should or shouldn't be allowed to do something? By all means, go there, live there, do whatever you want as long as you're not harming anyone else. By the by, it's also a grave injustice that I'm not driving a lambo; someone needs to sort that snafu out, because it's not my fault.
- SllX 9y ago
  I believe our fellow poster was referring to the generation that grew up in San Francisco and are finding it too expensive to continue living here.
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
An injustice? They have a fundamental right to live in the Bay Area? My bar for "injustice" is a bit higher than that...
- wffurr 9y ago
  If you're born somewhere, have family and roots in a place, and then can't afford to live there because of people coming in and jacking up the rent and property prices, that's definitely injustice. Is it injustice that a new CS grad who got a job at Facebook can't afford a place in San Francisco? Not really, plenty of other places to work.
  - Kalium 9y ago
    So, not to put too fine a point on it, in your mind there's a privileged class that deserves to have housing they can afford and an unprivileged class that does not. And this privilege is largely hereditary. Do I follow you correctly? I have to assume not, because such a notion is an affront to equity, fairness, and progressive principles. I would very much like to know where I erred in following your logic.
    - watwut 9y ago
      His point was not inheritance, it was being part of community for years. If your parents lived there, but you did not, you don't count. It is disingenuous to call that hereditary. I dont care about SF, the best would be for tech to move away from there. It just dont fit in, spacewise. Companies should more to place where they fit. But I find it funny that the same forum that yap and cry about lack of community or loneliness in every single loosely related topic (and especially when it is possible to blame women not being at home anymore), puts exactly zero value on it when it comes to people who were born in San Francisco and are not one of us. The parent you complain about here is literally about social ties and community. Newcomers don't have it and young tech people don't really value it, so maybe it would make sense for us to move away. Unless we make it about entering contracts and all that, in which case people who been there first has the same right to make rules they do like.

Spooky23 9y ago

We live in a market economy. The fact is, the SF Bay area is a housing shitshow, mostly because of a boom economy, which will end. Nobody was talking about this crisis in 2002 when the economy hit the skids, and all of the wacky California policy issues with property taxes and development challenges were all there. I don't live in California. I live in an urban environment in a neighborhood a mixed 1-4 family freestanding units. A major component of my property's valuation is that neighborhood cohesion. When you hear people characterizing turning potting sheds into shitty rental units as some sort of victory for social justice, you're hearing a movement that is poised to be upsurped by well capitalized real estate developers. I grew up in Queens, NYC, which has pretty loose zoning controls. My neighborhood, which in the 80s was a mix a 1-2 family detached and attached homes, changed dramatically, starting with the 80s real estate boom and continuing in waves in the 90s boom and the 2000's boom. The end result is a mix of cut-up single family homes and a bunch of teardown situations where nasty condo units eliminated open space, made parking a nightmare and killed the community. The only happy stakeholders are the real estate people who walked away with millions and left a mess for the residents and the city to deal with.

closeparen 9y ago
If we lived in a market economy, the market would find the most efficient use for each parcel. We don't. We live in a centrally planned economy with respect to real estate, and the central planners have got their priorities backwards. Your framing of the residents of high-density housing as not "stakeholders" or "the community" is a common NIMBY talking point, but the condo/apartment dwellers whose humanity you choose to deny are not less deserving of space than you. If the "well-capitalized developers" want to help people like me (who were born too late to own city land) fight for the right to occupy space, I'll take it.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Sure we do. It’s much more efficient to have some engineer pulling down crazy money to buy existing housing stock or move in with 6 roommates as compared to ripping down and replacing buildings. It just sucks for everyone when there are thousands of those engineers sucking the oxygen out of the city. You could say the same things about the $2000/mo trailer parks in South Dakota when gas booms. I live 4,000 miles away. My humanity doesn’t require that I have an apartment on 5th Avenue. Instead, I own a home where high quality housing runs around $100/ft. Fundamentally, the reason you don’t live in Cleveland or Buffalo is that aerospace and other industries left and moved to California 80 years ago, largely because it was cheap to buy an Orange grove. Capital and the investment culture of tech is why SFO is the way it is. Until that changes and Google Omaha starts impacting demand, you are stuck. Markets are about control. Not fairness, not what is right. If you don’t control the votes, and don’t control the land, you don’t have a stake.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    The fact that only engineers and similarly well-off individuals can afford to buy property in the Bay Area is because of NIMBYs. More NIMBYism will only make the problem worse. If you prevent wealthy people from buying new homes, they'll just buy old ones instead. This isn't a theoretical concern. In fact, it's precisely what has been happening throughout the SF Bay Area.
Romanulus 9y ago
What is your point, though? I own a home in the third most expensive city in Canada... there are some serious housing shithshows around here, too. If things get any worse I would consider selling and moving, similarly if I was in the rental market side of things. I have no compelling allegiance to this area that makes me feel like I am entitled to the land or deserve to live here for some reason the same way I don't feel upset if I have to move my hand off of an ever-increasing hot metaphorical stove-top. What do you mean by your first statement? There are many types of market economies; this one seems to be state-driven (into the ground).
pcwalton 9y ago
The SF Bay Area is a "housing shitshow" because there is too little supply for the demand. That much we agree upon. The idea that we just have to wait for the "boom economy" to end for the housing prices to fall to reasonable levels is not backed up by any evidence. Even the dotcom collapse of the oughts and the Great Recession didn't have enough of an effect on Bay Area housing prices [1] to make them affordable. Furthermore, there's plenty of evidence that this isn't a bubble—the demand is driven by well-established tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple that aren't going anywhere. > The end result is a mix of cut-up single family homes and a bunch of teardown situations where nasty condo units eliminated open space, made parking a nightmare and killed the community. Speak for yourself. I happen to like those "nasty condo units". In fact, I just bought one in San Francisco (in a building that replaced a disused industrial warehouse) after nearly a decade of saving—which was necessary largely because of NIMBYs driving down supply. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to do that, and I fully intend to buck the trend of homeowner-driven NIMBYism and encourage more development in the area so that others in my generation, as well as future generations, can afford to live here. [1]: https://www.paragon-re.com/trend/annual-trends-overview-san-francisco-real-estate https://www.paragon-re.com/trend/annual-trends-overview-san-...

Romanulus 9y ago

Did I say that families should or shouldn't be allowed to do something? By all means, go there, live there, do whatever you want as long as you're not harming anyone else. By the by, it's also a grave injustice that I'm not driving a lambo; someone needs to sort that snafu out, because it's not my fault.

SllX 9y ago
I believe our fellow poster was referring to the generation that grew up in San Francisco and are finding it too expensive to continue living here.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

An injustice? They have a fundamental right to live in the Bay Area? My bar for "injustice" is a bit higher than that...

wffurr 9y ago
If you're born somewhere, have family and roots in a place, and then can't afford to live there because of people coming in and jacking up the rent and property prices, that's definitely injustice. Is it injustice that a new CS grad who got a job at Facebook can't afford a place in San Francisco? Not really, plenty of other places to work.
- Kalium 9y ago
  So, not to put too fine a point on it, in your mind there's a privileged class that deserves to have housing they can afford and an unprivileged class that does not. And this privilege is largely hereditary. Do I follow you correctly? I have to assume not, because such a notion is an affront to equity, fairness, and progressive principles. I would very much like to know where I erred in following your logic.
  - watwut 9y ago
    His point was not inheritance, it was being part of community for years. If your parents lived there, but you did not, you don't count. It is disingenuous to call that hereditary. I dont care about SF, the best would be for tech to move away from there. It just dont fit in, spacewise. Companies should more to place where they fit. But I find it funny that the same forum that yap and cry about lack of community or loneliness in every single loosely related topic (and especially when it is possible to blame women not being at home anymore), puts exactly zero value on it when it comes to people who were born in San Francisco and are not one of us. The parent you complain about here is literally about social ties and community. Newcomers don't have it and young tech people don't really value it, so maybe it would make sense for us to move away. Unless we make it about entering contracts and all that, in which case people who been there first has the same right to make rules they do like.