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If you ever want to understand why parts of Silicon Valley has a 16:1 new jobs:new homes ratio, check out this twitter: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/99

If you ever want to understand why parts of Silicon Valley has a 16:1 new jobs:new homes ratio, check out this twitter: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/999364778907914245 https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/999364778907914245 The NIMBYism is insane. You have people who own $2M houses ($1.9M of which is capital gains) complaining about gentrification and ruined neighborhood character.

conanbatt 8y ago
I won't get tired of saying this: SF does not have a nymbism problem as much as a tax structure problem. The city spends 2600U$S per month household. (11 bil / 360k households). Because the city levies taxes on sales and corporate taxes and business taxes, the ultimate burden of taxes is borne by consumers, workers and business owners. Thus owning a home is a way to capture the value of all that tax expenditure, possibly with an incredibly reduced prop 13 tax rule. If instead, San Francisco changed its tax structure from corp/sales to land taxes, workers would see their incomes increase, businesses thrive, and real estate residences plummet in value. Think that if every propery had to pay 2600U$S monthly in taxes they would be worth almost nothing. The most stern nymbism will very desperatly ask developers to nuke his own house if he had to pay that much every month.
- anonuser123456 8y ago
  While this may be true, I'm not sure this is the calculus that goes through the average NIMBYite's mind. There are a lot of SF nativists that don't own property and are activists against change.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    The calculus definitely goes through their mind: if you bought a house 20 years ago, worth 1 million in the market, you might be paying less than 5k a year, while their average tax consumption from the city would be 31k. Unless they make up the difference with a business, working, or consuming enough to offset with sales taxes, they are 26k+ positive.
    - anonuser123456 8y ago
      I think your assuming the city provides 26k+ of value on those taxes to residents. That's a dubious assumption in SF.
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        I don't, im pretty sure is well below that. But its how much it spends. Precisely, as homeowners are disproportionately voters, the following step would be to restrict goverment spending: who wants to pay 2600 a month for a closed transit station, heroin needles and exporting homeless people. But now, the homeowner gets a very sweet deal, probably 50k a year in rental per unit he has.
- briandear 8y ago
  > the ultimate burden of taxes is borne by consumers That's it. All taxes are borne by consumers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPp3u4Jrdmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPp3u4Jrdmw "Corporations don't pay taxes, they collect taxes..."
  - inscionent 8y ago
    and all taxes are theft, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to go build a railroad.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Thats incorrect. Some taxes, like corp taxes, are not borne by investors alone and fall on consumers, but there are taxes that do hit land owners, or investors, etc etc. The concept is called tax inciddence.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Think that if every propery had to pay 2600U$S monthly in taxes they would be worth almost nothing. SF has lots of properties that sold at $3 million+ at their last sale, and so would be paying about that in basic property taxes before the 2% annual basis value increase allowed under prop 13, Mello-Roos assessments, etc. Now,if every housing unit (not property) were assessed a $2600/mo tax, would that drive sale prices down? Maybe. Would it drive up incomes and make businesses thrive? Well, it would increase the income of people living in SF (excluding the homeless) by driving lower income people out even more than the status quo does. But it wouldn't cause incomes for the same people to rise. But, also, that's not a land tax. What you really seem to want,if you want a land tax, is something like a tax not of $2600 on every property or every housing unit, but on every unit of land area equivalent to the average per-household land footprint of existing housing units. And, sure, that might encourage density, but not the income or business effects you claim.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    > Now,if every housing unit (not property) were assessed a $2600/mo tax, would that drive sale prices down? Maybe. Would it drive up incomes and make businesses thrive? Well, it would increase the income of people living in SF (excluding the homeless) by driving lower income people out even more than the status quo does. But it wouldn't cause incomes for the same people to rise. But, also, that's not a land tax. You are correct, incidence is not the same of property vs land. Land is preferrable becuase the 2mill single family hosuehold that takes the same space than the 5 mill 9 unit apt gets more tax benefits. You also have the added difficulty that prop taxes are capped. But land taxes aren't. In any case, shifting the burden from consumers, workers and businesses to landlords will inevitable drop the propery values enormously, regardless of the tax scheme implemented. They are today tax-positive. Even if you only do half the tax burden, it would be enough change incentives profoundly.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > You also have the added difficulty that prop taxes are capped. But land taxes aren't. I don't think California allows local governments to raise land taxes (it allows parcel taxes, that are apportioned on a flat per-parcel basis, but that's obviously not the same as a land tax.) > In any case, shifting the burden from consumers, workers and businesses to landlords ...won't happen. The consumers and businesses that rent property (and the workers employed by businesses and whose sustainable potential pay is limited by other costs the employer has to pay to operate) will still bear the burden of the taxes, even if they are directly levied on property owners.
megaman8 8y ago
This is an excellent point, and is the Primary reason why we have this housing crisis. Things like zoning and regulation can theoretically be fixed, if voters wisen up. But the longer this goes on, the more middle class residents will leave the bay area for good. Once the entire middle class is gone, we'll have no hope of ever building cost effective housing (other than automation) because there won't be anymore cost effective labor left to build it with. We're already seeing pretty large inflation on a local level for services: like eating out and plumbing, etc.
- sjg007 8y ago
  In theory services wages grow in line with product inflation. Plumbers make bank though.
ghobs91 8y ago
Yup. I've always found it so bizarre that NIMBYs feel entitled to a neighborhood that remains exactly as it was when they bought their home. Is it reasonable to expect a 10 year old car to operate the same as the day you bought it? It's especially absurd since we're talking about a global, dynamic city, not some small rural town. Can you imagine if 1900s NYC had the NIMBY culture of present day SF? It would've severely choked its growth. SF's saving grace is its VC ecosystem and network effect between existing talent. You can barely even say they have a monopoly on talent pool, since the ivy leagues and many other top schools are nowhere near SF. These factors are gradually growing in other cities, and the bay area will get to a point where the cost of living will turn it into just another city. They've essentially created one of the worlds largest funnels of money into landlords pockets. So much wasted capital. This isn't like the finance stronghold in NY or entertainment in LA, tech companies are involved in every industry, and don't need to be in SF to thrive.
- Kalium 8y ago
  California's property tax system, and often hyper-local control over planning, encourages the idea that once you buy an area is frozen in time.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  > Is it reasonable to expect a 10 year old car to operate the same as the day you bought it? Poor choice of analogy, with proper maintenance this is perfectly reasonable and fairly trivial to achieve.
- muzz 8y ago
  Yet it seems that these industries are "moving" ie virtually to the Bay Area when they are being technologized. Hotels -> AirBnb Taxis -> Uber/Lyft Automobiles -> Tesla Video distribution -> Netflix Tech in the Bay Area is expanding its footprint, not reducing it.
- almost_usual 8y ago
  >SF's saving grace is its VC ecosystem and network effect between existing talent. And pretty much perfect year long weather matched with world class outdoor activities within driving distance. I don't think the cost of housing in the Bay Area is going down anytime soon. People figured out it's a desirable place to live and are willing to spend more to live there.
rhacker 8y ago
The bay area is a vast driving horror. I laugh when I see people say the word NIMBY because it's like let's double or triple the number of cars on the road here! Then you all claim these new people are going to live next to their grocery store and workplace and won't own a car. Oh dear. If you can't even control the nimbys what makes you think you can enforce that?
antisthenes 8y ago
It's especially ironic, given Prop 13 and the consequences it entails about affordability for incumbent residents.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
It is interesting to see the dichotomy here, and sad. I suspect that some neighbors never saved enough for retirement and so having their home "worth" a million dollars over what they paid for it is what they are counting on to live on in their retirement. So they are highly motivated to have house prices stay high, while people who are looking to buy their first home are looking for affordable options. Sunnyvale at least has been doing a good job of adding housing in spite of the NIMBYism. It isn't a popular opinion on Nextdoor but every fora has its taboos.
oarabbus_ 8y ago
>Some people seem to think every place should be equally affordable to everyone and I do not understand that. Perhaps you can explain Is there something obvious I'm missing here? This seems to be a salient point. Why should it cost the same to live by the beach in California vs. being in a rural area in Wyoming?

conanbatt 8y ago

I won't get tired of saying this: SF does not have a nymbism problem as much as a tax structure problem. The city spends 2600U$S per month household. (11 bil / 360k households). Because the city levies taxes on sales and corporate taxes and business taxes, the ultimate burden of taxes is borne by consumers, workers and business owners. Thus owning a home is a way to capture the value of all that tax expenditure, possibly with an incredibly reduced prop 13 tax rule. If instead, San Francisco changed its tax structure from corp/sales to land taxes, workers would see their incomes increase, businesses thrive, and real estate residences plummet in value. Think that if every propery had to pay 2600U$S monthly in taxes they would be worth almost nothing. The most stern nymbism will very desperatly ask developers to nuke his own house if he had to pay that much every month.

anonuser123456 8y ago
While this may be true, I'm not sure this is the calculus that goes through the average NIMBYite's mind. There are a lot of SF nativists that don't own property and are activists against change.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  The calculus definitely goes through their mind: if you bought a house 20 years ago, worth 1 million in the market, you might be paying less than 5k a year, while their average tax consumption from the city would be 31k. Unless they make up the difference with a business, working, or consuming enough to offset with sales taxes, they are 26k+ positive.
  - anonuser123456 8y ago
    I think your assuming the city provides 26k+ of value on those taxes to residents. That's a dubious assumption in SF.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      I don't, im pretty sure is well below that. But its how much it spends. Precisely, as homeowners are disproportionately voters, the following step would be to restrict goverment spending: who wants to pay 2600 a month for a closed transit station, heroin needles and exporting homeless people. But now, the homeowner gets a very sweet deal, probably 50k a year in rental per unit he has.
briandear 8y ago
> the ultimate burden of taxes is borne by consumers That's it. All taxes are borne by consumers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPp3u4Jrdmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPp3u4Jrdmw "Corporations don't pay taxes, they collect taxes..."
- inscionent 8y ago
  and all taxes are theft, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to go build a railroad.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Thats incorrect. Some taxes, like corp taxes, are not borne by investors alone and fall on consumers, but there are taxes that do hit land owners, or investors, etc etc. The concept is called tax inciddence.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Think that if every propery had to pay 2600U$S monthly in taxes they would be worth almost nothing. SF has lots of properties that sold at $3 million+ at their last sale, and so would be paying about that in basic property taxes before the 2% annual basis value increase allowed under prop 13, Mello-Roos assessments, etc. Now,if every housing unit (not property) were assessed a $2600/mo tax, would that drive sale prices down? Maybe. Would it drive up incomes and make businesses thrive? Well, it would increase the income of people living in SF (excluding the homeless) by driving lower income people out even more than the status quo does. But it wouldn't cause incomes for the same people to rise. But, also, that's not a land tax. What you really seem to want,if you want a land tax, is something like a tax not of $2600 on every property or every housing unit, but on every unit of land area equivalent to the average per-household land footprint of existing housing units. And, sure, that might encourage density, but not the income or business effects you claim.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  > Now,if every housing unit (not property) were assessed a $2600/mo tax, would that drive sale prices down? Maybe. Would it drive up incomes and make businesses thrive? Well, it would increase the income of people living in SF (excluding the homeless) by driving lower income people out even more than the status quo does. But it wouldn't cause incomes for the same people to rise. But, also, that's not a land tax. You are correct, incidence is not the same of property vs land. Land is preferrable becuase the 2mill single family hosuehold that takes the same space than the 5 mill 9 unit apt gets more tax benefits. You also have the added difficulty that prop taxes are capped. But land taxes aren't. In any case, shifting the burden from consumers, workers and businesses to landlords will inevitable drop the propery values enormously, regardless of the tax scheme implemented. They are today tax-positive. Even if you only do half the tax burden, it would be enough change incentives profoundly.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > You also have the added difficulty that prop taxes are capped. But land taxes aren't. I don't think California allows local governments to raise land taxes (it allows parcel taxes, that are apportioned on a flat per-parcel basis, but that's obviously not the same as a land tax.) > In any case, shifting the burden from consumers, workers and businesses to landlords ...won't happen. The consumers and businesses that rent property (and the workers employed by businesses and whose sustainable potential pay is limited by other costs the employer has to pay to operate) will still bear the burden of the taxes, even if they are directly levied on property owners.

megaman8 8y ago

This is an excellent point, and is the Primary reason why we have this housing crisis. Things like zoning and regulation can theoretically be fixed, if voters wisen up. But the longer this goes on, the more middle class residents will leave the bay area for good. Once the entire middle class is gone, we'll have no hope of ever building cost effective housing (other than automation) because there won't be anymore cost effective labor left to build it with. We're already seeing pretty large inflation on a local level for services: like eating out and plumbing, etc.

sjg007 8y ago
In theory services wages grow in line with product inflation. Plumbers make bank though.

ghobs91 8y ago

Yup. I've always found it so bizarre that NIMBYs feel entitled to a neighborhood that remains exactly as it was when they bought their home. Is it reasonable to expect a 10 year old car to operate the same as the day you bought it? It's especially absurd since we're talking about a global, dynamic city, not some small rural town. Can you imagine if 1900s NYC had the NIMBY culture of present day SF? It would've severely choked its growth. SF's saving grace is its VC ecosystem and network effect between existing talent. You can barely even say they have a monopoly on talent pool, since the ivy leagues and many other top schools are nowhere near SF. These factors are gradually growing in other cities, and the bay area will get to a point where the cost of living will turn it into just another city. They've essentially created one of the worlds largest funnels of money into landlords pockets. So much wasted capital. This isn't like the finance stronghold in NY or entertainment in LA, tech companies are involved in every industry, and don't need to be in SF to thrive.

Kalium 8y ago
California's property tax system, and often hyper-local control over planning, encourages the idea that once you buy an area is frozen in time.
newnewpdro 8y ago
> Is it reasonable to expect a 10 year old car to operate the same as the day you bought it? Poor choice of analogy, with proper maintenance this is perfectly reasonable and fairly trivial to achieve.
muzz 8y ago
Yet it seems that these industries are "moving" ie virtually to the Bay Area when they are being technologized. Hotels -> AirBnb Taxis -> Uber/Lyft Automobiles -> Tesla Video distribution -> Netflix Tech in the Bay Area is expanding its footprint, not reducing it.
almost_usual 8y ago
>SF's saving grace is its VC ecosystem and network effect between existing talent. And pretty much perfect year long weather matched with world class outdoor activities within driving distance. I don't think the cost of housing in the Bay Area is going down anytime soon. People figured out it's a desirable place to live and are willing to spend more to live there.

rhacker 8y ago

The bay area is a vast driving horror. I laugh when I see people say the word NIMBY because it's like let's double or triple the number of cars on the road here! Then you all claim these new people are going to live next to their grocery store and workplace and won't own a car. Oh dear. If you can't even control the nimbys what makes you think you can enforce that?

antisthenes 8y ago

It's especially ironic, given Prop 13 and the consequences it entails about affordability for incumbent residents.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

It is interesting to see the dichotomy here, and sad. I suspect that some neighbors never saved enough for retirement and so having their home "worth" a million dollars over what they paid for it is what they are counting on to live on in their retirement. So they are highly motivated to have house prices stay high, while people who are looking to buy their first home are looking for affordable options. Sunnyvale at least has been doing a good job of adding housing in spite of the NIMBYism. It isn't a popular opinion on Nextdoor but every fora has its taboos.

oarabbus_ 8y ago

>Some people seem to think every place should be equally affordable to everyone and I do not understand that. Perhaps you can explain Is there something obvious I'm missing here? This seems to be a salient point. Why should it cost the same to live by the beach in California vs. being in a rural area in Wyoming?