9 ms·

He is right about the alarming ratio of public school funding to public school failure. California's problem isn't space. It's NIMBY. CA's gone so NIMBY that r

He is right about the alarming ratio of public school funding to public school failure. California's problem isn't space. It's NIMBY. CA's gone so NIMBY that regulations stifle the younger generation's ability to build and buy their homes. My wife and I went to open houses this weekend. Young Berkeley professors can't afford to live where they work. Young teachers can't afford to live where they work. This sort of thing is a societal recipe for disaster. (Long, but consider this a documentary on how NIMBY has affected housing in California, from the POV of a cool landlord. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg )

tathougies 8y ago
I agree with him on the schooling. Notice my comment was solely about space, not school.
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago
  Don’t you think it’s connected? Or are you suggesting that people build homes and don’t send their kids to school? I am ready for the assault of downvotes if it means the right questions are asked. One average home is 4 people. 2 cars. 2 kids. 2 incomes. 40% of it goes to various taxes. Dense over crowded cities. Overcrowded schools. Kids need tutoring because everyone wants their kids to succeed. 2 hour commutes. Baby sitting and child care. More water. More gas. More pollution. More public services. Same or smaller roads as bicycles and walkable roads become important. Less shopping as space is used for homes and people travel outside more and shopping dollars go out of the city. Less open spaces and nature. People start traveling for vacations and relaxation. More outflow without a balanced local economy. More service people needed for the high tech income earning population. But unaffordable for lower tiers for income. Break this down for me. How is high density sustainable? Seriously ..how? Having a house isn’t everything. Living involves many other things.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    How is high density sustainable? Higher densities are clearly sustainable. We have historical precedent for higher densities than San Francisco. (Resulting in exceptional, vibrant communities.) Futurists envision (and quantify) ways this planet alone could sustain approaching a trillion. Kids need tutoring because everyone wants their kids to succeed Higher densities mean lower housing prices. Lower housing prices mean teachers and professors can actually live where they work. Lower housing prices mean creatives, craftspeople, artists, and diverse people can keep living locally.
    - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
      So how is housing affordability in San Francisco working for you? Is the higher density in SF bring all those supposed promised sustainablity benefits?
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        So how is housing affordability in San Francisco working for you? The housing density in SF is held at lower levels than the market equilibrium. The result is miserable, because the density is artificially low for the current market.
        jelliclesfarm 8y ago
        Are you saying that if San Francisco has more people, it will become more sustainable and affordable and people will be happier? Paint that picture for me, please.
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Are you saying that if San Francisco has more people, it will become more sustainable and affordable and people will be happier? Of course that's a broken causal chain and obvious straw man. You have to start out with more and cheaper housing. Economic analyses indicate we could build a huge amount more housing, and people would snap it up. Build enough to actually bring the housing prices down, and yes, there would be a much more vibrant and diverse city life. (But the market has to follow this naturally. Legislating prices lower will have the opposite effect.) As far as cities being "sustainable" -- cities draw resources to themselves. That's simply how it works. Sustainability is something that only matters in the economy as a whole. Cities need not be locally sustainable to generate wealth and to be a positive benefit to society. Paint that picture for me, please. New York City in the past. Houston in its run up to becoming the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US. Chicago in the past as well. San Francisco is artificially held back from the density the market in other cities have achieved.
  - tathougies 8y ago
    > How is high density sustainable? The question really is how is 'low density' sustainable. Can you point me to an agrarian area that has lasted for thousands of years, with continuous occupation, and continuous economic prosperity (or at least no long periods of economic destitution)? I don't think you can. On the other hand, humanity has countless examples of the sustainability of high-density cities. I can name off the top of my head many cities that have successfully housed humans with high density for thousands upon thousands of years: 1. Rome 2. Cairo 3. Chengdu 4. Baghdad 5. Bukhara 6. London 7. Mexico City/Tenochtitlan 8. Tokyo > Don’t you think it’s connected? Yes. Low density housing decreases access to education by requiring extra costs to achieve the same ends. All the civilizations listed above managed not only to house people, but also to educate them, hence retaining the prominence they held thousands of years ago to the present day. The issue is not enough high density housing. Having lived in some of the cities listed above, San Francisco feels like living in the country side. Do not respond by asking how high density is working in San Francisco. San Francisco is not high density. It acts as if it is a moderately sized city when it really ought to be a metropolis. This is also not an issue of taxation, as several of those cities have much lower tax rates than California. I am a libertarian at heart, so I am for lower taxes. However, it is a mistake to think California's high taxes are because of high-density. California's high taxes are a response to the need to pay for the externalities caused by low-density housing. For example, road maintenance, bus systems, etc are all much cheaper to run if people live closer together. Moreover, the schools fail not because of the density in housing but because of the lack of competition to drive prices down. Catholic schools in the inner city do a better job at turning out students than public schools, despite having broadly similar student bases (In terms of socioeconomics) and spending much less per student (limiting myself to Catholic schools because they have the lowest average tuition among private schools by far). I believe the average inner-city Catholic school class size is actually larger than the corresponding public school. Historically speaking of course, large classes were the norm. Sowell details the issues of public schooling in his book 'Education in America'. If you think California needs money to fix its schooling, I highly recommend that book.
    - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
      Low density can be sustainable if we live in clusters that are self sustaining. Form 4-6 Dunbar number sized communities and another bunch of them forming a bigger cluster. Intra city transport to be separate from Inter city transport..maybe underground or mag lev along with surface transport. The problem is not low density. The problem is sprawl. The solution is not high density and shaming people NIMBY or coerced altruism but cooperation. Giving people incentive to cooperate and share in return for something of non material value would work better than worsening quality of life for the productive and working folks. High density can also be sustainable. Paris is a good example but it has public transport and its shaped like a snail. It would also mean segregation of regions according to income and ameneties. Also..I can’t give you any example because no system lasts for ‘thousands’ of years. I am rejecting your high density sustainable cities list but when I get the time, I will do my own research and if I am wrong in my intuition that you are off mark, I will certainly come back to you with it. Again. You are wrong about low density meaning less education dollars. In California, we have a funding formula by which all the money goes to a common pot and then redistributed. The formula ...to put it simplistically...assigns more money to school districts with kids who need free lunches, English as second language etc. so this means counties that contribute less tax dollars and less property tax dollars due to low house prices get more of the education dollars. Highly educated households and English speaking households and those are higher income where kids don’t rely on school lunches get less education dollars. This leads to no money for infrastructure improvements or overcrowding in schools and budget cuts. And yet..it’s these high property priced areas that have a higher influx of school kids. It’s not working. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/documents/currentexpense1718.xlsx https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/documents/currentexpense1718... Per student expense allocation in affluent cities is less than in areas that have lower property values. No child is truly left behind in California when it comes to education at least as far as $ redistribution is concerned. The problems we have cannot be resolved by high density building in Bay Area and LA.
jelliclesfarm 8y ago
I am a NIMBY. I don’t want overcrowding when there is so much space in California but everyone insists on building on small patches of land where we are prisoners inside our neighbourhood ...why not in other sprawling regions of California. But Sacramento doesn’t do it because it costs money to build roads and infrastructure and provide clean water and good jobs. Everyone complains about income equality ..how about what the state does..parts of California doesn’t even have clean drinking water and rural areas don’t have connectivity ...of course everyone wants to get out and come to LA or bay area where it’s all better. But the tragedy of the commons is that the system becomes over burdened. It will collapse.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  why not in other sprawling regions of California. "My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you." -- Wintermute Distance is time. Time is money.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
watching it. I understand sacrifice, but honestly a chicken coop is more spacious than their new "bedroom"! I also understand that 700 sqf is way better than cave living, but still, for how long would I live in there?
throwawaysea 8y ago
I see repeated painting of this as generational warfare, but it isn't. It's more that younger generations feel entitled to live in one of the most desirable places in the world, at the prices they want, doing the jobs they do. I would like to live on the beach in Hawaii - should I be able to have that no matter what? Should everyone be able to? It makes sense that the Bay area would be priced high given its tremendous desirability (which may be tapering off now). If people are willing to work there for low wages, then that is their choice - they have opted into a tradeoff they are OK with, and they/others should not demonize those who were already there and want to preserve their culture/way of life/standards of living. There are numerous affordable places to live in the US that are not [New York, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.] - you may not have every big city amenity you want, or maybe even be able to do the exact job you want - but such compromises are also just a regular part of life, aren't they? To me the reframing of this issue as a generational war, or a rich versus poor thing, or use of pejoratives like "NIMBY" serves to distract from the plain truth, which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area. It's not actually in people's self interest. A society that creates severe divisions courts social unrest. Perceptions of relative status are directly linked to social unrest and lawlessness. This is operating in people at a level below consciousness, and the evolutionary roots of it probably predate human language. Of course, no one has an "unalienable right to live in the Bay area." This is technically correct. However, it's still pretty crappy if the Bay Area prices-out everyone except for techies living there. Just because you can buy it, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can keep it for yourself, doesn't mean you necessarily should.
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    I think your understanding of the concept of ownership and market forces is tenuous.
magduf 8y ago
>Young Berkeley professors can't afford to live where they work. Young teachers can't afford to live where they work. This sort of thing is a societal recipe for disaster. How so? It's surely a local recipe for disaster. But there's nothing preventing young professors and teachers from leaving the area (or the state) and finding jobs elsewhere where housing is cheaper.
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago
  Google employs thousands of people. Do they all live in the same town as where their offices are...many mid range companies and public agencies and Starbucks baristas commute to work too. What is so special about teachers that they have an expectation of walking across the street to their place of work? Everyone commutes. Everyone. This expectation of living next to where you work is exactly why we have a housing density problem. Instead of focusing on public transport to make commute painless ..we are stuffing people like sardines in a can with talking points crafted by housing activists who are mostly grant funded non profits and public agencies. More homes in expensive areas serve tax coffers in Sacramento. Not the public.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Google employs thousands of people. And can afford special busses. What is so special about teachers that they have an expectation of walking across the street to their place of work? Nothing is special about teachers. Many things would be tons better if everyone could work where they live. I used to live in a community next to a university where lots of professors lived. My best friends lived upstairs from the shops we frequented. Some of them worked in those shops. It was a walkable community, the kind where your friend might call out to you on the sidewalk from their balcony to come up and have dinner. Such things weren't luxuries but were once the province of everyman and everywoman. There is something really gracious about that kind of living. Society is poorer for it going away. Granted, increasing density is likely to squash some of those things out. However, it might well create new opportunities for such communities to exist, especially if combined with better public transportation. Instead of focusing on public transport to make commute painless Public transport has a history of making cities more vibrant. No disagreement there. This expectation of living next to where you work is exactly why we have a housing density problem. You are misunderstanding my position. People don't absolutely need to live exactly where they work. They just need to be able to afford someplace to live with a modicum of dignity -- based on perceptions of relative status. A society that prices-out certain vital segments of itself entirely -- based on market distoring laws and regulations -- is doing something wrong. I mention the young teachers and young professors specifically, because it strikes me as a misguided way of ensuring one's youth are radicalized and ideologically disconnected from their own society. we are stuffing people like sardines in a can We in CA are deliberately a few steps removed from densities the market would naturally settle at. crafted by housing activists who are mostly grant funded non profits and public agencies Are there actually activists who want more housing density? Most of what I hear about are NIMBYs and people with misguided goals of "preserving the original character" of the neighborhood by just saying no. Perhaps you are aware of a different side of this than I am.

tathougies 8y ago

I agree with him on the schooling. Notice my comment was solely about space, not school.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Don’t you think it’s connected? Or are you suggesting that people build homes and don’t send their kids to school? I am ready for the assault of downvotes if it means the right questions are asked. One average home is 4 people. 2 cars. 2 kids. 2 incomes. 40% of it goes to various taxes. Dense over crowded cities. Overcrowded schools. Kids need tutoring because everyone wants their kids to succeed. 2 hour commutes. Baby sitting and child care. More water. More gas. More pollution. More public services. Same or smaller roads as bicycles and walkable roads become important. Less shopping as space is used for homes and people travel outside more and shopping dollars go out of the city. Less open spaces and nature. People start traveling for vacations and relaxation. More outflow without a balanced local economy. More service people needed for the high tech income earning population. But unaffordable for lower tiers for income. Break this down for me. How is high density sustainable? Seriously ..how? Having a house isn’t everything. Living involves many other things.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  How is high density sustainable? Higher densities are clearly sustainable. We have historical precedent for higher densities than San Francisco. (Resulting in exceptional, vibrant communities.) Futurists envision (and quantify) ways this planet alone could sustain approaching a trillion. Kids need tutoring because everyone wants their kids to succeed Higher densities mean lower housing prices. Lower housing prices mean teachers and professors can actually live where they work. Lower housing prices mean creatives, craftspeople, artists, and diverse people can keep living locally.
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    So how is housing affordability in San Francisco working for you? Is the higher density in SF bring all those supposed promised sustainablity benefits?
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      So how is housing affordability in San Francisco working for you? The housing density in SF is held at lower levels than the market equilibrium. The result is miserable, because the density is artificially low for the current market.
      - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
        Are you saying that if San Francisco has more people, it will become more sustainable and affordable and people will be happier? Paint that picture for me, please.
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Are you saying that if San Francisco has more people, it will become more sustainable and affordable and people will be happier? Of course that's a broken causal chain and obvious straw man. You have to start out with more and cheaper housing. Economic analyses indicate we could build a huge amount more housing, and people would snap it up. Build enough to actually bring the housing prices down, and yes, there would be a much more vibrant and diverse city life. (But the market has to follow this naturally. Legislating prices lower will have the opposite effect.) As far as cities being "sustainable" -- cities draw resources to themselves. That's simply how it works. Sustainability is something that only matters in the economy as a whole. Cities need not be locally sustainable to generate wealth and to be a positive benefit to society. Paint that picture for me, please. New York City in the past. Houston in its run up to becoming the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US. Chicago in the past as well. San Francisco is artificially held back from the density the market in other cities have achieved.
- tathougies 8y ago
  > How is high density sustainable? The question really is how is 'low density' sustainable. Can you point me to an agrarian area that has lasted for thousands of years, with continuous occupation, and continuous economic prosperity (or at least no long periods of economic destitution)? I don't think you can. On the other hand, humanity has countless examples of the sustainability of high-density cities. I can name off the top of my head many cities that have successfully housed humans with high density for thousands upon thousands of years: 1. Rome 2. Cairo 3. Chengdu 4. Baghdad 5. Bukhara 6. London 7. Mexico City/Tenochtitlan 8. Tokyo > Don’t you think it’s connected? Yes. Low density housing decreases access to education by requiring extra costs to achieve the same ends. All the civilizations listed above managed not only to house people, but also to educate them, hence retaining the prominence they held thousands of years ago to the present day. The issue is not enough high density housing. Having lived in some of the cities listed above, San Francisco feels like living in the country side. Do not respond by asking how high density is working in San Francisco. San Francisco is not high density. It acts as if it is a moderately sized city when it really ought to be a metropolis. This is also not an issue of taxation, as several of those cities have much lower tax rates than California. I am a libertarian at heart, so I am for lower taxes. However, it is a mistake to think California's high taxes are because of high-density. California's high taxes are a response to the need to pay for the externalities caused by low-density housing. For example, road maintenance, bus systems, etc are all much cheaper to run if people live closer together. Moreover, the schools fail not because of the density in housing but because of the lack of competition to drive prices down. Catholic schools in the inner city do a better job at turning out students than public schools, despite having broadly similar student bases (In terms of socioeconomics) and spending much less per student (limiting myself to Catholic schools because they have the lowest average tuition among private schools by far). I believe the average inner-city Catholic school class size is actually larger than the corresponding public school. Historically speaking of course, large classes were the norm. Sowell details the issues of public schooling in his book 'Education in America'. If you think California needs money to fix its schooling, I highly recommend that book.
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    Low density can be sustainable if we live in clusters that are self sustaining. Form 4-6 Dunbar number sized communities and another bunch of them forming a bigger cluster. Intra city transport to be separate from Inter city transport..maybe underground or mag lev along with surface transport. The problem is not low density. The problem is sprawl. The solution is not high density and shaming people NIMBY or coerced altruism but cooperation. Giving people incentive to cooperate and share in return for something of non material value would work better than worsening quality of life for the productive and working folks. High density can also be sustainable. Paris is a good example but it has public transport and its shaped like a snail. It would also mean segregation of regions according to income and ameneties. Also..I can’t give you any example because no system lasts for ‘thousands’ of years. I am rejecting your high density sustainable cities list but when I get the time, I will do my own research and if I am wrong in my intuition that you are off mark, I will certainly come back to you with it. Again. You are wrong about low density meaning less education dollars. In California, we have a funding formula by which all the money goes to a common pot and then redistributed. The formula ...to put it simplistically...assigns more money to school districts with kids who need free lunches, English as second language etc. so this means counties that contribute less tax dollars and less property tax dollars due to low house prices get more of the education dollars. Highly educated households and English speaking households and those are higher income where kids don’t rely on school lunches get less education dollars. This leads to no money for infrastructure improvements or overcrowding in schools and budget cuts. And yet..it’s these high property priced areas that have a higher influx of school kids. It’s not working. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/documents/currentexpense1718.xlsx https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/documents/currentexpense1718... Per student expense allocation in affluent cities is less than in areas that have lower property values. No child is truly left behind in California when it comes to education at least as far as $ redistribution is concerned. The problems we have cannot be resolved by high density building in Bay Area and LA.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

I am a NIMBY. I don’t want overcrowding when there is so much space in California but everyone insists on building on small patches of land where we are prisoners inside our neighbourhood ...why not in other sprawling regions of California. But Sacramento doesn’t do it because it costs money to build roads and infrastructure and provide clean water and good jobs. Everyone complains about income equality ..how about what the state does..parts of California doesn’t even have clean drinking water and rural areas don’t have connectivity ...of course everyone wants to get out and come to LA or bay area where it’s all better. But the tragedy of the commons is that the system becomes over burdened. It will collapse.

stcredzero 8y ago
why not in other sprawling regions of California. "My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you." -- Wintermute Distance is time. Time is money.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

watching it. I understand sacrifice, but honestly a chicken coop is more spacious than their new "bedroom"! I also understand that 700 sqf is way better than cave living, but still, for how long would I live in there?

throwawaysea 8y ago

I see repeated painting of this as generational warfare, but it isn't. It's more that younger generations feel entitled to live in one of the most desirable places in the world, at the prices they want, doing the jobs they do. I would like to live on the beach in Hawaii - should I be able to have that no matter what? Should everyone be able to? It makes sense that the Bay area would be priced high given its tremendous desirability (which may be tapering off now). If people are willing to work there for low wages, then that is their choice - they have opted into a tradeoff they are OK with, and they/others should not demonize those who were already there and want to preserve their culture/way of life/standards of living. There are numerous affordable places to live in the US that are not [New York, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.] - you may not have every big city amenity you want, or maybe even be able to do the exact job you want - but such compromises are also just a regular part of life, aren't they? To me the reframing of this issue as a generational war, or a rich versus poor thing, or use of pejoratives like "NIMBY" serves to distract from the plain truth, which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area.

stcredzero 8y ago
which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area. It's not actually in people's self interest. A society that creates severe divisions courts social unrest. Perceptions of relative status are directly linked to social unrest and lawlessness. This is operating in people at a level below consciousness, and the evolutionary roots of it probably predate human language. Of course, no one has an "unalienable right to live in the Bay area." This is technically correct. However, it's still pretty crappy if the Bay Area prices-out everyone except for techies living there. Just because you can buy it, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can keep it for yourself, doesn't mean you necessarily should.
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago
  I think your understanding of the concept of ownership and market forces is tenuous.

magduf 8y ago

>Young Berkeley professors can't afford to live where they work. Young teachers can't afford to live where they work. This sort of thing is a societal recipe for disaster. How so? It's surely a local recipe for disaster. But there's nothing preventing young professors and teachers from leaving the area (or the state) and finding jobs elsewhere where housing is cheaper.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Google employs thousands of people. Do they all live in the same town as where their offices are...many mid range companies and public agencies and Starbucks baristas commute to work too. What is so special about teachers that they have an expectation of walking across the street to their place of work? Everyone commutes. Everyone. This expectation of living next to where you work is exactly why we have a housing density problem. Instead of focusing on public transport to make commute painless ..we are stuffing people like sardines in a can with talking points crafted by housing activists who are mostly grant funded non profits and public agencies. More homes in expensive areas serve tax coffers in Sacramento. Not the public.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Google employs thousands of people. And can afford special busses. What is so special about teachers that they have an expectation of walking across the street to their place of work? Nothing is special about teachers. Many things would be tons better if everyone could work where they live. I used to live in a community next to a university where lots of professors lived. My best friends lived upstairs from the shops we frequented. Some of them worked in those shops. It was a walkable community, the kind where your friend might call out to you on the sidewalk from their balcony to come up and have dinner. Such things weren't luxuries but were once the province of everyman and everywoman. There is something really gracious about that kind of living. Society is poorer for it going away. Granted, increasing density is likely to squash some of those things out. However, it might well create new opportunities for such communities to exist, especially if combined with better public transportation. Instead of focusing on public transport to make commute painless Public transport has a history of making cities more vibrant. No disagreement there. This expectation of living next to where you work is exactly why we have a housing density problem. You are misunderstanding my position. People don't absolutely need to live exactly where they work. They just need to be able to afford someplace to live with a modicum of dignity -- based on perceptions of relative status. A society that prices-out certain vital segments of itself entirely -- based on market distoring laws and regulations -- is doing something wrong. I mention the young teachers and young professors specifically, because it strikes me as a misguided way of ensuring one's youth are radicalized and ideologically disconnected from their own society. we are stuffing people like sardines in a can We in CA are deliberately a few steps removed from densities the market would naturally settle at. crafted by housing activists who are mostly grant funded non profits and public agencies Are there actually activists who want more housing density? Most of what I hear about are NIMBYs and people with misguided goals of "preserving the original character" of the neighborhood by just saying no. Perhaps you are aware of a different side of this than I am.