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I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? This is an issue that need

• teknopaul 7y ago
  Where do garage orphans plug in their cars? Same place lounge orphans plug in their TVs. They are probably both not bothered since they are watching youtube videos on the underground on the way to the pub. Times are a changin.
• kelnos 7y ago
  This is somewhat orthogonal. In my building (where people generally own their condo units, though I'm renting), there's no access to charging in the building's garage. Yes, theoretically people could get the HOA to install charging stations or do something to make the situation better, but... well, there is still no way to charge an EV in my building's garage. Either the demand isn't there, or the HOA has refused to pay for any upgrades.
  • mattmcknight 7y ago
    If they price it right, it could be revenue opportunity or net $0 amenity.
• whalesalad 7y ago
  This is my hangup too, and it crosses over into the craze around building high density housing in California. I don’t want high density housing. I don’t think anyone does. I want a yard for my dogs to play, for my wife to nurture the garden she has always wanted, for fruit trees, a garage where I can work on my car, etc... We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.
  • trilila 7y ago
    Historically people placed business like buildings around town centres, as these were easy to reach. Lawyers, accountants, doctors and so on were supposed to be within walking distance. But these days this is becoming less and less practical, as everyone including back office employees, software developers, analysts, and other non customer non reach essential staff is crammed in those places. I seriously think planning should be made such way that any non essential business activity should be done outside cities. Downtown areas should be focused on face to face essential staff and the rest of the city on life focused businesses (restaurants, cinemas, and so on). The cities are planned at the moment is archaic.
  • kiba 7y ago
    Why would you think no one wants high density housing. Like, I don't want a backyard nor a garage or a car. But I am stuck with the lifestyle.
  • s0rce 7y ago
    Unless you live in a very small community the downside of this is horrible traffic.
    • rconti 7y ago
      This; suburbs don't scale. disclaimer: I charge my car in my suburban driveway
    • trilila 7y ago
      That is based on the assumption that jobs MUST be downtown, thus all traffic converging towards that area.
      • s0rce 7y ago
        Jobs aren't downtown in the Bay area... Traffic is awful and if you change jobs you might need to move.
  • Eric_WVGG 7y ago
    8.6 million New Yorkers humbly disagree.
• Swizec 7y ago
  Living in a city is nice when you’re young. Here in SFBA you see lots of people living in the city and commuting to the suburbs to work at bigtech campuses. Weird huh? But it makes sense. Population density increases convenience. I have 2 amazing corner stores on my block. The movie theatre is 2 blocks away, there’s many good bars and restaurants within a 4 block radius. Major grocery store (TJ) is 3 blocks away. And my apartment building has a wonderful very secure garage and a package concierge so nothing ever gets stolen. If I can’t find something within a walkable radius, a cheap bicycle share gets me to almost anything my heart desires within 15 minutes. And I’m meant to trade all that for what? A yard? A garage? Needing my car every time I want to run an errand? Pfft I remember living in Menlo Park and it was hell. Everything is so far away that you need a car just to grab something quick from the store. Guess what I’m saying is that we should find ways to reduce the need for cars, not to make sure everyone has somewhere to park and charge theirs. I think high density housing in mixed residential/business areas is the best solution.
  • damnyou 7y ago
    Living in the city was great in my 20s. Now that I'm past 35 and have a family, having a private backyard to ourselves is a lot more appealing than dealing with loud people in commodified, crowded restaurants and movie theaters. My family is quite neurodivergent and everyone has sensory processing issues anyway. The city is simply too noisy, too active, too high pressure for us. It's unfortunate that in the US, backyards and car dependence go together.
• firstplacelast 7y ago
  Because people are willing to work for wages that can't buy them the shittiest home within a reasonable commute to their office. If people were more willing to die, unionize, or advocate for a mediocre life, this wouldn't happen. If you're working for less than it takes to buy the shittiest home in your city, you are exacerbating inequality and thus making the world worse. Better to sit on the sidewalk until you're dead.
  • reificator 7y ago
    > If you're working for less than it takes to buy the shittiest home in your city, you are exacerbating inequality and thus making the world worse. Better to sit on the sidewalk until you're dead. I'm not normally one for this term, but this has to be the pinnacle of blaming the victim.
    • psychometry 7y ago
      True, but it's also a historical reality that in the early 20th century that's exactly what happened to usher in labor laws that we enjoy today.
    • esotericn 7y ago
      Disagree. I consider it a mass delusion that everyone seems to think you either live in the Big City(tm) or your life doesn't matter. IMO it's the opposite. Living in a pokey flat that's not yours is giving up your dignity. Even in SF or London or whatever.
• colechristensen 7y ago
  >why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? Housing costs seem to scale to the maximum that the population can pay, and people are willing to accept housing which is a little less than they think they need for a little more than they think they can afford. Generations of this have people growing up wanting what is "normal" and accepting a little less, each generation's normal is a little less while costing the same. The only thing that can be done about this is removing the third parties making money off of that trend – each generation of homes is a little smaller for the same amount of (inflation or whatever adjusted) money and the difference is getting sucked into the financial and real estate sectors giving far more profits than useful work done. Or we can just wait for peak-population to pass and an enormous crash where there will be far more housing than people and buying a house will be a money-losing venture you do because you want the space for yourself and not as an investment.
  • opportune 7y ago
    Actually, houses are getting larger by square footage over time, although not sure about lot size. And peak population won't necessarily create a housing crash everywhere. As long as urbanization continues, it could just slow the growth of cities.
    • colechristensen 7y ago
      Houses are only getting larger for (often enormous) suburban houses in new developments, not for apartments or redeveloped houses in existing neighborhoods. The pressure against urbanization is going to continue growing as long as the quality of life (esp apartment size) decreases in urbanized areas. I have lived in a few excellent urban neighborhoods with very strange demographics resulting from the lack of variety in housing sizes. You saw very many young people and a lesser but solid presence of long-present middle age to elderly people but no families with children older than a year or two. The neighborhoods were very livable until you had children and needed space, then you either had to be earning way above average salary or live packed in like sardines because the fancy new construction was only small apartments.
• Eric_WVGG 7y ago
  Funny, I was thinking something similar but from a completely different direction — the problem, IMO, isn’t that people in cities can't afford to buy garages, but that they want cars at all. The problem that these “garage orphans” don’t get is that society doesn’t owe anyone a free parking space. When one can’t afford car payments, or insurance, or gasoline, they aren’t allowed to simply go out and take it; but for some reason, we give away precious space to people who can’t afford garages. There’s a whole book on this topic, for anyone who’s interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
  • MadWombat 7y ago
    > The problem that these “garage orphans” don’t get is that society doesn’t owe anyone a free parking space Nobody owes anyone anything. But a lot of things in the society exist because "We would rather live in the world where X rather than in the world where X isn't". Car ownership is a societal norm in US, so most people are going to buy and own cars, at least for a while longer. And people are going to park these cars somewhere, whether you like it or not. I would rather we had regulated street parking than unregulated free for all.
    • Eric_WVGG 7y ago
      Unregulated free-for-all is kind of what we have, though, in NYC at least. People double-park with impunity, drivers leave cars on sidewalks, and the worst offenders are the NYPD, the very people who are supposed to enforce these regulations. We could trade subsidized parking for… - bus and bike lanes - garbage bins (the trash situation here is just humiliating) - inducement for the city and state to fix the subways - cleaner air - loading zones for shops and deliveries (Fedex and UPS have a crazy deal with the city for near-immunity from traffic fines) Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming, but I just don't see how the status quo is sustainable. Electric cars won't solve most of these problems.
      • MadWombat 7y ago
        > Unregulated free-for-all is kind of what we have As a person who paid a few thousand dollars in NYC parking tickets over the past two decades or so, I respectfully disagree with this assessment :)
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  It's not about buying property. Residential street parking is used by residents, not just visitors. Those cars can't charge whether you own your place or not. Meanwhile, the car in the garage can charge whether you're owning or renting.
• opportune 7y ago
  There's a few big reasons, at least in tech. One is that your investors may want you to start your business somewhere close by, especially if they want to be involved in your business. Another is that you need to start your business somewhere where you can acquire employees - if there are very few software engineers in an area already, you now need to convince people to move to your area for work. That's kind of a bad value proposition for employees because they need to relocate their lives to move somewhere that has only a single employer they could realistically work at. Usually the people running these businesses also are motivated by doing this to save money, so you might also be making about half of what you would in a big city. Further, being in a big city has a lot of benefits from infrastructure and network effects. It is easier to acquire some of your first customers if they are close by. You have international airports which allow you to travel the world more easily than somewhere with an airport that only feeds into a hub. Your employees will appreciate having the ability to work at other places should their employer fail/they get fired/etc. so it's easier to convince people to move there. What should be done, but which almost never is done, is that employers in small cities should start paying truly competitively with those in big cities. If your target employee could make 300k in NYC or the Bay Area, pay them that much in the cheaper city. Make the cost of living difference actually become a real perk, rather than a way to be miserly with how you pay employees.
• jperras 7y ago
  > I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? I own & live in an apartment on the top floor of a 3 floor walk-up in a busy metropolitan city. There is perhaps one single person on our street that has a "garage". Everyone else parks on the street. The "not able to buy property" argument here seems like a red herring.
• gambiting 7y ago
  >>why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? There's plenty of properties which are super high-end and which don't come with their own parking space(terraced houses on popular streets in the UK can go for millions and yet you won't get your own parking space - just a parking permit to park on the street, but there is no guarantee it will be in front of your own house).
• Aloha 7y ago
  I think the argument going is that if you live in a city core, you don't need a car, so most places don't have parking.
• a1369209993 7y ago
  > I seriously struggle understanding why at least tech jobs are so centered around crowded cities Because major (FAANG et al) tech companies are cross-invested with rental/housing businesses[0]. This means that concurrent increases in rent and salary have no effect; employees make 1000$/yr more but pay 1000$/yr more in rent, company('s shareholders) makes 1M$/yr of extra rent but pays 1M$/yr more in salary. Except when the employee tries to switch jobs they're under incresed time pressure (before they run out of savings and can't afford rent), and all of the tech companies benefit from their hiring candidates having less leverage. Note that this doesn't require any communication between companies; each company can see that the situation benefits them based solely on public information, and cross-investment means each company loses nothing by hiking rent and salary simultaneously. 0: Either directly owning them or, more covertly, by most of their shareholders also owning housing stocks.
• x3n0ph3n3 7y ago
  Another way to look at it is: why people are prioritizing buying a nice car over property? I live in a shitty 1 bedroom apartment, and 3 of my neighbors (with identical apartments) have Mercedes.