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Well, people want to live in safe neighborhoods with good schools, with a well funded police, etc. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not their job to fix th

Well, people want to live in safe neighborhoods with good schools, with a well funded police, etc. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not their job to fix the systematic issues in the US. It's not about race, it's about socioeconomic status.

jeffbee 6y ago
The inequitable aspect of "safe neighborhoods" is they depend on other cities for their existence. The people of Piedmont, as an example, require access to the cities of Oakland and San Francisco for their livelihoods, because there are no jobs, no businesses, and no cultural institutions of any kind in the town of Piedmont. They are purely parasitic. When you look at Berkeley you have somewhat of the opposite issue: they have the same population they had in 1950, but the number of jobs in Berkeley has doubled in the meantime. The general taxpayers of the Bay Area have paid to build three subway stations and an interstate highway through Berkeley, but Berkeley stubbornly refuses to let anyone enjoy the fruits of these investments except for people who already lived there half a century ago.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  That's true for many US cities but it doesn't mean it should be that way. In Europe for example there are many safe cities that are great places to live and raise a family but also have businesses and everything else you find in major urban areas. I can also give examples of such cities in the US.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    It sounds like we're all agreeing then. The other cities you're alluding to that actually do build enough housing to meet the demand for local jobs are doing things right. Contrast with the cities we've been discussing in this thread which have not been allowing much new housing development to meet demand and thus are creating all of the problems being talked about here.
fossuser 6y ago
This is a bit of a strawman. The people I’m talking about aren’t funding those things anyway because they pay next to nothing in property tax compared to their new neighbors thanks to prop13. I’m also not arguing for housing projects. The median housing cost in Palo Alto is well over a million. Prop13 means that old owners aren’t paying the tax on that cost and are incentivized to restrict building. This drives costs higher for really low quality housing. This means only multimillionaires can afford to buy housing here. Everyone else is someone who got in long ago or are new kids out of college with high paying jobs renting with three roommates. Increasing the housing supply makes the cost less absurd for everyone, a natural extension of that is more people can afford to live there and you get more diversity (since history has skewed who has that kind of wealth on average). The people restricting housing are acting in their own financial interest, they should have to pay that cost in property tax at their house FMV. At a minimum on sale, but I’d prefer some percentage each year closing the gap unless their town builds some large amount of new housing.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  I don't argue with that. My comment was more general, not about the Palo Alto area and its property tax laws. I don't live in California and not familiar with the specifics of housing in the Bay Area. My main comment was in response to "black lives matter but they can stay a town or two away from us - like in East Palo Alto.".
  - fossuser 6y ago
    You argued that it wasn't race, but socioeconomic status. It was explicitly race historically: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/not-all-neighborhoods-were-created-equal-in-palo-alto https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/not-all-neigh... https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/black-in-palo-alto-longtime-residents-describe-painful-toll-of-everyday-racism https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/black-in-palo... Restricting supply now is often justified by 'keeping neighborhood character', but that character is one which explicitly excluded others based on their race. I'd argue there are also examples where it's race and not socioeconomic status today. There was a recent story from a black VC jogging in Palo Alto who had the police called on him because 'he was up to something'. (I searched around, but couldn't find the link to his story). Increasing housing supply doesn't make neighborhoods unsafe and would increase the funding available to the local communities. > "There's nothing wrong with that. It's not their job to fix the systematic issues in the US." It may not be their job to fix everything, but I'd argue they're responsible for not pushing policy to make things worse.
CydeWeys 6y ago
And allowing more development doesn't run counter to those goals. It may not be their job to fix all the problems in the US but it's certainly not their job to make things explicitly worse through actively pushing for exclusionary housing policies.

jeffbee 6y ago

The inequitable aspect of "safe neighborhoods" is they depend on other cities for their existence. The people of Piedmont, as an example, require access to the cities of Oakland and San Francisco for their livelihoods, because there are no jobs, no businesses, and no cultural institutions of any kind in the town of Piedmont. They are purely parasitic. When you look at Berkeley you have somewhat of the opposite issue: they have the same population they had in 1950, but the number of jobs in Berkeley has doubled in the meantime. The general taxpayers of the Bay Area have paid to build three subway stations and an interstate highway through Berkeley, but Berkeley stubbornly refuses to let anyone enjoy the fruits of these investments except for people who already lived there half a century ago.

tinyhouse 6y ago
That's true for many US cities but it doesn't mean it should be that way. In Europe for example there are many safe cities that are great places to live and raise a family but also have businesses and everything else you find in major urban areas. I can also give examples of such cities in the US.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  It sounds like we're all agreeing then. The other cities you're alluding to that actually do build enough housing to meet the demand for local jobs are doing things right. Contrast with the cities we've been discussing in this thread which have not been allowing much new housing development to meet demand and thus are creating all of the problems being talked about here.

fossuser 6y ago

This is a bit of a strawman. The people I’m talking about aren’t funding those things anyway because they pay next to nothing in property tax compared to their new neighbors thanks to prop13. I’m also not arguing for housing projects. The median housing cost in Palo Alto is well over a million. Prop13 means that old owners aren’t paying the tax on that cost and are incentivized to restrict building. This drives costs higher for really low quality housing. This means only multimillionaires can afford to buy housing here. Everyone else is someone who got in long ago or are new kids out of college with high paying jobs renting with three roommates. Increasing the housing supply makes the cost less absurd for everyone, a natural extension of that is more people can afford to live there and you get more diversity (since history has skewed who has that kind of wealth on average). The people restricting housing are acting in their own financial interest, they should have to pay that cost in property tax at their house FMV. At a minimum on sale, but I’d prefer some percentage each year closing the gap unless their town builds some large amount of new housing.

tinyhouse 6y ago
I don't argue with that. My comment was more general, not about the Palo Alto area and its property tax laws. I don't live in California and not familiar with the specifics of housing in the Bay Area. My main comment was in response to "black lives matter but they can stay a town or two away from us - like in East Palo Alto.".
- fossuser 6y ago
  You argued that it wasn't race, but socioeconomic status. It was explicitly race historically: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/not-all-neighborhoods-were-created-equal-in-palo-alto https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/not-all-neigh... https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/black-in-palo-alto-longtime-residents-describe-painful-toll-of-everyday-racism https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/black-in-palo... Restricting supply now is often justified by 'keeping neighborhood character', but that character is one which explicitly excluded others based on their race. I'd argue there are also examples where it's race and not socioeconomic status today. There was a recent story from a black VC jogging in Palo Alto who had the police called on him because 'he was up to something'. (I searched around, but couldn't find the link to his story). Increasing housing supply doesn't make neighborhoods unsafe and would increase the funding available to the local communities. > "There's nothing wrong with that. It's not their job to fix the systematic issues in the US." It may not be their job to fix everything, but I'd argue they're responsible for not pushing policy to make things worse.

CydeWeys 6y ago

And allowing more development doesn't run counter to those goals. It may not be their job to fix all the problems in the US but it's certainly not their job to make things explicitly worse through actively pushing for exclusionary housing policies.