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I'm really curious to hear what the community has to say about this perspective. This is very compelling argument to me, but I've heard other compelling argumen

I'm really curious to hear what the community has to say about this perspective. This is very compelling argument to me, but I've heard other compelling arguments on the other side. These arguments tend to go like this: 1. Big tech has gone unchecked for a long time and it's up to government and regulators to reign them in when it comes to privacy, offering sustainable compensation models for gig workers, limiting an increasing wage gap, and other inequities. 2. The rise of big tech has outpaced the city/area's ability to offer services at low costs. No other industry has seen such a quick rise and it's no wonder prices (including houses) have climbed so much. I live in San Francisco, and have been disappointed, annoyed, and frustrated at many of the issues this article brings up, including high housing prices, homelessness, property crime, but it seems like an easy out to simply blame the government, or the tech industry exclusively. My guess is there's plenty of blame to go around and the answer might be more nuanced than finding a single scapegoat. What are people's thoughts?

mrkstu 6y ago
I've lived in multiple states in cities that were at the top or near the top for annual population growth over multiple years- and it was fine. Where I am now is #1 [0] and while property values are going up, there is plenty of housing being built, and since so much of Texas taxes comes via property taxes, there is an incentive for capping top end housing costs. The city council has been approving higher density housing than the area has had historically, despite some grumbling from the SFH owners. The master plan is oriented around mass transit in an area historically devoid of it. People complain about regulatory capture, but California has been captured by incumbent property owners and is now drowning in perverse incentives of their own invention. For a state that owes its success to innovation, there is zero innovation, let alone basic competence, coming out of the state/local government. [0]: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2020/07/26/austin-area-suburb-named-as-fastest-growing-city-i.html https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2020/07/26/austin-ar...
- codemac 6y ago
  Austin as a larger metro area has an order of magnitude the amount of land that all of the peninsula has, with no water in the way. Supporting housing growth through suburban sprawl is a story of most cities in the midwest & south in the US, and has completely different problems. I don't think the comparison will hold up. The amount of livable land in a city like Mountain View is 12 square miles in city limits, Palo Alto is a massive 26! Austin is 271 square miles. I agree the tax situation for private housing is nuts in the bay, but we should not pretend the bay and Austin face the same housing problems.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  Reading through the 2 above parents, I was having similar thoughts. Problems are evident and if not addressed effectively, they become pretty serious. The solutions are not effective. Why not? The region is chock full of many of the world's greatest problem solvers. It seems that the 'root cause analysis' is many times simply superficial. Too many homeless people? Give them homes. Too many addicts shoplifting to fund their habit? Decriminalize shoplifting. Cost of rental housing too high? Impose rent control. This may be a consequence of the amount of time a politician is in office vs. the amount of time it really takes to solve these intractable problems. If a politician's term is 4 years, and it takes 12 years to solve a problem, actually identifying the root cause and devising a solution would be the end of their career in politics. I'm pretty sure that if San Franciscans could elucidate what kind of a city they want San Francisco to be, no one would say they want it to be a haven for drug addicts and have the world's highest rents. And there are enough neighborhoods that just about all environs they'd list could be implemented somewhere within the city limits. Given that San Francisco is not the kind of city that San Franciscans want it to be, I can only chalk it up to ineffective leadership by the persons setting and enforcing the rules. That's not solely the politicians. I'd guess it starts with leadership trying to satisfy everyone's issues without triage for practicality or an investigation of possible unintended consequences of their solutions.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Too many homeless people? Give them homes. Has this actually been attempted?
    - tathougies 6y ago
      Yes Salt Lake City has done it to much more success than SF. Of course, Utah and SLCers in general tend to also be more charitable than SFers, so it's hard to say what would happen in SF if they were to do this, given that the population is full of seeming misers.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        Thanks for the information. Your version seems very plausible to me; that's why I questioned GP's trivial dismissal.
- bproven 6y ago
  Curious - where are you now in TX that has this? "The city council has been approving higher density housing than the area has had historically, despite some grumbling from the SFH owners. The master plan is oriented around mass transit in an area historically devoid of it." ? Austin?
  - mrkstu 6y ago
    See link in my OP.
vmception 6y ago
San Francisco's housing prices have risen the same percentages for the last 100 years straight. People blame whatever recently changed in any city everywhere. In one city it's wealthy people from China, in another city its tech, in another city its finance while the tech people earn the exact same amount as in the prior city and fly completely under the radar. It's just scarcity, no matter how it is sliced.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  I do believe there is an effect from zoning and resistance to rezoning. Though people who think abolishing zoning is the answer should be forced to live for a time in any number of cities that have done this. Little secret, it doesn't produce places most people want to live. Endless, monotonous grid, no community center, school next to a paper mill, etc
  - triceratops 6y ago
    There is a midpoint between "no zoning" and "neighbors can block my toolshed repaint".
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      Definitely agree. We just haven't found the right mechanism that can balance creating beautiful communities for people to live without enabling NIMBY abuse.
triceratops 6y ago
IMO Prop 13 is at the root of nearly all of California's woes. It stifles housing development, causing high housing prices, homelessness, and property crime. It drives up the costs of offering government services. It increases inequality by disproportionately enriching a small group of landowners who had the good fortune to buy in the Bay Area or LA county 20-30 years ago, and impoverishes everyone else.
- dano 6y ago
  The inequality may not be as widespread as it appears to be. On HN earlier this year someone posted a link [1] which allows one to peruse property taxes anywhere in the state. For this reply I picked a location in Daly City [2] to have a look. The black represent the highest property taxes and the green the lowest - there are few green bubbles. Take a look around, I'm sure there are areas like Huntington Beach [3] with absurdly low taxes, but I've not seen the actual analysis that favors the claims made either way. Proposition 19 effectively eliminates the Parent to Child reassessment exemption, but it wasn't done for altruistic purposes. It was done to put more houses on the market for the real estate profession who funded the campaign to pass the proposition. Yes, this will increase property taxes and limit generational wealth transfer in the form of low property taxes, but it won't fix all the problems listed. If you'd like to examine some potential problem areas in California I'd encourage you to google things like "Prevailing Wage Law" and similar. 1. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax 2. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.690761077216465,-122.46281587480873,18 https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.69076107721... 3. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#33.6595536026813,-118.00000352784994,15 https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#33.65955360268...
  - jedberg 6y ago
    That map puts too many values in the "black" category. Check this one out: https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.26178563229173,-122.02253937721254,18 https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.26178563229... Notice how there are a few outliers in red, making almost all the rest black. But look at the black ones. It ranges from $3000 to $25,000. And if you look at a row of roughly equal houses, you will see most of them are around $10K, while a few are $20K. ALL of them should be $20K+, if not for prop 13.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mrkstu 6y ago

I've lived in multiple states in cities that were at the top or near the top for annual population growth over multiple years- and it was fine. Where I am now is #1 [0] and while property values are going up, there is plenty of housing being built, and since so much of Texas taxes comes via property taxes, there is an incentive for capping top end housing costs. The city council has been approving higher density housing than the area has had historically, despite some grumbling from the SFH owners. The master plan is oriented around mass transit in an area historically devoid of it. People complain about regulatory capture, but California has been captured by incumbent property owners and is now drowning in perverse incentives of their own invention. For a state that owes its success to innovation, there is zero innovation, let alone basic competence, coming out of the state/local government. [0]: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2020/07/26/austin-area-suburb-named-as-fastest-growing-city-i.html https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2020/07/26/austin-ar...

codemac 6y ago
Austin as a larger metro area has an order of magnitude the amount of land that all of the peninsula has, with no water in the way. Supporting housing growth through suburban sprawl is a story of most cities in the midwest & south in the US, and has completely different problems. I don't think the comparison will hold up. The amount of livable land in a city like Mountain View is 12 square miles in city limits, Palo Alto is a massive 26! Austin is 271 square miles. I agree the tax situation for private housing is nuts in the bay, but we should not pretend the bay and Austin face the same housing problems.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Reading through the 2 above parents, I was having similar thoughts. Problems are evident and if not addressed effectively, they become pretty serious. The solutions are not effective. Why not? The region is chock full of many of the world's greatest problem solvers. It seems that the 'root cause analysis' is many times simply superficial. Too many homeless people? Give them homes. Too many addicts shoplifting to fund their habit? Decriminalize shoplifting. Cost of rental housing too high? Impose rent control. This may be a consequence of the amount of time a politician is in office vs. the amount of time it really takes to solve these intractable problems. If a politician's term is 4 years, and it takes 12 years to solve a problem, actually identifying the root cause and devising a solution would be the end of their career in politics. I'm pretty sure that if San Franciscans could elucidate what kind of a city they want San Francisco to be, no one would say they want it to be a haven for drug addicts and have the world's highest rents. And there are enough neighborhoods that just about all environs they'd list could be implemented somewhere within the city limits. Given that San Francisco is not the kind of city that San Franciscans want it to be, I can only chalk it up to ineffective leadership by the persons setting and enforcing the rules. That's not solely the politicians. I'd guess it starts with leadership trying to satisfy everyone's issues without triage for practicality or an investigation of possible unintended consequences of their solutions.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Too many homeless people? Give them homes. Has this actually been attempted?
  - tathougies 6y ago
    Yes Salt Lake City has done it to much more success than SF. Of course, Utah and SLCers in general tend to also be more charitable than SFers, so it's hard to say what would happen in SF if they were to do this, given that the population is full of seeming misers.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Thanks for the information. Your version seems very plausible to me; that's why I questioned GP's trivial dismissal.
bproven 6y ago
Curious - where are you now in TX that has this? "The city council has been approving higher density housing than the area has had historically, despite some grumbling from the SFH owners. The master plan is oriented around mass transit in an area historically devoid of it." ? Austin?
- mrkstu 6y ago
  See link in my OP.

vmception 6y ago

San Francisco's housing prices have risen the same percentages for the last 100 years straight. People blame whatever recently changed in any city everywhere. In one city it's wealthy people from China, in another city its tech, in another city its finance while the tech people earn the exact same amount as in the prior city and fly completely under the radar. It's just scarcity, no matter how it is sliced.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
I do believe there is an effect from zoning and resistance to rezoning. Though people who think abolishing zoning is the answer should be forced to live for a time in any number of cities that have done this. Little secret, it doesn't produce places most people want to live. Endless, monotonous grid, no community center, school next to a paper mill, etc
- triceratops 6y ago
  There is a midpoint between "no zoning" and "neighbors can block my toolshed repaint".
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    Definitely agree. We just haven't found the right mechanism that can balance creating beautiful communities for people to live without enabling NIMBY abuse.

triceratops 6y ago

IMO Prop 13 is at the root of nearly all of California's woes. It stifles housing development, causing high housing prices, homelessness, and property crime. It drives up the costs of offering government services. It increases inequality by disproportionately enriching a small group of landowners who had the good fortune to buy in the Bay Area or LA county 20-30 years ago, and impoverishes everyone else.

dano 6y ago
The inequality may not be as widespread as it appears to be. On HN earlier this year someone posted a link [1] which allows one to peruse property taxes anywhere in the state. For this reply I picked a location in Daly City [2] to have a look. The black represent the highest property taxes and the green the lowest - there are few green bubbles. Take a look around, I'm sure there are areas like Huntington Beach [3] with absurdly low taxes, but I've not seen the actual analysis that favors the claims made either way. Proposition 19 effectively eliminates the Parent to Child reassessment exemption, but it wasn't done for altruistic purposes. It was done to put more houses on the market for the real estate profession who funded the campaign to pass the proposition. Yes, this will increase property taxes and limit generational wealth transfer in the form of low property taxes, but it won't fix all the problems listed. If you'd like to examine some potential problem areas in California I'd encourage you to google things like "Prevailing Wage Law" and similar. 1. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax 2. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.690761077216465,-122.46281587480873,18 https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.69076107721... 3. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#33.6595536026813,-118.00000352784994,15 https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#33.65955360268...
- jedberg 6y ago
  That map puts too many values in the "black" category. Check this one out: https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.26178563229173,-122.02253937721254,18 https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.26178563229... Notice how there are a few outliers in red, making almost all the rest black. But look at the black ones. It ranges from $3000 to $25,000. And if you look at a row of roughly equal houses, you will see most of them are around $10K, while a few are $20K. ALL of them should be $20K+, if not for prop 13.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]