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Most of California's problems go back to lack of housing and opposition to building more. Everyone wants to live in Cali for nice weather and jobs. If you stop

Most of California's problems go back to lack of housing and opposition to building more. Everyone wants to live in Cali for nice weather and jobs. If you stop people from building more housing your property value just keeps rising. Property costs are high because NIMBY blocking denser housing. Traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Homelessness is bad because houses are too expensive. Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted

pbuzbee 5y ago
I agree, I do think building more housing would help. However, my point is that I don't see that happening anytime soon. We've only seen light forms of the policy changes this would require, and many haven't even passed. There's a lot of opposition to these policy changes, and they have money on their side. And even when (if) they do change, it will take some time for them to have an effect. My age group is at the age of looking to put roots down and have children. For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better.
- mavelikara 5y ago
  > For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better. But most of you don't leave because of family who live in CA - the very people who prevent any fixes to the situation, in the first place.
jiggliemon 5y ago
NIMBYism regarding more housing really only pertains to metropolitan/urban areas. How come the rest of the state can’t build housing consummate to the demand?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  People want to live near jobs, services and amenities, and diversity of those can only be achieved at scale. You could build a million homes in the middle of nowhere and you’d wind up with a million empty houses.
  - kewrkewm53 5y ago
    Many people also want to live in large houses or apartments, which is extremely expensive anywhere with high population density.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Many people also want to win the lotto. Even if people are saying this, what they actually do is quite different. People in CA moving out are generally moving into other metropolitan areas or smaller cities. They're not living some kind of Stardew Valley fantasy in the fields.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  I live in a socal suburb and there is plenty of nimbyism. Any new developments take years or get stalled indefinitely as all the nimbys who already own their home show up to complain and block everything at every turn. Because they don't want the traffic to get worse, or they don't want the community to "lose its charm" or whatever else they can think of.
- prostoalex 5y ago
  That was the major selling point of the CA high-speed rail when Governor Brown originally put it on the ballot - everyone would live in one of those ever-expanding residential suburbs and then take a quick train ride into a busy urban area.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Employment. Rural areas don't have much to offer in terms of jobs other than backbreaking farm labor, and Internet access is usually way too underbuilt to support full remote work.
- 0x000000E2 5y ago
  NIMBY is everywhere in California. For being such a liberal state it's crazy how local governments are obsessed with stopping new and denser housing from being built
raverbashing 5y ago
But the funny thing is, the California "countryside" is languishing because of a lack of people/jobs But instead of going there people prefer the big established cities elsewhere
- akudha 5y ago
  Any particular countryside town you’d recommend for someone working from home?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  A lack of jobs is usually not considered a positive thing when looking for a place to move to
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    True. And it's a bit of a catch 22 because even if you have your job, the city might not be good in terms of infrastructure, resources, schools, etc
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  Because living in the "countryside" in TN means I avoid a nearly 10% state income tax. And as a remote worker that's worth whatever marginal difference exists between CA countryside and TN countryside
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Someone else said it, but their comment is dead: California is bordered by a state with no sales tax to the north, and no income tax to the east. I would love to move to a more "rural" area if my company ever adopts remote work, but there is no financial advantage to rural CA over, say, rural any-other-state. If I'm going to move to the countryside, far away from my job, to remote work, I'm going to keep driving the moving van to at least cross a border, to avoid all that extra expense. I've never lived there, but I bet the east and west sides of lake Tahoe have similar quality of life, similar amenities, similar schools, but living just a few km across a border could mean you keep thousands more per year of your compensation.
prostoalex 5y ago
> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted Massive wildfires (vs small distributed fires) are the result of the policy framework that (a) prohibits preventative controlled burns (b) requires immediate containment of any new fire. The old (more flammable) undergrowth never has a chance to burn off and free up the space for (less flammable) new generation. As a result CA is one of the most polluting states in the nation as far as co2 emissions https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfires-carbon-emissions-equal-year-power-pollution-n942756 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfires-ca...
- blagie 5y ago
  Erm, no. There's a carbon cycle. Trees trap carbon. When they die, trees release carbon. Unless you bury dead trees underground (e.g. as paper, furniture, etc., in deep landfills), in terms net amount of carbon capture, there's no difference between a massive forest fire, periodic controlled burns, decay, etc. They differ in time cycles. Even a sequoia will eventually die and release its carbon back into the atmosphere. There's this myth that forests somehow reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Left to themselves, they store carbon, but they can't capture carbon. They're carbon-neutral. If you cut them down and release the carbon, you have a one-time emission. If you plant new ones, you have a one-time carbon capture. The only real net change to CO2 comes from: 1) Extracting dinosaur-era carbon, and releasing it. 2) How we handle our waste. Ironically, composting releases all the plant carbon eventually, while burying it underground stores some carbon away from the atmosphere.
  - kewrkewm53 5y ago
    This. The most climate-friendly way to handle forests is to actually cut parts of them down regularly (in a sustainable pace, leaving enough unaffected areas for wildlife), and use the wood for building houses and other elements which stay intact long-term. More buildings should be constructed from wood, less from concrete, which itself causes major co2 emissions.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    This strikes me as a reasonable argument. I wonder why it doesn't work for agriculture, which is regularly criticized for e.g. the carbon in livestock feed?
codefreakxff 5y ago
I’m not sure I understand your statement that traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Certainly just increasing density with no other controls just increases traffic congestion. The best approach would be increasing density while decreasing reliance on personal transportation. https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-great-housing-density-debate https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-gre...
- pharmakom 5y ago
  Increasing density will naturally decrease reliance on personal motor-vehicles because more journeys become walkable.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    This is probably more true than any time in the last 30 years iff remote work takes hold. Previously, it wasn’t near as likely that all workers in a household could for a 40 year career live within an easy walk of their work. Now it’s possible (maybe) for many more people (although they’ll need larger housing units).
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > personal motor-vehicles Fancy way to say 'car'.
    - pharmakom 5y ago
      More precise because it includes trucks and such
  - jjav 5y ago
    > Increasing density will naturally decrease reliance on personal motor-vehicles because more journeys become walkable. Only if you don't need to go to work. Which is working wonderfully in pandemic era. I can pretty much walk anywhere I could need in terms of stores and services. But jobs, unless you work in one of those stores or services, are of course far away, not in the middle of denser housing. Tech company campus won't be between housing rows. My town has built tons of housing over the last two decades. Offices are still in the industrial campuses farther away and all that new housing means tons of new local traffic. Uncomfortable but true. It used to be 2 minutes and one stoplight to get to the highway. Now it is 7 stoplights and up to 15 minutes to get to the highway (from the same house). It would be wonderful if for every new housing block there was an adjacent office complex block, so most people can walk to work, but that's not how it goes. So in practice, yes, increased housing density just means tons new traffic to fight through. Hopefully I can just remain work from home forever!
austincheney 5y ago
Everybody says that but I have never seen a study indicating increased housing availability reduces housing price. Where I live, growth rate 22% decade over decade for the last three decades, housing prices increase directly proportional to the increase of housing quantity. That is until an area is filled at which point housing values will either skyrocket or flatten based upon desirability.
- joejerryronnie 5y ago
  You’ve hit the nail on the head here. The desirable parts of CA are located typically along the coast with geographies which don’t allow unlimited expansion (lots of hills/mountains and water). No matter how many houses we build, the desire to live here for the weather/amenities/economy will continue to outstrip supply. Plus, it’s not just housing which would need to expand, it’s transportation, water, etc. There are no easy answers but the solution is not simply “build more housing”.
  - 0x000000E2 5y ago
    IMO it's not true. If it wasn't for rampant NIMBY in Cali developers would gladly replace low density housing with skyscrapers. There's less space but you can always build up. But none of the Cali cities allow this. That's why despite California's huge population you don't see any cities with skyscrapers and traffic is so bad. Building upwards also solves the transportation issues. Look at places like Tokyo and Singapore in comparison to Cali coasts. They're are all space constrained but these places managed to fit 20X the people in the same space and they still don't have Cali level traffic problems
    - joejerryronnie 5y ago
      You could be right about vertical construction lessening the transportation burden, but there’s still the water issue. As an aside, I came across a Tokyo density map overlaid on a map of CA (Greater Tokyo Area, not just the city of Tokyo) and it would be like taking the entire population of CA and condensing it into the city of Los Angeles.
ngokevin 5y ago
> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted PG&E?

pbuzbee 5y ago

I agree, I do think building more housing would help. However, my point is that I don't see that happening anytime soon. We've only seen light forms of the policy changes this would require, and many haven't even passed. There's a lot of opposition to these policy changes, and they have money on their side. And even when (if) they do change, it will take some time for them to have an effect. My age group is at the age of looking to put roots down and have children. For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better.

mavelikara 5y ago
> For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better. But most of you don't leave because of family who live in CA - the very people who prevent any fixes to the situation, in the first place.

jiggliemon 5y ago

NIMBYism regarding more housing really only pertains to metropolitan/urban areas. How come the rest of the state can’t build housing consummate to the demand?

bobthepanda 5y ago
People want to live near jobs, services and amenities, and diversity of those can only be achieved at scale. You could build a million homes in the middle of nowhere and you’d wind up with a million empty houses.
- kewrkewm53 5y ago
  Many people also want to live in large houses or apartments, which is extremely expensive anywhere with high population density.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Many people also want to win the lotto. Even if people are saying this, what they actually do is quite different. People in CA moving out are generally moving into other metropolitan areas or smaller cities. They're not living some kind of Stardew Valley fantasy in the fields.
jjeaff 5y ago
I live in a socal suburb and there is plenty of nimbyism. Any new developments take years or get stalled indefinitely as all the nimbys who already own their home show up to complain and block everything at every turn. Because they don't want the traffic to get worse, or they don't want the community to "lose its charm" or whatever else they can think of.
prostoalex 5y ago
That was the major selling point of the CA high-speed rail when Governor Brown originally put it on the ballot - everyone would live in one of those ever-expanding residential suburbs and then take a quick train ride into a busy urban area.
mschuster91 5y ago
Employment. Rural areas don't have much to offer in terms of jobs other than backbreaking farm labor, and Internet access is usually way too underbuilt to support full remote work.
0x000000E2 5y ago
NIMBY is everywhere in California. For being such a liberal state it's crazy how local governments are obsessed with stopping new and denser housing from being built

raverbashing 5y ago

But the funny thing is, the California "countryside" is languishing because of a lack of people/jobs But instead of going there people prefer the big established cities elsewhere

akudha 5y ago
Any particular countryside town you’d recommend for someone working from home?
bobthepanda 5y ago
A lack of jobs is usually not considered a positive thing when looking for a place to move to
- raverbashing 5y ago
  True. And it's a bit of a catch 22 because even if you have your job, the city might not be good in terms of infrastructure, resources, schools, etc
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
Because living in the "countryside" in TN means I avoid a nearly 10% state income tax. And as a remote worker that's worth whatever marginal difference exists between CA countryside and TN countryside
ryandrake 5y ago
Someone else said it, but their comment is dead: California is bordered by a state with no sales tax to the north, and no income tax to the east. I would love to move to a more "rural" area if my company ever adopts remote work, but there is no financial advantage to rural CA over, say, rural any-other-state. If I'm going to move to the countryside, far away from my job, to remote work, I'm going to keep driving the moving van to at least cross a border, to avoid all that extra expense. I've never lived there, but I bet the east and west sides of lake Tahoe have similar quality of life, similar amenities, similar schools, but living just a few km across a border could mean you keep thousands more per year of your compensation.

prostoalex 5y ago

> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted Massive wildfires (vs small distributed fires) are the result of the policy framework that (a) prohibits preventative controlled burns (b) requires immediate containment of any new fire. The old (more flammable) undergrowth never has a chance to burn off and free up the space for (less flammable) new generation. As a result CA is one of the most polluting states in the nation as far as co2 emissions https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfires-carbon-emissions-equal-year-power-pollution-n942756 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfires-ca...

blagie 5y ago
Erm, no. There's a carbon cycle. Trees trap carbon. When they die, trees release carbon. Unless you bury dead trees underground (e.g. as paper, furniture, etc., in deep landfills), in terms net amount of carbon capture, there's no difference between a massive forest fire, periodic controlled burns, decay, etc. They differ in time cycles. Even a sequoia will eventually die and release its carbon back into the atmosphere. There's this myth that forests somehow reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Left to themselves, they store carbon, but they can't capture carbon. They're carbon-neutral. If you cut them down and release the carbon, you have a one-time emission. If you plant new ones, you have a one-time carbon capture. The only real net change to CO2 comes from: 1) Extracting dinosaur-era carbon, and releasing it. 2) How we handle our waste. Ironically, composting releases all the plant carbon eventually, while burying it underground stores some carbon away from the atmosphere.
- kewrkewm53 5y ago
  This. The most climate-friendly way to handle forests is to actually cut parts of them down regularly (in a sustainable pace, leaving enough unaffected areas for wildlife), and use the wood for building houses and other elements which stay intact long-term. More buildings should be constructed from wood, less from concrete, which itself causes major co2 emissions.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  This strikes me as a reasonable argument. I wonder why it doesn't work for agriculture, which is regularly criticized for e.g. the carbon in livestock feed?

codefreakxff 5y ago

I’m not sure I understand your statement that traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Certainly just increasing density with no other controls just increases traffic congestion. The best approach would be increasing density while decreasing reliance on personal transportation. https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-great-housing-density-debate https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-gre...

pharmakom 5y ago
Increasing density will naturally decrease reliance on personal motor-vehicles because more journeys become walkable.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  This is probably more true than any time in the last 30 years iff remote work takes hold. Previously, it wasn’t near as likely that all workers in a household could for a 40 year career live within an easy walk of their work. Now it’s possible (maybe) for many more people (although they’ll need larger housing units).
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > personal motor-vehicles Fancy way to say 'car'.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    More precise because it includes trucks and such
- jjav 5y ago
  > Increasing density will naturally decrease reliance on personal motor-vehicles because more journeys become walkable. Only if you don't need to go to work. Which is working wonderfully in pandemic era. I can pretty much walk anywhere I could need in terms of stores and services. But jobs, unless you work in one of those stores or services, are of course far away, not in the middle of denser housing. Tech company campus won't be between housing rows. My town has built tons of housing over the last two decades. Offices are still in the industrial campuses farther away and all that new housing means tons of new local traffic. Uncomfortable but true. It used to be 2 minutes and one stoplight to get to the highway. Now it is 7 stoplights and up to 15 minutes to get to the highway (from the same house). It would be wonderful if for every new housing block there was an adjacent office complex block, so most people can walk to work, but that's not how it goes. So in practice, yes, increased housing density just means tons new traffic to fight through. Hopefully I can just remain work from home forever!

austincheney 5y ago

Everybody says that but I have never seen a study indicating increased housing availability reduces housing price. Where I live, growth rate 22% decade over decade for the last three decades, housing prices increase directly proportional to the increase of housing quantity. That is until an area is filled at which point housing values will either skyrocket or flatten based upon desirability.

joejerryronnie 5y ago
You’ve hit the nail on the head here. The desirable parts of CA are located typically along the coast with geographies which don’t allow unlimited expansion (lots of hills/mountains and water). No matter how many houses we build, the desire to live here for the weather/amenities/economy will continue to outstrip supply. Plus, it’s not just housing which would need to expand, it’s transportation, water, etc. There are no easy answers but the solution is not simply “build more housing”.
- 0x000000E2 5y ago
  IMO it's not true. If it wasn't for rampant NIMBY in Cali developers would gladly replace low density housing with skyscrapers. There's less space but you can always build up. But none of the Cali cities allow this. That's why despite California's huge population you don't see any cities with skyscrapers and traffic is so bad. Building upwards also solves the transportation issues. Look at places like Tokyo and Singapore in comparison to Cali coasts. They're are all space constrained but these places managed to fit 20X the people in the same space and they still don't have Cali level traffic problems
  - joejerryronnie 5y ago
    You could be right about vertical construction lessening the transportation burden, but there’s still the water issue. As an aside, I came across a Tokyo density map overlaid on a map of CA (Greater Tokyo Area, not just the city of Tokyo) and it would be like taking the entire population of CA and condensing it into the city of Los Angeles.

ngokevin 5y ago

> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted PG&E?