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One thing I don’t understand about the housing debate is why any specific area needs to be “affordable” If I can’t afford to live in an area, it seems to me th

by rank0 5y ago

One thing I don’t understand about the housing debate is why any specific area needs to be “affordable” If I can’t afford to live in an area, it seems to me the solution is to live somewhere else. Maybe I’m missing something. I’m open to new ideas here but I really don’t get it.

bradleyjg 5y ago
I could flip that question around. Almost the entire country is low density. Why does Palo Alto need to be?
- rank0 5y ago
  I mean it doesn’t NEED to be expensive it just is. The folks living there don’t want to change their local zoning laws. I don’t really feel like I should have a say if I don’t live there. The burden of proof for an argument should come from the side which is trying to make a change.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    I think we take hyperlocalism too far. If Americans shouldn’t have a say in California and Californians shouldn’t have a say in Palo Alto, then why not have each block be sovereign? Or maybe each house?
    - rank0 5y ago
      When it comes to local issues like zoning I think it makes sense that the people actually living there get to decide.
      - JackFr 5y ago
        To take that to the extreme would be to eliminate zoning. After all I own the property - why should anyone else tell me what I can do with it? If you’re from much of the US, that sounds ludicrous — but then what is the optimal level to put zoning restrictions in?
        rank0 5y ago
        Honestly not a bad argument at all. My knee jerk reaction says the lowest layer of government should get priority.
        theluketaylor 5y ago
        But since local landowners consistently choose the most restrictive zoning possible to the detriment of society with things like urban sprawl, car-centric development and locking the poor and youth out from economic opportunity local control simply can't continue. It's completely unsustainable both economically and environmentally. Local control means wealthy control.
        saltminer 5y ago
        Yep. Ask people who grew up in suburbia and who have only ever ridden public transit when on vacation what they want, and they'll probably tell you more low density neighborhoods, bigger roads, large shopping centers (but not malls since those became un-cool), etc. When left to their own devices, these people will inevitably take the worst parts of north Jersey and Long Island and implement them wholesale because it's all they've ever known. The affordable areas low-wage workers could previously live in just 15 minutes away have gentrified over the years, but local homeowners have no real reason to care that their cashier has a 2+ hour round-trip commute. As long as they can still get their groceries, it doesn't affect them. But, crucially, while the employees have to spend a shit ton of time and money getting to and from work every day and likely spend a fair amount of their paycheck in the city they work in (and pay a fair amount in taxes to it as a result), they have no say in its governance since they have to vote where they're registered to. Local governance utterly fails in these situations, regional planning requires state involvement when municipalities repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot for decades. And of course, as we hurtle towards a climate catastrophe, we must not forget that most people who commute long hours to and from work everyday drive cars - single occupant vehicles - because the only other way to get there involves an hour+ Greyhound ride (because they travel between multiple independent transit systems). Regional planning is needed to address these issues; the American worship of single-family zoning completely undermines any progress towards meaningfully addressing climate change.
    - throwaway9870 5y ago
      > If Americans shouldn’t have a say in California and Californians shouldn’t have a say in Palo Alto "A say" in what subject? Currency used? Sales tax paid? Laws regarding civil rights? Laws regarding non-compete clauses in employment contracts? We have a complicated legal and governing system that has worked out which subjects are covered at which levels of government. This is pretty much the same with all developed countries. Debating it in black and white terms as you present is not a very reasonable way to look at the issue.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        I feel like you're making a related mistake: just because we've worked out which subjects are covered at which levels of government[0], that doesn't mean we've done a good job of it, or that it's actually working. [0] And I don't think we have! This seems to be a constant struggle, with municipalities suing states, the feds suing states, states suing municipalities...
        throwaway9870 5y ago
        Where did I say it should not be revisited?
        romwell 5y ago
        If you didn't mean to suggest that, then your comment doesn't seem to say anything at all. It reads like an objection. What did you want to say?
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    If areas take federal or state funding than they input from both the federal and state levels should be considered
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    My counter argument would be that the policies as they currently stand are policies that affect people who have less legal footing in committing change in that area. Someone who works in San Francisco as a janitor, but lives in San Jose, doesn't get a vote in San Francisco elections. The people who do get to vote are least affected. So now the local problem as external consequences, which kind of punches a hole in it is entirely a local problem. Depending on how far you want to go with considering something local. EDIT: Another thought. And people the person works in SF, but lives elsewhere, who doesn't get to vote, but still have skin in the game for policy in SF.
closeparen 5y ago
Cities are conducive to human flourishing. It is good for people to have access to them. They can't be made from whole cloth; only a few sites have the potential to grow as cities in the short or medium term. Many people prefer suburbia, and that's fine, but it's not fine that they insist on having their suburbia on the only possible city sites.
azinman2 5y ago
That’s been the mentality in SF for years — “we don’t want to become nyc”. And so what happens? Prices skyrocket, the people who made the city interesting and serve its needs are pushed out, and only the rich enjoy it. The young generation as a whole has little hope of home ownership, while the top who work in well paid jobs reap all the rewards. Those well paid jobs are where it’s expensive to live, so it’s a catch 22. It doesn’t create a balanced society, and in fact just further stresses the differences between the haves versus the have nots. At it’s worst the wealth inequality turns into tinder for moving beyond culture wars into actual war or revolution.
- la6471 5y ago
  Why do someone need to move to SFO in the first place? Jobs are plentiful nowadays everywhere. So it’s not that for tech jobs one need to move to SFO. Yes one may want to live in Hong Kong , Singapore , Dubai , Mumbai , Paris or SFO but like all over the world certain places have higher per square foot cost than other places.
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    That's where a lot of very high paying jobs are
    - CincinnatiMan 5y ago
      Are the people with very high paying jobs the same people that need help from rezoning?
      - azinman2 5y ago
        No the people who need help were here before the techies came to the city.
      - rcpt 5y ago
        Yes. Because if you don't build housing at every scale the bottom level becomes Sao Paulo slums
mikem170 5y ago
Personally I'd say the problem is if someone is telling you that you are not allowed to build additional housing units on your property. Zoning should allow for variety and growth. Japan, for example, does a much better job of this than the U.S. Basic residential zoning allows for multi-unit and mixed use buildings. This is more flexible over time. Cities evolve as the decades pass, they need room to breathe. Single family single use zoning doesn't allow this. It's a major fail when a society can't provide housing for its people. Seems that a lot of Millennials are concerned about this.
- rank0 5y ago
  This is the best response I’ve gotten so far. It does seem a bit silly to me that I couldn’t build a duplex on my own property. But then I wonder again if this is an issue that the state government should fix instead of the municipalities.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    I like the idea of the states doing something. Like the article mentions! Maybe that's what it takes to get past the local NIMBYs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kelnos 5y ago
    The problem is that the municipalities are beholden only to the people who live in them, and the people who live in them tend to be pretty selfish when it comes to housing policy. The state can take a bit of a broader view. If it were left up to the municipalities to fix, it wouldn't get fixed. One could certainly argue that that's fine, and that property owners should get to decide every detail of housing policy for their municipality. I don't personally agree with that, but I can understand the argument.
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Its something that sucks it has to be done a state level. I mean, that is how most decisions are. It sucks any decision sometimes has to be made at the national level. But NIMBYism has a strong influence in municipalities. I would argue, the people who have the time and resources to go to city council meetings and voice their opinions, are the people who are NIMYBYs. Kind of hard to go to city council meetings or have influence if you don't live in the city (think of an outlying town/city of San Fran), or you have to commute 2-4 hours a day to and from work, or your holding down two jobs to keep your head above water.
parineum 5y ago
What even is "affordable" housing? How many houses do you have to build in Palo Alto before you run out of rich people to pay insane prices? You can build housing but the market decides if it's affordable.
throwaway34241 5y ago
If the government was restricting the supply of cars / TVs / medicine, etc, causing the prices to be high, you could make a similar argument: why not buy the older car / smaller TV / medicine with more side-effects that you can afford? That might not be bad advice at an individual level. But it still seems more optimal to allow people to produce more supply, so more people can get what they want and/or spend less of their income to do so. For housing people generally want access to good jobs, shorter commutes, more space, and lower cost. Those all exist on a spectrum, but more supply would allow, overall, more people to get more of those things. From a philosophical point of view, there's the question of who has a legitimate interest in what can be built... there's the property owner, the people who own houses in the neighborhood, and the people who work there but commute. There's the people who live in the general metro area, where the overall supply/demand will affect prices. You could even consider the people left behind by "economic geography" - as fewer people are employed in agriculture etc, there are less jobs in rural areas, and as knowledge work becomes more important more jobs are created in large cities with liquid job markets (which can support greater labor specialization). I think there's a case to be made that all these levels have some reasonable interest in the outcome and not just the local municipal level. And particularly at the local level there may be some bad incentives - approving more housing may generate local downsides like traffic, while not moving the needle too much on prices which may be determined more by the metro area as a whole.
hypersoar 5y ago
Every city relies on a bunch of cheap labor. Dishwashers, janitors, cashiers, cleaners, landscapers, baristas, gig workers, and on and on. Is it healthy for a city to need all of these people while denying them a place in it? We have this gross dynamic of essentially telling large swaths of people that they're around only to be the help and that they don't belong.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  This is still something you need to let the market sort out. Otherwise how do you decide who gets to live in CA by the beach, job lotteries?
- supernova87a 5y ago
  There is a surplus of cheap labor in the United States (at least up until recently), for the amount of goods and services produced. You may not believe it, but it is true. We have people willing to take jobs at low wages (again, up until recently) because of the growth of automation, outsourcing of low wage jobs to countries with even more labor surplus, and immigration. All these things, I will say off the bat, being good things that are producing good for people. (aside from the question, how many people can our planet sustain) "How can you tell people they are not welcome to live in the cities where they work" is a nice feel good thing to say, but those are feelings. Liberal city people seem to care a lot about feelings. But what matters, and how people actually behave, is what options and choices and reality people have to decide based on. And I might just point out, you probably don't care equally as much about the young families who are in the tech industry who "get told they can't afford to buy a house where they work". Anyway. No public policy can escape the fundamental demographic truth that we have a surplus of labor, and as cruel as it may sound, as long as people are willing to take the job for less, people will be coming to work in the Bay Area and yet not be able to live there. Liberal city policymakers believe that forcing cities to pay living wages or mandating housing will "make people feel welcome and that they belong" but there is no escaping these fundamental forces of wage depression due to labor surplus. Then trying to "fix it" by guaranteeing people housing or forcing affordable housing to be true through rent control etc. just creates more unintended side effects elsewhere. It creates housing shortages, sky high rents where not rent controlled, and protects the very NIMBYism that this article is about (where liberal people, believing their responsibility to be fulfilled through tampering with the market, now refuse to give on actual meaningful changes). And most of all, it makes those who had the good luck to get in, better off than those who weren't chosen to receive those benefits. As much as good intentions are nice, they rarely lead to good outcomes when applied at that level of thinking.
guerrilla 5y ago
People have answered your question but I'll add another aspect: It creates positive feedback loops. The poor get poorer because they have to live where lower paying jobs are. The "rich" get richer because only they can live where the higher paying jobs are. This isn't a society we want.
01100011 5y ago
There needs to be some sort of balance I think. There are limits to either extreme. Imagine if we forced, say, Hawaii to accommodate everyone who wanted to live there? There are limits on the carrying capacity of an area. I would love to let the market sort it out(sans all subsidies, property tax schemes(ahem, prop 13), etc), but I'm afraid the market will push things just to the south of being livable, and we'll build cities with poor quality of life. That said, ecological concerns will drive more and more of us to the cities, and we need to accommodate those folks. I hope we figure out a way to do it while maximizing quality of life for everyone.
dehrmann 5y ago
It's much less of a concern if there's good transit to work.
- romwell 5y ago
  > It's much less of a concern if there's good transit to work. Even good transit easily creates a 1hr commute each way. And no city in the US has good transit. NYC has barely adequate transit[1], and even then, the ridership of NYC rail systems exceeds that of the entire West Coast and Midwest combined. [1]Have fun taking the subway from Bay Ridge to Kings Highway and Ocean Ave. A century ago, streetcars were running across Brooklyn; they were replaced with buses, which sucked then, and suck now.
celloductor 5y ago
well if you want to dine in a fancy restaurant and shop and hang around in a plush suburb, how can you expect the blue collar workers keeping everything running to have to commute 2 hours for your convenience?
ZoomerCretin 5y ago
Because these restrictions are a net-negative on the entire economy of the United States. If no metro areas blocked housing between 1964 and 2009, GDP would be 50% higher than it is today. (https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medi...) "The authors estimate that if New York, San Francisco, and San Jose had housing regulations—rules about where you can build, how tall you can build, how much parking you need, and so on—that didn’t protect cute houses and instead were equivalent to the median US city in the period between 1964 and 2009, the US economy would be 9.5% bigger right now, or grow 0.21% more annually. That’s would be a big deal for wages, for the public debt, and for prosperity in general." (https://qz.com/402763/new-york-and-san-fransiscos-insane-housing-prices-are-dragging-down-us-growth/ https://qz.com/402763/new-york-and-san-fransiscos-insane-hou...) The average worker's income would increase by $9,000 per year if the Bay Area and New York City relaxed their zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes-gdp/ https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...)
- makomk 5y ago
  The problem with this is that no matter how much you tell people that they need to live in tiny concrete boxes and like it because it'll make more money for Bezos and co, they're not going to like it, which is why attempts to push it anyway have to be so anti-democratic. Sure, people are all for economic growth if it improves their actual quality of life, but a huge part of that is actually having a decent home and the anti-NIMBY campaigns involve abandoning trying to give that to people in favour of "the economy" and more money for housing developers.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. The solution to "housing crisis in low/medium-density area" need not be "dystopian nightmare".
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Rent prices in cities where building small apartments is legal indicate that a large number of people want to live in small apartments if it is in a desirable location. For example I share 55m^2 with my wife and we like it. Commutes are short, super markets, cinemas, etc are close by. We don't have a car.
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
The issue really is about supply and demand, right? The US has artificially limited supply through restrictive zoning. Better to fix the supply side than just say "move to texas".
- chii 5y ago
  > Better to fix the supply side than just say "move to texas". but "move to texas" is a solution. The "fixing supply" hasn't worked, for a long time, so why are people lamenting that instead of making "move to texas" easier?
  - chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
    It's not that increasing the supply "hasn't worked"- we straight up don't do it at all. It's been illegal to build anything besides single-family homes in most of the USA since the ~1950s. See SF, LA, Seattle... hugely popular metro areas where most of the city can only legally be a house. Single family homes are inefficient! Compare us to Japan or China where density is legal, the difference is night and day. In addition, it's very exclusionary to tell the less well-off to move away. Why embrace exclusivity when we can build more housing?
  - romwell 5y ago
    "Move to Texas" is a solution in your head, not in real life. Let's see what one needs to do to move: You need to find a job in Texas. That means in-person interview for service workers. That means also losing current job, because you need to be away from your job for interviews, and those jobs don't have vacations. So, to boot, you need: * Enough money to keep your family afloat while you're looking for a job * Money to pay for hotel while you're interviewing * Money to pay for a deposit on a new lease in Texas * Money to cover breaking the lease in your hometown * Money to go back and forth and actually move your possessions and family (several thousand dollars to either move things or sell/buy everything) Oh wait, your service job wasn't enough to provide for your family to begin with. Your spouse had to work too, and either or both of you had a "side gig", i.e. a second job to make ends meet. New task: * Have spouse find a job or two in the same area * Find a second job for yourself in Texas that works with the hours and commute for your first job * Have money to cover the deficit in the meantime Oh wait, but you also have children. How do you have kids if you're both working? * Have money to pay for childcare Haha, of course not. You can't afford that; yours and your spouse's parents were helping out. New quest: * Also move them to Texas, find places for them to live at, jobs to work at (retirement? Hahahaha), and so on. But wait! Everyone in your family has health issues, because working those jobs isn't healthy. Your job was crappy, but at least it had health insurance. * Have enough money to cover all medical expenses out of pocket while you were looking for jobs Oh, and you're still paying out loans on your vehicle that you need to get to work (and maybe a degree that didn't pan out), plus credit card debt (because you never have enough money to pay it all off) * Have enough money to cover all the debt that you have because you don't have the money to pay for things that you need to make money Too bad though, it turns out that you took a risk looking for jobs in a different city that didn't work out. The jobs in Texas that you can find are available because they don't pay enough for the locals to take them. Go figure, minimum wage in Texas is half that of your home state. Now you're out of money, out of work, without insurance, and with an employment gap what makes it harder to find work. Having lost medical care, your health issues get worse, making it harder to find work. So, what exactly should California do to make the above "move to Texas" easier?
Igelau 5y ago
Extreme example, but by pushing to the extreme we might illuminate something. Say you are born in Hawaii. One day you realize you can't afford to live in Hawaii. You're screwed.
kelnos 5y ago
Housing policy doesn't just affect the people who live in a place, but also the people who work in a place. Those people still have skin in the game, but they aren't allowed to vote on that place's housing policy. Consider that the cashier at your grocery store might not be able to afford to live in your city, and has to drive an hour each way to work every day. They have no say in that matter. (And no, they can't just get a job closer to home. There isn't enough demand for grocery store cashiers there for every cashier-commuter, more or less by definition.)
romwell 5y ago
>Maybe I’m missing something. I’m open to new ideas here but I really don’t get it. Is the concept of "it would take 3 hours one way to commute to work which isn't done remotely" really that hard to grasp? Or is the concept of relocation being difficult, costing a lot of money, and sometimes not feasible because it means other family members losing jobs too hard to get? I'm not even getting into the completely ephemeral ideas, like being priced out of the city you grew up in and have family + social connections in. The two above would be a good place to start.
- rank0 5y ago
  I still say relocate. There’s literally not another option and that’s what I would do. The alternative is what? Struggle and live in your car for years hoping that state legislation will magically build enough affordable units? You can’t always legislate every problem away. Life is hard and filled with struggle. I do not buy the idea that anyone is entitled to live anywhere and be able to afford rent and have a short commute. We may as well just ask for a utopia.
  - romwell 5y ago
    >The alternative is what? Sharing your living space with a dozen people. Either family or random roommates. What kind of economic background do you have to be asking this kind of question? > I do not buy the idea that anyone is entitled to live anywhere and be able to afford rent and have a short commute. I don't buy the idea that anyone is entitled to enjoy the benefits of essential infrastructure (which includes groceries, deliveries, restaurants, stores, etc) if it requires the people that power it to spend hours each day in commute. >We may as well just ask for a utopia. High-density, mixed use walkable neighborhoods aren't "utopia", it's how the cities always have been. Suburban cars-first developments and residential-only zoning are not some sort of natural order. Speaking of cars, without tax-funded highways, the suburban sprawl would not exist. NYC is far from utopia, but you can rent a studio today within 8 miles of Wall Street for $1400, in a safe neighborhood, next to public transit that will get you there in under an hour, with groceries and restaurants and stores in walking distance. >Life is hard and filled with struggle And this is a justification for what exactly?
encryptluks2 5y ago
Well you see at one time in history colonials came to America, killed and genocided the original land dwellers, kidnapped, raped and enslaved people to work on land furthering their profits, passed on their stolen land and wealth through generations while segregating various groups impacted by their transgressions, and to this day ask questions like you. All the while, many of them own multiple properties, have a plethora of unused land, continually abuse their positions as landlords, drive up housing prices to prices that are not affordable, and try to ensure that land is no longer available to settle for those who are simply looking for the basic necessities of safe shelter in life without trying to find ways to continue to exploit those they consider weak.
- rank0 5y ago
  > passed on their stolen land and wealth through generations while segregating various groups impacted by their transgressions, and to this day ask questions like you. Im a first generation American and my mother was a refugee. Get off your fucking high horse and go virtue signal somewhere else. People like you have no idea how the world works. You so desperately need to be seen as a “good person” it’s pathetic.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    > Im a first generation American and my mother was a refugee. Get off your fucking high horse and go virtue signal somewhere else Im really glad it worked out for her, but that doesn't mean that problems don't exist nor that you or your family didn't contribute to the issue. Many people admire the same billionaires and are "happy" willful slaves. What seems to piss off the happy willful slave more than anything is truth. > People like you have no idea how the world works. Apparently you do? Care to explain it to me? Want to tell me that people don't get exploited and they should just change their attitude?
    - rank0 5y ago
      > but that doesn't mean that problems don't exist nor that you or your family didn't contribute to the issue. Wow that's some incredible mental gymnastics you're performing there. So despite the fact that my family has never "killed and genocided the original land dwellers, kidnapped, raped and enslaved people" somehow my family and I still contribute to the issue. > Apparently you do? Care to explain it to me? Want to tell me that people don't get exploited and they those that are should just change their attitude? Sure. Exploitation and market forces are a part of human society. Baselessly calling everybody evil without offering any sort of solution does nothing except help convince yourself that you're some kind of martyr. People absolutely are exploited in every society that has ever existed. We're talking about the housing crisis in California cities here. People are not entitled to live in the most expensive, overcrowded cities in the world with low rent and short commutes. Somehow you've dumbed down a complicated issue into a blanket condemnation of the entire country. There is an abundance of work available right now. Many jobs can be done remotely, especially the tech jobs in SV.
mtoner23 5y ago
One problem is these areas are adding jobs but not housing. SF added 10 jobs for every house they built in the last decade, that gaurantees people want to live there and there wont be enough houses, ergo price increases.

by rank0 5y ago

bradleyjg 5y ago

I could flip that question around. Almost the entire country is low density. Why does Palo Alto need to be?

rank0 5y ago
I mean it doesn’t NEED to be expensive it just is. The folks living there don’t want to change their local zoning laws. I don’t really feel like I should have a say if I don’t live there. The burden of proof for an argument should come from the side which is trying to make a change.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  I think we take hyperlocalism too far. If Americans shouldn’t have a say in California and Californians shouldn’t have a say in Palo Alto, then why not have each block be sovereign? Or maybe each house?
  - rank0 5y ago
    When it comes to local issues like zoning I think it makes sense that the people actually living there get to decide.
    - JackFr 5y ago
      To take that to the extreme would be to eliminate zoning. After all I own the property - why should anyone else tell me what I can do with it? If you’re from much of the US, that sounds ludicrous — but then what is the optimal level to put zoning restrictions in?
      - rank0 5y ago
        Honestly not a bad argument at all. My knee jerk reaction says the lowest layer of government should get priority.
        theluketaylor 5y ago
        But since local landowners consistently choose the most restrictive zoning possible to the detriment of society with things like urban sprawl, car-centric development and locking the poor and youth out from economic opportunity local control simply can't continue. It's completely unsustainable both economically and environmentally. Local control means wealthy control.
        saltminer 5y ago
        Yep. Ask people who grew up in suburbia and who have only ever ridden public transit when on vacation what they want, and they'll probably tell you more low density neighborhoods, bigger roads, large shopping centers (but not malls since those became un-cool), etc. When left to their own devices, these people will inevitably take the worst parts of north Jersey and Long Island and implement them wholesale because it's all they've ever known. The affordable areas low-wage workers could previously live in just 15 minutes away have gentrified over the years, but local homeowners have no real reason to care that their cashier has a 2+ hour round-trip commute. As long as they can still get their groceries, it doesn't affect them. But, crucially, while the employees have to spend a shit ton of time and money getting to and from work every day and likely spend a fair amount of their paycheck in the city they work in (and pay a fair amount in taxes to it as a result), they have no say in its governance since they have to vote where they're registered to. Local governance utterly fails in these situations, regional planning requires state involvement when municipalities repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot for decades. And of course, as we hurtle towards a climate catastrophe, we must not forget that most people who commute long hours to and from work everyday drive cars - single occupant vehicles - because the only other way to get there involves an hour+ Greyhound ride (because they travel between multiple independent transit systems). Regional planning is needed to address these issues; the American worship of single-family zoning completely undermines any progress towards meaningfully addressing climate change.
  - throwaway9870 5y ago
    > If Americans shouldn’t have a say in California and Californians shouldn’t have a say in Palo Alto "A say" in what subject? Currency used? Sales tax paid? Laws regarding civil rights? Laws regarding non-compete clauses in employment contracts? We have a complicated legal and governing system that has worked out which subjects are covered at which levels of government. This is pretty much the same with all developed countries. Debating it in black and white terms as you present is not a very reasonable way to look at the issue.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      I feel like you're making a related mistake: just because we've worked out which subjects are covered at which levels of government[0], that doesn't mean we've done a good job of it, or that it's actually working. [0] And I don't think we have! This seems to be a constant struggle, with municipalities suing states, the feds suing states, states suing municipalities...
      - throwaway9870 5y ago
        Where did I say it should not be revisited?
        romwell 5y ago
        If you didn't mean to suggest that, then your comment doesn't seem to say anything at all. It reads like an objection. What did you want to say?
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  If areas take federal or state funding than they input from both the federal and state levels should be considered
- tcmart14 5y ago
  My counter argument would be that the policies as they currently stand are policies that affect people who have less legal footing in committing change in that area. Someone who works in San Francisco as a janitor, but lives in San Jose, doesn't get a vote in San Francisco elections. The people who do get to vote are least affected. So now the local problem as external consequences, which kind of punches a hole in it is entirely a local problem. Depending on how far you want to go with considering something local. EDIT: Another thought. And people the person works in SF, but lives elsewhere, who doesn't get to vote, but still have skin in the game for policy in SF.

closeparen 5y ago

Cities are conducive to human flourishing. It is good for people to have access to them. They can't be made from whole cloth; only a few sites have the potential to grow as cities in the short or medium term. Many people prefer suburbia, and that's fine, but it's not fine that they insist on having their suburbia on the only possible city sites.

azinman2 5y ago

That’s been the mentality in SF for years — “we don’t want to become nyc”. And so what happens? Prices skyrocket, the people who made the city interesting and serve its needs are pushed out, and only the rich enjoy it. The young generation as a whole has little hope of home ownership, while the top who work in well paid jobs reap all the rewards. Those well paid jobs are where it’s expensive to live, so it’s a catch 22. It doesn’t create a balanced society, and in fact just further stresses the differences between the haves versus the have nots. At it’s worst the wealth inequality turns into tinder for moving beyond culture wars into actual war or revolution.

la6471 5y ago
Why do someone need to move to SFO in the first place? Jobs are plentiful nowadays everywhere. So it’s not that for tech jobs one need to move to SFO. Yes one may want to live in Hong Kong , Singapore , Dubai , Mumbai , Paris or SFO but like all over the world certain places have higher per square foot cost than other places.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  That's where a lot of very high paying jobs are
  - CincinnatiMan 5y ago
    Are the people with very high paying jobs the same people that need help from rezoning?
    - azinman2 5y ago
      No the people who need help were here before the techies came to the city.
    - rcpt 5y ago
      Yes. Because if you don't build housing at every scale the bottom level becomes Sao Paulo slums

mikem170 5y ago

Personally I'd say the problem is if someone is telling you that you are not allowed to build additional housing units on your property. Zoning should allow for variety and growth. Japan, for example, does a much better job of this than the U.S. Basic residential zoning allows for multi-unit and mixed use buildings. This is more flexible over time. Cities evolve as the decades pass, they need room to breathe. Single family single use zoning doesn't allow this. It's a major fail when a society can't provide housing for its people. Seems that a lot of Millennials are concerned about this.

rank0 5y ago
This is the best response I’ve gotten so far. It does seem a bit silly to me that I couldn’t build a duplex on my own property. But then I wonder again if this is an issue that the state government should fix instead of the municipalities.
- mikem170 5y ago
  I like the idea of the states doing something. Like the article mentions! Maybe that's what it takes to get past the local NIMBYs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 5y ago
  The problem is that the municipalities are beholden only to the people who live in them, and the people who live in them tend to be pretty selfish when it comes to housing policy. The state can take a bit of a broader view. If it were left up to the municipalities to fix, it wouldn't get fixed. One could certainly argue that that's fine, and that property owners should get to decide every detail of housing policy for their municipality. I don't personally agree with that, but I can understand the argument.
tcmart14 5y ago
Its something that sucks it has to be done a state level. I mean, that is how most decisions are. It sucks any decision sometimes has to be made at the national level. But NIMBYism has a strong influence in municipalities. I would argue, the people who have the time and resources to go to city council meetings and voice their opinions, are the people who are NIMYBYs. Kind of hard to go to city council meetings or have influence if you don't live in the city (think of an outlying town/city of San Fran), or you have to commute 2-4 hours a day to and from work, or your holding down two jobs to keep your head above water.

parineum 5y ago

What even is "affordable" housing? How many houses do you have to build in Palo Alto before you run out of rich people to pay insane prices? You can build housing but the market decides if it's affordable.

throwaway34241 5y ago

If the government was restricting the supply of cars / TVs / medicine, etc, causing the prices to be high, you could make a similar argument: why not buy the older car / smaller TV / medicine with more side-effects that you can afford? That might not be bad advice at an individual level. But it still seems more optimal to allow people to produce more supply, so more people can get what they want and/or spend less of their income to do so. For housing people generally want access to good jobs, shorter commutes, more space, and lower cost. Those all exist on a spectrum, but more supply would allow, overall, more people to get more of those things. From a philosophical point of view, there's the question of who has a legitimate interest in what can be built... there's the property owner, the people who own houses in the neighborhood, and the people who work there but commute. There's the people who live in the general metro area, where the overall supply/demand will affect prices. You could even consider the people left behind by "economic geography" - as fewer people are employed in agriculture etc, there are less jobs in rural areas, and as knowledge work becomes more important more jobs are created in large cities with liquid job markets (which can support greater labor specialization). I think there's a case to be made that all these levels have some reasonable interest in the outcome and not just the local municipal level. And particularly at the local level there may be some bad incentives - approving more housing may generate local downsides like traffic, while not moving the needle too much on prices which may be determined more by the metro area as a whole.

hypersoar 5y ago

Every city relies on a bunch of cheap labor. Dishwashers, janitors, cashiers, cleaners, landscapers, baristas, gig workers, and on and on. Is it healthy for a city to need all of these people while denying them a place in it? We have this gross dynamic of essentially telling large swaths of people that they're around only to be the help and that they don't belong.

R0b0t1 5y ago
This is still something you need to let the market sort out. Otherwise how do you decide who gets to live in CA by the beach, job lotteries?
supernova87a 5y ago
There is a surplus of cheap labor in the United States (at least up until recently), for the amount of goods and services produced. You may not believe it, but it is true. We have people willing to take jobs at low wages (again, up until recently) because of the growth of automation, outsourcing of low wage jobs to countries with even more labor surplus, and immigration. All these things, I will say off the bat, being good things that are producing good for people. (aside from the question, how many people can our planet sustain) "How can you tell people they are not welcome to live in the cities where they work" is a nice feel good thing to say, but those are feelings. Liberal city people seem to care a lot about feelings. But what matters, and how people actually behave, is what options and choices and reality people have to decide based on. And I might just point out, you probably don't care equally as much about the young families who are in the tech industry who "get told they can't afford to buy a house where they work". Anyway. No public policy can escape the fundamental demographic truth that we have a surplus of labor, and as cruel as it may sound, as long as people are willing to take the job for less, people will be coming to work in the Bay Area and yet not be able to live there. Liberal city policymakers believe that forcing cities to pay living wages or mandating housing will "make people feel welcome and that they belong" but there is no escaping these fundamental forces of wage depression due to labor surplus. Then trying to "fix it" by guaranteeing people housing or forcing affordable housing to be true through rent control etc. just creates more unintended side effects elsewhere. It creates housing shortages, sky high rents where not rent controlled, and protects the very NIMBYism that this article is about (where liberal people, believing their responsibility to be fulfilled through tampering with the market, now refuse to give on actual meaningful changes). And most of all, it makes those who had the good luck to get in, better off than those who weren't chosen to receive those benefits. As much as good intentions are nice, they rarely lead to good outcomes when applied at that level of thinking.

guerrilla 5y ago

People have answered your question but I'll add another aspect: It creates positive feedback loops. The poor get poorer because they have to live where lower paying jobs are. The "rich" get richer because only they can live where the higher paying jobs are. This isn't a society we want.

01100011 5y ago

There needs to be some sort of balance I think. There are limits to either extreme. Imagine if we forced, say, Hawaii to accommodate everyone who wanted to live there? There are limits on the carrying capacity of an area. I would love to let the market sort it out(sans all subsidies, property tax schemes(ahem, prop 13), etc), but I'm afraid the market will push things just to the south of being livable, and we'll build cities with poor quality of life. That said, ecological concerns will drive more and more of us to the cities, and we need to accommodate those folks. I hope we figure out a way to do it while maximizing quality of life for everyone.

dehrmann 5y ago

It's much less of a concern if there's good transit to work.

romwell 5y ago
> It's much less of a concern if there's good transit to work. Even good transit easily creates a 1hr commute each way. And no city in the US has good transit. NYC has barely adequate transit[1], and even then, the ridership of NYC rail systems exceeds that of the entire West Coast and Midwest combined. [1]Have fun taking the subway from Bay Ridge to Kings Highway and Ocean Ave. A century ago, streetcars were running across Brooklyn; they were replaced with buses, which sucked then, and suck now.

celloductor 5y ago

well if you want to dine in a fancy restaurant and shop and hang around in a plush suburb, how can you expect the blue collar workers keeping everything running to have to commute 2 hours for your convenience?

ZoomerCretin 5y ago

Because these restrictions are a net-negative on the entire economy of the United States. If no metro areas blocked housing between 1964 and 2009, GDP would be 50% higher than it is today. (https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medi...) "The authors estimate that if New York, San Francisco, and San Jose had housing regulations—rules about where you can build, how tall you can build, how much parking you need, and so on—that didn’t protect cute houses and instead were equivalent to the median US city in the period between 1964 and 2009, the US economy would be 9.5% bigger right now, or grow 0.21% more annually. That’s would be a big deal for wages, for the public debt, and for prosperity in general." (https://qz.com/402763/new-york-and-san-fransiscos-insane-housing-prices-are-dragging-down-us-growth/ https://qz.com/402763/new-york-and-san-fransiscos-insane-hou...) The average worker's income would increase by $9,000 per year if the Bay Area and New York City relaxed their zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes-gdp/ https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...)

makomk 5y ago
The problem with this is that no matter how much you tell people that they need to live in tiny concrete boxes and like it because it'll make more money for Bezos and co, they're not going to like it, which is why attempts to push it anyway have to be so anti-democratic. Sure, people are all for economic growth if it improves their actual quality of life, but a huge part of that is actually having a decent home and the anti-NIMBY campaigns involve abandoning trying to give that to people in favour of "the economy" and more money for housing developers.
- kelnos 5y ago
  That's a false dichotomy. The solution to "housing crisis in low/medium-density area" need not be "dystopian nightmare".
- adrianN 5y ago
  Rent prices in cities where building small apartments is legal indicate that a large number of people want to live in small apartments if it is in a desirable location. For example I share 55m^2 with my wife and we like it. Commutes are short, super markets, cinemas, etc are close by. We don't have a car.

chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago

The issue really is about supply and demand, right? The US has artificially limited supply through restrictive zoning. Better to fix the supply side than just say "move to texas".

chii 5y ago
> Better to fix the supply side than just say "move to texas". but "move to texas" is a solution. The "fixing supply" hasn't worked, for a long time, so why are people lamenting that instead of making "move to texas" easier?
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
  It's not that increasing the supply "hasn't worked"- we straight up don't do it at all. It's been illegal to build anything besides single-family homes in most of the USA since the ~1950s. See SF, LA, Seattle... hugely popular metro areas where most of the city can only legally be a house. Single family homes are inefficient! Compare us to Japan or China where density is legal, the difference is night and day. In addition, it's very exclusionary to tell the less well-off to move away. Why embrace exclusivity when we can build more housing?
- romwell 5y ago
  "Move to Texas" is a solution in your head, not in real life. Let's see what one needs to do to move: You need to find a job in Texas. That means in-person interview for service workers. That means also losing current job, because you need to be away from your job for interviews, and those jobs don't have vacations. So, to boot, you need: * Enough money to keep your family afloat while you're looking for a job * Money to pay for hotel while you're interviewing * Money to pay for a deposit on a new lease in Texas * Money to cover breaking the lease in your hometown * Money to go back and forth and actually move your possessions and family (several thousand dollars to either move things or sell/buy everything) Oh wait, your service job wasn't enough to provide for your family to begin with. Your spouse had to work too, and either or both of you had a "side gig", i.e. a second job to make ends meet. New task: * Have spouse find a job or two in the same area * Find a second job for yourself in Texas that works with the hours and commute for your first job * Have money to cover the deficit in the meantime Oh wait, but you also have children. How do you have kids if you're both working? * Have money to pay for childcare Haha, of course not. You can't afford that; yours and your spouse's parents were helping out. New quest: * Also move them to Texas, find places for them to live at, jobs to work at (retirement? Hahahaha), and so on. But wait! Everyone in your family has health issues, because working those jobs isn't healthy. Your job was crappy, but at least it had health insurance. * Have enough money to cover all medical expenses out of pocket while you were looking for jobs Oh, and you're still paying out loans on your vehicle that you need to get to work (and maybe a degree that didn't pan out), plus credit card debt (because you never have enough money to pay it all off) * Have enough money to cover all the debt that you have because you don't have the money to pay for things that you need to make money Too bad though, it turns out that you took a risk looking for jobs in a different city that didn't work out. The jobs in Texas that you can find are available because they don't pay enough for the locals to take them. Go figure, minimum wage in Texas is half that of your home state. Now you're out of money, out of work, without insurance, and with an employment gap what makes it harder to find work. Having lost medical care, your health issues get worse, making it harder to find work. So, what exactly should California do to make the above "move to Texas" easier?

Igelau 5y ago

Extreme example, but by pushing to the extreme we might illuminate something. Say you are born in Hawaii. One day you realize you can't afford to live in Hawaii. You're screwed.

kelnos 5y ago

Housing policy doesn't just affect the people who live in a place, but also the people who work in a place. Those people still have skin in the game, but they aren't allowed to vote on that place's housing policy. Consider that the cashier at your grocery store might not be able to afford to live in your city, and has to drive an hour each way to work every day. They have no say in that matter. (And no, they can't just get a job closer to home. There isn't enough demand for grocery store cashiers there for every cashier-commuter, more or less by definition.)

romwell 5y ago

>Maybe I’m missing something. I’m open to new ideas here but I really don’t get it. Is the concept of "it would take 3 hours one way to commute to work which isn't done remotely" really that hard to grasp? Or is the concept of relocation being difficult, costing a lot of money, and sometimes not feasible because it means other family members losing jobs too hard to get? I'm not even getting into the completely ephemeral ideas, like being priced out of the city you grew up in and have family + social connections in. The two above would be a good place to start.

rank0 5y ago
I still say relocate. There’s literally not another option and that’s what I would do. The alternative is what? Struggle and live in your car for years hoping that state legislation will magically build enough affordable units? You can’t always legislate every problem away. Life is hard and filled with struggle. I do not buy the idea that anyone is entitled to live anywhere and be able to afford rent and have a short commute. We may as well just ask for a utopia.
- romwell 5y ago
  >The alternative is what? Sharing your living space with a dozen people. Either family or random roommates. What kind of economic background do you have to be asking this kind of question? > I do not buy the idea that anyone is entitled to live anywhere and be able to afford rent and have a short commute. I don't buy the idea that anyone is entitled to enjoy the benefits of essential infrastructure (which includes groceries, deliveries, restaurants, stores, etc) if it requires the people that power it to spend hours each day in commute. >We may as well just ask for a utopia. High-density, mixed use walkable neighborhoods aren't "utopia", it's how the cities always have been. Suburban cars-first developments and residential-only zoning are not some sort of natural order. Speaking of cars, without tax-funded highways, the suburban sprawl would not exist. NYC is far from utopia, but you can rent a studio today within 8 miles of Wall Street for $1400, in a safe neighborhood, next to public transit that will get you there in under an hour, with groceries and restaurants and stores in walking distance. >Life is hard and filled with struggle And this is a justification for what exactly?

encryptluks2 5y ago

Well you see at one time in history colonials came to America, killed and genocided the original land dwellers, kidnapped, raped and enslaved people to work on land furthering their profits, passed on their stolen land and wealth through generations while segregating various groups impacted by their transgressions, and to this day ask questions like you. All the while, many of them own multiple properties, have a plethora of unused land, continually abuse their positions as landlords, drive up housing prices to prices that are not affordable, and try to ensure that land is no longer available to settle for those who are simply looking for the basic necessities of safe shelter in life without trying to find ways to continue to exploit those they consider weak.

rank0 5y ago
> passed on their stolen land and wealth through generations while segregating various groups impacted by their transgressions, and to this day ask questions like you. Im a first generation American and my mother was a refugee. Get off your fucking high horse and go virtue signal somewhere else. People like you have no idea how the world works. You so desperately need to be seen as a “good person” it’s pathetic.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  > Im a first generation American and my mother was a refugee. Get off your fucking high horse and go virtue signal somewhere else Im really glad it worked out for her, but that doesn't mean that problems don't exist nor that you or your family didn't contribute to the issue. Many people admire the same billionaires and are "happy" willful slaves. What seems to piss off the happy willful slave more than anything is truth. > People like you have no idea how the world works. Apparently you do? Care to explain it to me? Want to tell me that people don't get exploited and they should just change their attitude?
  - rank0 5y ago
    > but that doesn't mean that problems don't exist nor that you or your family didn't contribute to the issue. Wow that's some incredible mental gymnastics you're performing there. So despite the fact that my family has never "killed and genocided the original land dwellers, kidnapped, raped and enslaved people" somehow my family and I still contribute to the issue. > Apparently you do? Care to explain it to me? Want to tell me that people don't get exploited and they those that are should just change their attitude? Sure. Exploitation and market forces are a part of human society. Baselessly calling everybody evil without offering any sort of solution does nothing except help convince yourself that you're some kind of martyr. People absolutely are exploited in every society that has ever existed. We're talking about the housing crisis in California cities here. People are not entitled to live in the most expensive, overcrowded cities in the world with low rent and short commutes. Somehow you've dumbed down a complicated issue into a blanket condemnation of the entire country. There is an abundance of work available right now. Many jobs can be done remotely, especially the tech jobs in SV.

mtoner23 5y ago

One problem is these areas are adding jobs but not housing. SF added 10 jobs for every house they built in the last decade, that gaurantees people want to live there and there wont be enough houses, ergo price increases.