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Marc Andreessen and Ultra-Wealthy Neighbors Thwart Housing in California Town
- luxurytent 4y agoIt’s time to build! Except … housing which can harm my property value
- midoridensha 4y agoExactly, it should be built in someone else's back yard...
- quickthrower2 4y agoIt can increase it too through the zoning changes. 2000 sqm low density residential < 2000 sqm high rise mixed use. The horrible thing is if your neighbour gets rezoned but you don't.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoThis is sort of how it's playing out where I live now. The city has opened up densification in an area that has historically been suburbs. Old bungalows from the 50s/60s are being bought out by developers and turned into mini 6-unit condo buildings. So on one hand, densification, yay! On the other, starter homes suitable for young families are being lost and replaced with smaller apartments suitable for young couples, boo? Any potential family looking to buy those properties is completely outbid by the developer. The sale of 6x units covers the purchase price, tear down and new build with a healthy profit margin, the single family never had a chance. It seems like the middle is falling out of the market and developers seek profit in one of 2 ways. Mcmansion that maximize square footage on a single lot, or condos that maximize the number of small-as-possible units in one building. Then the government wonders why the birthrate is decreasing..
- quickthrower2 4y agoA culture shift where a 2/3 bed appt is seen as OK for families would help. Ideally there would be parks / exercise opportunities nearby.
- Griffinsauce 4y ago"Seen as ok" doesn't change the experience of those living in it.
- femiagbabiaka 4y agoLiving in a 3 bedroom apartment is a luxurious experience in much of the world and preferable to homelessness or extreme precarity, imo. 3 bedrooms doesn't have to mean cramped and miserable, it only means that right now because we don't build enough and landlords in cities frequently split up 1 or 2 bedroom apartments into 3 with architectural slight of hand (or just by lying).
- fstarship 4y agoSuburbia is overrated for families “soccer moms” exist because otherwise the experience for kids is being under house arrest until you get your car. In denser countries you can take public transit/ walk yourself to places you wont to go long before you get a drivers license.
- piva00 4y agoWhat do you mean by the experience of those living in it? The experience of living in a 3-bedroom apartment in the middle of a walkable and lively city is pretty comfortable.
- jeromegv 4y ago6 families live on that land instead of 1. It’s a net benefit for society. You’re talking as if families are being screwed by developers. What I see is 5 mores families getting a home. You can’t have a society where everyone owns a single family home of 4000sqf. Infrastructure and public dollar can’t sustain all the roads, aqueduc, transit, for such low density. If some people have the money for it, fine, but we can’t have the whole population of North America living that way. It was always a lie of the American dream.
- ipython 4y agoI’ve watched this happen in my own neighborhood which is trying to build in additional transit options and build high density housing to ease the pressure on prices. We have neighbors vehemently opposed to the transit, convinced that it will bring the “bad elements” to town. Then further fighting the housing complaining of how it would make traffic worse. Note that neither is even close to a problem… I just sit and sigh. Honestly I think these developments will help our values but they don’t see it that way.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoIn my experience... public transit in areas with poor transit options is overwhelmingly used by "bad elements" (homeless and petty criminals). People who aren't "bad" (i.e. they are of the same economic class as the homeowners in the city) generally can afford cars in suburban areas. So I can understand why they oppose public transit. High density housing has no excuse though, if traffic is a problem then streets should be expanded. We need more 5+1 apartments and dense townhomes built.
- na85 4y ago>if traffic is a problem then streets should be expanded Quite the opposite. Traffic will expand like a gas to meet the available capacity. You can only make the roads so wide, but never will it be wide enough to abate traffic congestion. If traffic is a problem it's time to make driving less attractive by building bike lanes, subways/light rail/monorail, and investing in transit.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago> Traffic will expand like a gas to meet the available capacity Yes, but now the roads carry more people. You can't fix congestion, but you can make it so the roads can sustain the local population, even if they're traveling at 20mph during rush hour. > bike lanes Sure, but when's someone going to make an ebike that can carry lots of groceries? Or really anything more than 1 large bag. Even a Trader Joe's run for only myself is 4-5 bags, and those portions are small compared to Costco. Also, bike theft is a huge problem. And coincidentally the places with the best transit and bike lane buildouts have the worst policies towards property theft. > subways/light rail/monorail, and investing in transit Until disruptive people are banned from transit (so everything doesn't smell like piss and weed) and light rail is permitted to go faster than cars by NIMBYs, transit will never be an appealing option vs. cars. BART travels at 20mph next to 65 mph freeways sometimes. I'm all for transit and bikes if these problems can be fixed. But they are political problems, not engineering ones. So I have little faith they will ever be fixed.
- throwoutway 4y agoThe story here is one where the public finds a man who claims one thing publicly and but does the opposite privately. The man wrote this essay [1] complaining that America needs to build, but turns out he is a NIMBY when it comes to his own home. This, on the same day the man invests in WeWork’s Adam Neumann's [2] new residential real estate company that surely will just make the problems worse, while trying to enrich investors (though the actual company's plans are pretty sparse in detail). What a spectacle of irony. [1] https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/a16z-to-invest-in-adam-neumanns-new-residential-real-estate-company.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/a16z-to-invest-in-adam-neuma...
- planarhobbit 4y agoThere’s not a drop of irony here. It’s just mindboggling that HN prop these charlatans up like gods. You’re not temporarily embarrassed millionaires - you’re just embarrassing.
- tofuahdude 4y agoLet's call it hypocrisy then.
- davidivadavid 4y agoThe thing about Marc Andreessen is that of all VC-types of people he seemed like one with a modicum of tech legitimacy, given his history/role in the development of the web. Unfortunately it seems to be quickly evaporating.
- hvs 4y agoI was at UIUC shortly after he graduated and the general impression was that he basically just stole Mosaic from the University to create Netscape. Not sure that bestows him with any tech legitimacy. He's certainly a good businessman.
- 4y ago
- mixmastamyk 4y agoA YIYBY+NIMBY position, basically. I will concede that more homes in the city should be a priority, but they are needed everywhere.
- greyface- 4y ago12 days ago, 761 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32350657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32350657 4 hours ago, 111 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32489076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32489076
- Barrin92 4y agoso called modern "tech" can't build anything that isn't made out of bits. After that essay, a16z went on to fund a digital nightclub for nerds (clubhouse), tons of crypto schemes, and now apparently the next iteration on landlording. So pretty much anything that doesn't involve building something in the physical world. when covid came around every single one of these entrepreneurs was spamming twitter with how they're doing their part in saving everyone, yet at the end of the day it was the pharma sector and governments who actually did it. Even within the software sector it's largely companies like Microsoft or Apple, preceding the Andreessen generation who genuinely build things. Including here on HN in particular there needs to be a critical re-evaluation of the entire 'startup economy' and how much of it is just digital rent-seeking on top of physical infrastructure that other people build.
- orange_joe 4y agoTo be fair to big tech/software, it was the thing that me work from home, for some people (like my mother) that probably saved their lives. Not to mention all the digital services I relied on to keep some semblance sanity. I was stuck in a 300sqft apartment with my girlfriend for months but was able to talk with friends, family, watch movies and play games. None of that would have been possible without tech. You’re right that pharma ended up saving us, but it’s a bit pithy to totally dismiss what tech gave us.
- specialist 4y ago> ...can't build anything that isn't made out of bits. a16z argues that crypto are "digital assets", whatever that is.
- jmeister 4y ago
- tofuahdude 4y agoMarc Andreessen is the epitome of hypocrisy on this topic.
- fsckboy 4y agono, he's not hypocritical. Now, I don't like MA himself, so this is not a defense of somebody I like, this is a defense of basic Econ 101. Let's say you own a large amount of real estate in a city, much acreage in the wealthy part, much acreage in the middle class part, and much acreage in the poor part of town. As such, you have a good bit of influence at city hall, your development projects employ so many people and the taxes you pay sustain the school system. The city wants to build an airport, everybody agrees it is necessary for growth, you agree, the labor unions agree, everybody. Where do you recommend building it? Should you build it uptown and destroy the property values in the wealthy part of town? How much lower would the property values drop in the poor part of town? See where this is going? The model doesn't have to have one person owning all of this property, it's just easier to see that way, where one person makes the tradeoff, but the market will make the same tradeoff if instead, it could all be owned by individual people, or it could all be owned by a progressive socialist government: you still don't build the airport near the nicest real estate, you build it by the most distressed real estate where it will have little effect on prices. If you want to let the market solve this problem, auction off the right to build the airport to the resident stakeholders. The poor people will jump at a lower price than the other classes of people. So, advocating for an airport (or more housing) and then saying "but don't build it here" is not hypocritical, it's something I like to call rational. Now, should poor people be subjected to all the worst ills, the sewage treatment plant, the power plant, the airport, etc? Regardless of where you stand on that, the solution to improving the lives of poor people is still not building the airport in the best neighborhood. If your socialist government wants to confiscate the rich neighborhood so the commissars have places to live, they still don't want an airport there. If your govt confiscates it and rents it out to proles who want to pay more for housing and dress in rags, vs the proles who want nicer clothes in a shabbier apartment, it still does not make sense to destroy that value.
- joeblubaugh 4y ago
- upupandup 4y agoJust got rejection letter from a16z and I feel that I dodged a bullet. US security laws is probably the least of his worries atm.
- namecheapTA 4y agoIs there anyone that genuinely wants people a few steps down financially from them living near by them? If you make $150k being an decent but not fantastic engineer and you get into a nice enough neighborhood, are you really that excited if the vacant land down the street is being turned into low income duplexes for tow truck drivers? Honestly?
- the_only_law 4y agoI wouldn’t give two shits because I’m not a snobby douchebag.
- colmanhumphrey 4y agohonestly yeah, I like living in density with other people around. It generally leads to more local businesses too: even if the number per-capita is the same, you get more choice, better opening hours etc.
- wnolens 4y agoYes, sounds great. Useless, vacant land v.s. new neighbors + taxes paid to the city. The benefit is obvious when you put aside your prejudice against those from different walks of life.
- namecheapTA 4y agoJesus. Go more extreme then. Do you want to live next to the barely employed, social services using, bike stealing crowd? Are we really pretending nicer safer areas aren't more desirable than areas of low income housing?
- trevorboaconstr 4y agoSo let me get this straight, in your mind, every person making below, say, 35K, is a barely employed, social services using, bike stealing bum? I’m gunna be honest, if we’re making broad generalizations now, silicon valley snobs are by far the most selfish, inconsiderate, lack of empathy having, inflated ego persons in the entirety of the country. Texas and Arizona needs to be bussing those immigrants to SF area and not NY.
- wikitopian 4y agoMarc was wrong to promote YIMBY, and should be roasted for opposing neighborhoods defending and defining their character and culture. Nothing wrong with wanting a say in your neighborhood's development. We should let everybody who owns their own home to NIMBY, not just rich people and investors.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TheMagicHorsey 4y agoBetween pumping and dumping shitcoins associated with dubious crypto projects and this nonsense, A16Zs brand has been completely destroyed among my circle of programmers. And it isn't just Andreesen. Chris Dixon, and some of the other younger associates are also acting like grifters when it comes to crypto. And this is coming from someone that has held bitcoin since 2015. I'm not someone who is against crypto by any means, but this BS with pushing crypto projects to poverty level retail investors has to stop.
- urthor 4y agoRemember it's not just Marc. His wife is the daughter of Silicon Valley's all time most successful property developer.
- EddySchauHai 4y agoYep! A lot of Stanfords campus is named after him and before he died he was due to build a public gym in Palo Alto. Seems she's got the same interests as him with their recent letters!
- dnissley 4y agoThis is the most interesting part of this story! Everybody going on about how Marc is a hypocrite, but to me it smells of a house divided, since we don't know for certain who penned the letter, or whether Marc himself even ever saw it. To disavow it publicly though would be a personal betrayal of his wife. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on that wall.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eschaton 4y agoThe term NIMBY was originally intended to refer to people like this: A liberal who wanted all sorts of services—but not in _my_ back yard! That was to distinguish them from conservatives who were open about not wanting services at all.
- refurb 4y agoAs the saying goes "houses are expensive not because of the house, but because of the neighbors".
- vadym909 4y agoWhat I don't understand about the bay area is why they don't just dedicate an area away from these NIMBY neighborhoods- say north of 101, between San Carlos and Santa Clara and let them build lots of skyscrapers with lots of housing and roads to help 101 divert some traffic. I see tall office buildings there so its def not earthquake or environmental. Affordable housing and urban lifestyle for the young and SFH and space for the family folks in Atherton.
- 238475235243 4y agoI suggest you try to pretend to build a house, condo or office building to see what happens. Just go through the motions, talk to builders and try to get permits. Then you will understand.
- khazhoux 4y agoIn tech (and here on HN) we embrace the mythos of the founder, and everyone is 100% comfortable with a founder having 80x more equity than the first engineer (who writes the very first prototype) and 800x more equity than the 10th engineer, and we cheer them when they ("one of us") becomes a multi-billionaire... while at the same time, we're aghast at the immense wealth inequality everywhere else ("that greedy wall street!") and we're offended by Marc Andreessen wanting to protect his personal riches.
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- opisthenar84 4y agoThere's some comments pointing out that this is a dupe of recently posted articles. The fact that this keeps coming to the front page of HN goes to show you how scummy this behavior from Andreessen is.
- fitzie 4y agoso much politics here. seems like a bunch of issues, including putting lower income people into wealthy neighborhoods, which is an explicit goal of many elected democrats, urban sprawl, which no one seems to worry about these days, housing shortages, which is a big issue. honestly I don't know why people are so focused on marcs opinions, he can afford to lose property value or leave, bit certainly he has every right to fight for his little suburban dream. I think the bigger issue is that the cities were the future just a few years ago, and now that future isn't as certain.