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That's reasonable and I agree. Of course, you also won't house 100 new blue collar, lower-working class, or entry-level families in 100 expensive McMansions or

That's reasonable and I agree. Of course, you also won't house 100 new blue collar, lower-working class, or entry-level families in 100 expensive McMansions or luxury condos either. Because they can't afford it. But if that's all the builders want to make for the profit margins, and that's all the NIMBYs and zoning regulations will allow, that's what we get. Not just in the wealthy Bay Area. You see that in parts of the country with much lower median salaries. It's a difficult, multi-faceted problem. "Just let the market sort it out" is a markedly overly-simplistic solution. One that doesn't work well if at all except for very simple problems involving simple fungible commodities with a wide supply-side availability. Real estate obviously doesn't fit that description.

kristopolous 4y ago
My real advocacy is we should use the same level of eminent domain effort we took when we cut cities in half to build freeways out to winding suburbias full of giant malls to center life around driving and transform the cities again. It takes a lot of bravado and gumption to seize control of destiny like that and I think Americans at least have collectively lost that kind of imaginary. The modern apartment buildings are endemic of it. They are the closest thing you could get to the Jetsons; 30 feet of parking with the first floor of residency literally in the sky. They look like concrete fortresses with iron bars protecting parked cars. The only way in and out of the urban prison is to use your car as a key. If you're on foot, it's some side door. These things are extremely hostile to community building and offer the same clinical separation and isolation narrative of the redlined suburb of the 1950s. It's the lonely by design individualist approach to cosmopolitan living and personally I find it repulsive. Better, friendly buildings, fewer cars, more green space, this is all possible. Tokyo pulls it off pretty nicely. We just need to exercise the political power to make it happen
amluto 4y ago
> Of course, you also won't house 100 new blue collar, lower-working class, or entry-level families in 100 expensive McMansions or luxury condos either. Because they can't afford it. That’s sort of true, but not really true in the sense of the broader market. If you build 100 high end housing units, some of them will be occupied by people currently living in lower end housing, which will free up that housing for lower-income people.

kristopolous 4y ago

My real advocacy is we should use the same level of eminent domain effort we took when we cut cities in half to build freeways out to winding suburbias full of giant malls to center life around driving and transform the cities again. It takes a lot of bravado and gumption to seize control of destiny like that and I think Americans at least have collectively lost that kind of imaginary. The modern apartment buildings are endemic of it. They are the closest thing you could get to the Jetsons; 30 feet of parking with the first floor of residency literally in the sky. They look like concrete fortresses with iron bars protecting parked cars. The only way in and out of the urban prison is to use your car as a key. If you're on foot, it's some side door. These things are extremely hostile to community building and offer the same clinical separation and isolation narrative of the redlined suburb of the 1950s. It's the lonely by design individualist approach to cosmopolitan living and personally I find it repulsive. Better, friendly buildings, fewer cars, more green space, this is all possible. Tokyo pulls it off pretty nicely. We just need to exercise the political power to make it happen

amluto 4y ago

> Of course, you also won't house 100 new blue collar, lower-working class, or entry-level families in 100 expensive McMansions or luxury condos either. Because they can't afford it. That’s sort of true, but not really true in the sense of the broader market. If you build 100 high end housing units, some of them will be occupied by people currently living in lower end housing, which will free up that housing for lower-income people.