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> If they don't like it, they can move. Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of a

> If they don't like it, they can move. Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of affordable housing in the country, but it doesn't all exist in the places people want to live.

graeme 3y ago
Do you think those inexpensive homes are empty? Or that you could build to brooklyn density in those areas to build no problems. Your proposal merely shuffles the problem around, it doesn't increase housing supply.
vondur 3y ago
Exactly this. We should be giving people incentives to move the Midwest where there is affordable housing. Not everyone can live on the coasts. Here in California, the infrastructure has not kept up with the population increases. As a result, houses are being built in areas that were previously wilderness and now we have fires burning through entire towns.
- admax88qqq 3y ago
  Is the affordable housing that exists int he Midwest not an incentive? Or do you think we should be giving people even more?
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Many people find the Midwest winters unpleasant, and many Midwest states lack variety in outdoor terrain. On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest. That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of living too.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Or to factor it out, the incentive should be (perhaps) for businesses to allow "state agnostic" remote work, or give incentives to move to lower cost of living areas. The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        the problem is also that a lot of tax and insurance and whatnot are defined by the state you live in. supporting remote work means having to be compliant in every single jurisdiction an employee could possibly live in.
- ihaveajob 3y ago
  San Francisco, the densest city in the state, is 3/4 suburbia. There's no reason why it couldn't host 4 times the population without resorting to Hong Kong style urbanism (which would be great IMO, but that's a separate story). The infrastructure argument would make sense if homes in remote areas didn't also need that infrastructure, while suffering from lower efficiency in all measures.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    [deleted] No more fever posting
    - pchristensen 3y ago
      I’d love to hear how you came up with that.
    - danking00 3y ago
      I was surprised by the last clause in your last sentence, but you’re absolutely right. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.tx... LA edges out NYC: 7000 to 5300. Presumably in individuals per square mile.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        It all depends on where you draw the lines. When people think of LA they think of that whole sprawling metropolis between the mountains (what is technically the LA basis or the LA metro area) - but the City of Los Angeles is a smaller denser portion of that. And when people think New York City they think Manhattan, but New York City includes quite a bit more.
        pchristensen 3y ago
        The City of Los Angeles is still over 4 million people, more than most states.
- bitcurious 3y ago
  During/post covid there has been a massive migration out of urban centers into rural places. Thus far the effect has been that affordable places are less affordable, while expensive places stayed expensive.
creer 3y ago
1. High population areas are also concentrations of jobs. It doesn't make sense to both say "They" can live somewhere else and "They" should please work here. 2. Governance problems is unfortunately not a monopoly of high population areas.
mey 3y ago
Two reasons I haven't moved - my community (friends) are here - any cheaper place I would move is a political nightmare
comte7092 3y ago
Affordable isn’t only about price, but price relative to income. Not everyone can have a location independent job. Many places that seem “affordable” lack decent paying jobs. And the areas with the highest paying jobs are filled with people who scream that people should go live somewhere else. These are people who started the race a mile ahead and think they are superior runners. They’ve done very little to earn what they have and are fighting like hell to avoid even mild inconveniences to themselves (e.g. an affordable development for low income seniors or teachers). Before you say “well this is what voters want” voters at the state level got legislation through that mandated changes and the minority of voters in a handful of well off areas are actively disregarding that law.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > Affordable isn’t only about price, but price relative to income. > Not everyone can have a location independent job. Many places that seem “affordable” lack decent paying jobs. We don't have to hand wave about areas that "seem 'affordable'": we actually have the data for both income and home prices. The math isn't complicated: housing is affordable to the average person in much of the US [0]. The conflict here isn't driven by people who couldn't afford to move elsewhere, the conflict is driven by the sheer number of people who choose to live on the west coast. One group of those people already owns homes along the west coast and wants their neighborhood to stay the same. Another group would really like for there to be affordable housing along the west coast. But at the end of the day, there isn't anything stopping either group of people from getting a job in one of the green or yellow areas in the map below and living there with a very decent ratio of income to expenses. [0] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg0c850l7qrc91.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg...
cheriot 3y ago
> Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? Because the cities in question green lit the office buildings that have the job I need. If a city chooses to grow its economy, it has an obligation to allow enough housing for those new people.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Plenty of people (dare I say a majority?) commute to cities without living in them, and that often has nothing to do with the cost of housing and more personal preference. I, for one, don't want to be forced to move every time I change jobs. I would much rather have the opportunity to take jobs in near by communities as well (assuming I didn't work from home of course).
  - cheriot 3y ago
    It's possible this conversation about housing is not [yet] relevant to your area. By city I mean metro area, not the municipal boundaries. There's a predictable path: 1. city keeps adding dense office buildings 2. city and suburbs resist new housing 3. new housing is greenfield development outside the existing suburbs I'll pause here to point out the resulting trend: average commutes get longer because the people in the new housing are driving more miles each day than existing residents. Traffic is a function of miles driven. So traffic is super linear on growth. 4. housing closest to offices become extremely expensive [rich people will pay to save time] and existing residents have longer commutes because of increased traffic 5. make the roads wider 6. 5 doesn't work because of the super linear relationship https://plazaperspective.com/road-widening/ https://plazaperspective.com/road-widening/ 7. homelessness increases because housing that use to be cheap is now renovated for people that want to live closer to work Now you're Austin passing the same sit-lie law in 2021 that didn't work in San Francisco in 2010 Austin https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/new-play-gives-a-first-hand-account-of-austins-no-sitno-lie-law/ https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/new-play-gives-a-first... SF https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/What-happened-to-SF-s-controversial-sit-lie-13303216.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/What-happened-to-SF-s... Commuting into a city is a thing everywhere. But the American "sprawl forever" model has broken down in the places that have grown the most in the last ~30 years. It screws the people with extremely long commutes, the homeless, the people spending the majority of their paycheck on housing, the people want to have kids but can't afford to, etcs
J_Shelby_J 3y ago
Why should people get to build walls around the gardens of edens and kick out the ladders of those on the other side? Property rights are a shared fiction we adopted because they're (largely) in the best interest of society. When they instead act as subsidies and hand outs to some fortunate few, we need to rethink how things are done.

graeme 3y ago

Do you think those inexpensive homes are empty? Or that you could build to brooklyn density in those areas to build no problems. Your proposal merely shuffles the problem around, it doesn't increase housing supply.

vondur 3y ago

Exactly this. We should be giving people incentives to move the Midwest where there is affordable housing. Not everyone can live on the coasts. Here in California, the infrastructure has not kept up with the population increases. As a result, houses are being built in areas that were previously wilderness and now we have fires burning through entire towns.

admax88qqq 3y ago
Is the affordable housing that exists int he Midwest not an incentive? Or do you think we should be giving people even more?
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Many people find the Midwest winters unpleasant, and many Midwest states lack variety in outdoor terrain. On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest. That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of living too.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Or to factor it out, the incentive should be (perhaps) for businesses to allow "state agnostic" remote work, or give incentives to move to lower cost of living areas. The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      the problem is also that a lot of tax and insurance and whatnot are defined by the state you live in. supporting remote work means having to be compliant in every single jurisdiction an employee could possibly live in.
ihaveajob 3y ago
San Francisco, the densest city in the state, is 3/4 suburbia. There's no reason why it couldn't host 4 times the population without resorting to Hong Kong style urbanism (which would be great IMO, but that's a separate story). The infrastructure argument would make sense if homes in remote areas didn't also need that infrastructure, while suffering from lower efficiency in all measures.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  [deleted] No more fever posting
  - pchristensen 3y ago
    I’d love to hear how you came up with that.
  - danking00 3y ago
    I was surprised by the last clause in your last sentence, but you’re absolutely right. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.tx... LA edges out NYC: 7000 to 5300. Presumably in individuals per square mile.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It all depends on where you draw the lines. When people think of LA they think of that whole sprawling metropolis between the mountains (what is technically the LA basis or the LA metro area) - but the City of Los Angeles is a smaller denser portion of that. And when people think New York City they think Manhattan, but New York City includes quite a bit more.
      - pchristensen 3y ago
        The City of Los Angeles is still over 4 million people, more than most states.
bitcurious 3y ago
During/post covid there has been a massive migration out of urban centers into rural places. Thus far the effect has been that affordable places are less affordable, while expensive places stayed expensive.

creer 3y ago

1. High population areas are also concentrations of jobs. It doesn't make sense to both say "They" can live somewhere else and "They" should please work here. 2. Governance problems is unfortunately not a monopoly of high population areas.

mey 3y ago

Two reasons I haven't moved - my community (friends) are here - any cheaper place I would move is a political nightmare

comte7092 3y ago

Affordable isn’t only about price, but price relative to income. Not everyone can have a location independent job. Many places that seem “affordable” lack decent paying jobs. And the areas with the highest paying jobs are filled with people who scream that people should go live somewhere else. These are people who started the race a mile ahead and think they are superior runners. They’ve done very little to earn what they have and are fighting like hell to avoid even mild inconveniences to themselves (e.g. an affordable development for low income seniors or teachers). Before you say “well this is what voters want” voters at the state level got legislation through that mandated changes and the minority of voters in a handful of well off areas are actively disregarding that law.

lolinder 3y ago
> Affordable isn’t only about price, but price relative to income. > Not everyone can have a location independent job. Many places that seem “affordable” lack decent paying jobs. We don't have to hand wave about areas that "seem 'affordable'": we actually have the data for both income and home prices. The math isn't complicated: housing is affordable to the average person in much of the US [0]. The conflict here isn't driven by people who couldn't afford to move elsewhere, the conflict is driven by the sheer number of people who choose to live on the west coast. One group of those people already owns homes along the west coast and wants their neighborhood to stay the same. Another group would really like for there to be affordable housing along the west coast. But at the end of the day, there isn't anything stopping either group of people from getting a job in one of the green or yellow areas in the map below and living there with a very decent ratio of income to expenses. [0] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg0c850l7qrc91.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg...

cheriot 3y ago

> Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? Because the cities in question green lit the office buildings that have the job I need. If a city chooses to grow its economy, it has an obligation to allow enough housing for those new people.

zdragnar 3y ago
Plenty of people (dare I say a majority?) commute to cities without living in them, and that often has nothing to do with the cost of housing and more personal preference. I, for one, don't want to be forced to move every time I change jobs. I would much rather have the opportunity to take jobs in near by communities as well (assuming I didn't work from home of course).
- cheriot 3y ago
  It's possible this conversation about housing is not [yet] relevant to your area. By city I mean metro area, not the municipal boundaries. There's a predictable path: 1. city keeps adding dense office buildings 2. city and suburbs resist new housing 3. new housing is greenfield development outside the existing suburbs I'll pause here to point out the resulting trend: average commutes get longer because the people in the new housing are driving more miles each day than existing residents. Traffic is a function of miles driven. So traffic is super linear on growth. 4. housing closest to offices become extremely expensive [rich people will pay to save time] and existing residents have longer commutes because of increased traffic 5. make the roads wider 6. 5 doesn't work because of the super linear relationship https://plazaperspective.com/road-widening/ https://plazaperspective.com/road-widening/ 7. homelessness increases because housing that use to be cheap is now renovated for people that want to live closer to work Now you're Austin passing the same sit-lie law in 2021 that didn't work in San Francisco in 2010 Austin https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/new-play-gives-a-first-hand-account-of-austins-no-sitno-lie-law/ https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/new-play-gives-a-first... SF https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/What-happened-to-SF-s-controversial-sit-lie-13303216.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/What-happened-to-SF-s... Commuting into a city is a thing everywhere. But the American "sprawl forever" model has broken down in the places that have grown the most in the last ~30 years. It screws the people with extremely long commutes, the homeless, the people spending the majority of their paycheck on housing, the people want to have kids but can't afford to, etcs

J_Shelby_J 3y ago

Why should people get to build walls around the gardens of edens and kick out the ladders of those on the other side? Property rights are a shared fiction we adopted because they're (largely) in the best interest of society. When they instead act as subsidies and hand outs to some fortunate few, we need to rethink how things are done.