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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

This whole issue of affordable housing seems a bit ridiculous to me. The people complaining about affordable housing are urban young people wanting to live in San Francisco, Portland, etc. There are TONS of affordable housing, but not in hip, rich places where these young people want to live. Come south, Atlanta has tons of affordable housing. Austin Texas, Tampa Florida, Akron Ohio for heaven sake's! There is no affordable housing crisis, there is a crisis of unreasonable expectations and spoiled people.

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It's not unreasonable for someone who works in SF (1000/sf+) or Oakland (500/sf+) to expect to be able to afford a home. I'm currently in Tampa for the weekend and it's not a replacement for Oakland - in any way. These places are more affordable because they are less desirable...

The real issues - in CA at least - are the property tax lock-in that incentivized NIMBYism and the gross costs of lawsuits and regulations for developers. I believe we need the regulations that protect the sensitive environments and to discourage sprawl, yet we currently make it impossible to redevelop brown and grayfield (commercial retail, etc) lots or even single-family zoned neighborhoods that could accommodate flats (2-4 units per lot).

Zoning code has become a problem in desirable cities that have a housing shortage. It's not just small housing that has value - it's any housing.

Yes. People want to live near locales with services, infrastructure, and the majority of jobs. Fucking entitled shits.

Except there are plenty of places with services, infrastructure, good jobs, AND affordable housing.

Which are?

I'm not even being facetious. My city is incredibly expensive to live in. I'm willing to hear solid alternatives.

Can I ride my bicycle in those places without being swerved at or screamed at?

Yes in most suburbs of the US it's safe to ride your bike.

If anything has ever needed a citation, it's that little gem. Suburbs are about the most dangerous place in the world for cyclists. You have lots of traffic, unlike the country, but it's moving really fast and unaccustomed to anything on the road but cars, unlike the city.

Source: lived in US suburbs most of my life. Still have a rib that aches some mornings from when I got hit years ago (the driver was shocked when I started calling the police).

I was being an ass. It wasn't meant literally but if I'm wrong then i guess we need to tell all these kids to hang up their bikes. Seriously, kids ride their bikes around the neighborhood like idiots (no regard for auto traffic). If I rode my bike like that on city streets I wonder how long I'd live.

"Seriously, adults drive their cars around the neighborhood like idiots"

ftfy. If you're the one operating a two ton machine that moves at high speeds in residential neighborhoods, the onus of responsibility for not killing someone is on you.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

This is going to sound like an exaggeration but it's not.. In my 5 years in salt lake for grad school, every single year I personally saw someone get hit by a car while riding their bike.. My first advisors other student got "doored" while biking, and apparently my second advisor was hospitalized at some point on his bike... Currently living in Portland which does feel much safer while riding, maybe due to having bike lanes and signs everywhere..

Bike lanes and signs are important, but perhaps more than all that is just having lots of other cyclists. When drivers become accustomed to looking for cyclists, or even are more likely to be cyclists themselves who happen to be driving at the moment, it makes a world of difference.

I definitely agree there is an element of "cyclist empathy" from being cyclists themselves .. Probably doesn't help that in Salt Lake, 5 months out of the year (July/ August due to heat and Dec-Feb due to ice) it is impractical to use a bicycle as primary transporation, and that surely loses a portion of people who might otherwise commute.

This was a major factor for me also. I lived in a 'hip' city in Virginia for 5 years and faced weekly incidents with drivers, ranging from clueless to irate, that nearly cost me life and limb.

I live in the bay area now and I can't recall the last time I had a threatening encounter with a driver.

Well, the bay is big. I was unfortunate enough to work in Newark (CA) for about 8 months and got yelled at a lot just riding from Fremont BART to my job. Working in SF was much better, unsurprisingly.

I moved to Austin for 3 months and tried living without a car. Don't bother trying.

>there is a crisis of unreasonable expectations and spoiled people.

We do have a crisis of entitlement: people feel entitled to hold the vertical space in their neighborhoods empty when it is worth much more than they're willing to pay.

The unreasonable luxuries being demanded here are unobstructed views and a cozy small-town feeling for the price of one house purchased decades ago, when they are worth the price of several dozen skyscrapers.

Not to mention the horizontal space they demand everyone else dedicate to parking, so "their" on-street space is always available.

This is so bizarre. I knew I wanted to keep my car, so I filtered my search to apartments with parking available and factored it into the rental price in my comparisons. My building's garage has pretty high occupancy - the demand is there. It's unclear why the developer would need to be legally coerced to add parking, when the market demand is there. And if the market demand isn't there, what's the point of an empty parking garage?

Primarily because people who were in the area before the developer made the apartment came to consider the on-street parking "theirs" and didn't want to share it with newcomers. It's a very inefficient allocation of space, not to mention a burden on the taxpayer to make everyone else purchase private automobile storage because you wish to have exclusive use of public automobile storage.

For people that value cultural diversity and unusual opportunities, cities like Portland and San Francisco are much better for that in terms of diversity of culture than most of the places listed (Austin excepted). I think trading space and amenities to live in a cooler, more interesting place is totally reasonable. If you are happy with a bike/public transit, and don't mind living in 200 sqft of space, and being around a thriving local art and music scene is important to you, why not.

Remember that what you value is not what other people value. Living in Tampa or Akron might fulfill your needs, for others it might make them question their reason for existence.

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