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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

Woah, I knew about things being bad in the USA, but I didn't know living conditions are going towards third-world standards :/ Where I live (The Netherlands) there are laws that even protect foreign workers (i.e. from Poland) from all being stuffed in a single room.

At this point it's starting to look like even jail cells have more room and privacy.

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The problem isn't: "We are an exploited underclass unable to live in reasonable conditions." The problem is more along the lines of a gold rush type movement of people. Where large cities are attracting a large influx of people increasing demand on housing faster than it can be corrected.

Plenty of inexpensive housing in Ohio. Not so much along the California coast.

That, plus a complete refusal on the part of government and voters to build any more housing.

not to mention all the environmental impact fees, taxes, and endless regulation which increase housing costs way beyond where it would be without. It's not just LA and SF (gold rush cities that have housing problems). In CA, even the rural areas with miles of space in every direction, housing still costs a lot more than the national average.

I'm not sure where you plan to build in new york for example?

Build even higher buildings?

Yes. New York doesn't even have that high of a density compared to European standards.

Umm, which standards?

Paris city area has a density (21000/km²) that is twice that of New York City (10800/km²), but is an exception. Many other major European metropolitan cities are less than half of New York's density.

(Berlin 4000/km², London 5500/km², Amsterdam 4900/km², Stockholm 5000/km², Helsinki 1500/km², Madrid 5400/km², Köln 2600/km², Lyon 10000/km², Brussels 7000/km²).

Sure, why not? If zoning regulations were relaxed, developers would definitely be willing to build more housing. Even most of Manhattan doesn't have very tall buildings, just look at Google Maps in 3D view.

That's mostly because of the geography of Manhattan though. The places with tall buildings (Midtown and Downtown) sit on a solid base of bedrock, in between this base is much deeper a lot harder to build to. Housing in Manhattan isn't the big problem anyways, it's Brooklyn and Queens. But there are a lot of political issues in there.

Personally, I don't want to live in these new developments because I find them ugly. You can't tell the difference between a new flat NYC, London, Amsterdam and Paris anymore.

> Personally, I don't want to live in these new developments because I find them ugly. You can't tell the difference between a new flat NYC, London, Amsterdam and Paris anymore.

This seems like a solvable problem though. Like if everyone complains about how ugly everything is, why aren't there regulations passed specifying how things should look (or should not look)? Developers mostly just want a consistent way to build and make money, if you specify how things should look most will fall in line instantly.

You can't walk a block in downtown LA without stumbling on a 20- to 50-story apartment building going up, and vacant/underused historic buildings are being converted into housing at a decent clip. New housing is going up in the Hollywood and Koreatown areas close to mass transit. It's true that Los Angeles has an extreme housing shortage (~3% vacancy rate), but the supply side of the housing market is catching up.

I don't think it is the "third-world standards" that is making everyone rush over to these locations.

Where I live (The Netherlands) there are laws that even protect foreign workers (i.e. from Poland) from all being stuffed in a single room.

How do those laws work in practice? Everything I've seen about these sorts of tenant protection regulations make them infeasible to enforce in the case where the tenants are migrant workers who might even be working illegally. The idea is that if a person is already running afoul of the law personally, they will keep quiet about the law-breaking of their landlord lest they upset the apple cart and cause everybody to get kicked out.

Poland and The Netherlands are both members of the EU, so immigrant workers from Poland are legal by definition. As for illegal migrant workers I suspect that it's just not that big of a problem, quantitatively speaking.

There's a plenty of legal migrants working illegally.

Polish people have the right to work in the Netherlands (or any other EU country).

Yes? You can work illegally in any country by getting paid in cash and not reporting your income. I really don't see where the EU or the nationality of the worker comes in here.

There's significantly less incentive to do that when you don't have to. Or, in other words - why would a Polish worker do that any more than a Dutch person, when both of them are otherwise there entirely legally?

The cheap migrant worker probably doesn't care if he pays the Dutch taxes or not, but his employer will definitely be very happy if he and his coworkers don't.

Unreported employment is super common.

Must be the americans downvoting me :) This isn't a new thing to anyone in the EU... I think?

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_402_en.p...

Employers have every incentive to save that 30%+ by paying their employees in cash.

I skipped to the conclusions as I have no interest in reading over 100 pages, and there is no statement in the conclusions that migrant workers are more likely to perform untaxed work than local workers.

This is not representative of the US.

It's not even representative of Los Angeles. The "one-day notice" thing makes this person's situation different, but it's not hard at all to find 2 bedroom apartments for less than $2400, even in expensive areas like Hollywood. Split each bedroom two ways (assuming relatively "equal" bedrooms…) and you'd have < $600 rent in a much saner (from my POV) living situation.

If you expand the scope to Long Beach, the Valley, and South Bay, I'm sure you could find some 3BRs for < $2000 and pay around $600/mo to have your own room. For what it's worth, among my friends in LA — most of whom aren't well-off tech workers — none split a bedroom with anyone other than a significant other.

This is in one of the most expensive areas in the US. I wouldn't call this third world status. In most areas you can easily find a 1BR apartment for that much.

That example is extreme. Most of the USA pays less, and usually one home or apartment is shared by just one family/couple, or a few friends.

I'm reasonably sure there are laws against this in LA, too. It doesn't sound like an above-board operation at all. (Unless it literally is a hostel, as some have said, and the OP misunderstood.)

You can have a 3bd/2ba house with detached garage in an excellent school district for $200,000, as long as you do it somewhere designed for cars, cold, and economically stagnant.

well his example probably violates more than one regulation the issue being of course, someone has to report it.

...after which the people who lived there have even less of a roof over their heads.

Things are not that bad. The OP's post is kind of odd as many others have pointed out. Four adults sharing an apartment is something you would see broke college students doing. It is not the norm and has very little to do with Los Angeles which a huge place.

There are laws in many parts of the US forbidding more than a certain number of unrelated people from living in one house or apartment. How well they are enforced varies from town to town.

> protect

Curious about what exactly does it mean in this content. Is it about banning full grown and consenting adults from signing a deal because government think it knows best what's good for them?

Your objection could apply against all tenants' rights laws, or against any workers' rights laws as well, such as maximum allowed work hours, rights to breaks every few hours, etc.

Correct. And I agree with him.

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