Comment by akanet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akanet | Hacker News Reader

The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra units of housing.

We believe this to be in violation of the Housing Accountability Act, and have brought a lawsuit against Berkeley that you can read about if you're interested! http://www.carlaef.org/berkeley

More broadly, the Bay Area needs to build housing as quickly as possible. If you work at a tech company, please consider getting your company involved. If you can't participate directly, there are increasingly many groups in the Bay Area dedicated to lifting outdated zoning restrictions and accelerating the pace of housing development. We would love to have your patronage! http://www.sfyimby.org/

I love what you're doing, so let me tell you what's holding me back from jumping on board.

Traffic. You want more housing, but that almost always means more cars - and how do you handle that? But it's more than just traffic - broadly speaking it's the principle of Chesterton's fence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27...). Before making rapid changes, let's understand why the status quo is the status quo.

The reason I can't support YIMBY is because it comes off as too much like reverse stupidity - let's just do the opposite of those nasty NIMBY's and then things will be all right! That never works.

As for your claims about Berkeley, I've been frequenting Berkeley since 2014 and I've witnessed a pretty significant amount of construction on Shattuck - and I'm left wondering - how on earth are the roads going to accommodate the massive increase in traffic?

One thing people should consider is banning automobile ownership for residents of new buildings. That would address the concerns of critics like myself and lead to a whole lot less opposition to new construction. Plus, it would create stronger demand for public transportation and car-sharing - both of which are conducive to the goal of greater density. And honestly, a lot of tech-savvy millennials don't even want to own a car.

Traffic is an important concern. If it doesn't take proposition 13 into account, it's probably not going to be as effective as it should. Prop 13 creates too many financial incentives not to relocate to be near your job -- part of the reason that California has become a commute nightmare [0]. It also creates too strong an incentive to hang on to empty property and not improve it. [1]

That said, increasing the housing density in some of those currently-suburban areas (around Google, Apple, and Facebook, for example) could help them transform into more viable urban areas, without an increase in car traffic.

[0] http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/2008-19151-1.p... " observed changes in commuting patterns in major metropolitan areas in California support that hypothesis. In particular, between 1980 and 1990, the number of workers in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles who commute outside the metropolitan statistical area to work increased 119 percent, 88 percent, and 80 percent, respectively. That is well above the growth in the number of similar commuters in other metropolitan areas across the nation, which generally ranged from 25 percent to 45 percent."

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/09/22/california_s_...

Just skim-read through that story. Sounds pretty part-and-parcel for these kind of things, it's the same where I live too (UK).

The first step is always to include irrelevant statistics, since this bulks-up the case with "we are good people" rabble, and makes it harder to understand. It's essentially used to drown-out the key details of the case and to slow things down by making it much longer to read.

One of my older family members has been a council (our version of states I suppose) member for over 40 years, and some of the stories I hear are incredible.

I've heard stories of people submitting 300+ page testimonials and hundreds of correspondence over just 1-2 days just over small renovations, purely to obfuscate the case's legitimate and important details that are against their favour.

I'm really glad people are documenting things like this so we can actually see how bad it is getting...

Town councils are approximately the same level of government as cities/counties in the states.

(there are also often township governments that operate inside of counties, but modern travel makes them kind of stupid and there is a lot of at least de facto passing of authority up to the county level).

Or you can move if you can't afford the area. There are plenty of places with lower costs of living. You can't live in what is perhaps the most desirable area in the world and then be upset that people want to protect/increase their property value or not change how their community is. Not everybody wants to live in a sea of imposing skyscrapers.

-edit

So I see a few comments discussing things like commuting, urban sprawl, etc.... Those are fair comments and I largely agree. But the solution proposed is not the right answer either. We need mixed-use developed walkable neighborhoods. We need our work places to be mixed within our neighborhoods along with our parks, convenience stores, and everything in between. Obviously I'm not a fan of sprawl, but I'm not a big fan of skyscrapers, and I'm also not a fan of others being upset about the affordability of the world's most desirable areas. While it is true that there is much more economic opportunity in a place like San Francisco than, say, middle-of-nowhere Arizona or something, it would be incorrect to suggest that there is no economic opportunity. Frankly, the assessment being made here is that you're choosing to suffer a 2-hour each-way commute and unaffordable rent for the opportunity to work at really cool companies, but the solution, which is to force other people to change their way of life, even if you find it contemptable, is an inherently immoral stance. If a town votes in a mayor who does what the town wants, what is more American, and democratic than that? Is overrunning the town with lawsuits and fights an ethical thing to do? I don't think so. Pack your stuff, and move. When (insert company here) can't get employees to relocate to the insanity that is the Bay Area, they'll move their offices, and things will resolve naturally and peacefully.

Disclaimer: I have never lived long-term in the Bay Area and I have no vested interest in how any of this turns out. If anything, reading the horror stories about people subletting camping spots in their backyard and the like amuses me (obviously I feel bad too). I do confess I have a vested interest in promoting mixed-use development neighborhoods and I would like to see more people move out of the Bay Area and back into the rest of the United States as I believe that the concentration of wealth and knowledge in one (or a few) areas is contributing to the fractures in our society and anti-competitiveness of our second and third-tier cities.

Doesn't solve the problem. This approach contributes to urban sprawl, which is normally bad for the environment (people doing 2h car commutes is incredibly polluting, verses a shorter and commute or using public transport).

A good summary of the bad effects of urban sprawl is available on Wikipedia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl#Effects

Commuting has a cost that is more than just dollars especially for people who can't afford to outsource most non-income earning aspects of their lives.

1) A city can't survive if the people needed to work the jobs to make it an appealing place to live can't afford to live within commute distance.

2) The more affordable places tend to have less economic opportunity (which is part of why they're in lower demand and more affordable in the first place), so moving there isn't necessarily a win.

To your second point. The large issue here has more to do with moving to the areas with more economic opportunity instead of creating economic opportunity where you currently reside. The culture of moving on a whim, not creating a stable network of family and friends in your neighborhoods, and other factors are contributing to our social problems.

Well, creating economic opportunity can be a chicken-and-egg problem. For instance, there are extra challenges to starting a tech startup in a location without a large existing pool of software developers.

It wouldn't take a sea of imposing skyscrapers; just a small amount of land close to transit would need to be upzoned from single-family houses to six-story apartment buildings like they have all over Europe's most beautiful cities.

http://tinyurl.com/6storySF

> We need mixed-use developed walkable neighborhoods. We need our work places to be mixed within our neighborhoods along with our parks, convenience stores, and everything in between.

I strongly endorse this. I'd argue that it's totally compatible with expanded housing, though.

The population density of Somerville, MA is 18,000 per square mile. It's the 16th densest municipality in America, only narrowly behind San Francisco itself (18,600). That's almost 3 times Berkeley, CA (6,400), and 7.5 times Palo Alto, CA (2,400).

Somerville is also a pleasant, human-friendly city devoid of skyscrapers. It's a perfect example of mixed-use urbanism. The tallest buildings are ~12 stories, and that's government housing on the edge of town - almost everything is far shorter. That's nuts - it says we can massively increase population density while maintaining a Strong Towns approach to urban design.

Somerville cheats a little bit, because so many residents work or go to school in Cambridge and Boston. (Workplaces obviously kill density, since they're sized per-person but exist parallel to residences.)

But Somerville's real advantage is being old - older than stupid zoning laws. There are only 22 residences in all of Somerville that would be legal to build today, despite those old, illegal residences being livable and massively in-demand.

http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/

I don't think there's really a dichotomy between "live in NYC/SF style skyscrapers" and "overpriced housing with urban sprawl". You can relax zoning restrictions without getting highrises and tenements. It just requires careful planning and a willingness to abandon suburban, parking-lot filled design.

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