People live where jobs are, and a lot of them have reasons to stay in the Bay. She has children and a life. She's not a fucking software engineer that can just pick and move.
My parents worked as "pickers" for the Home Shopping Network near DC, making minimum wage. It became financially untenable, so they moved to southern Virginia to a place with good schools and where you can live and get by on low income salaries.
Even if we value family connections on a pure cash basis -- which I don't recommend -- moving can be bad for people. E.g., the cost of replacing grandparents with professional childcare can be astronomical.
Family also provides an economic buffer against the ups and downs that are especially hard on the poor. What if your old car has a sudden breakdown that you can't afford to fix? If you have family around, perhaps you can borrow somebody's old car or get a ride to work. Move to a place where you have no social network, though, and you could be in deep trouble.
I sympathize with their situation, I have personally LIVED their situation, but if they cannot afford to live somewhere they need to figure out how to move.
no, they don't.
You need to consider that telling people to leave the geographic area that is their family home is a shitty response. You need to consider whether, perhaps, there are government policies that can help these people. You need to consider whether sneering at poor people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps makes you a shitty person.
Also how is a single working mother going to have time to learn to fix her own car? you're on another planet right now.
I'm intimately acquainted with both being poor and poor people. I have never in my life sneered at them and I donate generously to help them when I am in a position to do so. I have been poor for the majority of my life (I am not anymore) and I have seen firsthand what works and what does not.
Your government projects, ideas, and policies are a complete disaster that do nothing but exacerbate the problem.
>You need to consider that telling people to leave the geographic area that is their family home is a shitty response.
It is the only honest response. It is not what people want to hear, and it certainly isn't as comforting as what most liberals will peddle to the poor working class, but it is the honest truth (as I see it, given my experiences and education).
I'm being very blunt in this thread because I am passionate about this issue. I have seen people's lives ruined, people that I grew up with, because they were trapped in a cycle of poverty and crime because their parents refused to do what needed to be done: pack their bags and GTFO and move somewhere where it is cheap to live and where crime is low.
>You need to consider whether, perhaps, there are government policies that can help these people.
Do you realize the scale of redistribution that would have to occur so that poor people could manage to live in SV? This place is too expensive for middle and upper middle class professionals, much less the working class.
What are your great government backed ideas? Publicly subsidized housing? Have you ever lived in a government housing project? Have you been near one? If you haven't, I will gladly share with you my experiences.
So price controls...
> eliminate no-fault eviction
"no-fault eviction" is, quite literally, a made-up magical concept.
A landlord that chooses to not renew your lease is not "evicting" you. Both parties have fulfilled their contractual obligations.
>any new housing production be allocated to existing needy residents by government lottery
OK. Sure, and how long does this go on? Do you really think that this is a feasible long term solution? If the social science and economic literature points to "Yes" then I'm all ears, but I don't think that this is the case.
>Optionally add downzoning to reduce landlord incentives to let buildings die of neglect (no opportunity to build anything more profitable).
This one was just painful to read. I mean....this is the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to do. The entire issue boils down to supply and demand, and their solution is to further reduce density and the supply of housing!?
Many can.
In my city (nowhere near SV), the cost of living is a bit high. I knew a bunch of low skilled workers who worked in restaurants, cleaning dishes, cooking, etc. They were all fairly close. When rents started shooting up a few years ago, they got together and made a plan - and moved to the Midwest, buying houses in the $40-80K range.
One of the mechanics I used to go to: Same story. Ended up moving to Texas where it is cheaper.
Most cases where I've seen that it is not an option fall into two categories:
1. A desire to be near very high quality services (e.g. one person's kids would get almost free health care from a neighboring university's hospital). Essentially, a desire to keep high quality tax discounted services. These people are making a choice - they can move if they wanted to.
2. People in some kind of hole - usually a financial hole. They want to stay pretty badly so they make poor financial choices, ending up in debt, with poor credit, etc. That makes it harder to go, well, anywhere. That's why the smart thing to do is move before you fall into that hole.
As someone who has lived in places, and grown up in places, where essentially we could have been forced out legally (and in one case actually were), I know what it feels like. And the solution for us was very obvious: Know that we do not have a right to stay where we were, and make contingency plans. For me, part of the contingency plan was to try to move some place that was much less likely to kick us out.