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Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those things that sounds nice at first - especially as a soundbite. But, it's clearly a NIMBY move to protect existing home owners financial asset. It's a clever trick to protect existing home owners even more by making new development even more difficult and expensive while making it look like it's an environmental move. Tack on $30k in expense to any new home development and (probably) some lovely legislation about how it has to be installed. On top of this, now they're "encouraging" all-electric homes. What does that mean?! No gas range?! Please, god, no. Why not enforce this legislation on existing home owners, raising the property tax to fund solar farms, enforce better building standards on existing homes, or /something/ that would actually have a substantial effect on the environment? Cause, that ain't helping existing home owners or helping push their home prices even higher.

As a renter who wishes to have a home /somewhere/ in the bay area, this is killing me inside. The existing home owner lobby is so ridiculously strong here. California has the Superman of home owner lobbies. Each day, it's nailed into me that Prop 13 will never go away and home prices are just gonna keep climbing so that non-1% income outsiders cannot get them. Meanwhile, estates will be passed down generation by generation tax free and with no reassessment.

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30k though is current price when installed separately. Currently solar panel + equip are already just 40% of the cost. When solar panel will be build into the design of the new construction and done by the contractor the installation cost will come down a lot. Plus as solar panel are in the design of the construction they could be better placed for optimal efficiency increasing the rate of return. My guess is by 2020 when it becomes mandatory it will actually cost maybe around 15k and save the owner a lot more over it's lifetime.

Some people think we're getting too many transplants and that regulating the development of new housing will somewhat curb that. There are some areas I've seen here that have grown in population so much that just getting across town takes an hour or more.

I'm personally all for more growth. I'd love to have more representatives and I think people are going to be very surprised at the results of the 2020 census. But we do need to do something about housing and traffic.

>Some people think we're getting too many transplants

Those people would be wrong. California lost a net of approximately 1 million residents between 2007 and 2016 [1]. Chalk it up to over-regulation (like the issue we are discussing here), high state income taxes, overcrowded/underfunded public schools, expensive housing, etc., but anyone complaining about too many transplants arriving in CA simply doesn't know the statistics.

[1] http://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265

> California lost a net of approximately 1 million residents between 2007 and 2016

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but the quoted statement is wrong. The statistic appears to be that: From 2007 to 2016: the number of people moving into CA was 1 million fewer than then number of people moving into CA. However the net population increased by about 3 million [0]. Happy to be enlightened if I'm missing some nuances.

Nonetheless, the immigration vs emigration is a really interesting statistic.

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=california+population+h...

Parent didn’t say that population dropped. He said that the state is losing more residents to domestic immigration than it’s gaining. Thus the housing issues are not due to domestic immigrants creating too much demand.

I’m pretty certain this doesn’t actually apply to the Bay Area in isolation, though. Population there is climbing much faster than the birth rate, I’d expect.

According to a similar thread I read recently, the disparity is because CA gained in foreign immigration more than it lost in domestic immigration outflows.

No, parent said exactly what I quoted. Based on another comment of theirs, I think they interpreted their citation as a population drop.

I replied initially because on a first read, I read it as a population drop, found it remarkable and then my gut told me that didn't seem right. I hoped to provide clarification to others of the too general statement (the part I quoted) about the cited study.

Good reminder on the Bay Area not being reflective of the state as a whole (aka the broad numbers discussed above). I think it will be worth my time to poke around later and understand the population change components at a finer grain that state-wide.

Maybe you’re right and he was indeed assuming negative domestic migration meant an actual population drop.

I can only tell you what the study I quoted says. There may be factors, such as illegal immigration, that it doesn't take into account. In terms of legal residents, the state has lost 1M people or about 2.5% of its population.

Parent is talking about births. 40 million US people will lead to about 500,000 births a year.

Multiply by the 10 and you have 5 million people that appear in California without migrating (or I guess closer to 4.8 million, whatever).

> California lost a net of approximately 1 million residents between 2007 and 2016 [1].

The study doesn't say that, it says there was 1 million in net outbound domestic migration. It doesn't discuss population change due to international migration (inbound and outbound, legal or otherwise) or natural increase/decrease; in fact, California gained, not lost, 3 million people between 2007 and 2016.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/206097/resident-populati...

You're correct that I should not have used the word residents in my quick interpretation of that study. However the study I linked to is directly relevant to the comment I replied that I replied to, which was about too many transplants arriving. Too many transplants are in fact not arriving, because as this study indicates, 1 million more people left than arrived from other states.

in fact, California gained, not lost, 3 million people between 2007 and 2016.

Most of those gains were through births to existing residents, which says nothing about California being a destination for transplants, which was the point that I was refuting. Children born in California generally don't have a choice as to whether or not to live there. Adults do, and on a net basis, they are choosing to leave.

> Too many transplants are in fact not arriving, because as this study indicates, 1 million more people left than arrived from other states.

“From other states” alone, sure, OTOH, California has had net positive total (domestic and international) migration.

If you include illegal immigration, sure. I'm not sure that's a positive for existing residents though.

Wasn't the concern upthread thst you were trying to argue against that the level of inbound migration was too high?

The full original sentence I replied to was this:

“Some people think we're getting too many transplants and that regulating the development of new housing will somewhat curb that”

The “transplants” he is concerned with are those with both the means and legal standing to purchase and drive up demand for new homes. How many illegal immigrants to California fall into that category? So most of the “transplants” that are relevant to this discussion are coming from other US states.

> How many illegal immigrants to California fall into that category? So most of the “transplants” that are relevant to this discussion are coming from other US states.

Why in this thread do you keep making the mistake of thinking migration consists only of domestic migration and illegal immigration? You know that legal international migration (both immigration directed at permanent residency and more transient legal residency by foreigners) is a thing, right, and actually quite a big one in Californiaz right?

People can immigrate legally from other countries. Most of the people I know in the San Francisco bay area who own a home are Chinese immigrants.

Are you honestly arguing that the majority of international immigration to California consists of wealthy Chinese?

Well, when it comes to demand for property owenrship, you don't actually have to be resident; wealthy Chinese do a lot of that without ever living in the place where they are driving up prices.

But certainly a sizable share of the foreigners migrating into California have substantial means (either pre-migration assets and/or post-pubescent income) and China isn't exactly underrepresented among the sources of such migration.

So now you’re actually arguing that the vast majority of international immigration to California is not poor people from Mexico, but rather wealthy Chinese buying up homes?

Any data to back up this claim or are you just arguing to argue at this point? There are many news outlets that would love to see your data on this, because it is a startling revelation indeed.

Edit: to those downvoting this, please provide data corroborating his claim above. Otherwise there is nothing to downvote, as I am simply calling into question his claim that wealthy, legal Chinese immigrants outnumber poor illegal immigrants from Mexico in California.

> So now you’re actually arguing that the vast majority of international immigration to California is not poor people from Mexico, but rather wealthy Chinese buying up homes?

No, and you can tell they because the only mentioned of the phrase “wealthy Chinese” in my comment refers to people buying up property from abroad, and the phrase.“vadt majority” (or even the word “majority”) doesn't appear in my comment at all.

> Any data to back up this claim

Since I never made the argument you reference, and it's not necessary either to the core issue or the tangent from the main discussion in my comment, why would you ask for that?

> Most of the people I know in the San Francisco bay area who own a home are Chinese immigrants.

He's saying that the majority of immigrants who are buy houses are Chinese. I'm not arguing for or against that by the way. For places where this already took place, Toronto and Victoria Canada.

> He's saying that the majority of immigrants who are buy houses are Chinese

No, I'm not saying anything like that.

Yeah but he keeps jumping around to either side of the issue just to argue. Either way, I’m done with it. He can argue with himself now. There’s a reason he has 50,000 karma points - he has lots of time and patience with which to argue.

They don't need to purchase homes to drive up demand. If they are living in homes then they are driving down supply.

I'm sure that California lost even more than 1 million to diaspora, but the loss was offset by new arrivals. I'm also sure the number of illegal aliens has increased significantly but there doesn't seem to be anyone keeping track of them.

The net loss, including all offsets, has been 1 million.

I don’t think that’s correct. California’s population has grown significantly over the period you’re discussing. http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/california-populatio...

The study I quoted was done by the State of California. It's most likely a reliable source.

The study specifically says “domestic” migration.

This entire thread is about migration. I was refuting someone's statement about too many many transplants arriving, when in fact net transplants are negative. Births have nothing to do with that. Most international migration to California is illegal.

If nothing else, that one doesn't take into account births/deaths and immigration/emigration outside the US.

That's net domestic migration. It doesn't count international migration, one way or the other.

Your source is talking about domestic (within USA) migration, not total.

The number of immigrants to CA during that time far exceeded 1 million net loss domestically.

Illegal immigration is a separate issue. I am not sure that any reliable records can be produced for to account for that, given that they are by definition off the record.

Huh? I'm taking about both legal and illegal immigration

> Some people think we're getting too many transplants and that regulating the development of new housing will somewhat curb that.

Those people are either idiots or don't care about anyone but themselves. Not everyone born and raised in California has parents who are well off enough to pass down a house to them (in fact I doubt most have parents that can). What happens when our teachers and every low paid worker get fed up with the quality of life (which includes lining their landlords' coffers instead of building equity) and decide to move elsewhere? Are the home owners suddenly going to pick up the slack and do the jobs of the 99%? "Snap decisions that sound good to my tribe but ultimately lead to long term problems for everyone" should be the motto of a certain group of people here.

It's also disconcerting that some tech people fall into that group of people because you would think tech people of all people would have basic enough skills to look beyond the first consequence of a solution.

Tech people are also hyper "rational" which some read as "cold".

Yep, "If you don't build it they won't come " doesnt work - especially in a desirable place like CA. I really hope these people don't really believe this motto. The current status is just wealth protection for those that got in years ago.

Regarding traffic - it is really sad that the epicenter of tech (and frankly our entire US economy) is so backwards on public transit and infrastructure. Its such an easy fix if we rolled our sleeves up and did it now and not over the next 40 years...

>Regarding traffic - it is really sad that in the epicenter of tech

That people still sit in traffic for hours so that they can sit in front of their laptops all day in a germ-farm office and poop next to their coworkers.

It's dance monkey mentality. It's living in the past.

Hey, aren’t you the guy who said you can make a lotion that will treat skin cancer? how can I message you?

I am. Reply with contact info and I will contact you.

Those peopler are, of course, totally incorrect. Our population boom is partly from migration but mostly from longevity.

Ouch, I don't think we want to hear their proposed solutions to that issue.

Such people are called nativists.

> But, it's clearly a NIMBY move to protect existing home owners financial asset.

It doesn't apply to new construction over 3 stories. Especially for the Bay Area, building up seems like the only way out of the current morass, so is it really that clear-cut?

Also most of the house price in high-demand areas is the land cost. $30k sounds like a lot but is less than 5% of the median house price. People pay that much over asking quite regularly.

Dismissing large sums of money like that in terms of percentages can really get you into trouble. Sure, it's "only" 5% more for a $1.5M property. Another way to think of it is as a 30 thousand dollar roadblock facing anyone who wants to move to California.

Err...30k is 5% of $600k which is the going rate for a townhome in Fremont.

I'm sorry but when the sums are that astronomical it really is a rounding error - especially for a home improvement that saves the homeowner money in the long term. If someone can't afford $630k they almost certainly couldn't afford the $600k it would've cost otherwise.

Like I mentioned above, because of space constraints the Bay Area has little choice but to densify if it wants to add significant new housing, and the new regs wouldn't apply to buildings taller than 3 stories.

Things like parking minimums, low-density zoning, and fragmentation of public transit have done and continue to do, most of the damage to housing affordability. Requiring solar is peanuts in comparison and has otherwise beneficial effects also - namely, reduction of carbon emissions.

AND... it pays for itself!

It's actually a little more than 5% of the median house price ($515,000), but setting that quibble aside that's a median* - meaning half of the homes are below that price. I know a lot of us Bay Area folks tend to forget this, but there are a lot of people living in California where $515k would buy the biggest house in town, and new home prices are closer to the 250k. This legislation is clearly a regressive burden on the less wealthy home buyers.

[1] median list price from https://www.zillow.com/ca/home-values/

Adding $30k to your mortgage would cost like $150 a month extra or so. It will produce about 15,000 kWh per month, which is about $150 off your electric bill.

So basically I give up $30K now (or pay that, plus interest) for no net benefit until 30 years out?

That sounds terrible. That $30K would turn into $100k if I put away for retirement.

No, it's vice versa, you put $30k more on your mortgage and pay it out over 30 years with lowest interest rate. So theoretically it should come at no cost to you since your additional mortgage payment will be countered by smaller electricity bill. But of course that depends on your electricity usage, pricing and how much money is required for maintaining the system.

But in the end, there is no net benefit to you. So why would you do it?

Support green energy, being more independent in case of grid electricity blackouts. That's the point of Tesla's roof tiles (at least how it's supposed to be), if you get same looking house and around the same net price, why don't do it?

> being more independent in case of grid electricity blackouts

That's generally not the case in California, as we're net-metering here. Very few people install storage and transfer switches to handle blackouts.

That's only a wash if you never have to maintain them in the lifetime of the 30 year mortgage.

You don’t have to maintain them. Their warranty is 25 years, they’ll produce beyond that. It’s a no brainer.

Ok, this isn't "the thing" with solar panels, but: they're going to require maintenance, be subject to wiring issues, and you have to clean those bad boys.

Roof work is notoriously 'dangerous', and impacts people with mobility/age issues differently than most of us. The maintenance burden is more than just the warranty, and any cost calculations of power savings should account for those costs as well.

[Oh, and we should all be god enough at high school level physics to solve the "climate crisis" in a few hours...]

I disagree with your argument that panels need maintenance except for replacement of failed components under warranty, which would be done by the installer.

You disagree that solar panels need washing and that electrical installations in houses require maintenance over time? ... okie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Solar Is NOT Maintenance Free" -- https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2014/02/accelerating-u... -- "We like to think PV is maintenance free but it is not ... if you don’t do the maintenance, you can have sub-optimal asset performance."

https://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Solar-Panel

https://www.civicsolar.com/support/installer/articles/snow-s...

Very pro-solar, but lost in all this is that people assume an astronomical amount of electricity use. Am I just odd?

In winter in SD (so no climate control needed) my electric bill was $12 a month. Solar's great and all but putting a 15kwh a month installation on the roof would be crazy.

Yes? That seems extraordinarily low. I live in Massachusetts with oil heat and only rare use of one window unit AC in the summer and I’m a bit over $100/mo which the electric company tells me is about average for houses of my size.

> Solar's great and all but putting a 15kwh a month installation on the roof would be crazy.

Do you mean 15kw per daylight hour install, or a 15kwh total per month install? Because 15kwh per month is a really small amount of power, that's roughly equivalent to running a single desktop PC for one hour per day.

That's hobby-kit amounts of electricity. A single 100w solar panel could almost produce 15kwh/month on it's own, in ideal sunlight conditions, and you can buy that for roughly $200 USD at retail.

Sorry, I misspoke! what I get for writing without adding.

I averaged about 90 watts in winter, around 2kwh a day, so 60 ish a month, so roughly eight or so bucks for the power with the rest from the odd fixed charge.

In summer I had one efficient window AC and would use about five times as much energy.

in CA you need to for air con

Do you mean 1,500 kWh/mo? Generating 15 MWh/mo would be a very large residential system. $150 for 15,000 kWh of electricity saved/returned would only be $0.01/kWh.

Why isn't everyone installing then? There is a net cost somewhere.

> Why isn't everyone installing then? There is a net cost somewhere.

Because it is damn close to break even and would you spend money on something you didn't need just because it was good for the environment?

Most people don't expend effort for $0/month to $50/month in returns. Despite all the solar proponents, once you factor in interest/maintenance/etc, its probably pretty close to that.

We are probably 10 years from it being 100% obvious that all homes should have solar.

Same reason most people in Canada weren't installing geothermal until the federal government started subsidizing them: Inertia.

Despite what they may teach you in Econ 101, the efficient market hypothesis isn't an actually useful way of looking at human behaviour. It might work for modelling some of the actions of Goldman Sachs, but actual people are squishy and irrational.

That's a misrepresentation of the efficient market hypothesis. It does not rely on the assumption that humans are rational.

No, but it does assume the irrationality maps to a random distribution.

How could it not?

Cultural prejudice?

I don't think that prevents a random distribution, only some kinds of them. But I'm not expert in statistics, let alone the EMH.

Because lots of people have tribally motivated objections. Or they don't have the cash on hand. Or they are landlords and won't do so until forced to.

But the actual cost has never been lower and energy prices are falling. There are downsides but they're very different.

Opportunity cost and the time value of money. You would likely be better off putting that money to work elsewhere.

A ton of people are installing them! Only on hacker news is rooftop solar some kind of horrible socialist boondoggle.

edit: to answer your question more directly: many people just won't be bothered to install them or don't think of it, or can't get the financing easily. For some people the numbers don't work out, because their roof is old or they don't get enough sun or their electric bill is already low.

On the flip side, if you bought a house from an old engineer who converted the entire house to electric appliances, and you bring your own electric dryer, and you have a family of 4, and a/c, in California, rooftop solar is dead obvious.

So then I guess we've hit QED - If all that is true why is a legislative mandate desirable?

Adding $30k to your mortgage would cost like $150 a month extra or so.

So instead of having ~$1800/yr going to your energy company's coffers, where they might use it to innovate and actually one day make clean energy cost effective, it should go straight to your bank's bottom line in the form of interest. While it may cost consumers the same amount, that sounds like a net negative to me.

So... You think we should forego installing a clean energy source that is available today and instead give that money to a company that does not provide clean energy in the hope that maybe they will provide the clean energy that we could have had today at some point in the future.

And your argument for that is... banks?

If you one day want financially viable clean energy, there are certainly better places for that money to go than into your bank's pocket - such as to energy providers, who could then use that money for R&D.

Tell me how many banks are spending their profits doing clean energy research.

Energy providers in California do have clean energy options. They are also more efficient than individual solar installs.

Seattle doesn’t have an equivalent of prop. 13, yet without enough supply, prices still have skyrocketed.

With the current supply problem in Bay Area, realistically all you are going to get is marginally more displacement of people who anchored themselves to a super expensive area in the past, but could not sustain a 10x increase in tax.

Building enough supply can work: https://la.curbed.com/2018/5/2/17311992/los-angeles-how-much...

And it doesn’t take long for things to stabilize either, once you increase supply.

Seattle is not alone. Vancouver, Sydney, London and other cities all have experienced the same boom. The global economy is currently booming, wealth is shifting from middle class to upper class. Building homes have become cheaper but since transportation services are still outdated, more and more people want to stay in the same place. The super wealthy are leveraged by the banks and think housing is a great investment so they squat on swaths of buyable property and rent it out.

If a City implements a solid transportation system that gets you in the burbs within an hour, then the prices drop. Prices are simply a matter of demand and supply, and supply is artificially capped.

The truth is, humans are terrible long term decision makers for the good of a large population. Personal agendas always get in the way.

Prop 13 is the coup de grace that exacerbates all the other issues that contribute to demand outstripping supply by removing the tax pressure that should've been incenting more density and liquidity in the housing market.

Seattle's real estate market has some but not all of the same pressures: too prescriptive of zoning that requires single family homes for no good reason and booming economies adding jobs at a faster rate than housing stock. But Seattle builds faster and taller in the median case; though the tall building seems to go through waves of either being all apartments or all condos.

Seattle has built enough housing supply that rents actually dropped earlier this year (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ar...) and the median clearing price is less than half of the San Francisco rate.

They don't want you there. Let them die slowly with no growth, or they are right and can sustain it, then who's to argue otherwise?

Seems easy to fix. The solar upgrade must be done to existing homes the next time they change hands.

Either its a good idea that existing homeowners are willing to pay for with a bit of their equity, or its a dick move dressed in the moralizing of environmentalism.

Doesn't this hurt their property values though? Now anyone that wants to do a tear down needs to pay to add solar. If the buyer must pay more to build, they logically will be willing to pay less for land.

> they logically will be willing to pay less for land

Only when there's restricted demand. Because we're in a restricted supply market, pricing is mostly established in based on alternatives. If every property tear down has the same additional cost, then it's probably not going to affect the price.

Or look into other options, such as building taller or re-furbishing and expanding the existing building to meet their needs instead of tearing it down to rebuild.

> What does that mean?! No gas range?! Please, god, no.

Serious question: why is that a problem?

Most modern apartment buildings here in Warsaw, Poland are built without gas. Nobody has problems with it: in fact, people would rather not have a potentially dangerous gas infrastructure in their building. I've been cooking on electric for more than 10 years now and would never think of switching back.

Why would you want to have gas?

Gas allows for more precise and responsive heat control per burner. To the average homeowner, this doesn’t make much of a difference, but I understand it to be of great importance for professional chefs and passionate hobbyists.

I'm not sure on that. Our electric heating can control the heating very precisely and hold the boiler at a specific temperature within the tolerance of the temperature gauge.

The heatpump and gas burner that are external are much different beasts as they require some windups and unlike a solid heating rod you can't flip them on and off rather rapidly (about once every 5 minutes).

An induction heater should also be able to heat a pot much more precisely than a gas burner (again down to instrument precision if it has one)

I cook 2-3 times per day: electric/induction isn't even close to gas. I even get annoyed by less powerful gas. FYI this is a common sentiment among people who cook. I'm not some master chef or anything and don't get excited by $5000 appliances. Has is simply better.

I'd sooner consider moving to a house without heat, A/C, parking etc - than one without gas (and if fact have). Even broadband can usually be added for enough money. But gas stoves are really hard to retrofit, and camp stoves are ghetto and unstable/dangerous esp with heavy dishes.

Electric ranges are indeed a joke to any semi-serious chef... right up until the relatively recent advent of inductive ranges. While still rare in the US, they are attainable, and really cool. Er, hot.

I actually had propane put in for my stovetop during a remodel a while back. I much prefer cooking on a good gas stovetop. More responsive and more high end output.

> Please, god, no. Won't anyone think of the passionate hobbyists...

Professiinals not withstanding, this seems involuntarily comical.

From experience in the UK Its a lot better cost wise for heating etc - the reason developers and landlords like all electric is they can save on having to properly have the gas equipment inspected

It's better cost wise for heating for now. Gas prices have been at a historic low for the last decade or two. That doesn't mean it will stay that way. And it emits CO2.

In areas with cheap and clean electric heat (like, say, Quebec with its massive hydroelectric sources and relatively cheap electricity) electric heat really isn't bad at all. And it's potentially more future proof for the addition of renewable electricity sources later.

Up to a point Lord Copper - I live in a UK country who's highest point is 200 ft above sea-level - so well just drown all those valleys in Scotland and Wales for hydro them.

Here’s an idea: make solar mandatory, but require it to be funded in part by a property tax increase

That's extremely counter productive. The most bang from your buck for solar is for utilitity plants. So raising taxes just to put solar on SOME new homes which benifits only the new home purchasers (majority of whom are quite wealthy) with their electricity bill and house value is dumb. Basically you're taxing everyone rich and poor equally (landlords pay property tax too) just for a soundbyte headline which accomplishes literally nothing.

If you're taxing everyone, at least make it efficient and build utility plants but even that is dumb because it subsidizes solar and likely puts the money into the wrong person's pocket.

If you were taxing everyone and wanted to help the environment, building public infrastructure, transportation, roads, bridges, trains is the best option even if it doesn't look as catchy. It'll produce a hell of a lot more benifits than a few MW of super expensive solar.

If you still want a headline, build transmission lines. Texas in 6 years went from dead last in renewables to first with over double California because the governor invested $7B in transmission lines making renewable energy an economic decision not a subsidized one

How is the $7b invested in transmission lines not a subsidy?

The same reason why building a road isn't a subsidy. Is building a bridge from Oakland to a San Francisco a subsidy for Uber and Twitter?

You are expanding the infrastructure, without transmission lines there is no economic viability for most of our renewable energy.

I would argue that roads that are not paid for by tolls and/or gas taxes are subsidized by those who don’t drive.

Really? Do people who don't drive not benefit from roads? How does your grocery store gets its food?

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