California Has the Jobs but Not Enough Homes | Hacker News Reader

California Has the Jobs but Not Enough Homes

wsj.com

94 pointsarcanus236 comments

The biggest problem I saw with the High-Speed Rail plan wasn't the outrageous cost, but rather that it was a plan to spend 60+ billion dollars to solve the wrong problem. The state should have been working on some plan to give high-speed access from the SF Bay, where property is really expensive, into the Central Valley where it's really cheap.

Not many people need to travel the 400 miles between LA and SF at 220 miles an hour. On the other hand, if you can travel 60 miles or so from San Francisco (or the mid-peninsula or even San Jose) at 120 miles an hour, that's a big deal, because that opens up a bunch of low-cost real estate for local workers.

Or speed and augment existing infrastructure. Spend a billion dollars on feeder light rail to Caltrain. Run twice as many cal trains. Oops, neighbors complain about traffic wait times. Bury five of the crossings. Now you can speed up the cal train. Nice. Now run more trains, connect the stops to the places people actually live and work. Do the same in and around Sacramento and LA. But don’t build a bullet train to nowhere. There’s so much more good we could have done with billions in transportation funding.

> Run twice as many cal trains.

My understanding of this is that CalTrain is already running at capacity. Trains are, essentially, back to back. Part of the electrification project is that the electric engines should have better acceleration than the current diesel ones, allowing tighter packing of trains on the tracks. (And thus, more trains, and thus, more capacity.)

We really, IMO, need 4 rails from SF to SJ, but if Atherton doesn't want to give up a few trees, I can only imagine the hell that would get raised for more space. That, and funding.

> Bury five of the crossings.

AIUI, Mountain View considered this (grade separation) w/ the Castro/Moffett/Central intersection, but decided against it, opting instead for simple removing the crossing. (The wrong decision, IMO. I'd bury the train, but I think the (canned) plan was to bury the road, as it would be less disruptive.)

That was my understanding as well. Someone did an analysis when I was at Google and concluded that there was basically no way to optimize the rush-hour schedule further and pack further trains in, given reasonable acceleration/deceleration constraints and station boarding times. I've also had the experience of sitting at the Castro/Moffett/Central crossing for 20 minutes as 3 trains go by and block every opportunity for a green light.

"AIUI, Mountain View considered this (grade separation) w/ the Castro/Moffett/Central intersection, but decided against it, opting instead for simple removing the crossing."

Wait, are they getting rid of the Castro crossing? This seems...strange, given that that crossing is the primary highway access to downtown (via 85), one of the primary routes between the Googleplex and downtown/Castro, and also links a densifying residential neighborhood to downtown. Are they getting rid of the bus service between Caltrain and the Googleplex as well?

Shoreline, Evelyn, and Dana are the primary links to downtown from the north and south, with Shoreline and Dana/Evelyn via Whisman linking to Central.

Shoreline is really close to Castro, but its capillary connections to Castro are pretty narrow, though there are a bunch in parallel.

> Wait, are they getting rid of the Castro crossing?

That's my understanding. See https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/transport/services.asp — specifically, the section titled, "Transit Center Master Plan" and the diagram on that section. See also the link in that section that points to http://www.mountainviewtransitcenter.com/ and the images on that page, particularly http://www.mountainviewtransitcenter.com/images/Castro%20Vie....

I originally just heard this through a friend who is more active in MTV politics that I am, but that seems to be the official info/site for it.

Oh. There's actually a bunch of really good stuff in that plan - the rail crossing is being replaced by pedestrian/bike undercrossings, Evelyn is being extended to Shoreline, and a protected bike lane goes from Steven Creek trail to the transit center.

IMHO they should just get rid of the 101 & 85 Moffett interchanges. It's close enough and low-traffic enough that residents can just use Shoreline/Ellis/Whisman. That would make Moffett a prime bike boulevard between downtown & Caltrain and the Googleplex via Stevens Creek Trail, which would make Caltrain + bike into Google (and the Ellis office park area) very attractive, which would take cars off of 101 & Shoreline, which is desperately needed.

  they should just get rid of the 101 & 85 Moffett interchanges

85? Aside from the SB Moffett to SB 85 onramp, I don't know of an 85/Moffett "interchange".

There's a both-directions Moffett (NB has a left-turn lane) to SB 85 onramp, and an NB 85 to both-directions Moffett offramp. I used to live in the area, so this would be my primary highway access (along with 101 <-> Moffett).

Both are kinda superfluous - it's less than 1/2 mile to the Shoreline interchange (with access to SB 85, SB 101, and NB 101), and other than the apartment/condo complexes on Moffett/Cypress Point, the neighborhoods in that area tend to have easier access to either Shoreline or Ellis. It probably made sense when Moffett was an active military base and NASA/Ames was a big employer, but now traffic on NB Moffett is miniscule.

Lots of people today travel faster than 220mph between LA and SF; they take airplanes. The point is to take pressure off the airspace because it's already close to capacity, not to mention the visibility issues at SFO that mess things up all the time. And of course flying is terrible from a CO2 emissions perspective.

> The point is to take pressure off the airspace

The original business plan actually was based around taking pressure of need for increased freeway capacity, not relieving airspace pressure.

> The state should have been working on some plan to give high-speed access from the SF Bay, where property is really expensive, into the Central Valley where it's really cheap.

Given that that's one of the key things HSR would have provided (and a key reason that it routed through the inhabited part of Valley), and one of the earliest it would have (with the planned San Jose to Merced Initial Operating Segment) provided, how exactly was it solving the wrong problem?

Isn't San Jose still pretty far (in terms of commute time) from where the jobs are in the bay area?

There are a ton of jobs in San Jose & the South Bay. Ebay, PayPal, Intel, Google, and Adobe are the first companies that come to mind.

San Jose was explicitly listed as an acceptable starting point by the great grandparent, and I was responding accepting that framing since HSR would do exactly what was asked for, including operating from one of the enumerated endpoints, and yet was described as misdirected and solving the wrong problem.

Also, San Jose would be a connection point between HSR and Caltrain.

An Altamont Pass segment ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its current role as an overlong exurban commute. It would've also provided for an alternate rail routing between Sacramento and the Bay that'd be competitive with the Capitol Corridor.

After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto.

Indeed, sad that they pulled the rail off of the bay bridge. It's really painful to from Amtrak to SF. I suspect a bay bridge link would have WAY more traffic than the high speed rail at a small fraction of the price.

Also sad that they never included a bike lane on the western span of the Bay Bridge. That entire project was managed by idiots who cared more about aesthetics than actual transportation.

It'll continue being a problem. Housing has become the gold of California and those who have the gold don't want more of it otherwise the value drops. There is no incentive right now for California home owners to want more housing.

What about when they realize their children and Grand children are all moving out of state? only to be seen once per year again.

From what I've seen the parents stay around, the kids move out of state, eventually inherit their homes, and then either rent the homes or cash out but face a huge tax penalty.

Older people have a community and time invested living in a place, it's hard to motivate them to move or want change. They would also rather their kids get their financial investment (gold) and have comfort knowing they'll be taken care of when they're gone.

Hmm, which tax penalty do you mean?

Capital gains. It adds up when your home is worth millions..

Not a tax accountant, but my understanding is that the cost basis gets reset when the property is inherited. If the home was already worth millions there wouldn't be any capital gains tax on it. (There only would be if prices go up more after inheritance.)

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/073115/how-cost-bas...

Most seem to be selling their homes (or the kids are selling their homes). A majority of the open houses I've been to have been older parents selling their homes & moving to cheaper regions now that the kids are grown, or dead parents passing their homes to adult kids who sell them. Few people want to be absentee landlords in California, where tenants have all sorts of rights & protections.

Don't really blame them, $2.4M for the house that your parents paid $200K for isn't bad when you can still buy that $200K house in much of the rest of the country.

There is no sense in renting them as well, I rent a 1.6 million dollar house for $4200/month. Of course, the owner bought it for way less, but I would rather sell, take the money and invest it elsewhere and get a better return.

It makes sense if you think that property values and rents increase over time.

Also if there’s any likelihood you move back.

Only if you also believe that the other assets you could be investing in (stocks, bonds, sweat equity in a startup, cryptocurrency, an apartment block in Portland) won't increase over time.

The money you save in interest doesn't just disappear - if you have any financial sense, you invest it in an asset that yields more than 3%/year.

They would be motivated by giving a lower rate for long term capital gains than regular income and by having their Jarvis-Gann bases transferable to all other counties (like Orop 5 would have done).

And yet somehow silicon valley companies are oblivious to this. I have had so many recruiters disappear on me when I mentioned upfront that I cannot move to the bay area. It was surprising because some of these companies have small or satellite offices in the city I live in and yet they want "co-located" team members only.

outside the valley, recruiters aren't really needed (or at least not so much as to warrant the enormous bonuses they get for SF/PA). Recruiters get paid big bucks in Palo Alto and SF precisely because there's no housing there, thus it's much harder to convince people to move there and work there.

companies don't care because it's easier to pay recruiters big bonuses than it is to ask VCs or CEOs to get on an airplane a few times a year.

Another article about how San Francisco is prohibitively expensive!

I think more mid to big companies should consider investing in moving to some of these areas where there's little to nothing else. If you look at something like Epic in Madison WI, they basically own that town in that sector, so a lot of people end up working there a lot longer than they want to because they've invested in that area (whether economically, emotionally, or something else).

> a lot of people end up working there a lot longer than they want to

I’m not sure that’s a good thing—for them or the company

It's certainly not, but I think the company wants it like that because, largely, working in healthcare sucks. If you had C# experience and were tired of jumping through hoops and constantly having fires because of the demands of the medical industry, you probably wouldn't keep doing it if you could take those skills somewhere else.

That said, I was more referring to the bigger companies noted for how they treat employees well. Having a 20k employee building for, say, google, in one of the more sparsely populated areas of California, Oregon, or Washington would solve at least part of the problem, but then I'm guessing that whatever population lives there now would absolutely hate the company for coming in and taking over everything.

The problem is nobody wants to live in Madison WI.

If you're a top performing engineer you're likely to want to head straight to the epicenter of tech innovation. You want to knock heads with the best of 'em, and that isn't in Madison WI or any other small town.

If that's the case they should absolutely stop complaining about housing prices. It's self inflicted pain. If you must live in the most expensive city in the world due to your own desires, you have no right to complain that it's expensive. The option to live somewhere cheaper exists, you just choose not to take it.

Try and look at it another way...

It's not that they MUST live in the most expensive city. Rather, they MUST live with (and work) the most bright minds. That creates a geographic pooling problem.

I don't think that's an entirely dismissible goal, by the way. Humans are social beings and more often than not we're better off working with other smart people. Collaboration of bright minds is responsible for some of the incredible achievements of humanity.

Well that and your labor market power is maximized in places where there are many potential employers. If you put down roots in a one company town, they can just tell you to go pound sand when you ask for a raise or promotion. Also, being in a place with lots of employers is a hedge against layoff risk.

I've seen no hard evidence that the minds there are actually brighter. More arrogant maybe?

Isn't the stereotype of SF arrogance? Most of the smartest people I've met work in O&G or aerospace, in places like Texas and Connecticut.

What a ridiculous comment. Who exactly do you expect to be collecting this "hard evidence" to prove such a thing to you?

Clearly if the likes of some of the biggest, and most successful tech companies in the world are located in the bay area, that might be proof enough that some pretty impressive minds reside there? I'm merely making the point that IF one wanted to work with like minded, smart people, moving to the bay is one way to maximize your chance of finding said people. I think we could both agree you're less likely to find them in Nebraska, though of course there are some very talented people there as well.

Furthermore, who is being arrogant here? The person who wants to live in and among bright minds, or the person who denies the bright minds exist? Takes a pretty arrogant person to deny that there's a lot of talent in the bay.

Talent appears to be a myth.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myt...

If talent is a myth, then the New Yorker should fire their editors and let anyone who can write a sentence publish freely on their platform. Certainly that makes sense if there's no such thing as being a "good" writer.

This is exactly why big employers leave smaller regions. I've seen it happen on numerous occasions. People in Seattle/SV/RTP/NYC are seen by leadership to be "better" than those in podunk mid-western towns. They are more than happy to pay $160k for a median NYC dev rather than $100k for a great mid-westerner.

So what incentive is there to stick around unless you really want to? All the good jobs are in those cities.

As a New Yorker, this comment is hilarious. Madison is about a third of the size of SF. As a polite reminder, SF is a little more than a third of the size of Queens, and fundamentally still kind of a small town compared to real cities. It's about the same size as Hempstead, NY which is certainly a small town. Hell, I bet more people bike to work as a % in Madison than in SF.

Lake Nebagamon WI is a small town.

Comparing these places to the Bay Area would probably be more appropriate.

This comment is hilarious. You assumed (incorrectly) that we're talking about just SF. Try the entire Bay Area.

It's also worth pointing out if it's not already clear, that "small" does not always refer to population size, or even geographical expanse. "Small" can refer to accomplishments, and impact/significance in the tech world. By comparison, Madison WI is quite small.

And for the record I don't live in the Bay Area. Nor do I want to.

It's not the size of an area or the number of people that indicate it's quality level as a tech high quality area either. The population of NYC is not the indicator of the number leading tech workers and companies there, of course.

No one wants to live in the middle of Wisconsin.

Urbanization is a global phenomenon. It's happening everywhere - in rich countries and poor. Resisting urbanization is expensive and ultimately a wasted effort. Instead we should be doing what the Japanese are doing and thinking carefully about how to gradually decommission small towns in the most humane way possible for the few people still living there - how do we provide them with medical services and utilities while they're still alive?

And we need to cut the bullshit, implement land reform, and let everyone who wants to live in one of our nice big cities live in one.

Actually lots of people want to live in smaller places; you may just not know them personally. "No one" is clearly hyperbole, as I know many such people myself. I find that a lot of people who live in big cities have little idea what life in a smaller place is like. It's looked down upon, and even feared, irrationally so. I bet a lot of folks who favor urbanization actually have a wider range of communities in which they would thrive than they think.

What you're asking for, an explicit effort to "decommission" small towns, is in some ways also signing the death warrant on a way of life, a culture. I don't think there's a humane way to do that. I think there are healthier perspectives available, with recognition that different people have different wants/needs. It doesn't have to be only a small number of big cities. It can be some big cities, some medium cities, some small cities, some rural areas.

What you're asking for, an explicit effort to "decommission" small towns, is in some ways also signing the death warrant on a way of life, a culture. I don't think there's a humane way to do that

The humane save people, not cultures. All the culture in the world isn't worth the suffering of a young working couple who have to live out of their car because of NIMBYism and our continuing efforts to subsidize small towns.

I think there are healthier perspectives available, with recognition that different people have different wants/needs

If more people really wanted to live in small towns, they would be expanding, not contracting. Clearly some people want to live in small towns, but many of these small towns won't be able to pay for their own hospitals and community services at some point. Some small towns will survive - after all, you seem to want to live in one. And no one is stopping you. But you are now a part of a small minority, and we need to have a plan to care for the last of the old people who live in some of these towns as they fade away.

The most unjust thing we could do is ask for young people living happily in their cities to subsidize a 'culture' they have no meaningful connection to or interest in. The real culture is where the people are, and soon that won't be small towns.

I don't understand this sentiment of being jealous of subsidies (city vs town, UK vs EU). Those communities are not billion dollar companies like Amazon that don't treat their workers with respect and then use their market power to eliminate competition. The subsidies are spent on things that help the people living there, they are not spent on dividend payments or higher compensation for executives (something you apparently do not consider as unjust). They get subsidies because they need them, they didn't steal them.

When I visited SF and the valley a while back I wondered about all the low rise buildings in many areas. Homes with 2 stories max. While I think it’s an essential part of the areas’ culture I wondered why the space above is left unused. Because of geological reasons? Esthetic reasons?

NIMBYs stop it because they “don’t want the feel of the city to change”. That is the excuse I’ve heard in Mountain View and Palo Alto to shoot down any high density apartments.

What we need is a federal law that zoning must scale with employees needed locally.

You really don't want the feel of the city to change? Fine, then keep out employers.

I'd argue that lots of people are trying to keep out employers. See: Amazon & NYC.

That's their excuse, the real reason is they don't want to their home they paid $1.5m+ for to depreciate.

If their homes were rezoned for skyscraper development their quarter acre that could host a hundred apartments vertically on it alone would go from 1.5m to 150m overnight.

The NIMBYs are going against their own economic self interest by resisting density, they are just petrified with fear that their house is the one just outside the criticality zone where developers would buy all the land for exorbitant money to build a metro and their area would become some sort of forsaken blight or be bulldozed at "fair market rate" via eminent domain to build the infrastructure to support that density.

It really bothers me that homeowners here have so much influence beyond their property lines. You own a plot of land. If someone is building an apartment not on your plot of land it should be none of your business.

The behavior of NIMBYs is a microcosm reflection of why wealth inequality is so detrimental for democracy. The property owners of major metro areas have both a vested interest in defending their profitability and crowd out those who want to be residents but cannot because of barriers put up by the owner class.

NIMBYs dominate SF politics because only NIMBYs can live in SF, which is exactly analogous to how business lobbyists dominate the rotunda of the Capital in DC because only multinational globalist corporations can afford to play the hardball bribes to get congress under their heel and crowd out everyone else with their money.

In both cases, when a few have a ludicrous amount of money / power and everyone else is left poor, the rich silence the rest and hold all the power.

Only one reason: Greed

Homeowners want to see their investment appreciate, plain and simple, and will do anything and make up any justification to impede development so as to reduce supply and increase home values. Pretty much any argument, any rule, that restricts housing ("ruining neighborhood character", "affecting the historic value of the neighborhood", and in almost all cases, "environmental impact") can be understood if seen through the prism of selfishness. Never mind that people's lives are more important than obtuse feelings of 'neighborhood character', and never mind that the reason the shitty silicon valley house you bought in the 70s is worth millions only because of the blood, sweat and tears of all the people who came here and started companies and built things.

As you can probably guess, I'm pretty disillusioned at probably not ever being able to ever afford a place to live in the place I call home. (And I'm a relatively well paid engineer, others have it much worse).

This is normal for any investment, why would anyone want their investment to depreciate? I also don't understand why so many people in San Francisco want to own a home. Owning a home in San Francisco is a giant pain in the ass. Everything is ridiculously expensive once you own. These homes are 100+ years old and most need updates and earthquake retrofitting (that's $100k+). You pay an obscene amount in property taxes and have to go through the city to change nearly anything. Once you do get approved you have to find a contractor and most contractors are on giant month long waits because there aren't many in the city. It's a pain, honestly I don't understand why anyone would want to buy when you can rent and be on rent control and not worry about any of these headaches.

The problem is housing being treated as an investment, resulting in artificially high prices and limited supply for the people who need to live in it.

We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late. A land value tax would help lower prices and remove the incentive to treat housing as an income source.

So how does this argument convince the population who has invested into their homes to suddenly want to devalue their property?

It doesn't. It requires building political will in the group that's been left out to override them.

I'm not sure why we need to convince those people, as we don't require consensus. We enact policy as a whole.

Also, I'm not sure what "devaluing" is going on; by pure financial value there's almost no way to build enough to actually drive down the price of any individual home; more likely as zoning increases the home will go up in value, but individual condos or townhouses will be available for much less than a single family home.

If you mean "devaluing" by "I now have apartments on the block," there's absolutely no right whatsoever for somebody to control the use of that other property.

Anybody who thinks they can drop $1.5 million+ into an asset without risk needs reality check on how entitlements don't work. Besides the world doesn't owe any one an insurance for stupid ideas.

Once again how does this argument convince the voters and home owners to change their mind?

Eventually an alternate location breaks out which offers amore compelling economic option for employees and employers, and the entire regional market implodes.

This ... kind of ... happened in Southern California in the early 1990s when the defence industry retrenched. SoCal housing prices had long led NoCal, and in the aftermath the south's values fell by a third or so. They've never really caught up. A different dynamic but similar result. Oddly, a consequence has been somewhat greater densification of the LA basin.

You could look at real estate in other and earlier times, especially industrial or extractive areas after the boom has passed.

> We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late

This is a really biased view of what landlords do. A landlord takes on all the risk of maintaining the home, staying in the home long-term, fixing things when things break, etc. As a renter, being able to just tell my landlord when things break means that much more convenience for myself. Moreover, as a renter, having no incentive to be gentle on my appliances, my landlord actually does quite a bit of stuff (Or pays a lot to have someone else do my stuff, hence creating a job) to make my life pretty darn easy.

Why should it be an investment? And why should we prioritize current winners' investments over the possibility of new entrants into the field?

Property taxes are another way that California is extremely regressive. Since property tax is paid based on the purchase price rather than market value like in other places, and since adding additional housing means that your property tax gets reassessed at the new value, tax policy highly incentivizes reduction of housing supply.

California policy can be summed up as: "I don't want any more people here after I moved here; but please bring on the jobs and the rising property values."

> California policy can be summed up as: "I don't want any more people here after I moved here; but please bring on the jobs and the rising property values."

On the east coast, we just call that "fuck you, I got mine."

> I also don't understand why so many people in San Francisco want to own a home.

The rampant NIMBYism hurts renters by constraining supply as well as well. Even if you don't want to own, you're still suffering.

(Though honestly I think the rental prices are lagging behind a bit. The home prices have truly become insane; I just watched a 4 bedroom in Burlingame that was bought for $2.3M in Oct 2017 sell for $5.1M; i.e., a 118% return in 15 months.)

You get that return but also face a huge income tax payment unless you invest right into another home hence driving prices up more. Convincing someone to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes isn't easy.

The broader market hasn't gone up anywhere near 118% in 15 months so when you see an anomalous sale like that it usually means something else was going on. For example a below market sale to a relative, extensive renovation, or some kind of fraud.

Of course people don't want their investment to decrease in value, that's why they have to invent bullshit arguments to bolster their case and discourage development.

But it is important to call it what it is and not be distracted by their nonsensical reasoning. They want less development because they want their housing values to increase. And in this process, they don't care about the lives of other people who'd want to move here or about the long term negative consequences of reduced growth and economic activity as a result of their greed.

Think of all of the companies that don't get started or the things that don't get invented because they simply can't get the workers they need -- It is a sort of 'negative externality', little different from pollution or lung cancer, of the reliance on housing equity to fuel savings that we've come to rely on.

There are tons of cities in the rest of the U.S. to start a company or invent something hence why the economy is moving there. I'm not saying I agree with the home owners, I just don't see how their vote is going to change.

> I'm pretty disillusioned at not probably not ever being able to ever afford a place to live in the place I call home.

You don't have to live in the Bay Area. Developers are employable all over the world and remote work is gaining popularity.

Not exactly.

I worked in the Bay Area for a few years. As some one from Bangalore, the difference was night and day. Overall quality of people, scale of challenges, money and in general career awesomeness are just unmatched.

Eventually Bay Area will give way to high rise apartment complexes, it's just natural that it will happen. Economics is above everything, and eventually people will just make it work.

> I worked in the Bay Area for a few years. As some one from Bangalore, the difference was night and day. Overall quality of people, scale of challenges, money and in general career awesomeness are just unmatched.

You pay for that "awesomeness" in premium housing prices.

> Economics is above everything, and eventually people will just make it work.

The economics are working. Home owners are sitting on increasingly valuable assets.

The economics are being strongly skewed by an overly-enforced artificial scarcity. It's the government's job to regulate housing. But, the government is letting itself be pushed around by the land-owning minority to inflate that minority's assets at the expense of everyone else.

It's the government's job to serve its _current_ constituents. And those constituents want things a certain way. I don't know what the demographics are like today given the big influx of transplants over the last 10-15 years, but at some point the "land-owning minority" was not a minority, but the primary constituency the local government served. Given their investment in the community (by virtue of putting savings into houses), I would argue they do have a greater right to implement laws that protect their interests in how they want the city to look/feel/operate.

Honest question, not a snark.

What would you say to the developers who are opposed to H1bs (for supposedly lowering salaries)? Isn't constraining H1b similar to homeowners stifling housing?

Answer is same the answer for stifling housing numbers, and the argument is same too.

You want cheaper homes only till you buy a home, once you buy a home, you want homes to get expensive so that you can benefit. Similarly if you are building a company, or running a business(like a manager), you want H1B. Other wise you don't want it.

Basically people vote with their wallets.

It's all the same, the idea is limited supply leads to increased value. The problem with both arguments is that it's too elementary to mirror real life.

More housing might actually increase existing values because the ability to convert a SFH to a multi-tenant building means that a property developer can extract much more value out of the land than is possible under current conditions. So while per-unit prices go down, aggregate housing value goes up and those with existing SFH will probably see their net worth skyrocket.

Of course, certain less desirable areas may see a decline (read: normalization) in value, but that's unlikely.

A similar thing happens with developers: more software leads to more economic value in software, which increases demand for developers. However, more developers mean more automation in certain areas, so some people may see the value of their skillset decline.

> those with existing SFH will probably see their net worth skyrocket.

depends. It would go up for some in convenient locations but as soon as new apartments start going on the market they'll have to compete on price and prices will start to fall.

The value driver of the SFH is that is can be converted at any time into an n-family condo.

So if n * avg_condo_value - development_costs > current_home_value, then the homeowner comes out ahead.

Right, but not every SFH will not be replaced. You're going to start actually satisfying demand, and then prices will fall across the board.

Normally, I'd agree, but newcomers to SF have outstripped housing development by a large degree for something like two decades at this point. So the amount of new construction you'd need to satisfy current demand would be staggering.

Not to mention, a drop in housing prices will make the region even more appealing.

Not OP, but that’s even worse. Bringing in more engineers is likely to have a boost for local salaries, because engineers will start new companies that hire more engineers, or launch new products at existing companies and grow their market share.

Software is a growth and landgrab sector right now, not a “divide the pie” sector.

>greed

There is definitely a lot of that. But that is not the only reason. The excessive housing pricing have gone on long enough now that many people will be trapped and ruined if housing prices stagnate or fall.

People have had to spend far more than is prudent to get a house that is not that great just because there are no other options.

If you are putting all of your extra money into your mortgage payment, you are going to have to rely on being able to sell that home anf move away when you retire. If you cannot at least sell it for the equity you have in it, you will be trapped in an expensive city with no money to retire on and no way to sell and get out.

So I understand why so many are fighting to keep prices high. Their financial future depends on it and I don't think it's greedy to try to avoid financial ruin.

Why would it be financial ruin? California is a non-recourse state. The highly paid engineer who bought the multi-million dollar home can easily stop paying on the home and live there "rent free" for several months, recouping their down payment. By the time they are foreclosed on, they will have a sizable nest egg to do what they want with. In your scenario, the person would be "financially ruined" presumably due to a downturn in housing. In my scenario, they would be in a better position to buy again in several years at more sane levels, while ridding themselves of all the downside on their bad real estate. The only cost is a relatively minor (you can still get credit cards, etc) hit to credit for about 3 years, and in general your interest rates will be higher. But you're also cash rich, so who cares.

If somebody is older with little income and goes through the exact same scenario, they would be ruined, assuming all their net worth is in real estate. However in that case I'd argue that's more about their own poor/risky financial choices. There would be less people acting like their primary residence is an investment if the market wasn't so absurd to begin with.

It's hard to get another mortgage if you've previously been foreclosed upon. If you can save enough to buy a house for cash this could work (and screws the banks in a wonderfully ironic way), but housing prices would have to fall a lot without incomes falling much for the money saved in foreclosure to be enough to purchase another house for cash.

That's why you have your spouse get the second mortgage.

What spouse?

Many if not most spouses are both signed on the mortgage because they would have needed both incomes to qualify for the loan.

You cannot be serious. Planning on a strategic default is crazy from a personal finance standpoint for most homeowners. When you consider all the impacts it only makes sense in very limited circumstances. There's no reason to expect that prices would be more "sane" in the future, and in the meantime people still need a place to live.

Only purchase mortgages are non-recourse. A high percentage of owners have refinanced into recourse loans.

It's not just homeowners, it's the entire real estate and banking sector as well, quite posibly with other players.

With floating and fractional reserve banking, bank assets (incluing mortgage) literally underpin the money supply. Reductions in asset values decrease that, and the impacts are felt throughout the system. From individual homeowners to banks and assetbmanagers to national policymakers and central bankers, rising prices are "free money", and anything which might decrease market value is seen as a threat. That's effectively what 2007-2008 was.

The modern homeless crise was co-emergent with floating the U.S. dollar, the 1970s oil crises, and the Volker inflation and recession (intentionally triggered).

Housing and real estate now function principally as asset classes rather than as a service good. When financial assets serve only (or principally) as assets, the social disruption is low: gold, siilver, gems, fine art, rare wines, etc.. When assets perform vital functions in the real economy, their store-of-wealth function can become quite problematic.

I've been reading a book on the credit theory of money, and it's been fairly eye opening on how banks create money when they make loans, and how fractional reserves don't really limit their ability to continue "printing" money that way.

However, the 1970s stuff there sounds like a long chain of data to understand. (And is that why your comment currently downvoted)?) Do you have any recommended sources describing what you're talking about?

The idea's my own and more than a bit crackpot. Longer explanation:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190115035057/https://plus.goog...

Or, to phrase this less pejoratively, distinctly nonorthodox.

The reasoning and history seem to hold up though.

You have mischaracterized the motivation of most homeowners. Have you ever actually talked to many? The loudest, most influential NIMBYs have lived in the area since before the first Internet boom and plan to die in their current homes. They don't care about housing as in investment, and in fact complain about rising real estate values because it drives up their property taxes (albeit slowly due to Proposition 13).

What they actually care about is quality of life. Their perception is that higher residential density means more traffic, parking issues, noise, crime, pollution, school overcrowding, etc. If you want to get them on board with higher density then you'll have to find a win/win solution which addresses their concerns. Maligning their motives will accomplish nothing.

I agree that my comment might have been a bit hyperbolic. I don't mean to imply that homeowners are one dimensional characters with a single motivation. But also I can't help but notice that most of the quality of life objections you noted - noise, traffic, overcrowding etc - boil down to this: Their issue is people. They don't want to live with too many people. I think its fair to say that that doesn't reflect very positively on their character either.

Who are you to judge the character of others? Wanting some space and privacy doesn't make someone a misanthrope.

From where I'm sitting, people that want to live with a lot of other people doesn't reflect well on their character.

How about this home: https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Jose/468-Carpentier-Way-95111/...

2 bedrooms - you're definitely surrounded by people. In an apartment I owned in the bay area I heard screaming on both sides of me. Random times. Real fun.

So if you want to live with people, there ARE reasonably priced solutions.

There is a simple "win/win" solution: oppose commercial development as much as you oppose residential development. The fact that this isn't happening means home owners prioritize their home value more than they prioritize the things you have listed above. More workers mean higher traffic, parking issues, etc regardless of whether they live there or not.

Many NIMBYs have also been actively opposing new commercial developments for the reasons you listed (as well as environmental impact). So it is happening. I've seen it in city council meetings.

It's unfortunately this. Not earthquakes, not hills, not technical problems, but almost 100% due to balkanized city councils. The state needs to step in more. They already have a little bit.

I think it is because:

a. That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes.

b. People who already have homes, think they own the view. Also known as NIMBY.

c. Building new homes(like big apartment complexes with mass housing), would crash the market. Because many people have put in $1 million+ to buy a home. Imagine what happens when homes are suddenly available for $300K a piece. Those people will go bankrupt instantly.

d. Rent control.

The market won't crash. You can't physically build fast enough to do it even if all the zoning was fixed. If anything you'll temper prices or lower slightly but even if they fell a bit maybe CA'd get needed tax changes finally.

Yes, something like this will happen in and close to SF, like till Palo Alto may be. But if you allow building high rise apartments, places far enough from SF will see a good fall in prices. Then you can build fast enough in those places given the demand for homes at those prices.

Beyond all this once its clear that you can get decent accommodation for $300K, spending $1.5 million for the same becomes stupid.

Sure people will buy McMansions and homes in cul-de-sac as a badge of prestige. But anybody with a brain, and knows that money is better spent on saving up for retirement will look the other way go stay in the $300K flat. You would stay in the same if you rented, anyway.

> That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes.

This is not an excuse. High rises that are well designed are perfectly safe in earthquakes (safer than single family homes often times). Other major cities in earthquake areas (like Tokyo) do not have this problem.

There are many reasons some people do not prefer urban areas: aesthetics, crime, pollution, homelessness, noise.

And many people in SF (especially if they have lived their a while; i.e. property owners) are not thrilled that their home is changing.

Law prohibits a lot of places to built it. I remember Palo Alto had some condition. In SF, I think it doesn't have a good foundation to build tall building. It's either that or the architect here is not great.

The slanting, sinking high-end building terrifies me. https://www.businessinsider.com/is-millennium-tower-safe-sti...

SF's infrastructure was never designed for high density. They can't just add homes by themselves. That would overwhelm the roads, sewers, electrical grid, schools, public services, etc. Those things all must be upgraded before adding more housing, otherwise the city will start to resemble a shantytown. The infrastructure upgrades will be tremendously expensive and in many cases would have to be done as huge capital projects rather than incrementally. There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects.

The root cause was a failure of urban planning decades ago. Now SF leaders and residents have to deal with reality as it exists today rather than what it ought to have been with better foresight.

> There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects.

It really sounds ludicrously obscene that the city with the highest average income per person in the world can't "afford" to do things that third world countries have done to multi-millennia old cities histories spanning much larger footprints with way more people involved and way less money in the economy.

If SF wanted to develop into the proper metropolis it should have been since the 90s there is ample money flowing through the Bay Area to pay for it. You just need the political willpower to make it happen, which may be rarer than flying pigs.

What is the basis for assuming that SF should have been a proper metropolis? Many of the residents seem to disagree. (I don't live there and have no particular opinion on the issue.)

To find the answers to this you need to jump into the rabbit hole of corruption, low cost housing and zoning laws. Yes, people are greedy but then that is true for every single town in USA. It is only in SF bay area that housing is so expensive.

It is possible to build a high rise building but such a project needs to be approved by local town which they won't. They will put unreasonable restrictions in terms of parking spaces, open spaces etc. These laws prevent building anything bigger.

There is a deeper rot of corruption called "low cost housing". There are several organizations that will deliberately litigate any new project, run it into ground and once the developer has lost a lot of money they will buy it cheap for so called low cost housing. To give a real world example a laundramat owner in SF who made ton of profit had pity on the housing need of the city and out of his good heart decided to demolish the laundramat and build housing instead. He has been harassed, the corrupt city admin declared his building historic monument in order to prevent him from redoing it. All the while he lost money and paid property taxes. [1]

As of today it takes around 2 years to get all the necessary permissions for any kind of construction project. Most developers have turned their back on the city. See this interview with one of the builders. [2]

Third part is large empty patches of land that are for some reason not being brought under development. Look at google maps and you will notice there is plenty of land in Fremont, Santa Cruz mountains, Palo alto etc. where mountains can be demolished, new housing units created. But wont happen because of over zealus environmentalists.

[1] https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/19/the-most-contested-ap... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIjDGF_YYQ

If more companies would let people work at home 3 or 4 days a week, there would be a lot more housing options.

There are plenty of affordable homes in the San Joaquin valley, close enough to San Francisco to do a round trip on one Tesla charge. Every time I check Redfin, for example, Merced has plenty of 3 or 4 bedroom houses in the 1700 sq ft range for under $300k. Modesto also has plenty under $300k, and is even closer to San Francisco.

Merced or Modesto doesn't have anywhere near the cultural offerings San Francisco has for your off work time, but again, San Francisco is close enough that a weekend trip is not a big deal.

I'm sorry but suggesting a 5-6 hour commute round-trip, even once a week, is absolutely not a reasonable solution.

Clickbait title. 99% of the article is about the Bay Area, where we already know there’s a housing crisis.

Its in Sacramento too. Just saying. Sure, not Madera, Visalia, Fresno, or Stockton.

What is the housing crisis in Sacramento? I only ever read about the Bay Area and occasionally Southland.

http://www.capradio.org/enewsletters/notes/2018/06/sacrament...

It's a housing crisis by spillover - all the people in the Bay Area who can't afford houses there are going to Sacramento instead. Here's a particularly pointed and opinionated editorial on the subject: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/erika-d-smi...

One of the symptoms of communism as experienced in Eastern Germany and other countries was the scarcity of many things. People formed long queues when rare goods (e.g. bananas) happened to be available and spent a lot of effort to procure necessary items (parts and materials to repair a vehicle or fix their appartment).

Occasionally we find this kind of queue-forming scarcity in western market based economies, even though the laws of supply and demand handle most situations quite well. To me this is not just an irrationality, it's a bit of a disgrace. With all of the shortcommings of capitalism, at least it ensures that a good substitute product is always available.

Be it a job market with affordable housing, a mobile phone or a movie, or a restaurant with friendly service and fair prices: Whenever I spent a few moments to look around, I never fail to find an excellent choice of suitable products and services.

On the other hand, outside of communism, a horde of irrational customers who insist on having a certain scarce thing cannot possibly be satisfied. Prices go up and/or the provided value goes down.

I wish for everyone to recognize the workings of the laws of supply and demand, and a happy life in any of the great tech/startup cities of the world.

The scarcity problem is well understood in the Bay Area: government works hard to disallow new housing. Cities here zoning for lots of jobs, but they do not allow residences for those who work at those jobs.

The irrationality is simply bad planning by local governments. They are extremely strict in what they allow, and they do it in a way that maximizes profits for current residents, at the expense of anybody who comes along later (through birth or migration). This is pure regulatory capture.

This is not the result of market dynamics, its the result of state intervention.

As others have noted, this is because of governments telling developers they can't build, not a lack of developers wanting to build.

And there are other substitute products. You only need one great job at a time, and there are plenty of other markets in the US where one can make a living that under any other circumstances would get everyone telling you to count your blessings and stop whining so much about how you're only upper middle class. There's startup hubs, industry hubs, places that may not be anything in particular but still have plenty of jobs of various types, things closer to nature, places with decent weather (even if SV is the epitome of weather for some people), all sorts of other choices.

Really, if you don't want to "work for a startup" (including starting one), and even then, a rather particular sort of startup, you don't need to be in Silicon Valley. It's an option, yes, and I'm neither surprised some people choose it nor particularly criticizing them. But it's not the only option.

I get the point you are trying to make, but it doesn't make sense in this case. For all it's problems, East Germany solved the housing problem [1], in fact, its probably one of the main contributors to Berlin's ability to grow while keeping housing prices "reasonable"[2]. Our current property system isn't really that great at handling rapid fluctuations in housing demand, as we are witnessing in real time in the Bay Area. If we don't find more efficient housing solutions, we essentially condemn all but the privileged class to impossible commutes, poor quality housing and homelessness.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau [2] https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/09/a-second-life-for-ber...

There are currently 50 development projects in the city of Santa Clara, population ~130,000. Most are residential. Many residential development projects that are active are tearing down light industrial and replacing with apartments and condos. For example, this 347 unit project described as follows:

"Project Description: SummerHill Apartment Communities proposes to demolish three existing light industrial buildings on a 3.06-acre site within the Tasman East Specific Plan area and replace them with one 347-unit apartment building and dedicate 0.4178 acres to be a City of Santa Clara park, which will include a dog park and children's play area. The proposed park also includes walking and bicycling paths which will connect into the broader Tasman East bicycle and pedestrian network. The proposed apartment building will include two stories of above-ground parking, seven stories of residential units with associated building amenities and a community garden. SummerHill proposes a total of 275,000 square feet of new residential area with 396 vehicular parking spaces and 24 bicycle parking spaces. The proposed project will include street and utility improvements and a lot line adjustment and merger to create two new parcels (one for residential and one for city park)."

http://santaclaraca.gov/Home/Components/BusinessDirectory/Bu...

Here is the full list:

http://santaclaraca.gov/businesses/development-projects-stor...

Having a project in the city database means little until shovels get put in the ground. Plenty of zombie projects are on the books in my town. Even if the project is active, it often takes years to get all the permits.

They're about to plop over 2000 people in that new development at Kifer abd Lawrence that is one city block square... which is already gridlocked during commute hours.

Random house in Concord CA easily commutable by bart to SF under $600K https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/18386554_zpid/globalre...

I wouldn't consider 1.5 hours each way an easy commute. Also, 600k for that kind of house is still really expensive compared to the rest of the country. Houses like that sell for $250k in Raleigh, and that would be a 10 minute drive or 20 minute bus ride into downtown. https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Raleigh-NC/pmf,pf_pt/6...

Google maps says it’s about 1.5 hours to Market Street arriving at 9am. $600k for a 1,000 sqft house with 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom in a horrible school district with that commute isn’t really a good deal.

Horrible School District!? MDUSD isn't all that bad, is it? Granted it's been a while since I was there.

YV isn't College Park, sure, or De La Salle, but it ain't Mount Diablo.

I guess things have changed then.

Also, 600 for that house is a bit of a steal. My folks live across 680 in PH, and the house next door just went for 950 a year ago.

In the end, all these comments are just dancing around the real issue: Prop 13. Nothing will make sense in CA housing until Prop 13 is revoked and the inevitable wild swings in the housing stock then settle down.

EDIT: Ok, that's right, I forgot. YV is like 4 blocks from De La Salle. So, they take all the good students and leave all the rest of the 'poor' students to go to YV. I forgot. If you look at all the other High Schools in the area, they're all 8/10 or 9/10.

==If you look at all the other High Schools in the area, they're all 8/10 or 9/10.==

And this house would be even more expensive if it was in the boundaries of those schools. $600k for a house that size, more than an hour outside of a city, with poor local schools is astronomical.

Prop 13 deserves a lot of the blame. However, at some point the prices reach a point where people will just move to New York, Boston, Chicago, Philly, Austin, Nashville, Portland, Dallas, etc. In Chicago, we have already seen some of this with companies like Foursquare, Google, Facebook, Coinbase and Salesforce opening more engineering-focused offices in the past couple of years.

I think prop 13 is 99% of the issue. It disincentivizes moving at an increasing rate the longer you hold on. Taxes rising with market value prevents this acceleration.

Average home value in Palo Alto is 2,901,408. Average Property tax is 0.42%. $12185.88. Thats the equivalent tax bill of a new house worth 1.2 million, less than 50% of the average house value in Palo Alto

Doable != easy. Nobody wants to spend 10% of their day on BART.

https://outline.com/hkanFb

This is the natural effect of the passage of Proposition 13. When you cannot raise real estate taxes to keep up with inflation, residential real estate becomes a liability for governments, not an asset.

California has had to turn to business development to make up for the short fall. From an economic perspective, the government has a high demand for commercial development, and a low demand for residential development.

(Not) looking forward to CA millennials turning into NIMBYs when they inherit properties with super low Prop 13 tax assessments. Passive rental income with minimal property taxes is a hell of a drug..

Nothing that futuristic mass transit couldn't fix.

Fortunately, China is already building it. Something that travels around 100 mph should do the trick.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-driverless-maglev-t...

How about allowing remote workers? I don't get the resistance to it.

I pay for my computer. I pay for my own coffee/tea. I pay the electrical bill. I pay for my phone/internet. My quality of life goes up massively.

God forbid we work remote and avoid traffic and all the headaches of commuting.

Employers want you under their thumb so they can squeeze you harder.

I'm not sure what this comment means. California obviously allows remote workers.

I'm sure they allow it, but is it "easy" to find a remote job there? I think he meant "a lot of companies still don't accept remote worker"

Highly depends on the team. I've seen teams where most members are remote but most teams I've been on shun working-from-home regularly.

That and most companies pay based off "cost of living" and you cannot expect Bay Area pay outside of the Bay Area. Asking for work-anywhere-in-the-world remote work basically feels like shooting yourself in the foot if you value compensation.

More like depends on the boss. I've been at my current company to see remote work come and go based on leadership.

Right, but California and California corporations are two completely different entities. California cannot legislate remote work, anymore than a california corporation can legislate the property tax.

> California cannot legislate remote work

Well, it obviously can (states having general police power and there being no federal right to non-remote work incorporated against the states that would bar such legislation), but it probably shouldn't.

Just wait till they realize the additional taxation (without that pesky representation) they can get by taxing remote workers.

I moved out of CA and switched to remote work. It's been 100% positive. I would recommend it to anyone who can swing it.

Here in France it is even worst, we're still 20 years behind in mentality regarding remote work

Most managers here think remote work = staying at home playing video games, even if you're lucky enough to find a company ok with you doing 1 or 2 days per week at home, you have to report everything you do because they're extra paranoid about it

Not really, at least for developers you just have to look for the right company. Also, if you live in France but are looking for remote work anyway, no need to restrict yourself to French companies. That's the whole point of remote.

So it's still not easy, especially if you're junior, but from my experience I don't think the situation in US is much better.

I think it comes down to performance measurement being a really weak area for many companies. No one really knows whats real when it comes to output over a 40 hour week, and so bosses are afraid of getting shafted by an employee whom they can't see toiling away at their desk.

It's all but fact that a 40 hour work week doesn't result in 40 hours of productivity. Those non productive hours are seen as acceptable in an office for some reason, but when you're at home and can fire up a video game, it's sacrilege.

The fact is that not everyone has the discipline to be productive while working remotely, and a company requires a different way of hiring, operating, and measuring to support remote work.

Coordination is easier too when projects involve the cooperation of multiple individuals to get things accomplished. Escalating to more senior people is also easier when someone can walk over and ask for help in some situations.

You are right that employers want "proof" and butts in seats is a proxy. Having everyone go remote also requires changes to process and communications to keep people in sync. It requires tools and works to get everyone on the same page and keep them there. Most companies don't want to evolve to solve this, it is easier to rent a building.

Quality of life is even better in California if you are remote. I don't see how this helps.

I used to live in Austin but after getting a remote job I moved to LA. I get to live in an amazing, walkable neighborhood and rarely deal with the notorious LA commuting nightmare.

Where at in LA? What areas do you recommend from your research?

I'm currently in Echo Park, a few blocks from Sunset.

Downtown is great if you want a true urban feel and don't mind the homeless. I found a deal on rent but was looking heavily at Macarther park to Koreatown area.

I've heard parts of Hollywood are good and pretty well connected on transit lines but didn't really explore.

people don't know this but LA is surprisingly fine without a car if you live in the right areas.

There are many people who live in west hollywood, downtown, santa monica who don't have cars! lyft/uber are also relatively cheap here.

living in LA without a car is the biggest lifestyle hack I've ever done. Best of all worlds.

My experience is that there's more communication friction when working remotely. I prefer being on-site in an office. Being remote can make it feel like a struggle not to get left behind.

This is a major reason I don’t like to work from home any more than necessary. I would also never go full time remote, because, as another commenter says, comp is usually based on cost of living. If I’m delivering the same value in, say, Arizona vs California, why should I get penalized for living somewhere that isn’t insanely expensive?

A lot of times face to face interaction really trumps anything over the phone. Just being able to catch someone quickly for a discussion is one of the main pain points of "remote work" where you may be on a "send chat message -> wait -> wait some more -> ok I'm going to get coffee -> rats, I missed her/him -> ..." cycle.

I think a permanent telepresence can avoid some of these issues. But it brings to fore some privacy issues where people at work have a video feed into your home (its office space - but its your home nonetheless).

Some places, just don't want to.

I worked for a company based in the valley who bought a company that had some remote offices. I was at one of the remote offices.

The acquiring company had technical support teams in the valley too so that they could be "close to the engineers". We got a lot of "don't know if these guys out in Minnesota can do this..." kind of push back, lots of talk about how they all had computer science degrees / we did not, but they couldn't find enough warm bodies in the area so they were told they had to take us on.

So I traveled out there to see these hot shot super smart guys and after about half a day I was astonished by how ... not super high performers these guys were. In about a month we were out performing them on every metric (granted metrics can suck) and they accused us openly of "cheating". So they got someone to audit all the metrics, they found the guys in the valley were "cheating" (effectively they were closing cases regardless of resolution).

And about that being "close to the engineers", the engineering teams actually asked cases be transferred to me as they got tired of the work the local guys were doing and their habit of not thinking before they'd go over to the next building and hand them a half through through problem. At times to skip the bureaucracy, folks in the valley would call me in MN, to then contact an engineering manager in CA to get them going, the engineering team's management knew I didn't create false alarms / wouldn't send them into a bad spot flying blind.

Now beyond the management bickering I actually got along with those guys, but it was a constant battle of people just not believing that other people could get the job done. They thought they were amazing, but really they had no clue what was outside the valley and a couple other cities. They just assumed about the rest of the world. Meanwhile we also were about 2/3rds the cost and were more productive.

Eventually the company was bought again and they cut all the remote offices altogether. After I was laid off, my job went up on the internet, no remote workers (job is back in the valley), computer science degree required, many years experience required. All for a job an ok college grad could do, maybe even less than that, but they just don't belive it.

California also has fixed borders. And limited resources like water and crumbling infrastructure. Failing public education. 40 million people. How many more homes can we build? More homes = more infrastructure, shrinking land, loss of habitat and nature, strained water, over crowding, more schools, more support jobs(low pay), more cars on the same roads, more consumption, more pollution. 45 percent of the state budget goes to public education and it is one of the highest tax collecting states. If we don’t think of a way to hack this situation, California will become a failed state and bankrupt. Sooner than most of us fear.

What bubble are you living in to think California has no space. If there's one thing California has more than enough of, it's open space. I suggest driving on one of the myriad freeways for a few hundred miles and then tell me there's no open space. It's actually space that is the problem, because everyone wants the low-density SFH that the space affords. No one wants to invest in higher density housing.

He is right about the alarming ratio of public school funding to public school failure.

California's problem isn't space. It's NIMBY. CA's gone so NIMBY that regulations stifle the younger generation's ability to build and buy their homes. My wife and I went to open houses this weekend. Young Berkeley professors can't afford to live where they work. Young teachers can't afford to live where they work. This sort of thing is a societal recipe for disaster.

(Long, but consider this a documentary on how NIMBY has affected housing in California, from the POV of a cool landlord.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg )

I agree with him on the schooling. Notice my comment was solely about space, not school.

Don’t you think it’s connected?

Or are you suggesting that people build homes and don’t send their kids to school?

I am ready for the assault of downvotes if it means the right questions are asked.

One average home is 4 people. 2 cars. 2 kids. 2 incomes. 40% of it goes to various taxes. Dense over crowded cities. Overcrowded schools. Kids need tutoring because everyone wants their kids to succeed. 2 hour commutes. Baby sitting and child care. More water. More gas. More pollution. More public services. Same or smaller roads as bicycles and walkable roads become important. Less shopping as space is used for homes and people travel outside more and shopping dollars go out of the city. Less open spaces and nature. People start traveling for vacations and relaxation. More outflow without a balanced local economy. More service people needed for the high tech income earning population. But unaffordable for lower tiers for income.

Break this down for me. How is high density sustainable? Seriously ..how? Having a house isn’t everything. Living involves many other things.

How is high density sustainable?

Higher densities are clearly sustainable. We have historical precedent for higher densities than San Francisco. (Resulting in exceptional, vibrant communities.) Futurists envision (and quantify) ways this planet alone could sustain approaching a trillion.

Kids need tutoring because everyone wants their kids to succeed

Higher densities mean lower housing prices. Lower housing prices mean teachers and professors can actually live where they work. Lower housing prices mean creatives, craftspeople, artists, and diverse people can keep living locally.

So how is housing affordability in San Francisco working for you?

Is the higher density in SF bring all those supposed promised sustainablity benefits?

So how is housing affordability in San Francisco working for you?

The housing density in SF is held at lower levels than the market equilibrium. The result is miserable, because the density is artificially low for the current market.

Are you saying that if San Francisco has more people, it will become more sustainable and affordable and people will be happier?

Paint that picture for me, please.

Are you saying that if San Francisco has more people, it will become more sustainable and affordable and people will be happier?

Of course that's a broken causal chain and obvious straw man. You have to start out with more and cheaper housing. Economic analyses indicate we could build a huge amount more housing, and people would snap it up. Build enough to actually bring the housing prices down, and yes, there would be a much more vibrant and diverse city life. (But the market has to follow this naturally. Legislating prices lower will have the opposite effect.)

As far as cities being "sustainable" -- cities draw resources to themselves. That's simply how it works. Sustainability is something that only matters in the economy as a whole. Cities need not be locally sustainable to generate wealth and to be a positive benefit to society.

Paint that picture for me, please.

New York City in the past. Houston in its run up to becoming the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US. Chicago in the past as well. San Francisco is artificially held back from the density the market in other cities have achieved.

I disagree. But thanks for the engagement.

I disagree. But thanks for the engagement.

You completely disagree with much of the academic output of the past 75 years of modern geography. (Urban geography is as much economics and social science as 19th century geographic mapping.) Perhaps you should take your views into the field and revolutionize it?

Yes, I do.

Perhaps I will. Thanks for the suggestion.

Perhaps I will. Thanks for the suggestion.

Let me know when you do, so I can get out the popcorn. It will be entertaining, I'm sure.

> How is high density sustainable?

The question really is how is 'low density' sustainable. Can you point me to an agrarian area that has lasted for thousands of years, with continuous occupation, and continuous economic prosperity (or at least no long periods of economic destitution)?

I don't think you can.

On the other hand, humanity has countless examples of the sustainability of high-density cities. I can name off the top of my head many cities that have successfully housed humans with high density for thousands upon thousands of years:

1. Rome 2. Cairo 3. Chengdu 4. Baghdad 5. Bukhara 6. London 7. Mexico City/Tenochtitlan 8. Tokyo

> Don’t you think it’s connected?

Yes. Low density housing decreases access to education by requiring extra costs to achieve the same ends. All the civilizations listed above managed not only to house people, but also to educate them, hence retaining the prominence they held thousands of years ago to the present day.

The issue is not enough high density housing. Having lived in some of the cities listed above, San Francisco feels like living in the country side. Do not respond by asking how high density is working in San Francisco. San Francisco is not high density. It acts as if it is a moderately sized city when it really ought to be a metropolis.

This is also not an issue of taxation, as several of those cities have much lower tax rates than California. I am a libertarian at heart, so I am for lower taxes. However, it is a mistake to think California's high taxes are because of high-density. California's high taxes are a response to the need to pay for the externalities caused by low-density housing. For example, road maintenance, bus systems, etc are all much cheaper to run if people live closer together.

Moreover, the schools fail not because of the density in housing but because of the lack of competition to drive prices down. Catholic schools in the inner city do a better job at turning out students than public schools, despite having broadly similar student bases (In terms of socioeconomics) and spending much less per student (limiting myself to Catholic schools because they have the lowest average tuition among private schools by far). I believe the average inner-city Catholic school class size is actually larger than the corresponding public school. Historically speaking of course, large classes were the norm. Sowell details the issues of public schooling in his book 'Education in America'. If you think California needs money to fix its schooling, I highly recommend that book.

Low density can be sustainable if we live in clusters that are self sustaining. Form 4-6 Dunbar number sized communities and another bunch of them forming a bigger cluster. Intra city transport to be separate from Inter city transport..maybe underground or mag lev along with surface transport.

The problem is not low density. The problem is sprawl.

The solution is not high density and shaming people NIMBY or coerced altruism but cooperation. Giving people incentive to cooperate and share in return for something of non material value would work better than worsening quality of life for the productive and working folks.

High density can also be sustainable. Paris is a good example but it has public transport and its shaped like a snail. It would also mean segregation of regions according to income and ameneties.

Also..I can’t give you any example because no system lasts for ‘thousands’ of years.

I am rejecting your high density sustainable cities list but when I get the time, I will do my own research and if I am wrong in my intuition that you are off mark, I will certainly come back to you with it.

Again. You are wrong about low density meaning less education dollars. In California, we have a funding formula by which all the money goes to a common pot and then redistributed. The formula ...to put it simplistically...assigns more money to school districts with kids who need free lunches, English as second language etc. so this means counties that contribute less tax dollars and less property tax dollars due to low house prices get more of the education dollars. Highly educated households and English speaking households and those are higher income where kids don’t rely on school lunches get less education dollars.

This leads to no money for infrastructure improvements or overcrowding in schools and budget cuts. And yet..it’s these high property priced areas that have a higher influx of school kids. It’s not working.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/documents/currentexpense1718...

Per student expense allocation in affluent cities is less than in areas that have lower property values. No child is truly left behind in California when it comes to education at least as far as $ redistribution is concerned.

The problems we have cannot be resolved by high density building in Bay Area and LA.

> I am rejecting your high density sustainable cities list but when I get the time, I will do my own research and if I am wrong in my intuition that you are off mark, I will certainly come back to you with it.

You reject the history of the world?

> Also..I can’t give you any example because no system lasts for ‘thousands’ of years.

Yes, they do. Humans have numerous examples of sustainable systems. The Japanese are well known for several businesses that have lasted over 1000 years. The English have their own share of institutions that have lasted centuries. Of course, institutions like the church have lasted two thousand documented years. Humans know how to build to last, but it's a matter of following the wisdom of the ages.

> The solution is not high density and shaming people NIMBY or coerced altruism but cooperation

Coerced altruism? We currently have coerced ruralism! San Francisco is not built the way it is because developers and property owners want it. The government of San Fracisco places artificial limits on what can be built. It's one thing to not want to upgrade your own home, but currently, the city allows your neighbor to tell you hwat you can do with your property. If you want to build higher density, your property improvement plans are subject to a hearing of your neighbors and neighborhood. This is ridiculous. People should be free to do what they want so the free market can work, and we should not be coercing them to maintain an untenable status quo.

> This leads to no money for infrastructure improvements or overcrowding in schools and budget cuts. And yet..it’s these high property priced areas that have a higher influx of school kids. It’s not working.

There's no such thing as overcrowding. People have been educated in large classes for many many years. The issue is a lack of focus on education and academics in the schooling system. The American school system completely lacks rigor, and teachers tend to come from the lowest ends of their educational cohort (test scores of teachers are among the lowest when compared with other groups)>

Businesses last for thousands of years?? I have never heard of anything like that before. I don’t want to live in a world that is like a church.

property rights are important. If they are not respected, the state has more control over your property than you do. Immediate neighbours have the right to expectation of privacy and impact of new development

I honestly cannot have a discussion with someone who says ‘there is no such thing as overcrowding’. This is the end for me. Have a good rest of the day.

I honestly cannot have a discussion with someone who says ‘there is no such thing as overcrowding’. This is the end for me. Have a good rest of the day.

I suspect you are using some popular misconceptions in place of actual knowledge of urban geography, history, and economics. (Not that I'm such an expert. Basically, I took Geography 101 and remembered the 20th century segment.)

> Businesses last for thousands of years?? I have never heard of anything like that before

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

> I honestly cannot have a discussion with someone who says ‘there is no such thing as overcrowding’. This is the end for me. Have a good rest of the day.

You are most excellent at strawmanning, sir/madam! I didn't say there is no such thing as overcrowding, merely that San Francisco and LA are not anywhere near the levels of density normally seen in other major cities, such as London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other cities of the same importance.

I am a NIMBY. I don’t want overcrowding when there is so much space in California but everyone insists on building on small patches of land where we are prisoners inside our neighbourhood ...why not in other sprawling regions of California. But Sacramento doesn’t do it because it costs money to build roads and infrastructure and provide clean water and good jobs. Everyone complains about income equality ..how about what the state does..parts of California doesn’t even have clean drinking water and rural areas don’t have connectivity ...of course everyone wants to get out and come to LA or bay area where it’s all better.

But the tragedy of the commons is that the system becomes over burdened. It will collapse.

why not in other sprawling regions of California.

"My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you." -- Wintermute

Distance is time. Time is money.

watching it. I understand sacrifice, but honestly a chicken coop is more spacious than their new "bedroom"! I also understand that 700 sqf is way better than cave living, but still, for how long would I live in there?

I see repeated painting of this as generational warfare, but it isn't. It's more that younger generations feel entitled to live in one of the most desirable places in the world, at the prices they want, doing the jobs they do. I would like to live on the beach in Hawaii - should I be able to have that no matter what? Should everyone be able to?

It makes sense that the Bay area would be priced high given its tremendous desirability (which may be tapering off now). If people are willing to work there for low wages, then that is their choice - they have opted into a tradeoff they are OK with, and they/others should not demonize those who were already there and want to preserve their culture/way of life/standards of living. There are numerous affordable places to live in the US that are not [New York, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.] - you may not have every big city amenity you want, or maybe even be able to do the exact job you want - but such compromises are also just a regular part of life, aren't they?

To me the reframing of this issue as a generational war, or a rich versus poor thing, or use of pejoratives like "NIMBY" serves to distract from the plain truth, which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area.

which is simply that people are acting in their own self-interests. And yes, this includes the folks who believe they have an unalienable right to live in the Bay area.

It's not actually in people's self interest. A society that creates severe divisions courts social unrest. Perceptions of relative status are directly linked to social unrest and lawlessness. This is operating in people at a level below consciousness, and the evolutionary roots of it probably predate human language.

Of course, no one has an "unalienable right to live in the Bay area." This is technically correct. However, it's still pretty crappy if the Bay Area prices-out everyone except for techies living there. Just because you can buy it, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can keep it for yourself, doesn't mean you necessarily should.

I think your understanding of the concept of ownership and market forces is tenuous.

I think your understanding of the concept of ownership and market forces is tenuous.

This statement is basically proof that you really don't understand where I'm coming from. (Which is exacerbated by your quaint and highly inaccurate ideas about urban geography.) Property rights are indeed fundamental. Resisting market forces is as wise as resisting the tide -- do it at your peril, or if you have considerable resources and know what you're doing. (So usually, no!)

That said, market forces don't dictate morality, laws of physics, and fundamentals of human psychology. There are other things out there to be concerned about. An overly narrow focus on the market and what money entitles you to may well cause you to miss important implications.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/09/martin-shkrelis-legacy-shapi...

Society has to work together as a whole. All the different segments of society have to be accorded a certain level of dignity. Otherwise, one endangers the civility and mutual trust necessary for economic transactions to happen reliably. Dividing society too much according to wealth, generational, and demographic lines creates more opportunities for groupthink and division.

There is a point where "separate but equal" loses its luster, after all.

I think society is fine. What is at peril is freedom to admit to be upwardly mobile.

There is a desire to cut down those wanting to fly high. The ‘Tall Poppy’ syndrome.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

[..]The tall poppy syndrome describes aspects of a culture where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down, strung up or criticised because they have been classified as superior to their peers. The term has been used in cultures of the English-speaking world.[..]

[..]The concept originates from accounts in Herodotus' Histories (Book 5, 92f), Aristotle's Politics (1284a), and Livy's Ab Urbe Condita Libri, Book I.

[Periander] had sent a herald to Thrasybulus and inquired in what way he would best and most safely govern his city. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field. As he walked through the wheat, continually asking why the messenger had come to him from Cypselus, he kept cutting off all the tallest ears of wheat which he could see, and throwing them away, until he had destroyed the best and richest part of the crop. Then, after passing through the place and speaking no word of counsel, he sent the herald away. When the herald returned to Cypselus, Periander desired to hear what counsel he brought, but the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none. The herald added that it was a strange man to whom he had been sent, a madman and a destroyer of his own possessions, telling Periander what he had seen Thrasybulus do. Periander, however, understood what had been done, and perceived that Thrasybulus had counselled him to slay those of his townsmen who were outstanding in influence or ability; with that he began to deal with his citizens in an evil manner.

— Herodotus, The Histories, Book 5, 92-f[..]

What is at peril is freedom to admit to be upwardly mobile.

No disagreement there either.

The tall poppy syndrome describes aspects of a culture where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down, strung up or criticised because they have been classified as superior to their peers.

Don't merely rail against your haters, when there are ways of converting them into your allies. Does blame only flow in one direction here?

Exactly. Anyone can buy into Stockton.

But many don’t and they chose Bay Area because they want to...see the key word? ‘Want’? You are saying that the vulnerable society’s ‘want’ is weighted more than the non vulnerable section of society.

Why? I do this all the time. I call it the ‘Five Whys’ method. If you can answer five consecutive ‘Why’s ..issue will clarify.

Exactly. Anyone can buy into Stockton.

(Tangential: One of the best musicians I know took great pains to move to SF, for artistic reasons. He took great pains to move away from Stockton. I think I'll ask him about your observation above.)

You are saying that the vulnerable society’s ‘want’ is weighted more than the non vulnerable section of society.

Incorrect. What I'm saying is that causing the de-facto division of society into separate castes is a recipe for social disaster.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-silicon-valley-fuels-an-info...

In addition to markets, there are certain wired-in facts about human psychology. Perceived relative status, if the gap is too wide to let people feel dignified, directly causes social unrest. It's just not smart for the segment of society that controls resources to let that situation come about. That's just how people work. The psychological and social science research on this is clear.

Why? I do this all the time. I call it the ‘Five Whys’ method. If you can answer five consecutive ‘Why’s ..issue will clarify.

My hunch is that you've strawmanned your particular whys. Judging from other parts of this thread, I would probably agree with all of your answers and conclusions, yet I still come to a different conclusion.

I don’t see a problem with a fragmented society. It makes for diversity. We should alleviate hardship but it’s not our social responsibility to form a homogeneous society on the basis of wealth.

Dignity is not about living in the Bay Area. Those who live in Bay Area and in nice homes may even suffer indiginities at work that facilitated their status.

The psychological and social study is actually not clear. We don’t have true poverty in this corner of our western world like in India or Bangladesh or in some places in Africa etc. So..yea..perspective. We have relative poverty. Cupertino folks are poorer than those in Atherton. Hayward is poorer than Cupertino. Visalia is poorer than Hayward. There will always be hierarchies. There are enough studies to back that tho’.. And hierarchies are important. They are the furnaces from where societies are tempered.

Making assumptions is easy. None of us can be saviours of others. We can only be saviours of ourselves. It’s ok not to be a super hero in our story. We don’t even have to be hero’s. I would rather that we aspire not to be villains. But again..that pesky thing called free will. So there’s that..

We don’t have true poverty in this corner of our western world like in India or Bangladesh or in some places in Africa etc. So..yea..perspective. We have relative poverty.

Relative poverty, specifically, is what causes social unrest. (Perhaps here is another hole in your social sciences education?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3XYHPAwBzE

There will always be hierarchies. There are enough studies to back that tho’.. And hierarchies are important. They are the furnaces from where societies are tempered.

I am also pro-meritocracy. Pareto is as widespread as the normal distribution. Sure. I'm also down with the idea that different groups will know different things and so will have vastly different outcomes in the economy. Thomas Sowell is a personal hero of mine, and I own and am working through something like 5 of his books.

I would rather that we aspire not to be villains. But again..that pesky thing called free will. So there’s that..

Octavia Butler's viewpoint in her books generally, but especially in the Parable of the Sower series, is valuable for its observation that much of human conflict is determined below the level of consciousness. Society can't ignore those forces, precisely because they can override conscious rationality and are powerful enough to tear even the most powerful societies apart.

Principles are important. However, we are not creatures of pure rationality. If a society tries to live as such, purely on principles, it will fail. Probably through its elites becoming out of touch. California to a T, through and through.

I am familiar with gini coefficient...I don’t understand the relevance of the video tho’...if you want to normalize the gini coefficient, then all welfare programs and benefits have to be scrapped. Minimum wages and rent controls have to be abolished. No more affordable housing quota by the state.

So I am confused why you’d bring that up..unless you support the measures above. When free market forces take over, things will fall into place.

Further, there is also nothing wrong with social unrest. We don’t live in a vacuum where everything is frozen. Social unrest leads to paradigm shifting changes in society. This is why things change and don’t stay the same for ‘thousands of years’.

Go attempt to protect society from social unrest is symptomatic of a saviour complex that is irresponsible and dangerous.

Milton Friedman was my thesis subject in college. I get Thomas Sowell too. I just don’t understand your stance.

Octavia Butler didn’t finish the Parable series. Writer’s block. Maybe there was a reason why..badly plotted.

You say: ‘Principles are important’. True. But your principles are important only to you. I may define mine differently.

We are not rational animals but we are all ‘rationalising’ creatures. I don’t see the relevance either bring to this discussion.

if you want to normalize the gini coefficient, then all welfare programs and benefits have to be scrapped. Minimum wages and rent controls have to be abolished. No more affordable housing quota by the state.

I would be for that.

Sure. The violent kind, no one should need in the USA in 2019.

Go attempt to protect society from social unrest is symptomatic of a saviour complex that is irresponsible and dangerous.

Keeping violence out of society is simply a good idea. You can't have commerce and markets without order. Giving people the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness is a good idea. Everything which is the "fabric of life" should be within the means of everyman and everywoman. I think this should be achievable in the free market. The organizations and forces which dominate society have a practical obligation to provide such things. Historically, it's a good way to make money. Also, the disappearance of true everyman/everywoman activities and goods seems to be associated with dying industries trying to hold on by raising prices.

I think you and I would agree that giving stuff away would create more problems than it would solve. That's not what I'm proposing here. Also, saviors are dangerous. The real ones wield power in a more concentrated form than is wise.

I just don’t understand your stance.

Markets aren't the be-all end-all. They're just a tool. Everyone in business should be biased towards getting ahead by creating delight and avoiding resentment. On one level, that's just good brand management. On another level, the dignity of all levels of society is necessary for a long lasting, healthy society. Powerful people all working together informally and voluntarily towards this end are the hallmark of the healthiest societies.

You say: ‘Principles are important’. True. But your principles are important only to you. I may define mine differently.

Making sure large swathes of the public don't feel put upon is something to keep in mind as well. Principles may not be important at all, to minds taken by instincts more deeply rooted than rationality. Like the status calculations of young men and women who decide they no longer have a stake in society.

We are not rational animals but we are all ‘rationalising’ creatures. I don’t see the relevance either bring to this discussion.

You seem to be biased towards prioritizing only principles, rationality, and markets. Those are great, but they don't cover everything.

Ok.

1. No one is going to get violent because they can’t find housing in the Bay Area. 2. Violence is a very expensive endeavor for human beings. It extracts lives, property and depletes resources. Most human beings avoid violence unless they have nothing to lose. This is what happens in war torn areas. 3. People MOVE when resources become scarce. That’s why America is made of immigrants. From the time it was formed, people MOVED in from places that got too crowded or when resources became thin. Trying to cram everyone into one tiny desirable geographically area in California is exactly the opposite of what to do to avoid violence due to social unrest. 4. This is a land of opportunity. People TAKE opportunities. Spoon feeding and force feeding after the threat of malnutrition is not the same as offering a plentiful plate of food. There is ‘fabric of life’ beyond certain zip codes in California. 5. Asking property owners to give up quality of life and environment for higher density homes with minimal benefit to them is most definitely asking them to GIVE UP something. 6. There is dignity outside certain zip codes in California. This is bordering on nonsensical now. I fail to understand the import of your communication. We have a hot housing market where people below a certain earning potential are priced out. And there is theatrics all over. News flash: This happens everywhere in the world. Every single decade. Only in California is this about loss of dignity and potential for violence and obligation of retired old folks to give up their homes for high density while on fixed incomes because someone just out of college can’t afford a mortgage. 7. No. We can’t cram everyone who wants to live in the most desirable zip codes in California because that means they lose dignity. 8. And no. We can’t make everyone happy. We can’t make everyone feel not resentful. We can’t control how people feel about their entitlements or inadequacies or whatever. The best we can do is NOT enable it. Bringing this to a conclusion. No. We are built out. Some of us want quality of life. Some of us don’t. Some of us can afford to live where we desire. Some of us can’t. And there is a whole lot of us in between the book end choices.

Sometimes it’s better NOT to act outside one’s sphere of influence. If you feel that more people need to move in a low density area, feel free to demolish your home and built multiple dwellings in it. Maybe you can evangelize your position and convince others. Be the change you want to see, but don’t expect others to be the change you are unable to create yourself. It doesn’t say so in the rulebook of life. It has only three things: Welcome. Live. Die. You can define that any way you want and find meaning in it for yourself only.

1. No one is going to get violent because they can’t find housing in the Bay Area.

More professors are radicalizing kids, and there are even examples of indoctrination of children at grade school levels documented. There are more campus

2. Violence is a very expensive endeavor for human beings.

There is an expansion of the amount of it committed by the Far Left in the US for the past several years. Before Christchurch, the Far Left had doubled the death toll of the Far right for the past two.

Trying to cram everyone into one tiny desirable geographically area in California is...

A part of how cities create wealth. The economic activity of SF would be expanded by taking up the difference in density between it and NYC.

5. Asking property owners to give up quality of life and environment for higher density homes with minimal benefit to them is most definitely asking them to GIVE UP something.

Is not asking them to give up quality of life. They could also move, by your same logic. Having more money, this would be far easier for them than for people working in restaurants and assistant professors and teachers.

Your "Asking property owners to give up quality of life" is actually rich and powerful people manipulating laws to stymie growth and market forces.

6. There is dignity outside certain zip codes in California.

Is there dignity in being forced to move away from one's home? It depends.

7. No. We can’t cram everyone who wants to live in the most desirable zip codes in California

We have historical precedents that indicate we can have about 30% more.

We can’t control how people feel about their entitlements or inadequacies or whatever.

We can avoid obvious rigged games and broken markets. Those things stick out like a sore thumb as something unfair.

>Young Berkeley professors can't afford to live where they work. Young teachers can't afford to live where they work. This sort of thing is a societal recipe for disaster.

How so? It's surely a local recipe for disaster. But there's nothing preventing young professors and teachers from leaving the area (or the state) and finding jobs elsewhere where housing is cheaper.

Google employs thousands of people. Do they all live in the same town as where their offices are...many mid range companies and public agencies and Starbucks baristas commute to work too.

What is so special about teachers that they have an expectation of walking across the street to their place of work?

Everyone commutes. Everyone.

This expectation of living next to where you work is exactly why we have a housing density problem. Instead of focusing on public transport to make commute painless ..we are stuffing people like sardines in a can with talking points crafted by housing activists who are mostly grant funded non profits and public agencies. More homes in expensive areas serve tax coffers in Sacramento. Not the public.

Google employs thousands of people.

And can afford special busses.

What is so special about teachers that they have an expectation of walking across the street to their place of work?

Nothing is special about teachers. Many things would be tons better if everyone could work where they live. I used to live in a community next to a university where lots of professors lived. My best friends lived upstairs from the shops we frequented. Some of them worked in those shops. It was a walkable community, the kind where your friend might call out to you on the sidewalk from their balcony to come up and have dinner. Such things weren't luxuries but were once the province of everyman and everywoman. There is something really gracious about that kind of living. Society is poorer for it going away. Granted, increasing density is likely to squash some of those things out. However, it might well create new opportunities for such communities to exist, especially if combined with better public transportation.

Instead of focusing on public transport to make commute painless

Public transport has a history of making cities more vibrant. No disagreement there.

This expectation of living next to where you work is exactly why we have a housing density problem.

You are misunderstanding my position. People don't absolutely need to live exactly where they work. They just need to be able to afford someplace to live with a modicum of dignity -- based on perceptions of relative status. A society that prices-out certain vital segments of itself entirely -- based on market distoring laws and regulations -- is doing something wrong. I mention the young teachers and young professors specifically, because it strikes me as a misguided way of ensuring one's youth are radicalized and ideologically disconnected from their own society.

we are stuffing people like sardines in a can

We in CA are deliberately a few steps removed from densities the market would naturally settle at.

crafted by housing activists who are mostly grant funded non profits and public agencies

Are there actually activists who want more housing density? Most of what I hear about are NIMBYs and people with misguided goals of "preserving the original character" of the neighborhood by just saying no. Perhaps you are aware of a different side of this than I am.

What is wrong with ‘special buses’ by google? Isn’t that sustainable? It removes so many cars from the freeways and commuter roads.

Of course there are activists who disrupt city council meetings to increase Bay Area density. Who do you think came up with the term NIMBY? It is meant to shame people. It took me about three months to start introducing myself as NIMBY. ‘Hi, my name is ___. I am a NIMBY. So now that it’s out of the way..next?’ Housing advocates come in from other cities and threaten to sue cities if they don’t build more housing.

If you are a developer and you are required by law to build 80 high end apartments only if you set aside 20 units as affordable units...what would anyone who has learnt to count with 10 fingers do?

They’d either pass on the cost to the upper 60 or build 120 units and make a profit.

As far as Sacramento is concerned, this is fine because they get more property taxes of highly inflated high end housing PLUS affordable housing taxes.

But the schools now have to absorb 120 households worth of children instead of 80 households worth. There are 240 cars on the road where normal density would have put 160.

Gas, power, utilities, trash, water...all public agencies make money. The state and county collect more taxes. Local governance suffers while state captures most of the tax monies that it redistributes to areas that are typically lower income, higher welfare, lower tax producing and lower housing density.

Meanwhile urban high density towns where productivity and income is high are vilified as NIMBYs, pay high taxes, get less community benefits and tax disbursements, have high density and crumbling infrastructure..commute short distance for longer due to lack of public transport and traffic jams. All the while the rest of the state spits on your face because you are one of the worst .. ‘tech bros’ and Silicon Valley millionaire while all the time you have a mortgage and kids and higher cost of living like anyone else in California. It’s a tier difference but it’s not a real difference. Only in California will one be disowned and shamed for desiring a higher quality of life and for upward mobility.

It is filled with people hungry for upward mobility coming from countries where the promise of a better life is in America. These are not folks who take a gap year to travel around Europe or grandma leaves a trust fund. To claim that we MUST be altruistic is itself a sign of privilege.

You can’t go to a hungry person who has been starving for days and has finally found a way to eat well...to share all he has worked hard to obtain. Maybe once he is satiated, he might share. But great things come out of raw passion and desire. It may not seem virtuous to some but who are they to judge?

Californians understand this. Immigrants understand this. Americans from other states who don’t understand the California state of mind don’t get it. From the gold rush days, ca has always been in a frenzied state of creation and creative destruction. That’s our default state of mind and that’s why California is different from the rest of America and that’s why everyone wants to come here and precisely why we are overcrowded.

But now if we make California unCalifornia, we will be taking away the very identity that makes California what it is..it’s not just creation. It’s also creative destruction.

I would rather live in France than in Soviet Russia. I would rather live in California than in France.

Of course there are activists who disrupt city council meetings to increase Bay Area density.

I find this utterly fascinating. This runs 180 degrees counter to the usual narrative, that the activists are out to block increased density. Is there documentation?

But the schools now have to absorb 120 households worth of children instead of 80 households worth. There are 240 cars on the road where normal density would have put 160.

These are problems cities have always dealt with.

Meanwhile urban high density towns where productivity and income is high are vilified as NIMBYs

Huh? This also runs 180 degrees counter to the usual narrative. NIMBYs are seen as against higher density.

Only in California will one be disowned and shamed for desiring a higher quality of life and for upward mobility.

The usual narrative is that NIMBYs are for "higher for me, but not for thee."

No one I know is for NIMBYs being altruistic. Everyone wants NIMBYs to stop distorting the natural housing market. To stop being the opposite of altruistic.

But now if we make California unCalifornia, we will be taking away the very identity that makes California what it is..it’s not just creation. It’s also creative destruction.

The usual narrative is that NIMBYs are against creative destruction. NIMBYs are the ones saying "no." You're saying you're a NIMBY for creative destruction -- which takes the form of saying "no?"

I LIVE in high density California where we are stuck in traffic for hours because we keep building multi story homes with NO infrastructure..NO public transport and a zillion school kids crammed in public schools where they have to choose between having lunch or standing in line to use the restroom.

The STATE does nothing to deal with infrastructure and just keeps building in expensive and dense parts of the state.

I am living INSIDE the nightmare.

California needs mixed-use high density housing with pedestrian friendly streets. Frankly, I have also lived in high density California, and all your problems are solved if you just walk everywhere.

Yes. Smaller inter connected sustainable cities with self governance and cooperative strategies to share commons and resources

But if you can walk anywhere, what is the point of the megacities that seem to be fetishized in this discussion? I think you're basically suggesting that it is possible to have a good, high-quality life within a certain geographic closure that is small enough to walk in.

That may be true. In some ways, it is suggesting a return to the past. But that also means we could just as well have a web of smaller cities that are interconnected (for example by high speed rail) instead of packing everyone tightly into a concrete and steel jungle.

> But if you can walk anywhere, what is the point of the megacities that seem to be fetishized in this discussion?

I don't fetishize mega cities but I accept the fact that some cities will become the center of certain industries and thus naturally evolve into megacities. This is especially true of places like San Francisco (the city itself) where geography simply gets in the way. If a city finds itself in this position, there is no option but to build up. It cannot pretend to be a suburb.

I don't even mean sky scrapers, but it would be nice to have like a four story building or two out of the main downtown areas, rather than the two story max that it seems to have now.

SF has a population density of 18,679 per square mile. NYC has 27,000. There is plenty of room, you'd just have to scale everything along with it.

Also, for what it's worth, > population density = < net pollution. mass transit etc. are great optimizations of resources. these humans already exist - it's just a matter of where they exist.

SF has a population density of 18,679 per square mile. NYC has 27,000. There is plenty of room, you'd just have to scale everything along with it.

The problem isn't space. It's NIMBY. It's groupthink disconnected from reality.

well, that I completely agree with. :)

Reality is self interest.

Reality is self interest.

When self interest cuts the next generation off at the knees, it's no longer so well connected to reality.

How does it cut the next generation off at the knees?

You are asking those who work hard to avail a certain standard of life to be altruistic? How is this logical?

Why do you think someone would work 10-12-14 hours a day? Spend 2 hours commuting..take no vacations..take enormous risks with low pay for a start up to maybe hit the big leagues? They are risk takers. Risk takers and A types are not altruistic.

And yet..these are the people who made Bay Area desirable.

And immigrants. These are people who were so unhappy with their native countries(not coincidentally, in the Bay Area..this is majority from high population countries) that they were willing to double down and work hard and deal with immigration and leave family, language and culture behind to start a new life in a strange country.

You are asking these immigrants to say YES IN MY BACKYARD? Do you see the irony and/or the humour in that expectation?

If one wants someone to unclench their fists and give up something, then there has to be an incentive for them to do it. You are looking for altruism amongst the crushed middle class. What do they get back in return?

Convert NIMBYs with community benefits or better roads or recreational spots in the city or better schools or just about anything that would make their quality of life better. What kind of negotiation is it to ask someone to sacrifice their deeply held beliefs and fond desires for the promise of WORSENING quality of life? How will this tactic even work?

How does it cut the next generation off at the knees?

Building new housing and modifying existing housing costs several orders of magnitude more than it did a half century ago.

Why do you think someone would work 10-12-14 hours a day?

My wife works like that. She's definitely a type A. She's also an immigrant.

They are risk takers. Risk takers and A types are not altruistic.

Calling leaving room for young people to make their way, "altruism?" Arranging society to allow for the next generation is "Altruism!?" Sorry, but that's just good governance. When a society transforms, such that about the only people who can gracefully afford being 20-something newlyweds are 40-something professionals, that society has become truly ossified. In most times and places throughout history, there are places where young lower and working class people can be thrifty and make their way. It's disappearing from a lot of California.

You are asking these immigrants to say YES IN MY BACKYARD? Do you see the irony and/or the humour in that expectation?

My parents are immigrants and my wife is an immigrant. If one cares about the next generation, if one cares about upward social mobility, then "yes in my backyard" is the answer.

We went to a real estate meetup of my wife's alma mater. There was a young man who was with a project building shipping container mother-in-law units, with the goal of increasing density and reducing the cost of housing. Literally, "yes in my backyard" manifested in actual hardware.

“Calling leaving room for young people to make their way, "altruism?" Arranging society to allow for the next generation is "Altruism!?" Sorry, but that's just good governance. When a society transforms, such that about the only people who can gracefully afford being 20-something newlyweds are 40-something professionals, that society has become truly ossified. In most times and places throughout history, there are places where young lower and working class people can be thrifty and make their way. It's disappearing from a lot of California.”

Altruism : altruism noun al· tru· ism | \ ˈal-trü-ˌi-zəm \ Definition of altruism 1 : unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others charitable acts motivated purely by altruism 2 : behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species[..]

governance noun gov· er· nance | \ ˈgə-vər-nən(t)s \ Definition of governance : GOVERNMENT the challenges of national governance [..]

I am not saying no one should care about the next generation. I am saying that even ‘caring for the next generation’ has to be sensible and rational. How is overcrowded schools ‘caring for the next generation?” Or being away from your child due to long commutes? How is worsening air quality and high cost of living and increasing pollution..all attributes of high density cities...’better for the next generation’?

You are saying a child raised in Visalia is worse off than a child raised in Palo Alto. It’s not because of housing density. It’s because of governance that doesn’t provide for good schools in Visalia and not enough support to alleviate school pressure in Palo Alto.

High density housing does NOTHING except generate taxes for the government that spends most of it for the care and feeding of employees and to cover unfunded pension liabilities.

For what it’s worth, CA will not allow container mother in law units in the backyards. It won’t bring in as much property tax as building a three story 2400 sq ft matchbox home on a 3000 sq ft lot for a million dollars price tag to get $12k property tax per annum.

This..THIS..is the reality of California.

unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others

Taking care of the next generation is an enlightened form of selfishness.

I am saying that even ‘caring for the next generation’ has to be sensible and rational.

I agree.

How is overcrowded schools ‘caring for the next generation?”

I'm for school choice.

High density housing does NOTHING except generate taxes for the government that spends most of it for the care and feeding of employees and to cover unfunded pension liabilities.

[citation needed]

In New York, it seems to have created a vibrant and diverse society. (While housing price pressure seems to be undoing that there as well.)

For what it’s worth, CA will not allow container mother in law units in the backyards.

Didn't Fresno pass favorable legislation?

This..THIS..is the reality of California.

Shortsighted self interest? No disagreement.

Fresno is not the Bay Area. I am all for building high density homes in Fresno. Not so much in Bay Area because we are full capacity.

California is more enlightened and egalitarian than most other states in the country. If making rational choices is ‘shortsighted self interest’, I can see how I am comfortable live that.

California is more enlightened and egalitarian than most other states in the country.

That's the narrative California tells itself. The reality is a bit more nuanced than that. The visible income inequality in the Bay Area puts me in mind of France before the revolution. (Another wine growing world power with world renowned culture and upper classes concerned with fripperies in the midst of incredible squalor.)

I see your perspective - however, the irony to me is that the alternative to urban density is to price out the people who are already there (decreasing their quality of life).

Increasing demand while keeping supply constant will (continue to) be bad news for lower and middle income people.

NIMBY is a pejorative, and I think this sort of labeling is not conducive to honest conversation.

The truth is that people have different wants/needs. Not everyone wants to live in a high-density megalopolis. Many want a smaller, slower-paced life, with more breathing room. And those who have that and prefer it, don't want to lose it in favor of accommodating others - which is a very rational viewpoint. As such I don't think it is fair to paint it as 'disconnected from reality'.

don't want to lose it in favor of accommodating others - which is a very rational viewpoint. As such I don't think it is fair to paint it as 'disconnected from reality'.

When one's "wanting things to be chill" is interfering with society's transferring the reins to the next generation, it is 'disconnected from reality'.

But it's not interfering with a "transfer of the reins". The "next generation" that you're referring to has options - they can certainly make a life in numerous other locations. Instead they are coveting one of the most desirable places in the world, and want that location and its people to change in significant ways to accommodate them. I don't think that's the prior generation interfering as much as the next generation exhibiting entitlement - the entitlement of wanting scarce, highly-valued things, without creating the necessary value to earn it (that is, possessing the necessary wealth).

Moreover, I don't know that your perspective is uniform across any generation.

The "next generation" that you're referring to has options - they can certainly make a life in numerous other locations.

Hey that's just too bad you've been priced out of the place you grew up. That's just the market. That's the breaks. Hey, you have options in other places. Quit being entitled!

Instead they are coveting one of the most desirable places in the world, and want that location and its people to change in significant ways to accommodate them.

Instead techies moving there for the sweet, sweet high paying jobs are coveting the most desirable places in the world, and want that location and its people to change in significant ways to accommodate them. The big difference is that they have the money, so they're the ones that get their way. The golden rule: he who has the gold, writes the rules. Again, it's all well and good. It's all legal and within the letter of the law. In an overall view, is such an approach really that smart and benevolent? If you look at it a certain way, no, I don't think that's benevolent and wise.

I don't think that's the prior generation interfering as much as the next generation exhibiting entitlement - the entitlement of wanting scarce, highly-valued things, without creating the necessary value to earn it

Living where you grew up is now entitlement. If you want to live where you grew up, you're going to have to create the necessary value. What, are you entitled!? Again, that's the market reality. That's all technically legal, technically correct. It's still kinda crappy if you look at it from a different point of view.

If it weren't for a certain California law, nearly all of the easily accessible beaches would be owned or indirectly access-controlled by rich people. If it weren't for a certain California law, that condition would be simply market reality. It would be technically legal. It would be technically correct. It would definitely be kinda crappy, though.

It's in the long term interest of us techies to act in ways that are good and benevolent, and show some forbearance in certain matters, even though our market power and money allow us to do it anyways. Social unrest is caused by perceived relative inequality. Wouldn't being forced out of your childhood home by richer people feel quite "unequal?" That said, the answer isn't to try and legislate equality, as that is shown to have the opposite effect. The answer is a market which creates enough housing for all segments of society to live in the "desirable places in the world." That's how they become and stay the "desirable places in the world."

Moreover, I don't know that your perspective is uniform across any generation.

Fair enough.

California could build more homes in a way that generates more tax revenue than it costs. In most places, the best way to do this is to gradually increase density, which increases the tax base. SF could have significantly more tax revenue if 8 story residential buildings were allowed to be built. (https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/12/27/san-francisco-mission...) Similarly, many of the other neighborhoods in CA would only need to legalize duplexes and/or triplexes in order to have the gentle density increases necessary.

Also, more homes != more cars and more driving. Seattle and Minneapolis have both added more residents and decreased vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by allowing infill development and increasing transit coverage. (https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/02/08/minneapolis-and-seatt...)

Well. Then let’s see the public transport being built first.

It's also bigger than Japan that has 130 million people.

There is plenty of space in California, but people just cluster in the Bay Area and LA area.

California has a very significant Ag economy. We have an income receipt of 45 billion per annum. We have pockets of density because most rural areas can be considered ‘open air factories’ that bring in a lot of money to the state.

Japan on the other hand is smaller and has lesser immigrants, most ageing population.

Also..New Zealand has 5 million people and it’s a country. Canada is 22 million people and it’s bigger than Japan. India is 1.3 billion people. What’s the point of comparisons? It’s not a race to be the most dense state. There is no prize at the end of the race.

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