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.