America's Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
100% spot on. NIMBYism is the left's version of xenophobia. The mantra is very much "Welcome to my country, now get the hell out of my city".
> There are places actually trying to understand how to progressively and responsibly manage infill development
You make it sound like they're having to do groundbreaking research or something, but Japan and France and Germany have had responsible infill development for decades now. If we're failing to leapfrog using their lessons, it's because we're stupid and obstinate, not because we're mature and wise.
In other words, SF being all blue doesn't mean it's all progressive, it'll still have its fair share of right-leaning xenophobes. In a different environment where the Republican party had less of a broad stigma, I suspect a lot of these people wouldn't identify as Democrats.
As much as this sounds like a "no true Scotsman" argument, it doesn't make sense to me that NIMBYism is actually seen as a progressive stance.
They're all for helping the poor and working class, until it may bother them at home. Then it switches to the ol' "fuck you, got mine".
Maybe there is a faction that are hypocritical about this for local issues, but is that actually the main driving force behind the housing crisis? It seems to me that there's a lot more actual conservatives in SF than maybe the voter party registration gives credit for, and blue SF politicians know that they have to represent those people as well.
The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US. It's already happening as companies struggle to find workers in SF bay area opening offices in other west coast cities.
Sure, but demand is not infinite.
> When can you consider a city to be full?
No such thing.
> Are you ok with raising a family in a 400 sq. feet condo like people do in Asia? Because if you increase density that's going to be a new standard for American cities.
I'd rather that be an option than only having slightly larger apartments that are unaffordable, like the bay area currently does.
I think Vienna is a better model, though. Dense and highly livable. I live in Munich right now, which is similar. It's a great place for families.
> The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US.
Wrong. Ecosystem effects are a natural phenomenon. There's a reason you tend to get clusters for industries: they're more effective that way. Forcibly spreading out the economic success also means reducing the economic success in total. A much better option is just letting people come. The bay area isn't dense at all right now anyway.
But if there are already jobs fro them, it's absolutely 100% the responsibility of cities to make sure that they allow enough housing to be built.
Right now California cities are encouraging growth in jobs while simultaneously actively preventing any sort of balance with housing. This has great effects for the pocket books of landowners in cities, and tremendously negative effects for the environment and all the workers that come later.
It's a completely false strawman to assert that families in 400sqft condos are the inevitable result of density. But we know what happens when nothing is built, that families savings are drained until they are forced to move to other areas, displacing them. That's by far the worst consequence, and it is the active choice of wealthy people in California.
It's like these people have infant-style lack of object permanence: if we just make these people leave my city, they disappear! Look how great it is for the environment that they vanished into the aether, never to be seen again!
Interestingly since local regulation is voted on only by locals, either directly or indirectly via their elected officials, the system is naturally catered to the existing land owners. Winning the support of commuters does not win elections.
Even at $300 million, we have no idea how that money is being spent. There are 7500 homeless people in San Francisco, and yet Market Street looks like something out of a 3rd world country.
San Francisco is mishandling the budget, plain and simple. They have more than enough money, and yet they are completely opaque and they have zero accountability.
This is the government that we want to give MORE money to, because somehow more money is the solution to this problem? Hell no. Hold the politicians accountable. Get a proper budget that will focus money on where it will most help and make people accountable. Fire those in charge and put people who are willing to help without wanting to suckle from the teat of public funding and taxation.
There are something like 20,000 different homeless individuals in the city throughout the course of the year. Something like 15,000 end up getting some sort of services.
However, that's not really much of the story, because the bulk of that $300M budget from prior years goes directly to the easiest and cheapest intervention to stop homelessness: paying people's rent. For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, a single unexpected expense can get them kicked out.
Without that $300M, the problem would be immensely worse, on a huge scale.
Why?
Property is an investment (and that investment creates wealth for CA via Prop 13). It's rational to oppose anything which would decrease the value of your investment. For many home owners, their home is one of their biggest wealth sinks.
That said, we should have never treated housing as an investment without some sort of control.
In the grand scheme of things, screwing over one person (or one family) could be considered to be OK, given the benefit to the city as a whole. But, having gone through this with my parents in a stupidly small town (40k), I can understand why anybody doesn't want it in their back yard.
And ultimately, they're the tax payers and voters for that city. What they want is valued more than what outsiders want for their city.
Yup, this is a big part of the problem. Potential residents can't vote, so you end up with a tragedy of the commons kind of situation: everyone agrees that someone ought to make more housing, but they all want someone else to handle it, and leave them alone.
It's not entirely unlike homeless shelters. People agree that they should exist, just never in their own neighborhood. Because, y'know, eww.
The solution is to have policy dictated at a higher level of authority that can avoid regulatory capture by hyperlocal interests. A zoning board that operated at the regional level would have fewer problems than cities or neighborhoods making these decisions.
More conservative metros will at least build outward to deal with housing supply problems. Yeah, that's not really good for the environment, but it does help with prices. But not liberal cities: they don't want to build out OR up.
Instead, you get a plethora of excuses as to how they really shouldn't be expected to host any more human beings: why can't another city in the metro build more? Why can't those people move to another state? Why can't those companies hire more in another state? What about my god-given right to free, abundant car parking? Shouldn't we build more infrastructure before more housing (also let's not build that infrastructure please)? Why can't we freeze my neighborhood in amber? Etc.
SF, NYC, Seattle, and Boston don't have more land to open up for development by virtue of their geography. Of course places like Dallas, Oklahoma city, etc. are able to build outward -- they aren't surrounded on multiple sides by large bodies of water. To build outward in SF, NYC, Seattle, and Boston they would have to recreate Waterworld.
https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#12/37.7341/-122.4540?show=sa...
(The East Bay and Palo Alo are screwed, but that's not the subject here.)
Also, expensive high rises benefit the working poor by giving rich yuppies a place to live where they don't bid up the same housing that working-class people have been living in for decades. If you put up luxury condo highrises in SOMA where tech workers could walk to their offices, for example, then maybe they wouldn't be bidding up the price of 1BRs in the Mission to $4k/month. Landlords are generally unwilling to let housing go vacant, because even a 2-month vacancy can destroy much of their profit for the year. So one way or another, if you build enough housing the price will adjust itself to the point where everybody gets housing.
It has to happen eventually. As long as there is economic activity, there will be jobs hiring the best talent from around the world, spurs more economic activity, etc. That's just not going to change, demand will continue, so cities really need to get rid of zoning for height so supply could be built near the job centers. The alternative is sprawl, which means people need to be transported, consuming resources, etc. Infrastructure is also all the more difficult to build out over sprawl. In particular for California, adding to the sprawl could also mean building into wildfire prone areas.
California really does have a major problem now with wildfires and encroachment. I was amazed how fast the Camp Fire moved (an acre a second burnt at one point). There's just no way to really escape something like that. This is why I think building down as well as up is a good idea for many cities, Californian cities may have dinner different issues due to their tectonic activity but it should at least be explored.
I agree with your point regarding density in general. I always find it silly when people say America doesn't have space for more people. We have entire states with less population than some cities. I think improving infrastructure between the "flyover" states and coastal states might be one improvement that's overdue, but I don't know what the best solution would be off the top of my head.
I thought the article made a good point, that tribalism and xenophobia is common to most humans and that wealthy & powerful people have the means to enforce their exclusivity on less wealthy & powerful people, and that different parties just manifest it through different policies operating at different levels. Then they dress it up in outrage politics because that generates pageviews.
Maybe they represent a different kind of life. Maybe the zones that encourage overpopulation shouldn't have monopoly on representation. Because on some issues they clearly did bad.
And I think we can stretch this logic to the entire article. The author is as guilty as "not in my back yard" as the rich people. Move you yard! Vote with you wallet. Go live, work and pay taxes where they respect your way of thinking.
Now you want to have your cake and eat it too. You talk against corporations and rich people but you consume their products and dream about making it big yourself. What other reason could you have for staying in mega cities?
Because it's anti-democratic?
> Maybe they represent a different kind of life
Maybe Hindus have a different way of life than Christians in the US. Should they get bonus representation too, since they're a much smaller population?
> And I think we can stretch this logic to the entire article. The author is as guilty as "not in my back yard" as the rich people. Move you yard! Vote with you wallet. Go live, work and pay taxes where they respect your way of thinking.
Absurd. Land is fixed, you can't just go generate more of it. And by not allowing more people to live where a booming economy is, they're hurting people, they're hurting economic opportunity, and they're hurting the environment. That is not okay.
The winners here are selfish people, largely landowners who benefit from the housing prices being so high. The losers are the rest of us.
Good thing the US is a federal republic
If you're specifically objecting to the use of "democratic", I could also say that it's blatantly unfair and nonsensical. Why should North Dakotans have more voting power than Californians or Texans?
If you have a gallon of pistachio ice cream and a gallon of vanilla ice cream, the pistachio eaters have the same amount of ice cream as the vanilla eaters even if more people like vanilla than pistachio.
If you want to avoid tyranny of the majority, you don't do it by eliminating equal representation, you do it by dropping first past the post.
Man, I hate this phrase so damn much. What does it even mean, and why do people bring it up? The original use was basically, "the majority using democracy to be real assholes to the minority". It's the reason we have certain rights enshrined in the Constitution, to protect against that.
But the way people bring it in response to anti-democratic efforts makes ZERO sense. Letting 55% of people vote to be jerks is bad, but letting 45% of people vote to be jerks is...somehow good, or something? Obviously not, it's basically the same problem except with less popular support, so it's a flatly worse situation.
It's super disingenuous too. If tyranny of the majority -- aka democracy -- is such a problem, what even is the alternative? Go back to kings, or an aristocracy? Should we remove the vote from Christians -- they're the majority in the US, after all -- and let, I dunno, Hindus make all the decisions?
Plus, the people who mention it curiously only ever want minority-equalizing powers that would benefit their side in particular. You don't see conservatives advocating for giving extra votes for Muslims and Hindus, or Asians and black people, despite those groups being obvious demographic minorities.
As it is, if one municipality upzones alone, they see an increase in demand and the neighboring municipalities see a decrease in demand. As a result, whoever blinks first loses. So Palo Alto wants San Francisco to upzone and San Francisco wants Palo Alto to upzone.
This problem is systemic: it particularly affects suburbs that were originally created by segregation, most famously contributing to Detroit's budget crisis.
In ancient times, cities were autonomous units, defended by local armies. The idea of a "suburb" financially independent of the main city was unthinkable; the city was the state. The modern US has created a system of social organization with entities called "cities" and "towns" which are really nothing of the sort; they are more like electoral fiefdoms, chartered by whit of the state government usually back in the time when we were still killing Indians and promoting racial hierarchies. And these "towns" have given rise to their own mythology, with a call to defend "our community" (usually from annexation) which is neither ours nor a community, but a haphazardly sown legal artifice whose primary effect in reality is moving tax money around and putting up signs.
This whole charade has got to end sometime. But what would that look like? And how can it be squared with our love of bottom-up governance, which, via English common law, has always been a part of America?
about:
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/<Hn profile name>; my proof: https://keybase.io/<Hn profile name>/sigs/n_-<text matching [a-zA-Z0-9]+> ]
Complete with the opening and closing brackets.
Why is that?
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
This is true. American urban design is hot garbage that fell off a truck, went threw a sewer, was dried out, set on fire, and then shot into the sun.
But affordability wise, yeah it's mostly the super-successful liberal cities that are really feeling the pain. Though all the other cities still have serious problems with economic segregation by neighborhood, generally.
Almost all conversation regarding housing / urban design seems to be focus on San Francisco. The only other cities ever mentioned here often are New York, Seattle, or London. So if you live in a reasonable city that doesn't have housing problems, insane tax policies, or homelessness taking over the streets you won't really get much conversation.
This is like 30% of HN's front page at any given time. Let's be honest: this one got flagged because someone didn't like "wealthy liberals" in the title, despite being the actual article title.
There's actually quite a lot of space in Cali, and cost of living is not quite insane in many areas just outside the bay.
So if there were some thoughtful progress even on just transportation (i.e. imagine something faster than Bart/Caltrain that looped quickly around) and some quick commuter trains ... combined with less of the various needs to be in the Valley/City ...
Then maybe places like Stockton, Merced, Morgan Hill etc. could flourish smartly.
Consider if there were a fairly quick way to get from Gilroy to the Valley+City without fuss? Maybe someone would open a big office there? The entire North Bay seems to be 'cut off' (many residents probably like that...), but maybe 'a tunnel' where the Golden Gate is, to connect that 'fast train' to Santa Rosa? (Yes, 'earthquakes' surely) but it's worth considering.
The Valley, and even many places in SF are not particularly aspirational places, frankly. My bet is people would be happy to live a ways away if they could get into the office quickly.
No it's not. It's ridiculous. Cities are meant to change, to grow, to adapt to conditions over time.
By refusing to build enough housing to match its booming economy, the cities in the bay area are seriously hurting people. They're seriously hurting economic opportunity. That is not okay.
NYC has already 'verticalized' ... and they are one of the example 'problem cities' - and they still have extreme inequality and 'housing problems'.
So when SF crams in 5 million more folks, will they have 'solved the problem'? Or will they be just like NYC?
Why haven't Chicago, NY or Hong Kong, with all their 'amazing density' solved this ostensible problem?
By this 'build out' logic Stockholm, most of London, Zurich should be bulldozed and turned into NY or Hong Kong as well?
So first, is the notion, hinted above, that 'more density' in no way implies a solution to the problem - because there's nary any limit to how many people might want to come into the city.
Second, which underlies the above, is an issue called 'Supply and Demand'. People moving to the Bay have to make that rational decision as to housing costs vs. pay. Moving to the Bay is usually a choice, not some kind of coercion, so people are for whatever reasons, making that choice.
If the Bay wants to expand smartly they should consider wicked fast transportation to places around the bay, and those places could be built with a little more density than now as well.
There's quite a lot of space, there's no reason that even working class folk can't live a decent standard of living.
They don't have to become Dubai. Vienna would probably suffice.
> NYC has already 'verticalized' ... and they are one of the example 'problem cities' - and they still have extreme inequality and 'housing problems'.
Much of NYC's housing would be illegal to build today because of zoning regulations. It's absolutely a part of the problem.
> So when SF crams in 5 million more folks, will they have 'solved the problem'?
SF proper doesn't really need to get 5 million more people, probably. The bay area as a whole does. SF could stand to receive some of that, sure.
> Or will they be just like NYC?
NYC is substantially cheaper as a metro than the bay area despite having a much larger population. Going from bay area affordability to NYC affordability would be a huge win, believe it or not.
> Why haven't Chicago, NY or Hong Kong, with all their 'amazing density' solved this ostensible problem?
Don't know much about Chicago or HK, but NYC still has zoning problems, absolutely. They've gotten more conservative over time.
Now look at Tokyo, which is much more free form with zoning, and -- surprise surprise -- WAY cheaper than SF or NYC, despite being an even larger metro area than either.
> So first, is the notion, hinted above, that 'more density' in no way implies a solution to the problem - because there's nary any limit to how many people might want to come into the city.
And yet, even with 40 million people, Tokyo has done an alright job. I mean, it's still fairly expensive, but nowhere near as bad as the most comparable US cities.
> There's quite a lot of space, there's no reason that even working class folk can't live a decent standard of living.
Who says you can't have density and standard of living? Vienna is one of the most livable cities in the world, and it's far denser than almost all of the bay area. It's probably denser than SF too, despite the stats saying otherwise (Vienna city limits include a lot of green space around the edge that's basically just forest/farms).
Nobody is arguing that.
The argument put forth is that SF needs to increase density as a matter of pragmatism, economics, even humanity - which is rubbish.
Your Vienna example provides no evidence that that level of density is in and of itself somehow going to provide better housing costs, or anything else frankly.
There is zero evidence that building higher in SF will ease housing costs, especially in an aspiration city a zillion people would like to live in.
Moreover, people have every right to chose the conditions in which they live.
The residents of SF can chose whatever density they want, it's their city.
The most practical related work I've seen has been on growth of major international cities and large villages/slums in third world countries. I can't recall any authors in particular. Some of my commercial work approaches what you're asking about but I build products more than perform research and have never worked with zoning data.
If anyone has a better answer I would love to hear it; this is my jam.
Single family home-only zoning is economically segregationist, and should not exist. It's fine if people want to own a single family home themselves, but wrong to keep the poor and working class out of their neighborhood by making that type of home mandatory.
Also, it's only sort of "liberals" that are the problem, the real problem is those who claim progressive values, except for when those values may affect themselves.
Liberals at the levers of power are certainly part of the problem (or at least their neoliberalism is) the problem is the wealthy of all ideological stripes.
Blaming nimbyism is just a roundabout way of blaming government regulation, which I find nonsensical.
The bay area in particular isn't even that densely populated. It's just that most of the residential land is reserved for detached single-family homes still. When you constrain supply that much and demand shoots up, the result isn't exactly surprising.
Finally, nimbyism is resentment about gentrification in reverse. I find objections to gentrification pretty convincing--why shouldn't people have a say in what happens to their neighborhood?
TLDR a lot of the description of the problem (IE nimbyism) depend on the market continuing to do what it's doing, and I think the market is the problem to begin with.
I'm all for public housing too (more competently executed than last time, please), but Tokyo is a good example of prices being fairly reasonable relative to the size/prosperity of a metro area, and that's been done with the market.
Besides, you'd need to upzone for public housing complexes anyway. There's no conflict here between the socialized solution and the market one, really. The government can make what public housing it can do, and the market can handle the rest.
> why shouldn't people have a say in what happens to their neighborhood?
Because it turns them into reactionary assholes? Because land is in fixed quantity and quality, so letting people with a monopoly on it command even their neighbors to not let people in is a terrible idea? Because mandatory single-family home zoning is classist bullshit that is designed to keep out the poor and working class? It's economic segregation, pure and simple, and you can't be economically progressive while supporting it.
One of the starkest changes going from the US to live in Munich was that suddenly, I didn't notice neighborhoods being obviously rich or poor or middle-class most of the time. Nearly all of them are sort of middling, and have people with an obvious variety of incomes. Even if I focus on it, it's hard to slot neighborhoods into a particular income bucket. And the most obvious cause of this is that SFH-only zoning does not exist here, not in Munich and not anywhere in Germany. Thus, would-be rich neighborhoods cannot keep out the working class by making sure that nobody can build fourplexes or apartments that might be more affordable.
edit: to be clear, I'm not categorically opposed to community input on neighborhood design. But letting specific neighborhoods and cities decide on zoning density has been an unmitigated disaster. So yeah, let's maybe not do that.
This is simply untrue, in that it depends on how regulations have set up those markets. There are plenty of markets around the world that distribute both housing and healthcare far more equitably than the US (e.g. Germany).
The problem is that regulatory capture in the US has prevented regulation that would allow equitable distribution. We allow homeowners to prevent equitable distribution of property that doesn't even belong to those homeowners, because the homeowners feel that they have the right to not see an apartment building a few blocks over. For healthcare we set up markets so that really encourage such a disconnect between the payor, care giver, and patient such that nothing can be performed efficiently, and that care givers and paors are incentivized to raise prices as high as possible.
These are market failures, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to make a market that would work; we just need to choose to regulate the markets into working like the examples we know.
This sounds a lot like something Hitler would say: he used the Jewish community as a scapegoat for many problems the country was facing, so some citizens were all too happy when they were quietly being taken away.
First of all, this article is about San Francisco. SF is parodied within many groups for being exactly the way that it is.
However, put that aside. Are the problems of SF cause by liberals or are they cause by people who happen to be liberal. This is an important distinction. If it's the latter, then the problems are caused by the inhabitants, and you could substitute any politically identifying individual in to get similar results:
>Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount goal of progressivism.
That's what I mean. Is that due to liberals only paying lip service, or is that due to wealthy people not wanting to co-mingle with commoners? I agree with some of the base reasoning in the article: NIMBYers make it hard for a major city to be inhabitable by others. However, how much of this politics compared to people?
> Nope. Instead, Anthony Portantino, a Democratic state senator whose district includes the posh city of La Cañada Flintridge and who heads the appropriations committee, announced that he’d be shelving the bill until next year.
The problem with some "progressives" is that they're not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to elevate the quality of life for others. The same thing is happening in Austin, TX, another liberal stronghold.
Most of the new construction going on in Austin is high-end, far out of financial reach for many. Neighborhoods are denying requests to build denser affordable housing because they want to have their cake and eat it too.
It's what happens in a society that's constantly told us that owning our home is the way to wealth generation for the middle class. People who already own homes are going to do everything they can to benefit themselves, and who can blame them? That's the system working the way it was designed to. It's just not sustainable.
On top of that, there are a lot of multi-family developers and brokers making an absolute killing it on buying and selling apartment complexes and making massive returns on their portfolio. Had a buddy who worked for a PE real estate firm in Austin that gave their employee of the year an Escalade a couple years back.
Not the only reason for issues, of course. Austin could have had a slightly better code with CodeNEXT but the NIMBYs got to it and successfully sold the message that it would destroy neighborhoods, despite all the concessions they received.
A corporation can only do one thing, and that is give you money. So I'm not sure it is that simple. Personally, I really wonder how much government welfare and other government sponsored "help" has lead to part of the wage issue. In the "good ol' days", a company had to be competitive in order to retain workers. Sure there was a more abundance of jobs, but that is not the only reason. Watch any documentary about Walmart to see what I mean. During a new employee's orientation on the first day of work, they go through the normal HR routines, but they are also shown all federal and state welfare programs their low wage also qualifies them for. If their employees did not qualify for these programs, they would most certainly have to have a more competitive wage. Basically they are paying half the employee's wage and the government is paying the other half. Not saying "welfare" is the problem here, but clearly it is being gamed.
So, San Francisco still votes 8% Republican. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_San_Francisco
Is it possible that there are a majority of people in SF that support changing their city and are Democrats? And, that a small minority of people (who could be Rs or Ds) can effectively block legislation to change housing laws? I'm not sure this article proves it is all "liberals" doing it, just that a) lots of liberals live in SF and b) SF has been ineffective at tackling the housing crisis ("...a place where lots of liberals live! QED!!!").
Having said this, my mom considers herself very liberal, and still has signs up on her lawn saying "Preserve Historic Houses" (which means "I don't support tearing down houses in my neighborhoods to build higher density places").
BUT: I do think she would be open to changing her mind. I'm not sure someone that lives in SF and that agrees with Trump's approach to immigration would be open to changing their mind. Is that biased of me?
You don't want to jump to conclusions, but you already did, didn't you?
I wrote: "... that a small minority of people (who could be Rs or Ds) can effectively block legislation to change housing laws."
How did you turn that into a vast right wing conspiracy UNLESS you already felt that "someone out there" already thinks that (well before my post)?
I am refuting the assertion made by the article that says Liberals are to blame. I think it is more complicated.
I point out that there are voters in SF who vote Republican. DOWNVOTES because I must be saying Republicans are to blame. Hint: I never said that, nor do I believe that.
I point out that people that align with Trump's immigration policy that live in SF might not be open minded about changing their mind. DOWNVOTES because I must be saying Republicans are not open minded. Hint: I never said that, nor do I believe that.
Hint: downvoters, you aren't reading carefully. And, if there is a hint of people making assumptions about who you are, and you are angry, and it is translating into downvotes, then you have some introspection work to do.