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Comment by quaquaqua1 | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of things I want to do in life that someone tells me I can't do. For example, I can't buy a house for an affordable price because the supply is artificially constrained for less-than-ideal reasons.

Similarly, I want to work remotely but can't because of company culture. I am willing to negotiate but they are not. Even if I could work remotely, other countries won't let me stay for more than a month or without me arbitrarily flying out and then flying back in.

These are all problems that I'm having in my life right now, and they aren't really tech problems compared to people ones. Influential people need to be the ones to solve these problems, but none of them have taken action.

I hope this can be fixed somehow. In the 2010s, I went from not being able to text my international friends on my phone to it being trivial and near-zero in price (thanks Whatsapp!).

I hope something big changes in 2020.

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Bought a 3 bedroom house for $75k because I work remotely. There are cheap places to live in America, you don't have to fly out of country.

Out of curiosity where did you buy?

Texas

That's a valid choice, but it isn't for everyone for a variety of reasons (perhaps they like the amenities a city offers, perhaps they have family nearby and don't want to move away).

Point is, cities could be building a lot more housing, but typically can't because of zoning regulations and NIMBY activism. It's a shame.

Yeah, I've been offered jobs in some of the cheapo areas (actually live in one), but among many issues, it would be tolling on my mental health. I already lack any friends or nearby family, and moving to an area like that would kill me

I agree with you. Furthermore, you are describing a negative aspect of the work around to the housing problem.

The true solution to the housing problem is to remove the laws that are allowing supply constraint in "liveable" areas like NY, CA, MA, etc.

The local government there in charge of housing policy prevents people from adding more liveable legal units to their land. So for example if you wanted to remodel your land to have 2 houses on it instead of one, or to be 4 floors tall with apartments, or to have only a very small energy efficent house on it, the local government will tell you "haha sorry no."

This is a really big problem because land is in finite supply and as a result if you have a very dense area of office buildings with 20,000 workers and only 1,000 houses are in a commutable distance, then you have 19,000+ workers who are either going to be renting illegally, sleeping in their car, commuting 50 miles, or paying through the nose for a house.

No it's not for everyone, but if you don't have any ties and you want to save up money, it's really nice working remotely in a rural area.

I much prefer it out here.

> you don't have to fly out of country

is not an answer to "I want to travel" or "I happen to be born in the 'wrong' country and now I'm not allowed to travel"

I misread and joined his first and second points accidentally. I thought he was wanting to live abroad for cheap.

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