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Comment by type_enthusiast | Hacker News Reader

I guess you're implying that old people are the reason for high housing prices in SV. Respectfully, what are the bad policies my parents are responsible for, besides pioneering the technology that makes you want to live in SV? And buying a house for 85k in a nice neighborhood in order to do so, without forseeing that Facebook and friends were going to move in and make their house unaffordable were it not for the protections you're mocking?

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What gives your parents more right to live there than anyone else? Just because they were born first? What about the people that will pioneer the next generation of technology? You’re not entitled to live where you want just because you set up shop there first. This is one of the fundamental reasons property taxes exist. Otherwise, most of the land in the US would be squatted on by powerful families of centuries past. If your parents don’t want to be priced out of the market, maybe they should vote for more and denser housing that would drive property prices down. You don’t get to have a farm in midtown Manhattan. Things change.

> What gives your parents more right to live there than anyone else?

I mean they own the home, so presumably that gives them a right to live there. They went there and bought a home for market value, even if it was a struggle to do so. They didn't complain about the existing residents or suggest that everything had to change to accommodate them. So I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

I live in a town on the Peninsula, inside San Mateo county. It's basically impossible to get new housing development, and the "affordable housing" requirements for any new development in this place have been 100% seniors-only (i.e. aged 55+) housing in the last few years.

The local government committee meetings on these matters is predominantly filled by two groups of people: those same seniors, and people who are effectively independently wealthy. It's NIMBY-ism all over the place here driven primarily by the wealthy and the old. I don't know if it's the same in other communities or towns in this area, but that's what it is here.

Opposing the construction of anything besides single-family housing for one

Championing restrictive zoning policies. They got theirs, and screw everyone else.

Exactly right. And one reason the "prices are so high" is the possibly illegal monopoly action that Google, Facebook, etc took. Once the Government splits these companies, will the people who inflated the price of housing by paying too much be made to compensate other people who had to pay too much for housing?

House prices are high in SV because they're not building enough housing. Blame zoning laws and racism (Palo Alto only builds low-income housing for people with college degrees and no criminal records. They call it "teacher housing.") Don't blame the generation that came before you.

Prop 13 is all of California, right?

> make their house unaffordable were it not for the protections

FB isn't the problem, the problem is zoning... Artificially cutting off supply to the benefit of landowners and capital.

Proposition 13, mentioned by a sibling comment.

Two counterpoints:

- Direct your discontent toward the corporations and landlords who are exploiting Prop 13 when it wasn't intended for them. It was intended to protect homeowners (often on retirement income) from skyrocketing property values that is out of their control. It's done great at that, but unfortunately (like any regulation) has also been exploited by the greedy.

- That aside, don't presume to be entitled to buy the house you want in the place you want it to be for the amount you want to pay for it. It sucks that I can't afford to buy a nice home in my hometown because FAANG came in and made it the place to be, but I'm also not entitled to that. The notion that people like my parents ought to be taxed out of their home so that well-off twentysomethings can have a more favorable property market really grinds my gears. There are lots of people trying to just live in their hard-earned homes after doing the work and taking the risks of building the tech industry, and most of them didn't become wealthy venture capitalists in the end. Just like most of us won't.

Spot on

From their perspective, of course it would be unfortunate that your parents cannot continue to have their lifestyle subsidized. For the rest of us, that money could gladly be used for schools, infrastructure, etc

Luckily, if someone is being priced out by fair property taxes, they still own a valuable asset.

So, "their perspective" is that their home is where they live, and your perspective is that their home is an asset. From your perspective, they should be glad their asset has multiplied in value, and they should be happy to pay the government based on that. From their perspective, they didn't ask for the asset to increase in value, and they're just trying to live there — while people like you resent them for living there and not building a high-rise apartment building instead.

How about I go to your hometown and bully your folks out of their house? They ought to be fine with that, right? It's just an asset. Come on.

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