Hacker News Reader

Comment by topspin | Hacker News Reader

"better start finding and implementing real solutions to housing prices right now"

They can't. Providing supply will suffer the wrath of BANANA/CAVE/NIMBY anywhere you dream of living. Constraining demand will either get you voted out of office or devastate your political network or both, depending on which policy you attempt. You're competing with a whole planet full of people that want to live here and have more means than you.

Seek property where demand is lower and development isn't effectively outlawed. Forget any livable cities or high population states. For 99% of you that means living far away from your preferred locale among people you probably loath. If that's not acceptable then keep renting or live in a van.

The good news is many of you can work remote. That is an affordance you can leverage to great benefit.

View on HN

> For 99% of you that means living far away from your preferred locale among people you probably loath.

Parent comment is vitriolic but not actually wrong. Myself, I take great comfort in the idea of huge swaths of liberal, well-educated millennials and xennials migrating out of coastal cities and into small towns across the South and Midwest. Can you work remotely? Want to own your own home on a multi-acre lot for $100k, and live in a place with sunshine and warm weather nine months out of the year?

Sure, you'll end up living in the most conservative parts of deeply red states -- but try it. Live among people you disagree with -- we're all still Americans, it'll be OK -- and if enough of your friends and fellow Ivy alumns make the jump you'd be surprised how easily you could turn Texas or Georgia nicely purple.

We've got to end the big sort, at any cost. And the hilarious difference in cost of living is probably our last, best hope.

I was ready to buy an estate in the Georgia mountains earlier this year - then I saw the internet connection options. Then I looked up how much it would cost me to get a decent wired connection out there.

Totally unviable for tech workers to live in most of the solid red areas of the country strictly due internet capabilities, or lack thereof.

Then keep looking. I'm a liberal, minority techie living on a farm: one of my base requirements for moving here 15 years ago was at least a minimal amount of wired broadband.

This summer the phone company has been pulling fiber all over the place. I was told that it's not going to be put in use until next year, but at least they're planning ahead.

Especially after the last year and a half of distance learning and working from home, there is a big push all over the place to get faster internet connections because the people already living out here are demanding it.

Got mine a month ago! In rural Iowa.

Correct. There is fiber all over non-Asheville Appalachia right now. It’s reflecting in home prices too.

I’m looking at this move myself and the final decision point is state taxes (TN, WA, FL) or fiber/cheap homes (largely Western NC and GA), both paired with some cool nature.

All ears on places with $200k and below homes and fiber, quite candidly.

Extrapolating from 'rural mountainous Georgia' to all red states, including Texas and Florida is a bit of a stretch. I live in a remote mountain town in North Central Washington and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of remote tech workers. I have good internet through a local ISP and starlink is now prevalent in our area as well.

Fair enough. I was looking in the triangle between Asheville, Nashville, and Atlanta. The few homes i was like "I will buy this now if i can get good internets" did not play out for me. I'm looking for an excess of land though, to indulge my many hobbies, so that is certainly constraining my options. It's okay though, I'm in no rush. Once Starlink is rolled out en masse I'm sure the equation will drastically change for me.

Also, FWIW, I meant more rural areas than just "red states". Even in solidly republican states there is a fairly prominent urban/rural divide.

There’s fiber all over that area now because of Morris Broadband

I think there’s plenty of real reasons people don’t do this economically, but don’t downplay the social parts of it - we have very Balkanized communities in the US. Ask a minority what it’s like going on a road trip sometime - I guarantee there’s many places where they won’t want to stop.

Living in a place with no amenities, an extremely regressive/borderline extreme social climate and a lack of economic opportunity for people who don’t have remote tech jobs and it gets depressing really fast. Also when you try to buy healthy food from a dollar general.

>I guarantee there’s many places where they won’t want to stop.

As someone who recently made the jump to a rural area, these problems are almost entirely imaginary. The notion of backwards, ignorant, racist rednecks occupying all the rural lands is nothing but a bigoted stereotype.

Southern hospitality is real; and while rural peoples will be more likely to notice and acknowledge cultural differences, they generally are open minded and just as respectful of nonwhite neighbors as white ones. It's the city folk who don't understand the roles that politeness and respect play in southern living, necessary for the unbelievably high trust society that only really exists outside of cities.

The truth is that urbanites have been hypersensitized to so called racism, and completely mislead as to what rural/conservative culture is actually like. But I don't mind a bit, that means more cheap land for me.

This contradicts with my experience growing up in WV. The last time I went back there (5 years ago) I still saw the same confederate flags and n-words being thrown around casually. The reality is that 'the south', like anywhere, has pockets of diversity and acceptance; but your stereotype of universal 'southern hospitality' is not in line with my experience at all.

Appalachia is very different than the rest of the south, much less rural areas in other parts of the country. It was populated by Scots-Irish herders, versus say German farmers in the rural midwest.

Appalachian culture is extremely insular, even with respect to other white people. I once had a conversation with a (white) guy who had married into a family in Appalachian Kentucky. Folks in town regarded him as an outsider even after a decade of living there.

I'm happy to hear that's your experience. My experience comes from being raised in such a place (not the south, just rural conservative), and fleeing to the nearest metro region as soon as I was able while growing up. That was a while ago though, and this was over LGBT things - a bit less about abject discrimination and more that it was impossible to even think about finding a date, and a fear of being found out with people regaling me of stories of houses of known queers being firebombed in recent years. I don't really speak about the stereotypes of the ignorant rednecks - the most virulent haters were the orderly christian pastors and the true believers who opened up multiple conversion camps in my area. There were 2 black students in my high school of 1500 kids, and both of them got pulled over literally dozens of times in just a few short years, and it wasn't for driving fast.

Culture has changed somewhat since then. I don't presume to speak for anyone's experience but my own, and I go off of the stories that my friends have told me for other things.

That said, Trump flags fly everywhere, and BLM flags get torn down/burned/vandalized. I don't think its really fair to say that its all politeness and mutual respect - in my experience that is how it is until you accidently fall into one of the cultural battlegrounds, and then its more conform or die. Lastly..

> The truth is that urbanites have been hypersensitized to so called racism

I think this can be true while the rest can also be true.

Well, to be fair, my experience is limited to a couple locales and only an hour or so away from major cities. I might have lucked out because I made a solid first impression on the community and don't have to worry too much about having the wrong opinions.

I suppose you could say that ruralites are more tolerant of intolerance in general, even when they individually may be welcoming. No argument about the flags around here...but I get the impression that, at least where I've settled, even if you're a little different, if you stick to your property and don't make waves nobody is likely to mess with you...and to be honest I kind of appreciate that sort of live and let live attitude, even if it requires some degree of conformity.

As far as I can tell, a somewhat rigid common culture is sort of the price of high trust living, where you can leave your doors unlocked and your keys on the porch. That doesn't justify violence against minorities/lgbt of course but... there's always the city for that I suppose. It's definitely a very different non-pc attitude around here. I certainly understand why a guy like Trump is so popular in these parts.

> Ask a minority what it’s like going on a road trip sometime - I guarantee there’s many places where they won’t want to stop.

Certified brown person here. The only thing I think about in terms of deciding where to stop is how far I can get before needing gas, and what the odds of finding decent food are. I've travelled in rural areas all over the country: midwest (my wife grew up in rural iowa), west coast (wife's family is from the rural oregon coast), and south (worked a summer in southern virginia, my best friend lived in south georgia for a decade). I just got back from a road trip through rural Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming with my white wife, mixed kids, and Latina au pair. In all this time nobody has even looked at me sideways.

Hell, the precinct where I live went for Trump 58-34 in 2016 (the year I moved here). The precinct a few minutes away where my parents live was 57-32. Most of the ones around us were 60-30. Again, no problems.

I have to agree with the sibling comment. I have no idea how these folks would perform on an IAT (and I don't care because they're bad science: https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-psyc...). Southerners are nice to visitors and keep their thoughts to themselves for the most part. I'd rather deal with that than west coast frigidity or NYC aggressiveness.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, its nice to get another view.

This is immaterial. People can be very welcoming to tourists and hostile to the very same people as immigrants. As a brown person who drove extensively through the US both North and South you would mostly see very welcoming people, the same places you would hear horror stories from people like me who actually lived there.

The above comment was in reference to a road trip.

As a brown minority who travels regularly all throughout the US, I believe your statement only rings true for minorities with strong politically left-leaning identities. The only reason that persuades me against stopping in any location is the price of gas is too high or there’s better food options in the next town. Additionally, I find the contrary to be more true — people in major cities generally make me much more nervous.

That's an interesting point and I wonder what's the cause. It's possible that minorities who had bad experiences growing up in rural areas moved to urban areas and developed left-leaning political identities.

I think there's also an element of cultural mismatch. Trevor Noah has a great passage in his autobiography about how he could cross the intense inter-tribal antipathies in South Africa by speaking another tribe's language: https://www.josephineelia.com/power-of-language. Rural places in America are like places everywhere else in the world--you have to "speak the language" of the people in the place where you are. If you go to rural France and conspicuously don't speak French, you'll face hostility. Obviously in America we speak English everywhere, but if your mannerisms and attitudes give you away as an outsider, you might not get the same warm reaction as someone who knows the cultural cues.

If you lived in the types of areas where people 'move to', you'd see it's not the state that turns purple, it's the immigrants. Then they turn reddish (or they quickly leave).

Hey, you can leave US you know. Europe will probably gladly have you.

Please don't. The housing market is fucked in EU urban areas now too. Without an inheritance you can't afford to buy anything decent around a developed city with jobs even on a tech salary.

As selfish as this may sound, the last thing we need is more foreign competition on the housing market with bigger pockets.

It would be fair that if people from the US want to buy property here with their foreign megabucks, we should also get unrestricted visa-free access to the US labor market. Tit for tat. Otherwise it's just unfair to Europeans to be outspent out of their own housing market.

Yes, because nothing would ruin Albania or Georgia more than a few tech workers siphoning profits from US into their local economies.

Of course it wouldn't ruin the countries themselves, the countries would profit somewhat, but it would however hurt the middle class since now they have more competition on the housing market that's much wealthier so you're increasing inequality.

Just because the country is profiting from your megabucks, doesn't mean the average Joe is.

Look at Austria. The most touristic areas are profiting a lot from all that foreign tourist money, but a lot of the locals can't afford to live there anymore as all that tourist money is only going into a few pockets. Those who don't already own something or have an inheritance have been royaly fucked by that tourist money. It increases inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

> it would however hurt the middle class since

If the middle class are the ones buying the properties, then they're the ones selling them. Therefore it actually injects money into the middle class, foreign capital that never existed in that country.

>he most touristic areas are profiting a lot from all that foreign tourist money, but a lot of the locals can't afford to live there anymore as all that tourist money

Those who move to a country to work and live there on anything but a very short term basis on not generally considered tourists. Most of the money flowing into the rich is a function of capitalism, not just tourism. You can examine virtually any industry and make the same statement. Yet, some fraction of money is usually better than nothing for the middle class people benefitting.

The US has your Austrian analogue, it is called Hawaii. In Hawaii most money is made from tourism. The common person there is mostly employed in tourism. Housing prices are high, because lots of people want to live there. The result when it was mostly closed off for coronavirus was that although demand for housing decreased, unemployment skyrocketed without tourism, making the middle class worse off.

>If the middle class are the ones buying the properties, then they're the ones selling them.

Sorry but since you make no distinction between someone owning and selling a house ($500k asset in Austria) and someone who doesn't own a house and call them both middles class is just plain wrong.

The property owner middle classer is significantly better off than than the other and would benefit even more from your intention of buying while the other middle classer is worse off without a property to his name and will suffer more from being in competition with you.

Sure, one guy profits, but you can't possibly tell me with a straight face someone else doesn't get screwed from this wealth driven game of music chairs which is the property market right now.

You just said the middle class was the competition for these houses. If the middle class are the ones who own these houses it follows they are the ones selling them. You seem upset you were caught up in your fallacious logic and fail to understand it's the middle class making the money off these sales.

I think you misunderstood my comment, but whatever. Still, to follow up on your latest example, the classes below those who own the properties you want to buy get screwed since you're still increasing inequality between the asset owners and the non-asset owners by increasing housing demand. Simple.

I don't follow. The total wealth inside country starts out here:

value of house + value of rest of economy.

Now someone foreign comes into the country to live there and work in tech from abroad. They buy a house. Now the wealth inside the country looks like this:

value of house + foreign money paid for house + value of rest of country.

You can see that the wealth inside the country has increased. If it is the middle class owning those houses, then the wealth of middle class has changed by the difference in value between the value of the house and what it was sold for. The middle class then further benefits from whatever money the foreign worker spends in the country, which is a net gain for the middle class, plus the injection into the economy of the foreign money paid for the house. The only way the middle class end up worse off here is if the foreigner doesn't live and work here, and is just a foreign landlord (siphoning money out of the country) -- which is something I think we can both agree is detrimental.

I will say here in the US people have a lot of problems with foreign landlords and people who buy property here and don't live here. But only the most backwards rednecks have serious issue with an honest foreigner who buys a normal middle class house to live their lives, especially if they are injecting foreign capital into our economy.

I know in Berlin they consider themselves to be having a housing crisis but last I checked apartments in desirable districts of Berlin were like a quarter of Bay Area housing prices, for example < €1000/mo for a 2 bedroom / 50 m^2 apartment.

When was that? Prices are higher now for something decent. Also I was taking about buying property not renting.

>districts of Berlin were like a quarter of Bay Area housing

So what? Nothing touches Bay Area prices, even in the US. And then there's the income difference as well.

Try comparing to something more similar like Texas. Last I checked average dev wages in Austin are easily 2x more than average dev wages in Berlin while buying a house there costs the same. So who's buying power is stronger then?

Buying something decent in Germany now, in the current market is nearly impossible without an inheritance.

Before COVID-19, when I was still allowed to travel :-/

Prices are higher now. And please don't compare Berlin to SF it's apples and oranges.

So are the wages. Or maybe not exactly that bad, but they are no where close.

You've basically described the sentiment and current situation with the US midwest and south.

Yeah you might wanna look up housing prices there. Most young people don't own and the average size of the places they live in is much smaller.

I have no idea why I have been downvoted. There are many comments on HN recommending immigration to US, whereas people can remote work from Europe too. There are plenty of places where you can live well as English-speaking person. It does not have to be a capital of an EU state, there is plenty to choose from, esp. when working remotely.

OK but this is not actually happening. Young, well-educated people with high incomes are the only types of people who continue to flow into California. They are driving out poorer and generally less-well-educated people, because of course that is how it will work in a competitive housing price market.

See this report for details: https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/675

The source just shows a net outmigration of taxpayers from California.

It doesn't say that rich young people are replacing old.

It just says that wealthy & older people are leaving in big enough numbers that there's a sizeable ourmigration.

It's important to note that natural born residents have been fleeing California for a long time, and a substantial portion of the young, high paid workers are on H1B - so non-permanent.

Doesn't sound like you scrolled down. The heat maps clearly show net in-migration of younger high-earners.

> Live among people you disagree with -- we're all still Americans, it'll be OK

I grew up in the American south, and migrated to California as an adult. As a Black person I can say this doesn’t work as well in practice. It’s better than the old days (when my mom was growing up segregation was still legal and the military warned her parents to be back on base before sunset.) But I’d much rather live in a welcoming area.

That is...a very fair qualification. I grew up white in the South, where my mom used to tell me stories about school integration. Knowing that my otherwise-welcoming neighbors/family/peers might randomly turn out to be racist assholes when confronted by someone of slightly different skin tone was and remains my least favorite thing about the place, by a margin that's wider than Texas.

There's "be the change you want to see", and then there's "move to a place where you're likely to murdered in the street for pointless, intractable reasons." I can't say I blame you for getting the hell out; I just hope that in our lifetime you feel comfortable going back to where you grew up.

The weather's great (except for the hurricanes) and the barbecue is amazing (except in the Carolinas). Maybe one day you can get back here and we can all work together on fixing whatever the hell is wrong with (some of) the people.

> the barbecue is amazing (except in the Carolinas)

how dare you

I grew up in West Virginia. I'm not going back to 'the south'; people there would slash someone's tires if they found out they're gay. In contradiction to the history of the state, confederate flags fly over every half dozen trailer parks on the 30 mile one-way trip to Walmart (the only supermarket). Multiple bomb and shooter threats every semester at a school with 900 students. My high school graduating class had 1 non-white student to give you an idea of the cultural diversity your child might be exposed to. The jobs are leaving and not coming back. I personally know someone who died of prescription opioid abuse. Would you want to raise a family there?

(By the way, the county where I grew up is considered 'progressive' due to its proximity to the NOVA area)

I think it's already a foregone conclusion at this point with respect to the migration. Places like Boise Idaho have already been smacked with the SV stick and their housing market has been a horror show ever sense. The problem won't be the personal politics of the migrants but rather the effects that come from them eating up more resources which the governments in those red states haven't accounted for, especially housing and schools. There's already a strong anti-migrant (or rather anti-Californian migrant) sentiment in places like Colorado and Idaho last time I read up on it. I expect this to get worse and probably cause some strange events (not like personal violence but more political upsets in the coming decades).

State level reform is important. Here in Oregon, we have HB2001 that allows for up to 4-plexes everywhere. City council's can't stop it. A local NIMBY lady ginned up a bunch of opposition to its local implementation and even put a full page ad in the newspaper. It went through anyway.

The folks at YIMBY Action are a great resource if you're serious about making progress on this kind of thing.

> Providing supply will suffer the wrath of BANANA/CAVE/NIMBY anywhere you dream of living

TBH I would have said the same thing 5-10 years ago, but I think this notion is outdated now.

I live in a famously NIMBY city (Seattle) and things have changed a lot in the last 5 years. I would guess that single-family zoning will be gone within 5 years.

Although I don't buy it, some people even argue that SFH zoning is already gone in Seattle due to ADU/DADU reforms.

And yet no one is promoting vasectomies. I know exactly how to reduce demand without increasing supply, but it'll take about 30 years.

The birth rate is already dropping in the US....

And yet the population is not. Ergo, you're competing not just with your fellow citizens, but the whole planet.

The OP suggested vasectomies to bring down population, the result is the same.

Are you suggesting we kill off part of the current population? What's your point with this comment?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com