> California
This comment made me realize that maybe powerful people actually want to push lower income people out of the state, or metros at least.
This comment made me realize that maybe powerful people actually want to push lower income people out of the state, or metros at least.
The principal is that someone should be free to build on their land as long as they don't create safety issues or significantly impose on someone else.
Democracy at worst can be mob rule. Principals are important.
Japan does a good with federal zoning regulations. It's not impossible.
I agree.
> existing near someone can have effects that are easy to justify in court
I had the impression this was a "mob rule" problem, that local voters were voting for zoning laws that limit the quality and quantity of new housing. I admit to not understanding the legal or moral justification. It just doesn't seem right to micromanage others to the extent that occurs today.
There are other countries that are much more flexible, like Japan [0]. Instead of single family single use zoning they start with three story multi-use housing. Some places in the U.S. are moving in this direction.
> decreasing or limiting increase on future land values
That can be flipped around. Someone who opposes new housing is taking value from the people who could have made use of that new housing, had it been allowed.
The recent lawsuit against UC Berkeley is a great example. A handful of cranks angry about UC Berkeley admissions abused an environmental review process to impose their will on their town. Not the will of the majority, but rather the tyranny of the most rich and petty.
0 - I prefer the term “tyranny of the majority”.
The fascinating thing about HOAs is that they’re all done under the guise that they “improve property values”, but I’ve never seen any evidence that this works. From my geographic location it seems like non-HOA factors drive prices (supply, demand, neighborhood location and nearby amenities like transit and shopping), not whether or not the neighbors flower bed matches the “neighborhood character”[0]. From what I see it just seems to let petty tyrants control their neighbors; the property value argument seems like a transparent excuse.
0 - You see this phrase a lot in zoning discussions and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. As if neighborhood character is a concrete thing that can be pointed to and protected, rather than a constantly changing and emergent result of the humans living in a place.
Some people like not worrying about stuff and having rules in place.
It’s all about the freedom to choose
For my house I decided not to buy in an HOA - missed out on some amenities for sure.
I'm not sure what to make of the choice part here. Once an area is under an HOA it's almost impossible to dissolve the HOA. Anecdotal evidence from my own HOA which my wife was president of for many years shows that only very few people get involved. The people who do get involved tend to be of the type who want to overreach. When my wife was president she probably spent more time trying to bring the other folks involved in the HOA back to what's reasonable. Fortunately management companies also help with this. I'm afraid that without management companies most HOAs would devolve into attempts to build a miniature fascist state that only would be stopped by prolonged court battles.
Also, depending on your state it can be very hard to avoid a HOA. If you're buying a home in California, Colorado, or Florida you've got a 2/3 chance of buying into a HOA, with the numbers getting worse over time. 2/3 new homes being made now have a HOA, so pretty soon you won't have an effective choice when buying.
Not all HOAs have infrastructure to maintain. I know a few people in neighborhoods with HOAs that don't have private roads or facilities for the HOA to manage, it's just purely there for property value.
Witness the lack of slurs for Nordics, I have no idea which they are. I'm sure they exist. I know more slurs for doctors than Nordics...wait I think I know one, "dumb blonde", and "rusio" is another one, in Chile..."gringo" in Chile..."borsch" I think is one for Germans though, it's really old, there's others, but not Nordic. "Honkey" comes from "Hungarian"...some Hungarians are very fair...I'd need like a slur dictionary to find a slur for Nordics.
These slurs must all be said at some point, it's irrelevant if I say G-R-I-N-G-O or "gringo", because putting it in writing and spelling it out is literally the same thing, you can read either just as well. For these particular slurs nobody can figure out what the hell I'm writing about if I don't write them in full. Similarly, History professors in Chilean universities can't tell their students about the "n-word" without actually saying it out loud, for real, at some point. They otherwise will never know what the professor is talking about.
Back to Nordic immigration. So yeah, if Swedes arrive next door and the women dress differently, and they recycle all kinds of things Americans don't recycle, like I guess if they yodeled that would piss people off...it would take some work. And white Americans surprise surprise are very tolerant of very different views if they like them. The big thing with the "poor" or "poors" (the worst slur in my whole comment) is the poverty is related to entropy. Same thing pretty much. So more entropy in their nervous system, more entropy in their bodies, more entropy in their housing, more entropy in how they communicate and their habits, more entropy in their relationships, more entropy in how they deal with neighbors ultimately. Reducing entropy in one thing means increasing it in another. On the other hand, if the poor who move in haven't always been poor, or have an excellent reason to be poor, or are rapidly moving up in society, or something else of that nature, they are not as entropic and are therefore welcome.
And that's why there was such a huge social movement to make education free and obligatory, because then you reduce the entropy in the minds of the poor, and that order (meaning strictly absence of entropy) radiates from there into everything else.
Well I suppose there's some moral hazard because the government is more tolerant than rent-seekers (I find the term "landlord" gross because of the "lord" part, no nobility in America, and the whole point of the endeavor is collecting rent, they're synonymous. If they don't want to be called rent-seekers all they have to do is stop seeking rent). Plus Section 8 costs IIRC either 30 or 33.33% of your income, so it's not that they pay nothing for housing, it's just limited to a very high but still feasible amount. You're objecting to exactly what I was talking about, entropy. In this case you're using the synonym "noise."
So you built your own house from scratch, no help from builders, mined your own iron, wrought your own steel, the copper and all, because surely "you" wouldn't be talking about "it" online if it weren't up to code. And claimed your own land...loaned yourself the mortgage, did it all on your very own. Society didn't do anything for you, after all.
> You're objecting to exactly what I was talking about, entropy. In this case you're using the synonym "noise."
I live in a neighborhood without section 8 now and, surprise, there is no entropy!
>So you built your own house from scratch, no help from builder
I am sorry, it might be some popular point on reddit but I need more context, what are you talking about? I bought my house and the land. Are you, by chance, saying that you are sincerely confused by my usage of the verb "to provide" and believe that I used it in a general way, only indicating that the society somehow made the housing available, and not given wholly or partially free?
For instance, I am by all means of the definition living in poverty right now; but I also have much more than even some middle class folk might have depending on their life style.
So poor is relative mostly to the compared 'true wealth' of each other person.
You might only make 1200 a month, but you own a house. Or you might only make 2k a month, but you have a vehicle and house and many luxury items with in it.
By our current standards if you made those amounts, you would be considered poor, like me. BUT, you will still be richer than someone who gets that same amount of money from some stipend, but without any where to live and all those basic things that should be an uncontested human right.
So again. It's all relative to the situation at hand.
If I sold everything I have and went back to just a laptop with bag, a duffle bag of clothes, a back pack full of my 'stuff', and a blow up mattress; I would have maybe 10k total in my account to reuse as a nest egg.
And that's if I don't get ripped off by everyone and their mother.
So one last time. Wealth, is relative.
Not sure about California, but in most places that would double or triple the value of the land. If you did everyone all at once, it probably wouldn't be so extreme but would still be an increase.
The easiest way to have actual affordable housing is to change the "single-family home" zone limitations (this might have changed recently IIRC but it might not)