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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

This is such a twisted framing of the issue. No one wants to "abolish property ownership". In fact housing proponents want the exact opposite – give everybody the opportunity to own a house rather than a select few large corporations and investors. Let me build my own house on a piece of land in or near the city, just like my grandparents did just a couple of generations ago. Remove years worth of excessive permits, reviews and other red tape. Remove restrictive zoning laws. Remove neighbors being able to veto my property because it would cast a shadow in their garden for 6 minutes a year.

And no, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" isn't an acceptable answer.

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>And no, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" isn't an acceptable answer.

As someone who grew up in a small town, do you understand how condescending this is? People have homes there, have families there, work hard and live decent lives. Just because they live at a pace you're not accustomed to, doesn't make living there some kind of hellish existence. Many would say the same about a filthy, overcrowded, crime-ridden city, of which I've lived in several across the US.

You seem to want to get offended for no reason. If I forced everyone from your town to move to downtown New York would they be happy about it? Or could it be that different people have different lifestyle preferences?

I'm sure where you live is lovely, but I still don't want to move there myself.

Just because you don't want to live there, doesn't make them "middle of nowhere" is my point. That's an extremely common elitist attitude that I see among tech people who look down their noses at people in rural communities.

I grew up in a very small town (under 5k pop) and did not find this condescending. There are very clear and obvious drawbacks to living there. It’s really not for everyone, evidenced by the fact that 80% of the US population lives in urban areas despite small towns being incredibly cheap.

It's not condescending for someone to imply "I live somewhere important, you live somewhere unimportant" ?

Phrased another way, if someone came in for an interview and said "I'm from Laketon, Indiana", do you think it would be appropriate for the interviewer to say "Oh, you're from the middle of nowhere." ? I don't think that would be appropriate at all.

Sorry but with all due respect, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" is absolutely an acceptable answer. You're acting like you're entitled to live where ever you want, but the simple reality is that this is not possible.

You need to come to grips with that objective fact.

There's a giant gap between "you're entitled to live wherever you want" and "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere."

My read is that the person you're responding to is in the middle of that gap; and your response frames them as being on one extreme edge and then says an acceptable answer is to go to the other extreme edge.

Clearly it is ethically problematic for the people of San Francisco to squirt out babies and then 18 years later tell them to go fuck off, go live in Gary, Indiana.

Don't give anyone any ideas or they might discover that they can buy a house like this [1] that is walking distance to the commuter train, walking distance to the beach, and walking distance to the trails in a National Park [2] [3] [4]

[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8725-Maple-Ave-Gary-IN-46...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199213,-87.2571163,16z

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199718,-87.2697873,16z

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6218829,-87.2348586,16z

You are acting like owning a home entitles you to dictate how other people get to live. It does not. Owning a home shouldn't allow you to dictate that someone cannot build a home near you. Unfortunately it does in some places, but this is fixable.

Why is it not possible? The only "objective fact" is that people in certain areas in this country have lobbied hard to make sure that no one else should be able to move in anywhere around them. These rules are all reversible.

It’s not possible because there is limited space. Someone loses, always. There is no version of reality where everyone who wants to live in San Francisco gets to.

You can disagree with how we divvy up SF but claiming you should get to live there is in direct contradiction with the idea that everyone should get to live there.

Someone, somehow, will get bumped. You’re just advocating for a system that would put you there at the expense of someone else.

Thank you so much for this beautiful insight. I just purchased a 100 sqft plot of land in the Alaskan wilderness where I will hire 20 employees and start a manufacturing business... oh wait, that's ridiculous.

Your argument contributes nothing because it fails to address the real negative consequences of unaffordable housing. After a point (which we most certainly have crossed), it affects society in strongly negative ways.

I don't know what kind of society you want to live in, but I don't want any part of that.

What the heck is so wrong with the Midwest in your mind? Do you seriously think living in Ohio, a couple of hours from the Great Lakes, is equivalent to living on some remote parcel of land in rural Alaska?

You’re missing the forest for the trees.

No, he isn't. Being able to live in any one particular city is not an inherent right of humanity.

It's perfectly reasonable to be priced out of some areas of the world, there is nothing at all wrong with that as a general concept.

You’re also missing the forest for the trees because you’re not seeing the real issue. What you’re describing is really just the core concept of any market.

The issue is that we’re seriously restricting growth and innovation in favor of using housing as a financial investment. Yes, it’s necessary to have some degree of inequality and nobody is entitled to to live in any exact spot, but it’s gotten out of hand at this point, it’s hurting our societies, and it’s unsustainable.

This is a pretty silly response. Are people entitled to live wherever they want? No. But the situation is very obviously not that black and white. We allow many things in society that people aren't entitled to, largely because we believe it will build a better society.

Am I entitled to own my investment properties? No.

Am I entitled to block neighbouring housing from being built? No.

But society allows both of these things because they ostensibly should result in a better society. Of course, they may not, and if they don't result in a better society, we should probably turn the dial back on these factors, but not get rid of them altogether.

So should anyone be entitled to live anywhere? No. But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)? Probably, if we think that will result in a better society. So we may need to turns some policy dials to ensure this will happen.

Why are you not entitled to own your investment properties?

> But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)?

No. You are not entitled to access to specific jobs or a specific area.

What kind of worldview is this? We should sacrifice social and economic mobility for people's Zucchini gardens?

The world exists beyond San Francisco, you are not entitled to one specific city.

>just let me build a house where somebody else already owns the property where I want to build that house.

How does that work out in your mind without abolishing the concept of property ownership? What happens when somebody wants to build their house where you already have yours?

I'm not talking about building in someone's front yard. If you sell me a piece of land that you own, and it is now legally mine, should I be able to build a house on it? That itself is practically impossible to do in 99% of cases in most major cities in the US. A city like San Francisco approves like 7-10 shovel-ready housing projects a year, and fewer actually get completed.

I agree that in SF it has gotten out of hand. But the concept that communities can establish rules for what you can build in those communities seems acceptable?

If I moved to a a suburb because I wanted a smaller scale, and my neighbor wanted to build an apartment building next door, I'd probably push back against that. It feels like what is happening in SF is some extension of that.. projects getting caught up in community board reviews that happen slowly and unpredictably, and are staffed by old-timer SF residents who want to keep the city small. Frustrating for sure, but hard to fault them for that, if that's why they moved there pre-tech boom?

I personally live in NYC and appreciate that you can build whatever you want here!

Link me to an example of an empty lot in San Francisco that you are trying to build a single family home on and can’t, please.

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