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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

Whenever someone says "image a billion dollars" just remember that amounts to 1000-2000 small apartments at best.

A billion dollars for a thousand apartments is one million per apartment. Even in corrupt, dysfunctional California that's crazy high.

The cost should be a few hundred dollars per square foot to build, plus land cost. Anything over that is overhead California forced on itself.

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And you can find houses for $500k in California right now, so clearly they can build them, but where people want?

Don't know if this will work, but Zillow found 285 properties between 475-500k built in 2022 that are houses:

https://www.zillow.com/ca/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination...

It is clearly not in accordance with the state’s adopted climate and energy policies to build five million houses in sprawling car-choked desert hellscapes.

Apparently building much of anything isn’t in accord with their policies what with the homeless piling up.

I wonder if a state can put a “bugger off we’re full” sign on the border?

It is clearly not in accordance with the state’s adopted climate and energy policies

Then they are part of the housing problem. You can't have everything - more immigration, cheaper housing, and more restrictions on building.

> clearly they can build them, but where people want?

its time for the California City Development Company to shine. It's already the 3rd largest city in the state so surely they can adequately handle the population growth with current infrastructure.

http://www.desertnews.com/article_7ffe4cb4-fa34-11eb-b387-53...

https://laist.com/news/california-city-podcast-investigation...

This isn't quite a million, but a current candidate for San Jose mayor, Matt Mahon, makes the point that the "housing solution" for homelessness is now costing over $100K per new unit. He has a proposal to build them for $8K / unit.

Is that realistic? I don't know, but it seems clear that any real solution has to be cheaper than what's being spent now.

Is that crazy high though? That would barely get you half a toilet in SF.

“Plus land costs” is doing a lot of work in your analysis.

You forgot the high-speed rail line to every apartment.

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