Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> places like the bay area with a housing crisis and limited space to expand

This is the most Californian response to the problem I’ve seen. Limited space? Even San Francisco has 190 acres of vacant land [1].

You want to emulate Singapore? Consider its relative lack of single-story structures. The Bay Area’s housing crisis is a political choice made by its voters.

[1] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5gc6w0vd/qt5gc6w0vd.pdf?t...

View on HN

Yeah. There is this weird meme that there is no space to build in the bay. But at the density I’d say Hong Kong (which is an extreme) you could probably have 100 million people in there. Tokyo you could have 50 million. There’s only limited space when you assume the only thing you can build is suburban office parks, single story strip malls, and single family homes.

America is not Singapore. We have higher expectations around the amount of space than pretty much the whole rest of the world. And that's okay: we are also the world's wealthiest country.

I agree though, that the current housing crisis is entirely the work of people who own influencing city governments much much more than renters (who have no choice but to move out of expensive locales).

If we're going to say "Americans want and expect more space", then we also have to be honest about the consequences that people who can't afford that minimum of space will either have to move or be homeless.

> We have higher expectations around the amount of space than pretty much the whole rest of the world.

Many of these expectations helped lead us to this housing crisis. It may be time to reexamine them in the light of the life-ruining harm they encourage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com