Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of affordable housing in the country, but it doesn't all exist in the places people want to live.
Not everyone can have a location independent job. Many places that seem “affordable” lack decent paying jobs. And the areas with the highest paying jobs are filled with people who scream that people should go live somewhere else.
These are people who started the race a mile ahead and think they are superior runners. They’ve done very little to earn what they have and are fighting like hell to avoid even mild inconveniences to themselves (e.g. an affordable development for low income seniors or teachers).
Before you say “well this is what voters want” voters at the state level got legislation through that mandated changes and the minority of voters in a handful of well off areas are actively disregarding that law.
> Not everyone can have a location independent job. Many places that seem “affordable” lack decent paying jobs.
We don't have to hand wave about areas that "seem 'affordable'": we actually have the data for both income and home prices. The math isn't complicated: housing is affordable to the average person in much of the US [0].
The conflict here isn't driven by people who couldn't afford to move elsewhere, the conflict is driven by the sheer number of people who choose to live on the west coast. One group of those people already owns homes along the west coast and wants their neighborhood to stay the same. Another group would really like for there to be affordable housing along the west coast.
But at the end of the day, there isn't anything stopping either group of people from getting a job in one of the green or yellow areas in the map below and living there with a very decent ratio of income to expenses.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg...
Property rights are a shared fiction we adopted because they're (largely) in the best interest of society. When they instead act as subsidies and hand outs to some fortunate few, we need to rethink how things are done.
No more fever posting
LA edges out NYC: 7000 to 5300. Presumably in individuals per square mile.
And when people think New York City they think Manhattan, but New York City includes quite a bit more.
On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest.
That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of living too.
The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.
Because the cities in question green lit the office buildings that have the job I need. If a city chooses to grow its economy, it has an obligation to allow enough housing for those new people.
I, for one, don't want to be forced to move every time I change jobs. I would much rather have the opportunity to take jobs in near by communities as well (assuming I didn't work from home of course).
1. city keeps adding dense office buildings
2. city and suburbs resist new housing
3. new housing is greenfield development outside the existing suburbs
I'll pause here to point out the resulting trend: average commutes get longer because the people in the new housing are driving more miles each day than existing residents. Traffic is a function of miles driven. So traffic is super linear on growth.
4. housing closest to offices become extremely expensive [rich people will pay to save time] and existing residents have longer commutes because of increased traffic
5. make the roads wider
6. 5 doesn't work because of the super linear relationship https://plazaperspective.com/road-widening/
7. homelessness increases because housing that use to be cheap is now renovated for people that want to live closer to work
Now you're Austin passing the same sit-lie law in 2021 that didn't work in San Francisco in 2010
Austin https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/new-play-gives-a-first...
SF https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/What-happened-to-SF-s...
Commuting into a city is a thing everywhere. But the American "sprawl forever" model has broken down in the places that have grown the most in the last ~30 years. It screws the people with extremely long commutes, the homeless, the people spending the majority of their paycheck on housing, the people want to have kids but can't afford to, etcs
2. Governance problems is unfortunately not a monopoly of high population areas.
Your proposal merely shuffles the problem around, it doesn't increase housing supply.
- my community (friends) are here
- any cheaper place I would move is a political nightmare