War on the Young | Hacker News Reader

War on the Young

profgalloway.com

4 pointssocalnate110 comments

As a recent transplant to the SF Bay Area, I looked at sale prices and property taxes for the houses in my neighborhood. We are a dual six figure income family and are squeezed tight to live here, while neighbors that have been here a while have about 1/10th the housing cost for essentially identical housing. It takes 4-6x the income to move here and stay now as it did a few decades ago.

I don’t know what the solution is, because if policies were changed so I wasn’t effectively heavily subsidizing my poorer and older neighbors, they would be kicked out.

But it seems weird to make 4-6x what my neighbors do, and barely able to afford to live like they do, basically just because I’m younger. For millennials, my partner and I are the “lucky” ones, nobody else I know my age could even consider renting a low end single family home in the bay as we are just barely able to do. It’s weird that the people with kids are barely able to rent small apartments, while the 4 bedroom homes are mostly occupied by 1-2 retirees, with dusty bedrooms that nobody has entered since the grandkids last visited.

Do you feel you would be entitled to affordable housing in Atherton, Vail or Highland Park - or you’re ok with that because they don’t make any accomodation to the lower classes?

Would you support bulldozing Dolores Park and building towers there. Try suggesting that at the next YIMBY meeting and watch their heads explode.

I’m not sure where those places are, I assume it’s not the part of the Bay Area I’m in. But I’m okay with making it legal to build affordable and high density housing in currently low density areas.

Take a bus to Dolores Park (SF) this weekend and see who you can convince to give it up.

Otherwise, please exactly identify the “low density” area of SF you want to force your will upon.

Make it legal to develop high density housing on land you already own… no need to force anyone to do anything.

I don’t live in SF or know anything about it.

> the people with kids are barely able to rent small apartments, while the 4 bedroom homes are mostly occupied by 1-2 retirees

Not to get all Georgist, but: is Prop 13 still a thing?

Yes it still is, but there was a measure that passed to provide some route for retirees to transfer low property taxes to a smaller place. In practice that probably helps to even make the smaller places inaccessible to young families, while the big houses get bought as investments by big firms… and often left to sit vacant. Lots of large vacant houses with mysterious ownership in my neighborhood, some dilapidated, and others kept up by commercial crews.

> you’ll be better off than your parents were. For the first time in our nation’s history, this is no longer true.

This claim is disputed. The Economist argues that this generation is on track to be the best off.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/g...

I looked at that article, and think they are misrepresenting the data.

First they show that the percentage of people employed is now higher, and later on that the median family income is slightly higher adjusted for inflation.

To support a family now you generally need dual income, whereas you didn't used to need to. So you're seeing dual income families now with slightly more income than single income families had generations ago. However, they have much higher expenses because they don't have someone working full time at home.

The whom?

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