Hacker News Reader

What about in LCOL areas?

When I moved to SF when I was 25, I sure could not afford a house or even a condo.

But I sure could have bought a house in the Tahoe area.

Would the commute suck? Yes. Could I have made a go of it? Slept in my car during the week?

I sure would have built a lot of equity, plus you'd have a cool place to go on weekends and invite your friends.

There is no world where a 4 hour commute to work is reasonable. That said, Stockton and Tracy seem like they happen more often at an hour and a half (to San Mateo or San Jose)

But why are we building a world where that is necessary? That's an awful world.

That world isn’t necessarily until that four hour commute is driving past houses the whole way.

But it isn’t.

I think a big part of the problem is we’ve lost the shitholes; it used to be 20/30 years ago you could be making good money in the city and choose to live in a crappy apartment/house that others of your salary tier wouldn’t look at; that option is mostly gone. The shitholes are infinity dollars a month.

That's a problem with constrained supply. But nobody is willing to build up south of San Francisco as far as I still understand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com