Hacker News Reader

Comment by harrall | Hacker News Reader

The cost of housing is probably the #1 reason and, in my opinion, California’s biggest problem.

California as a whole is still doing pretty well but high housing cost is slowly pulling out the rug from under the state.

But the California legislature does know that and has forced many cities to start building housing but there is still a lot work still in flight.

View on HN

I'd say it is the size of the population, far far too many people try to make it in Los Angeles without any specialized educations, so the car washers have 40 people that dry your windows, and the wait staff jobs are exponentially Orwellian. When I finally moved away, I was living over an hour away from Santa Monica, paying $4K a month for rent, and the entire neighborhood lights up every night like a gangsters' paradise. Street racing, graffiti everywhere, sidewalk food vendors everywhere, the local high school kids are covered in tattoos, including their faces. No thank you.

4k rent for that environment?

Over an hour away and paying $4k for that? I'm guessing you were renting an entire house. If we were talking 1br apartments you could be in santa monica for about half that today.

Is that really how LA central is these days, the mexicans and the hood taking over?

You're pretty propagandized. It's an international city that is the playground for the world's wealthy, no it is not the "Mexicans", it is the stupid dirty wealth. What I describe is an international event every night; you do not hear much English nor Mexican/Spanish, you hear every language on the planet.

Los Angeles has mountains/water on all sides so it can't grow in size.

It also utilizes the space extremely inefficiently. Single level single family houses everywhere and the rest is parking space. The few parks are difficult to access by kids arriving by foot/bike.

This is what results in the high rent: Can't grow supply and don't use existing land efficiently.

Density: LA = 8,210/sq mi, Lisbon = 17,040/sq mi, Paris = 10,100/sq mi, Amsterdam = 13,670/sq mi, Copenhagen = 19,195/sq mi. (from wikipedia)

Look at Google Street maps: LA is a hellscape of concrete and asfalt. Lisbon and Amsterdam are much nicer and greener and they stil have higer density.

I don't think you can argue that California is significantly worse off in terms of housing than London, which is where a large number of productions go due to tax incentives.

Cities don't need ever-increasing populations to thrive.

Both populations and supply can remain static as demand pushes up prices and swaps lower earners for high net worth people.

Classic supply/demand.

Yeah, that's fine too. If it weren't fine, there wouldn't be increasing demand. If it became too lopsided and thus expensive to live there, it'd become less desirable. CA has plenty of cheaper cities too.

The flood of immigrants into California inevitably pushes up housing prices.

There are a lot more Americans than immigrants moving to California. And the number of people moving to California combined with Californians’ pathological resistance to building an adequate housing supply is what pushes up housing prices.

Lol. Imagining someone sneaking across the border from Mexico so they can work under the table to afford a $4k/mo 1BR in Hollywood

WalterBright got flagged into oblivion because of a war with reality. He said something to the effect of immigration causing/keeping real estate high/unaffordable. This IS what is happening. I live here in West LA. Immigration is causing this. It’s basic supply and demand. I live on one side of a 2 family in a 2 bdrm and rent out the living room space to make it more affordable. Next to me is a 6 unit building, all 2 bdrm units. Everyone is a recent immigrant from either Guatemala or Mexico. All six units house a family of at least 4 people. They work together to pay rent. No one is coming here from south of the boarder and paying 4K/month, themselves, to live in my neighborhood. They move in with immediate family or cousins or extended family. With 4-7 people working, the per person portion of rent is decreased substantially compared to COL expectations of indigenous Americans. This longterm trend pushes middle class people out, keeps real estate high and wages low. Even if you don’t live here all that is required to understand this phenomenon is basic econ and the courage to follow logical reasoning. I was born here. My family lived a very middle class life. The middle class was huge back then. The dynamics I explain have gutted the middle class and created a two tier class of the wealthy in the Hollywood Hills and a low income, immigrant, working class in mid city. This is growth economics and GDP must go up at the expense of everything else. I don’t blame the people running away from their own country’s problems to come here. It’s the path of least resistance. I like the majority of them as friends and neighbors. The system is massively exploitative and destructive and can only operate by replacing higher standard of living expectations with lower standard of living expectations. LA was a middle class American paradise from the 1950s-1980s. Lots of opportunities and sense of community for most people. LA has been transformed into a brutal globalist stratification. I work for Google and make relatively great money. Within a couple more years I’ll be able to buy a tiny million dollar ranch in San Clemente or opt to leave the state entirely. Most of the people I grew up with have not been as fortunate. There is another aspect of Southern California that virtually no one who didn’t grow up here is aware of. This is the endless expanse of building and development for the sake of building and development (growth economics) into the desert. East and southeast east of Ontario Airport is more or less (or was) extremely hostile rocky desert. Moreno Valley is one such artificial community. Zoom in with your maps app and take a look at the earth between development zones. This endless development into the desert makes the economy of Southern California go round. Southern California is not the model I want for the country. The density fetishists disturb me more than anyone else. There is no water here.

> He said something to the effect of immigration causing/keeping real estate high/unaffordable. This IS what is happening

Oh looking forward to some stats or estimates or some economic data then. Because it's well documented and known that California doesn't meet housing build targets unlike many cities in Texas which also have high immigration and yet have declining rents and home prices

> Next to me is a 6 unit building, all 2 bdrm units. Everyone is a recent immigrant from either Guatemala or Mexico

Oh okay anecdotes. Surely the actual hard evidence is coming later...

Okay, no evidence or economic stats or even theories at all. Wild. Zero grappling with why housing goes up in cost here vs down in other metro areas with similar high rates of immigration

> I work for Google and make relatively great money.

My God. You can work at Google and have your economic understanding of the world around you just be "I see a lot of immigrants. That must be the issue"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com