The Millennial Commune
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Of course, it's essential to have a good feeling with the others, but I feel like this is going way too far, with just you ending up with others alike, and no diversity. Granted, that's what they sell : “highly curated community of like-minded individuals.”
Is this because you're worried about an echo-chamber effect where you won't learn, see or do something new? Some of the benefits I get from hanging out (and living) with like-minded people is that they've come across some new music in a genre they thought I might appreciate, read a new study or article in a field of science, politics or philosophy that we commonly find interesting, cook an obscure meal or go out to a new restaurant that, based on my past preferences, they knew I'd enjoy.
Expanding one's experiences and tastes can be an evolutionary process, and people with similar tastes can help you step through them faster than you would on your own - the cadence merely increases. It doesn't have to be a binary thing either - often someone's friend or partner will be quite different philosophically and you have the opportunity to listen to their ideas or tastes and become richer from exploring those things with them.
It speaks to one of the largest failures of technology, which is that the techno utopians from Gen X believed the Internet would herald a new age of informed democracy and rational debate. Instead what we got is a balkanization of ideas where no one has to ever hear anything vaguely uncomfortable and we can all stay ensconced in our little tribes.
If you have a roommate that loves throwing parties, and everyone else is maybe super tired from working, you're gonna have a bad time.
If you have roommates that don't believe in cleaning, ever, then you're gonna have a bad time.
If you have roommates that spend a lot of time torrenting and your internet gets shut off, you're gonna have a bad time.
If you have roommates that are really into drug culture, you could well end up having a bad time (seen this happen once or twice).
You can all be totally different in, say, politics or sexuality or income or whatever (provided rent is still being made), but it gets super shitty super fast if the basic "Hey, this is our home, don't cause problems" stuff isn't nailed down.
1. Regulatory failure leads to a lack of reasonable real estate options in growing cities.
2. Striving young people want to move to the major cities for career reasons anyways.
3. Aspiring capitalists deploy capital to convert existing housing stock into microunits while charging a premium.
Nothing in this is communist at all.
Shame that these people didn't go "organic" and searched for the real deal in living in a real commune and not that synthetic one.
Proper sharing would be a fully connected graph topology. Modern "sharing" is hub-and-spoke where the hub extracts rent on all transactions because they either made a website (lol, "tech company") or have absconded capital and sell it back to you (time limited) at a profit.
The connected network part was also similar because you have to go through these co-living space capitalist-hippy administrators to actually live in the co-living space. So some of the co-living spaces are co-living as defined by "you passed our landlord's test" but others are "everybody must like you to live here."
If this was relating to Uber, we'd also mention they are doing the entire "break local laws and hope city hall doesn't care" trick by introducing oversubscribed short term housing which is against city policy.
In 1951 Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers around her. This group (jokingly designated "The Collective") included future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
An actual co-op shares food purchases, requires labor like cooking and cleaning, and the members share democratic control over the house's finances. There is no actual reason why you need microleases - the co-op I live in has 6 month leases at a minimum, and on average most members live here for two years. People stay for so long because actual cooperatives foster a culture of cooperation and a community full of real friendships, giving its members a deep, lasting connection with the space and their fellow housemates. Microleases seem like they create a transitory and shallow culture with people coming and leaving all the time and not actually making any connection with the space, partially because you can't leave your mark on the space since you don't own it.
There are very large and active communities of both residential and commercial cooperatives in Berkeley, Michigan, and Austin (where the co-op I live in is), and I think this is because there is cheaper land and individual houses. It's close to impossible for starting true residential cooperatives in downtown NYC because the landlord often owns the entire building, which would require an enormous amount of money to acquire, and would lead to enormous cooperatives which would be difficult to run. There _are_ very large, apartment-style cooperatives - there are at least 5 co-ops in Austin with over 100 people each - but there are many more that are house style with 15-30 people. I think the ones in Berkeley and Michigan tend to be closer to 30-40 people, but they're still just big houses.
The cooperative movement is alive and well and has been for decades. Capitalists trying to jump onto the sharing economy bandwagon just dilute the message and create the wrong impression of what actual shared living is - raw democratic control over your space. Cooperatives have amazing potential in the internet age, but seem to have been largely forgotten by modern day technologists. A non-profit Uber, cooperatively controlled by both drivers and developers, is an obvious example of a great system that would work very well and be immensely popular with drivers. There are a lot of knotty problems to work out, but nothing insurmountable. If 100+ drug-addled college kids can democratically run an entire apartment complex successfully for 3 decades (and even make money, too!), surely today's technologists can build software that allow many more people to democratically run much larger systems.
In a coop, the owners approve/reject apartment sales. This is the same, except the residents are renters, while the owners still pick who is allowed in.
I am surprised this doesn't run afoul of Equal Housing (anti-discrimination) laws, since the people rejecting applicants aren't the residents.
1. Build more housing (won't happen) 2. Rent control (doesn't work, mostly. Distorts the market) 3. The bubble pops (most likely)
When demand for housing (or any other product) exceeds supply the price goes up.
The system SF has is actually broken due too to much regulation. Regulation that inhibits the creation of new housing which would increase supply and lower prices.
You are appealing to supply and demand as if it was an immutable law of the universe and not just an outcome of predatory human behaviour.
When demand outstrips supply, prices go up. He never suggested otherwise. But why do sellers raise the prices on necessities such as housing just because they can? It is because they are predatory assholes.
And why blame just the property owners? Presumably if no one was willing to pay the rents they would have to come down -- but some "predatory" renters are willing to pay to get what they want.
However, I think that a renter who pays an exorbitant rent when a cheaper yet still liveable alternative is available is partly complicit.
I work for myself, but in the hypothetical situation where I worked for somebody else, no, I would not offer to take a lower rate from my employer just because it is more than I need. I am entitled to every single penny that my employer makes from my labour. The difference between what he makes from it and what he pays me for it is capitalistic exploitation. It is in the interest of justice that it be minimised.
SF and NYC are "desirable" places to live. People want to be there. The world is more "globalized" than ever now.
How does supply and demand cope when 6 million to 60 million superhumanly rich people (from all over the world!) want the same thing a non-superhumanly rich person also wants?
It's the exact same "superhuman AI will take all our jobs" reasoning, except in this case we have actual humans with access to vastly more wealth than any average person can accumulate.
On a long enough time scale, the market may win and only $100 millionaires and billionaires will live in SF and NYC. But for now, the non-independently-wealthy (those poor suckers who need a 'job' to live) end up paying $5,000 per month for a one bedroom apartment. That means you need to make over $200k per year just to be independent. In reality, you should be making $450k per year to live "nicely." (In actual reality, if you are a programmer who can create value with your mind your skills are easily worth over $3 million per year).
Regulation could give us options like: no non-resident foreign nationals may purchase property here. nobody may purchase more than one housing unit within the city limits. no one person may be the landlord of more than 3 housing units (or else you have "the rich get richer" where one guy uses rent income to buy more buildings to get more rent income—soon, one guy has 60 buildings being milked for rent). nobody may purchase units for money laundering purposes. hell, throw in a morality clause and say if you are convicted of a crime you lose your multi-million-dollar condo as well (hi, wall street frauds).
Regulate the heck outta the housing market because fixed assets can't be efficiently allocated in the face of supernormal resources unless you consider "the rich deserve more than people with full time jobs" to be a proper way of allocating physical pieces of the planet earth.
And what do you mean by "predatory real estate owners and bankers". It's a free market system if you can't afford to live in an area then live somewhere where you can afford given what your job is. Nobody is entitled to a particular job in an area (if they are not paid enough) if they can't (with the pay) afford the rent. I'd love to live many places but I have to consider the practicality. Hawaii would be nice! [1] As far as people getting pushed out because of rents being driven up, the answer to that is not to take property away from lawful owners.
Want to "lower the rent"? Government buys at fair market value some apartments or housing how about that? (Sure that will happen, right?) Fine as long as the rightful owners agree and everyone else in the community uses their tax dollars to pay for acquiring that property.
Given you are so unhappy about this would you use your tax dollars so that others could live and not have high rent?
[1] To clarify not because of housing prices but because of economic opportunity. NYC would be nice also however housing, traffic and so on are out of my comfort zone.
Governments dramatically impact the price of the housing market already via any manner of policies such as zoning, regressive tax subsidies on mortgages and even school funding.
Not everyone who suggests tweaking the laws is on the vanguard of a communist revolution.
Yes. Obtaining property "technically lawfully" but actually illegally is not going to survive.
It's a free market system
Except, corrupt foreign millionaires and billionaires are buying up in-demand US real estate (SF, LA, NYC) as safe houses (see: russian and arab mobsters/politicians/princes buying condos with 3 bulletproof safe rooms) and long term investments (see: chinese family buying Palo Alto homes for their newborn daughter because they know she will go to stanford in 20 years) without living there. They either let the houses sit idle or rent them out at a profit, taking more money out of the local economy. We do not welcome our new foreign non-productive overlords.
the answer to that is not to take property away from lawful owners.
We need to track down all these "optimistic investment" purchases and safe house purchases then just imminent domain them back to the public who actually participate in the local economy. When people on salary are competing with millionaires and billionaires for rent, they can't win.
Entire living centers are being built as "ghost towers." Real estate developers travel overseas and sell every unit in a tower to Chinese buyers 5 years before even breaking ground on the building. Then when the building is complete, it sits 90% empty. The developers get their money and the buyers get to ride on tax breaks, but it does nothing to help the local population.
Then, all of that isn't getting into when all this fancy housing is purchased by illegal foreign money.
There's a spectrum here. We need to audit all purchase records, pierce the veil of every LLC, and determine if real estate purchases in tight markets are made as an attempt at laundering money. If so, the property is forfeit.
Yes, you found the exact problem.
But, with such a current high demand, all sales end up going to these wealthy few since supply is so restricted. We see it every day. Multi-million dollar condos and houses going for 150% to 200% over asking price (in cash, paid in full at closing, either by wire or by literal black duffel bags full of currency delivered by their proxy lawyer who doesn't ask too many questions). Bidding wars for simple apartments. If you try to buy housing as a worker (by saving from your paychecks to obtain a downpayment), you'll always be out priced by people who can just drop 20x your net worth on a whim—in cash.
If only we could tear down the sunset districts and replace them with more modern high density housing plus a real transit system. Heck, if only we could step back and get a real transit system between San Jose and SF at all. It shouldn't take 90 minutes to go 40 miles on dedicated track. A 90 minute commute (if you're not rush-hour bound) is the ultimate killer of morale.
Yes! I'd be happy to.
I don't understand why people keep trying this "gotcha" thing when someone suggests tax dollars be used to benefit the needy. Don't assume that everyone is secretly selfish just because you are.
Why not? Eventually non-owners will form a majority of voters and will vote to remove ridiculous restrictions.
Generational rent-seeking can only persist for so long.
The result has been the beginning of many new large multi-unit housing developments. Dense multistory condos and rowhouses near downtown are happening. Google's plan for office space was even rejected because it didn't have enough new housing units!
The renter political majority are the people who got laws such as rent control in. And the other very landlord unfriendly laws that make ~ %30 of residential rental stock unoccupied in SF due to fears of bad renters costing far more than their income. Also their are other laws that let petty NIMBYs prevent neighbors building stuff in their empty lots, so they can extract concessions out of them, or just avoid the personal inconvenience of construction during working hours. A good chunk of people in SF are unemployed / not in the labor force. Something around %30. 'Tech workers' are a very small minority of the population, but are the new immigrants aggravating the supply problems.
Then you have old money in SF organizing political groups to block building on the water front so their waterfront condo views will not be block and so on.
The multiple competing interests in SF lead to the general regulatory failure there of not building nearly enough. SF has always been a city with it's head far up it's ass, it was very bad in other ways in the 70s too, with similar 'renter friendly' laws causing more problems than solutions.
I should have been more specific about wanting newer "tech renters" (ie. not crazy liberals who think building housing somehow drives up rents).
Apparently this has already happened in Mountain View and I do think eventually SF will have to come around. Probably through an alliance of either developers and new renters (curtailing most regulation) or new renters and silly rent-controllers (streamlining regulation but requiring the addition of rent control on x% of all new units).
(On a separate note, the hypocrisy of SF liberals is ridiculous. They're all for allowing immigration nationally, but violently attack people who dare to move into their city.)
Is this for real? So clearly false. (Increasing supply will somehow increase demand by even more?) I have to assume these ideas have been spread by the vested interests that you've noted.
I've read about folks who worked for years to clean up their low-end neighborhoods, organize a neighborhood watch, drive out the dealers, etc, and as things improve the landlord jacks the rent up until they have to move to a slum area again. That's not about "luxury apartments" specifically, just about how manifestly screwed you are if you're not at least middle-class.
Seems very much like WeWork for rental housing.
My only concern is that this model seems ripe for discrimination, of many many kinds. "Oh, we only rent to people with a STEM degree from an Ivy." Yet another way an SAT score turns into a life.
1) Vibrant tech/startup sector is critical to US national security and economic prosperity
2) SFBA is critical to the success of US tech/startups
3) Housing costs are a major impediment to tech/startups
4) High-density housing to be constructed on federal land (and/or federal preemption used to build housing elsewhere).
Doing this as a private entity would be a bit more interesting -- I wonder what happens if you either drop serious dollars to take over one of the smaller towns in the Bay Area (campaigning and/or moving people into high density housing for a while to get residency to vote).
Straight civil disobedience (unpermitted live work) also happens, but doing it at the scale needed would be a bit more challenging. Probably crazy libertarian fantasy to build a supertall in downtown SF on your own land in direct defiance of the local government, unless you're state/federal.