1. freeze property taxes on residential construction
2. local government is running out of funding
3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise
4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes)
5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases
6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants
7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable
8. NIMBYs introduce rent control
9. developers cannot recoup their investments and leave
10. households with (two) incomes become homeless
11. people start living in tent cities or their cars (we are here)
What a shitshow...
Freezing rents or property taxes just delays the negative effects and perversely make it harder to implement a long lasting solution. Frozen property taxes lead to high house prices which lead to high property taxes on the next assessment. At some point the theoretical property taxes become so large it is no longer possible to unfreeze property taxes because home owners cannot afford them. The threat of high property taxes would force NIMBYs to optimize for variables other than their home value. The goal would be to provide as much housing as is necessary to prevent yourself from being priced out of your neighborhood.
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to build small developments, like duplexes or triplexes, which would help a lot here!
To give you some concrete examples; in Mountain View, adding a new unit of housing requires about $80k in impact fees and permit fees from the city, and the permits require bending over backward, since they're sometimes self conflicting. We've now banned natural gas, so homes have to be electric. The only way to heat electrically efficiently is heat pumps, but those are affected by noise ordinances, so it's tricky to place them. Solar panels are mandatory, but you need to pay for a permit to install them. Electric car chargers are mandatory. The fire code, city code, and state building codes conflict at times, so you sometimes have the fire inspection, then change stuff around for the city inspector, etc.
Everybody knows how broken it is, so everyone cheats, and inspectors sign off on temporary kludges, knowing full well they'll be changed right after inspection, but the i's must be dotted, and the t's must be crossed. But hey, "we're" doing something!
Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern political discourse.
These governments aren’t stupid; they’re correctly representing the interests of the majority of their voters who a) are homeowners and b) strongly prefer suburbia.
Renters and people who appreciate density need to show up if we’re going to counteract that.
This constituency can't show up because they're priced out of living in the communities in which they work or would work. The only solution is top-down regional planning that runs roughshod over local concerns in order to solve the regional crisis.
Renters are a voting majority here, and successfully passed rent control, at the same time, the city council down-zoned the city, and NIMBYs are able to stop developments via California's crazy environmental review process. So, we have a shortage and rent control, which means Mountain View is becoming more unaffordable to every newcomer, but some renters will have some protection.
The local residents show up in droves to oppose housing, particularly the home owners, with the arguments being "the infrastructure can't take any more". They never hold the city to its responsibility or providing infrastructure, instead, use the bad infrastructure as an excuse to stifle development.
It's a backwards, topsy turvy world here. City governments are meant to serve people, not rule over them.
Because they vote in all the Democrats, irrespective of views, as long as the party affiliation is correct. There isn't that much choice. The city council has seven members, three-ish are usually up for re-election, and you'll have a choice of maybe six on the ballot, half Democrats, and that's the half that gets all the votes.
How does showing up help any activist campaign? Participation in these decisions is tiny (sometimes unilateral - one retired lawyer can set a project back years), many people don't know about the issue or don't have an opinion, those who do have opinions aren't necessarily showing up to speak and vote for them. Everyone notices the cost of housing, but few realize it's a political issue that they even could vote about.
In general the story is broad and diffuse support for more housing, tightly concentrated and intense opposition to particular projects. There are many more NIMBYs than BANANA.
That’s democracy. The residents get to choose what happens in their community. If they don’t want to fill the Bay Area with slums and housing projects, they can make that choice and keep people out.
As someone who loves to cook and much prefers gas I’m genuinely curious about why you and parent like inductive so much?
One neat thing at my girlfriend’s place was that there was an inductive circle with two possible diameters of heat which seems neat for a gigantic stock pot.
But switching quickly between heats seems like it’d require you to have two “burners” going at once.
At the end of the day I’m not sure if it’d really affect my cooking which I love to do but probably isn’t three Michelin stars or anything, but it’s the first I’ve heard of a preference for electric.
Natural gas is a greenhouse gas, and contributes to climate change when leaking out of the distribution network or burned in your home. Not crazy at all to ban it.
Remember when doctors used to smoke during your exam? That’s how future generations are going to look back at our fossil fuel use.
The basis of this article seems to be the statistic. "33% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation". What does that have to do with gas burned in your home? The statistics is for gas burned to create electricity. That seems like significant different things.
Unfortunately, phasing it out of use for heating in favor of electricity is quite likely counterproductive. Burning natural gas for heat is more efficient than burning it to produce electricity, transporting that electricity, and then sending it through a resistor to create heat.
Which means it's only an emissions win if the electricity is carbon neutral or the multiplier for a heat pump compensates for the generation/transmission losses.
Heat pump based electric heat in out mild climate emits less CO2, even factoring in transmission and conversion losses, than burning the gas in the most efficient condensing gas heater. It still costs about 3x as much in terms of energy cost, but emits less CO2.
However, the city regulators, like I said above, are stupid, so you often can't get a permit for a heat pump, because of noise ordinances. These things sound like an A/C compressor, so you can only install it if there is enough distance to your neighbors, and that's usually not possible in newer, denser developments, precisely the kinds where natural gas is banned, so you are now forced to use resitive heating, which uses 3-4x as much power as a heat pump, and costs more than 3x as much, due to our tiered electric prices (additional units cost more than early units)
Electricity grid gets cleaner every year. You can generate closer to load centers to avoid transmission losses. Natural gas distribution network and consumption never does. Heat pumps work all the way down to 0F. Insulate, insulate, insulate.
One of the achilles heals of democracy. When the many or the older vote for their self-interest, sometimes those self-interests don't align with the well being of the younger generation or society at large.
You can't blame the older generation for voting in the interest of maximizing their home values and low taxes for themselves. But you also have to admit how unfair that is to the younger generation who have difficulty finding affordable housing and have to take on a greater property tax burden.
> Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern political discourse.
Why blame the politicians for doing what their voters wanted? Why not tar and feather the voters?
Politicians simply can't reflect the will of the voters, because voters aren't a homogenous blob. Here, they represent the wishes of a very slim majority, and go against the will of the greater majority quite frequently, since this is a representative democracy, not a direct one.
What we should think about is whether it's a legitimate use of power to limit what an entire city can do with its property. The nice, dense areas of the world didn't start out that way, they grew over time as new replaced old. We've stopped that cycle here, and the politicians are trying to freeze things as they are. We do indeed have a lot of home owners resistant to all change, but those aren't the majority. I'm a grey haired home owner here, and I go to council meetings to support increased density, increased property rights, etc.
New Step 1 - Have a multiplier for property taxes based on the number of properties owned. If you own and live in 1 property, you pay the base rate. If you live in one property and own x properties (where x > 1), you pay the base rate * x
Step 2 - Profit for municipalities, affordable housing for citizens
> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care.
> There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey, the complex had strict rules governing who could reside in its units — and since the apartment was in Candido’s mother’s name, her children and grandchildren were barred from living there. The building’s sympathetic manager, however, assured them that it would be fine; with a yearslong waiting list to even enter the lottery for these subsidized rentals, they certainly weren’t the only ones, he said, who’d be living “off-lease.” Everything went well for about a year. But then a neighbor threatened to report the family. She’d started photographing the kids as they left and reentered the apartment each day, and the manager had no choice but to tell them to go elsewhere. “We were totally scared and shocked,” Brenda said, “and we knew that we needed to get out right away. If not, Candido’s mom might have been evicted, too.”
What heartless NIMBY does this? I am just shocked and appalled at the cruelty of this neighbor - it's impossible that she wasn't aware of the housing crisis in the area.
Just like mass murders, these stories seem to be popping up everywhere in the US.
I find it hard to understand how a country can be so good in some ways, but so terrible in others. Is it just because the successful truly extract all their wealth from the more unfortunate?
In order to make the large dollars (middle income wise) you need good training or education (or experience, but that doesn't typically apply for <30). This education gives skills that typically require living in populated areas because businesses (especially large businesses) want to be near large population of potential employees.
So the typical employment force has their education benefit offset by the cost of living increase, putting them in just as bad a situation as living in the middle of no where making low wages (or perhaps worse, since they went into debt for training).
Meanwhile, if your in the top 10% -- a business owner or top management -- most of this doesn't matter because you make enough to take $15/trip HOV Lanes, or buy a $800,000+ home easily. So you want to keep your business near top talent (i.e. cities) but are less impacted by the situation you are encouraging by flocking the business to the city in the first place.
This is super complex, but just my quick-ish generalization... There are lots of factors.
A lot of the people in this forum are part of the wealth. People talk about how after just a few year of working they are making $400k at a FAANG like its now big deal. That is a lot of money compared to the people around them.
See my other comment on this thread, it's not just about the money... it's about the cost of living.
Making $100k+/year now is "easy" in the tech sector, move to any of the major cities. Unfortunately homes cost $750k+ or you take an unpaid part-time job in commuting to the office (2-4 hours/day, 5 days a week).
And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of the parents stay at home even!
> And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of the parents stay at home even!
So do you not consider the $400k FAANG compensation a huge disparity vs the service industry pay? Is it only at the C-level and senior manager/owner level that it becomes a problem?
I do, I just believe that level of pay is at higher levels of the company more often. Not everyone at those companies gets that level of compensation.
In addition, My argument was trying to point out that there's multiple levels to this issue, and saying low level employees is the problem is ignoring the fact senior leaders decide to stay in these big cities despite the fact their own employees can't find homes, or commute as a part time job.
I think it’s 320 million people but that’s just being pedantic.
One thing you could compare it to is America four decades ago.
Wealth inequality in America seems to fluctuate, there was the gilded age which was greatly unequal, then we tampered it down with very progressive tax codes which we’ve since been slashing away at to produce what you see today (there are other factors as we of course).
Europe has many areas which are far more egalitarian than America but you’re almost certainly correct that the vast majority of Earth’s 7.whatever billion inhabitants live in deeply unequal societies.
Nothing says decline more than previous things once considered ordinary are now impossible. In the US and Britain Neoliberal policies reward rent extraction over wealth creation while treating labor as a social disease.
I always figured with modern technology we don't need to have all of the federal government in the DC/VA area.
I'd scatter each department to a different rust-belt or similarly hollowed-out city, creating a permanent economic base and allowing redevelopment to jump start.
That's my argument for internet everywhere to. You physically can't have work from home employees if, in 2019, they have to pick between 3Mbps or a 25GB data cap.
And if more people worked remotely, stress on large cities is reduced.
I actually liked the concept of wework -- a shared office to work in that is not at home -- to bad there was serious issues with the company. With enough places like this, you can still move people out of cities.
Then again, many workers depend on video calls or video conferences, which easily require a multiple of that bandwidth.
Regular security updates are also important. Those add up nowadays, and if they’re slow to download you tend to skimp on them.
Not all employees can communicate by text or voice alone. Body language is very important to a lot of people when communicating... I prefer video calls, though I don't require it.. but you can't easily tell an employee is having a rough day or is not following what you're saying on verbal/text cues alone... Or they say they get it in text but they really are not sure (and seeing their face or posture might have communicated that they "kinda" understand)..
Many people need the human-to-human interaction.. and many people don't. If you and your boss and direct reports are all happy connecting in text, great! But a huge portion of the population wants to see the other person when communicating
It sounded like this particular family was doing ok until the wife lost her job when she was on maternity leave (wouldn’t happen if maternity leave were actually protected), so they started illegally subletting, and then they got kicked out of their illegal sublet. Yeah it’s clear they basically had no savings at that time though, other than the car.
I read the article a few hours ago but I think I remember them saying like a quarter of the kids in the Salinas public school system were homeless? I agree that in general, people should be responsible about having children. But let’s be clear: a quarter of a city’s kids being homeless is indicative of a deep systemic problem. That’s not something that we should simply accept as natural because they are poor.
Of course, the big issue which they touch on briefly is that the whole “affordable/subsidized housing” crap is not even close to reaching the scale it needs to be at to address the problem. You can’t solve a housing shortage by selling $10 for $3 to a couple thousand people.
What a shitshow...
Freezing rents or property taxes just delays the negative effects and perversely make it harder to implement a long lasting solution. Frozen property taxes lead to high house prices which lead to high property taxes on the next assessment. At some point the theoretical property taxes become so large it is no longer possible to unfreeze property taxes because home owners cannot afford them. The threat of high property taxes would force NIMBYs to optimize for variables other than their home value. The goal would be to provide as much housing as is necessary to prevent yourself from being priced out of your neighborhood.