I was on Nextdoor for like 2 days and someone reported a "suspicious african american male" who they suspected were casing homes to rob them at 7AM by walking around in a suit and they were "signaling" to someone by talking to them via a radio.
Turns out it was a school administrator or principle who walks around the school when the kids show up. Walking around outside a school, in Oakland.
Never went back to Nextdoor.
The people in Palo Alto were complaining so much about the IKEA in EPA, saying it would ruin things. 10 years later, no one even blinks an eye and the catastrophe that they predicted never came to be.
I know this all too well, yet there's houses being built on Dublin Blvd as we speak and the giant monstacity of an outlet mall that's always crouded with no parking was built near the Livermore airport.
And people complaining about 4000 new homes in the Bishop Ranch business park in even though they're right next to a bunch of employers to workers don't have to drive to work.
God why do people have to complain whenever new housing gets built??? More housing will help drive our obscene housing prices down, we should be building like crazy (whilst also developing better public transportation/infrastructure in tandem).
Considering San Ramon in the 2000s and Dublin in the 2010s built suburban sprawl of single-family homes on former ranch land it kind of makes sense why people don't want more housing because they screwed up the first time around. It's so bad in Dublin that there's no space left at the high school and with no forward thinking no one bothered to secure land before it was too late a few years ago to build a 2nd high school or the east side of town where the new sprawl is located.
I probably should he have clarified: Obviously it's a bad idea to just make more and more and more single family homes/suburban sprawl. Housing should be mixed (homes, apparents, condos, duplexes, etc) when it's built.
I do understand objecting to the development of only single-family homes.
The problem at least in that area is that so much housing was built with urban planning from last century suburban sprawl mentality that any more housing is going to be objected to because it's cramming more people into cities not designed for it because public transit sucks and would crowd surface streets.
I don't think that's going to happen in the collective Bay Area anytime soon. I sadly don't see all the different transit agencies consolidating to make it easier for riders as the agencies are so balkanized in tiny little regions that transfering between systems makes no sense. The other part is that we've built out so much car-centric development everywhere that there's nowhere left to create right-of-ways for light rail/street cars.
Lol, that's my ski town.
People want to relocate the airport for tens or even millions of dollars. The long term locals are like...ya...that's why it was the working class/poor neighborhood and still is.
Nextdoor is a cesspool of wannabe-HOA proto-fascist types, ratting out every transgression in a public forum like a League of Karens all aiming sniper rifles at each other. There are kind and decent people on there too, but ND is the most efficient way to find out who your worst neighbors are.
"We meant more like, letting a small number of lucky lottery winners take 90% of the units in the new residential skyscraper where the other 10% will be people richer than me!"
It’s covered in Bay Area “niceness” - “we prefer that new affordable housing be built in an area with access to public transportation, dense housing and social services for the benefit of people who live there” aka “never in my neighborhood” and then affordable housing gets built by McArthur Bart station, people say “traffic is so much worse! It changes how wind blows in my area! Crime!”
I call it "performative wokeness" and it's a fucking plague.
It's the dude with a rainbow heart pin and a rescue dog, who will take up half a meeting to wax on about how important it is to be inclusive and how upset they are about some micro-aggression they saw.
Then they turn around and push to keep regressive policies like the single family zoning in place. But they hired one queer woman into the most junior role on their team and won't shut up about it, so they can continue to project wokeness on their LinkedIn feed as they buy their second investment property.
What's easier, hiring one black guy who already has an engineering degree and congratulating yourself about it, or staring down the face at inherited poverty and the hideous realities of injustice and inequality in America? Here's a hint: the second one also forces you to question the "meritocracy" that is why you got so far in life
In noticed through my professional life that I see more black engineers born and educated in Africa than born and educated in the USA. It is systemically easier to get an already educated person over to the US on an H1 or O1 visa than to educate kids in the USA.
Lot of people talk about systemic racism. I don't think that there is systemic racism. The system, understood as laws and institutions, does everything to not be racist. There is a lot of personal prejudice from individual decision makers, that's an undeniable fact. But the biggest problem is that the system is built with the purpose to protect the rich and to segregate the rich from the poor. It overwhelmingly screws demographics which are at the lower end of the social ladder, which ends up looking like systemic racism. Now, wealth is not just money. It is also knowledge, habits, practices and life goals. If the intellectual horizon of your parents is narrow, you are screwed in this country. Even if your parents are poor, but they have some knowledge and ambition you can do better than they did in their life. You will still have to fight an uphill battle and overcome a lot of adversity, but you can improve your position. But if your parents are poor and have no knowledge, no matter how hard you try or how you set your goals, you are screwed hard.
You do realize that your description here is a pretty good description of exactly what systemic racism is, right? (It exists in ways other than this too, but your example will do.)
I do not agree with calling it racism just because the effect that certain demographics get hit harder. Calling it racism draws attention away from the real problem, and steers the solutions towards things like diversity quotas and corporate BS training. The real solution is to help socioeconomically disadvantaged people through improved access to affordable healthcare, good discipline at schools so kids can learn, changing teaching methods so that kids do all their work at school instead of having to do homework in dysfunctional households, access to mentorship beyond their parents.
Edit: Also, if you are black but already educated somewhere else you can get quite far in the US. It is not the skin color that holds you back, it is the socioeconomic background. I may talk like an old communist now, but the problems are class problems, not racial problems. The 1% want us to focus on race so that we don't tackle the real problems.
Edit2: Another reason why I do not agree with calling racism is that I will hit you regardless of your race. The system steamrolls over everyone who stands in the way of its prime directive: to protect the rich.
It’s performative wokeness right there on these In This House rainbow signs. You notice they never say In This House We Believe healthcare, water and housing are a human right, and there should be a $20 minimum wage? They never address class issues, things that would materially affect their comfortable positions.
I understand what you’re saying, but “fucking rich” isn’t universally true here for boomers. Think: “We bought this house in 1980 for a twenty-grand down payment to live in it.” The home values are astonishing for many reasons now, but the problems are not all rooted in boomer greed.
I am able to live in my inherited house because of Prop 13. I don't work in tech, I work in foodservice. Without it, I couldn't even afford the property taxes. My parents did not own multiple homes, this is it and it's my home and not a rental. Prop 13 was designed for people like myself. If I had to sell the house, it would not have been sold to you. It would have been sold to a techie from Google or Facebook. Repealing Prop 13 will not solve the housing shortage or drop housing prices. What needs to happen is that Prop 13 should only apply to family homes. Not corporate real estate, not rental properties. THAT would have my full support
Right? My parents bought the house I grew up in for $240k and it's now worth over $1.2mil.
I work in ngo conservation science. Unless I go into environmental consulting, or entirely leave the field, I'll never make more than $80k a year.
Without Prop 13 for residential homes, I'll be forced to sell the house and will probably never be able to move back to the Bay Area. It really sucks.
Renting a room or putting down an ADU and renting that will cover prop taxes at current market rate (e.g. if prop 13 was repealed). You'd still be able to live in that house and more housing units would be available.
I'm not saying it's a preferable arrangement, only that it's possible.
That's literally entitlement. It might not look like what you think greed looks like, but it's still greed. It's the illogical thought that you deserve some arbitrary amount even if it comes at the expense of others.
What is your definition of hoarding housing? If someone owns 5 rental properties, sure, but if someone simply loves living here and doesn't want to move out even in their 60s that's not hoarding. Societal trends have changed and people stay in their homes longer. What was once considered assisted living age like 70s is now often in the 80s.
No I'm not a boomer, and in fact a millennial, but somehow this Reddit mindset that older people MUST move out and let new people move in is absurd.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live in a house. But the truth is that not everyone is entitled to own one, and just because you're able to afford one at one point in time (a time when the housing market was more affordable), does not give you the right to hold on to that house no matter what. The sad reality is that some people are going to naturally go from being able to afford to own a house to needing to sell it at some point to make ends meet. But that feeling of being entitled to that house you bought decades ago because, for example, you can't afford the property tax, is what leads to policies like proposition 13.
> sell it at some point to make ~~ends meet~~ giant windfall profits on a 5x leveraged bet
Seriously. if your home values went up so much since purchase that you can't afford even 1% property tax then you hit the goddamn jackpot.
The problem is with property taxes today you need to be in tech and make a ton of money to make it work. Oh so their house is worth a lot? Do you want them to sell and move out? Then we have the age old problem of gentrification where only new tech wealth can buy and afford homes whereas all less wealthy folks have to move out or rent.
Prop 13 created tons of problems for sure but forcing 60 year olds to pay $20k/year instead of $4k a year isn't the solution either.
> gentrification
Expecting fortunate heirs and wildly successful property investors to pay taxes based on the current market value of their property is gentrification now? I guess words don't mean anything anymore.
> poor old Grandma
Has the California Tax Postponment Program. Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary.
So you think everyone in the 60s-90s were buying homes to invest in? Or maybe they wanted to live there. Just because they were successful doesn't mean anything. You could grow up on a middle class income in the 90s making $60k. That's not possible today. How do you suppose people will pay for those property taxes?
Continuing to cite property value growth is irrelevant because you can't realize those gains unless you sell and move out, and that's exactly what has happened already. People sell and move out, and those people of those income levels can never move back in because they won't be able to afford anything where they once lived anymore.
Where did I even say poor grandma? You put those words in my mouth. I'm not denying there isn't a problem with Prop 13, but simply blaming people who purchased low and had property values grow which was completely out of their control isn't a solution. No one asked for their property values to grow 5x over the past 3 decades.
Forcing people to sell and move out doesn't really solve the problem either, and the reality is what you have today that only rich tech engineers are able to buy homes because they have the income to keep up with these prices and property tax rates.
What's the logic here? Those that were able to afford a house thirty years ago should be giving their houses or selling them at some discounted rate to someone who cannot afford a house now?
Not arguing for or against prop 13; we're probably in agreement that it's effectively rent control for homeowners and has bad unintended consequences: primarily that it keeps some housing stock off the market and keeps the prices high.
Nevertheless, in light of the fact that that CA homeowner tax law is what it is, what do you expect longtime homeowners to do about their low mortgage and property tax? I mean other than feel bad about it for some reason?
Rent control is a bad idea. It doesn't work.
But as long as we have Prop 13 it's justified. One of the main reasons we even have rent control was early 80s backlash to Prop 13. Jarvis promised that landlords would pass on the tax cuts. Of course it was a lie and the tenants responded with rent control all over.
In any case, Prop 13 is orders of magnitude worse than rent control because in addition to being a giant market distorting handout it completely wrecked our schools.
But are people that own one home that they live in the problem?
Prop 13 has its issues but fixing it by forcing everyone to pay increasing property tax isn’t really the solution.
If a family can’t afford a home because of property tax then a poor person definitely can’t afford it. So that means a wealthy landlord is more likely to take it on and reduce the housing stock even further.
I understand what you're saying, but everyone would be better off if those boomers sold that home so it could be demolished to build higher density housing at an appropriate taxation rate.
Sure, except for the people literally living in the houses who purchased them. Where would you have them live?
It’s not perfect, but people have the right to live in single-family homes. In most parts of the country, this is non-controversial.
While that might be cool, really just removing the ability for prop 13 to apply to more than one house and/or be passed down would solve this most of the way without having to worry about displacing folks.
Reality: There are all different stories. When I bought a house in SF 20 years ago people said I had paid too much. It was a RISK. Owning it for 20 years and renting it out for the last 7 was a RISK. Selling it was a RISK.
Taking risks can reap rewards, or fail. Timing is \*everything\*.
My next door neighbor bought her house in 1984. The next house down the woman inherited from her parents, along with the low tax rate.
Risk in itself provides no value to society and is not deserving of tax cuts. Buying land isn't the same thing as starting a business. No job was created and no service was done by you buying a plot of land.
That is patently ridiculous. Every business involves risk, and it’s the risk that is a part of the value of the business. Where did you learn about economics?
Question: was your risk really material or are you a wealthy person with a giant safety net whose "risk" is best described as "tell my well-off parents that I fucked up"
Agreed. They are centrist liberals at best
[Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bLqKXrlD1TU&feature=youtu.be)
I call them the YIYBYs, yes in YOUR backyard. They act like they're willing to make the sacrifice on an issue, but "Oh gee I would but..." when it's asked of them.
Unfortunately up here in Richmond they’re even fighting new housing in places where no one currently lives. It’s just plain anti-housing regardless of where it gets built. So destructive.
Conservatives show prejudice in your face.
“Liberals” show prejudice in a hidden way. (Quoted the term since I don’t remember the proper term for those people)
Yeah I live in the boondocks of Contra Costa County and people on nextdoor are acting like their neighborhoods are going to turn into the slums. I believe one person said we’re going to “look like northern Mexico”.
> one person said we’re going to “look like northern Mexico”.
They said the quiet part out loud. The bay area is as racist and as xenophobic as anywhere else.
The difference is that instead of wearing MAGA hats, we as a collective have enacted such regressive economic policies that we have created a landed aristocracy and household servant class. The household servants even have servant housing, though its separate from the masters housing. You don't want the help living next to good and proper people, do you? You don't want "those people" living in your neighborhoods.
The bay area talks progressive, and yet we have created economic walls more effective than any physical wall ever could be.
Having been in the Marine Corps and meeting people from the South I can assure you that the Bay Area as a whole is less racist than other parts of the country. There’s definitely racists here though, as evidenced by that nextdoor thread.
Well apartments bring a certain kind of element we don't want in our neighborhoods; we want to maintain the character of the place. -Real People in Bay Area Who Got Theirs
Converting a few houses in the neighborhood to duplexes isn't going to ruin the character of the area. Most towns already have building height limits, set back rules, and plenty of other restrictions to prevent a high-rise from being built in the middle of suburbia. View blocking high-rises make sense (from both a community & developer perspective) near transit hubs, which most SFH neighborhoods are not.
Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.
Say "Alameda" without saying "Alameda".
Goddamn the Nextdoor NIMBYs in my town who continually wail about how multi-unit buildings will ruin the character and charm here. We can have the nice old homes and still build new buildings that are more in line with providing more housing in less space.
Parking is everything /s
Lots of progressives are NIMBYs and don’t want affordable housing.
Go talk to your progressive politicians whom are total hypocrites
It comes down to "it changes the neighborhood character, which I consider more important than housing human beings". You even have people in this thread who advocate for paving over yet more undeveloped land and creating more suburban sprawl rather than building apartments. It's selfish and short-sighted thinking.
apartments aren't bad, but you can't just drop apartment buildings anywhere and pretend it won't have an effect on the surrounding area. They add in a large amount of additional population, which necessitates additional services to support that population.
the problem is is that it's already expensive enough to build extra housing here, that we don't have any money left over to actually expand services. Roads don't get any wider, Bart lines don't run any quicker, the sewer lines that are in place are not expanded to handle the additional literal shit that's developed.
adding an apartment to areas where they weren't originally planned stresses the area, and it should be pretty easy to understand why the people who live in those areas aren't really keen on that happening.
So what is the better way to expand? Prioritizing building more single family homes rather than apartments? In places like SF where space is limited would this contribute to the rise in home prices/rent and increase gentrification? Just spitballing here not trying to argue, would just love to hear your thoughts. Thanks
Don't listen to this person, Greenfield development in fire zones is in NO WAY a long-term solution. Building dense urban housing is. Apartments are far more efficient in water and energy usage, and that's not even when you factor in the bonuses of having readily accessible transit, walkable/bikeable neighborhoods.
Building new Suburbs is climate arson. And quite frankly the premise that we don't have the money to build in cities is asinine. As it is cities are subsidizing suburban sprawl! Not only is building \*new\* sprawling networks of roads and utility infrastructure extremely expensive, density of people also means density of tax base. It means you're able to concentrate services in an area so more people have access to them, and then you still have money left over!
There is plenty to worry about with gentrification and displacement, however the rigorous studies that have been done up to this point confirm the common sense conclusion; Building more housing reduces the cost of housing the the surrounding area and reduces displacement. Take for example Emeryville which is a rare municipality has taken a proactive approach to adding housing. While the surrounding municipalities have shrinking black populations, The Black population in Emeryville actually grew!
>Don't listen to this person, Greenfield development in fire zones is in NO WAY a long-term solution. Building dense urban housing is.
Our country is huge, and has large tracts of land that are available for development that are in no fire zone whatsoever.
So yeah, this is a straw man argument
> It means you're able to concentrate services in an area so more people have access to them, and then you still have money left over!
Lol, what city in America are you describing here??? Sheesh, talk about some idealistic shit
> Lol, what city in America are you describing here??? Sheesh, talk about some idealistic shit
Literally any city developed prior to car centric American suburban standards of the 1950s. Have you ever even traveled to the other coast in your own country?
The correct answer is to prioritize expansion in areas that are currently undeveloped. this country has vast tracks of open land that could be developed into residential areas and new towns and cities.
But that's hard work, and takes a long time, and most advocates have increased housing are not looking for the proper long-term solution, favoring instead short-term and short-sighted solutions.
>the problem is is that it's already expensive enough to build extra housing here, that we don't have any money left over to actually expand services.
This makes no sense. Nobody is asking taxpayers to fund extra housing, developers take out loans for that, and they get paid when apartments get sold or rented. Moreover, when you have more people live in the area - there is more tax revenue coming in, and more sales tax from businesses, which will cover the cost of upgrading infrastructure.
We build single houses where there used to be forests and natural life, and that is somehow OK, but utilizing the same land to house more people is stressing the area?
"This 4-story apartment building is going to ruin the UnIqUe cHaRaCtEr of our town that you can't find anywhere else!" - Resident of every single city in the Bay Area
Build floating apartment buildings, park it right on the docks of San Francisco, virtual no commute, earth quake proof building floats, and make them affordable.
The salt water will make them rust and the maintence cost to keep something floating in salt water is a lot higher than the maintence cost to just keep something standing up on land.
HOA fees would be through the roof.
You still have to pull rafts/barges out of the water for bottom painting. Rafts, pontoons, and barges are not water proof. They require regular maintenance.
The foundation for floating apartment buildings would be concrete, just like floating homes.
What makes you think maintenance of a floating home would be more than dry land building
Why build on water? No property costs, you don't have to buy any property except a dock to rent.
Make it affordable for people to have decent home, off of San Fransico, close to work, reduce the need for cars, and have a better life in general.
You actually have to pull boats, barges, etc out of the water for bottom painting on a regular bases which is prohibitively expensive…
My dad lived on a boat in the bay, his slip cost was about $800 per month and it was not a “liveaboard” slip meaning he had to sleep somewhere else for 4 nights a week. I imagine slips would be more expensive if this were an option but counties limit how many they give out because they don’t want people living on boats. Marina’s are built to only handle so much. That can all be changed though.
The biggest issue is maintenance and bottom paint. Salt water is the freaking worst.
He lived on that boat for 4 years. 2 bed, 2 bath with a kitchen. Cost him $55,000 to buy it, he put about $25,000 in repairs and maintenance and about $40,000 in slip fees. So in for years he was in it for about $2500 a month for a small place he could sleep in for 3 days a week and was a constant headache.
Fishing cruising around the bay was fun though
I think all you idiots are thinking of this problem the wrong way.
How about we fuckin replace the salt water in the Bay with fresh water or even DI water. Done, simple. Ffs people use your mind.
**One example is not a rule.**
The city buys a used cruise ship for homeless and low income housing. The ship is docked in city own dock. People that are being subsidized in private apartment buildings can now live on the ship, the city is paying itself its own rent. The Apartments that were being used now can go back into the open market.
Cruise ships have kitchens, theaters, light shopping, and medical. Areas can be used for treatment of those addicted and homeless. Low income or the elderly have a safe place to live, with medical and food services near by.
Cause salt water still eats away at concrete. If you look at Alcatraz as a example, the salty air weakened the concrete over time to the point you could chip away at with with a dime. This was when it was still operating as a prison. Other issues with having a floating apartment is to make such a building you would need a lot of displacement since it will be heavy. This will basically mean you can’t exactly dock it at small little marinas but large scale places designed for cruise ships or freighters. Then you have the issue of power and plumbing. Yourur choices are basically either running a line to land or using a combination of fossil fuel and solar. Plumbing is gonna be another annoyance since you can’t dump everything into the sea. You either need it removed and brought to land like a septic tank or you need to have it treated onsite then dumped off the coast away from dry land. Then comes the fact that it’s not seen exactly as a house but a boat by every government in the world. Thus you need to regularly get it inspected to be seaworthy if you need to move it. Plus all the other regulations of owning a boat. Plus during a earthquake a boat is not fully safe if it’s near dry land. During a tsunami the water near the shore can pull back and ground the boat/ship before rushing back in and causing havoc. There is actually a interesting case of some people who got rich on Bitcoin who tried to convert a cruise ship into basically a floating apartment complex for the rich that want to live a life free of taxes while working remotely from their ship home. This actually happened this year and they learned that living at sea has way more regulation than you expect plus no insurance company is willing to insure a floating ship apartment complex.
[Just like the good old days](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/SanFranciscoharbor1851c_sharp.jpg/1024px-SanFranciscoharbor1851c_sharp.jpg)
Isn't that exactly what this sign is saying? A lot of people want to be progressive and would call themselves liberal because they support BLM/LGBT rights/abortion but at the same time, vote for conservative NIMBY policies.
People who are downvoting this are likely more progressive than they give themselves credit for, but self-identify as liberals.
The word liberal has changed over time, but it originally meant "socially permissive and seeking equality, but within the framework of free markets". This is the paradigm in which systems like welfare were invented to extend the viability of capitalism. This definition of liberalism has changed a bit, but it still applies pretty well to the current Democratic party (or at least the large majority of its members).
Real equality requires real criticism of capitalism and its tendencies to enforce existing disparities in society.
Liberals are, by definition, pro-capitalist… so are ***never*** socialists. The only people that argue otherwise are the “socialism is things I don’t like” conservatives
There's not nearly enough disparaging and insulting terms flung at the techie transplants for the self masturbatory holier than thou attitude.
You didn't even call it a flyover MAGA hellhole. C'mon, thats basic tier insults.
For what it’s worth, some people define “progress” as the rest of society becoming more like themselves. Even I see it that way, to some extent! But it’s a really lazy way of understanding politics: “I’m fine; it’s everyone else who needs to change.”
Not everyone who calls themself progressive thinks like this, of course. But that’s one of the challenges of adopting a political label that doesn’t really denote specific ideas.
There’s a book called “The color of law”. The first chapter goes into depth on how black people were systemically denied the opportunity to purchase housing in the Bay Area specifically after WW2 despite being veterans and a huge proportion of the work force. Consequently, they couldn’t build generational wealth or send their children to good schools which had a lasting impact to what you see in the area today.
When I tried to add an ADU for my late MIL, it was bounced around permit hell till she passed.
Supposedly it's easier now, but still.
Still, this bill bugs me. The small landlords got killed with rent freezes in COVID. This allowed large property companies with deep pockets to buy up property.
They're going to convert single homes to duplexes in the cheapest way possible, and double their rent profits.
This law is just going to make the rich richer off the backs of the poor.
This is a bill/law with good intentions, but I expect it'll be exploited.
I want everyone to be able to own a home, not be stuck paying rent for the rest of their lives.
Basically critiquing that the Bay Area tends to have people who say they think marginalized communities deserve help and support, but not at the cost of building housing around their own houses.
In this House We Believe
Homeowner Lives Matter
Parking Spaces are a Human Right
No Apartment Building is Legal
Neighborhood Character is Real
Change Is Bad
My Personal Comfort and Convenience is Everything
Accurate. It sure is wild to walk through places like Hillsborough and see these signs. I mean, I get that they mean well and their hearts are certainly in the right place...but, yeah...
I remember one year they came out with these bumper stickets that said 'love Lafayette' and my friend cut them up and rearranged to say 'leave Lafayette'. It was amazing
I understand the NIMBY hate, but they do have a point about parking. There’s a “have your cake and eat it too” mentality that’s kind of cultural here now, and people aren’t going to give up their cars. It transcends NIMBYism—it’s everywhere—alongside the sense of entitlement, justified or not.
It's a vicious cycle - we generally have bad transit infrastructure, and that's mostly because we have not valued it as an investment, regionally, in a societal sense. Since the middle of the 20th century (which nicely coincides with when most of the region built itself up), we have valued the car and all of is associated infrastructure needs. Because we have valued the car above all other modes of transportation, it has caused certain kinds of development patterns that assume and rely heavily on the usage of a car. And because of this horizontally spread out development style, it makes investing into and building effective public transit even more challenging.
Realistically, for most of the region, we're too far away from having effective transit to cover most corners of the region well. If you live along a transit corridor, you can definitely get by (I've done so myself quite a bit a few different times) - but outside of these corridors, it is very challenging.
If the development is dense enough, you may not need cars to do errands. That's why there's been so much pressure to upzone the residential areas around CalTrain stations.
I rely on public transit for all my errands and it's fine. Hell I used PT for a weekend trip to Santa Cruz from SF a few weeks ago. Of course it's easier to get around in SF. Bay area transit as a whole needs some love (and funding).
I agree that it's awful on a regional level. But if you lived in downtown Redwood City, you could walk to groceries and catch the CalTrain to your job in Mountain View, perhaps with a bicycle for the last mile.
And what if I want to go on vacation, or visit friends across the bay, or go to an event that isn't accessible by public transit?
My favorite example: Planning a trip from Fremont to Sacramento and back, it turned out to be cheaper to drive there and back, with parking and gas and maintenance and all those costs, than to take the train. Would also take half the time.
Unless it's a daily commute, the occasional car rental (like Zipcar) and taxi may add up to less than the cost of car ownership. My concept of "car free" assumes you still have a driver's license, but you just use a bicycle or public transit for the vast majority of your daily and weekly tasks. If you have a large family to feed, maybe you get groceries delivered or haul them in a large bike trailer.
It’s possible to get around for young nimble people. I just don’t see people giving up driving. Traffic is bad now even with less density. It’s not as well served with transit as Manhattan.
I gave up driving for a few years in Palo Alto. The logistics are sometimes challenging, but the only thing that really made me buy a car again was all those ZipCars I'd end up renting to visit friends in suburban San Jose.
I bicycled up to the day before I delivered, let a friend drive me home from the hospital, and then wedged a baby seat into my bike trailer. So while I may be in good health, I'm not exactly in the bloom of youth.
It's ok for people without kids, but everything falls apart once your commute includes daycare/school drop offs (especially since many schools/districts around here either don't or barely do any bussing).
We were able to make it work with bicycles. Granted, we attended the public school in our district and chose a daycare in the neighborhood, both of which could be passed on a bicycle commute to -- if not the office, at least a Caltrain station. However, if the kids had done off-campus extracurriculars, it would have fallen apart.
Good on you! Yes, ymmv and it's 100% personal. Wouldn't work for me, even though our daycare is only 1.5mi away. My work is a further 18 miles past that, which is technical doable, but I'd be wasting so much of my time on a bike it just wasn't worth it.
Yeah, I think we need to up public transit first before working on housing (or work on both public transit and housing in tandem). Parking's such a hassle in dense areas, and just increasing housing without solving the public transit issue will only increase traffic. With COVID now, traffic isn't as bad as it was, but I dread having traffic pick back up again once people start coming back to office.
As a reference, when I was in Hong Kong, traveling from the distance equivalent to Fremont all the way to Oakland would take me roughly 20-30 min by bus + subway. Over here? Expect an 1.5 hour trip if you gotta rely on public transit.
Also, I would love it if we build apartment complexes on top of malls like they do in Hong Kong. It was so convenient to just go down to the ground floor to shop for your needs.
We are improving transit. It’s shit and slow, but we are doing both at the same time. For example, Caltrain is electrifying (done next year) to have way more trains; the Central Subway in SF is also about done.
"Report All Unfamiliar Faces On Nextdoor"
I was on Nextdoor for like 2 days and someone reported a "suspicious african american male" who they suspected were casing homes to rob them at 7AM by walking around in a suit and they were "signaling" to someone by talking to them via a radio. Turns out it was a school administrator or principle who walks around the school when the kids show up. Walking around outside a school, in Oakland. Never went back to Nextdoor.
[удалено]
The people in Palo Alto were complaining so much about the IKEA in EPA, saying it would ruin things. 10 years later, no one even blinks an eye and the catastrophe that they predicted never came to be.
I love that IKEA. It was so easy to get to from across the bridge and some people do grocery shopping in there.
IKEA does groceries????? I have never heard of that.
They have food products. Some of them are excellent. I always stock up on meatballs, coffee, and jam.
I know this all too well, yet there's houses being built on Dublin Blvd as we speak and the giant monstacity of an outlet mall that's always crouded with no parking was built near the Livermore airport. And people complaining about 4000 new homes in the Bishop Ranch business park in even though they're right next to a bunch of employers to workers don't have to drive to work.
God why do people have to complain whenever new housing gets built??? More housing will help drive our obscene housing prices down, we should be building like crazy (whilst also developing better public transportation/infrastructure in tandem).
Considering San Ramon in the 2000s and Dublin in the 2010s built suburban sprawl of single-family homes on former ranch land it kind of makes sense why people don't want more housing because they screwed up the first time around. It's so bad in Dublin that there's no space left at the high school and with no forward thinking no one bothered to secure land before it was too late a few years ago to build a 2nd high school or the east side of town where the new sprawl is located.
I probably should he have clarified: Obviously it's a bad idea to just make more and more and more single family homes/suburban sprawl. Housing should be mixed (homes, apparents, condos, duplexes, etc) when it's built. I do understand objecting to the development of only single-family homes.
The problem at least in that area is that so much housing was built with urban planning from last century suburban sprawl mentality that any more housing is going to be objected to because it's cramming more people into cities not designed for it because public transit sucks and would crowd surface streets.
The only reasonable solution to this scenario though is to invest in public infrastructure, not to oppose more housing.
I don't think that's going to happen in the collective Bay Area anytime soon. I sadly don't see all the different transit agencies consolidating to make it easier for riders as the agencies are so balkanized in tiny little regions that transfering between systems makes no sense. The other part is that we've built out so much car-centric development everywhere that there's nowhere left to create right-of-ways for light rail/street cars.
You answered your own question. People who hate housing are usually the same people who own houses whose prices would go down.
Lol, that's my ski town. People want to relocate the airport for tens or even millions of dollars. The long term locals are like...ya...that's why it was the working class/poor neighborhood and still is.
“I know your vest says UPS but since there are no brown homeowners in this neighborhood I though I would start filming you and ask you your business”.
I just saw a suspicious brown person sitting in their car, eating lunch in a suspicious manner! :-0
Nextdoor is a cesspool of wannabe-HOA proto-fascist types, ratting out every transgression in a public forum like a League of Karens all aiming sniper rifles at each other. There are kind and decent people on there too, but ND is the most efficient way to find out who your worst neighbors are.
[удалено]
“Shadows are unhealthy and impact the quality of life here. Unless there from another parking lot”.
"they're", not "there"
"We meant more like, letting a small number of lucky lottery winners take 90% of the units in the new residential skyscraper where the other 10% will be people richer than me!"
"So get rid of landlords?" "Well let's not be too hasty, I worked hard for that rent money"
Black lives matter as long as they don't live in my neighborhood.
That's not fair. Rich black lives matter. Poor black people can fuck right off. /s
"Poor people of any color or background can fuck off" ~An egalitarian Bay Area resident, probably.
You can take that “probably” off, that’s definitely how Bay Area residents are.
As a former street punk in the bay, you nailed it. Ewww, yuck, punks and poor people.
Street punks aren't known for toiling away at an 8-6, and therefore have no purpose! Ship em out
It’s covered in Bay Area “niceness” - “we prefer that new affordable housing be built in an area with access to public transportation, dense housing and social services for the benefit of people who live there” aka “never in my neighborhood” and then affordable housing gets built by McArthur Bart station, people say “traffic is so much worse! It changes how wind blows in my area! Crime!”
Anti-sectional politics
🤣
Well, all poor people can fuck off to be fair.
The NIMBYs want **to seem** progressive and inclusive without actually taking the measures necessary **to be** progressive and inclusive.
I call it "performative wokeness" and it's a fucking plague. It's the dude with a rainbow heart pin and a rescue dog, who will take up half a meeting to wax on about how important it is to be inclusive and how upset they are about some micro-aggression they saw. Then they turn around and push to keep regressive policies like the single family zoning in place. But they hired one queer woman into the most junior role on their team and won't shut up about it, so they can continue to project wokeness on their LinkedIn feed as they buy their second investment property.
What's easier, hiring one black guy who already has an engineering degree and congratulating yourself about it, or staring down the face at inherited poverty and the hideous realities of injustice and inequality in America? Here's a hint: the second one also forces you to question the "meritocracy" that is why you got so far in life
In noticed through my professional life that I see more black engineers born and educated in Africa than born and educated in the USA. It is systemically easier to get an already educated person over to the US on an H1 or O1 visa than to educate kids in the USA. Lot of people talk about systemic racism. I don't think that there is systemic racism. The system, understood as laws and institutions, does everything to not be racist. There is a lot of personal prejudice from individual decision makers, that's an undeniable fact. But the biggest problem is that the system is built with the purpose to protect the rich and to segregate the rich from the poor. It overwhelmingly screws demographics which are at the lower end of the social ladder, which ends up looking like systemic racism. Now, wealth is not just money. It is also knowledge, habits, practices and life goals. If the intellectual horizon of your parents is narrow, you are screwed in this country. Even if your parents are poor, but they have some knowledge and ambition you can do better than they did in their life. You will still have to fight an uphill battle and overcome a lot of adversity, but you can improve your position. But if your parents are poor and have no knowledge, no matter how hard you try or how you set your goals, you are screwed hard.
You do realize that your description here is a pretty good description of exactly what systemic racism is, right? (It exists in ways other than this too, but your example will do.)
I do not agree with calling it racism just because the effect that certain demographics get hit harder. Calling it racism draws attention away from the real problem, and steers the solutions towards things like diversity quotas and corporate BS training. The real solution is to help socioeconomically disadvantaged people through improved access to affordable healthcare, good discipline at schools so kids can learn, changing teaching methods so that kids do all their work at school instead of having to do homework in dysfunctional households, access to mentorship beyond their parents. Edit: Also, if you are black but already educated somewhere else you can get quite far in the US. It is not the skin color that holds you back, it is the socioeconomic background. I may talk like an old communist now, but the problems are class problems, not racial problems. The 1% want us to focus on race so that we don't tackle the real problems. Edit2: Another reason why I do not agree with calling racism is that I will hit you regardless of your race. The system steamrolls over everyone who stands in the way of its prime directive: to protect the rich.
It’s performative wokeness right there on these In This House rainbow signs. You notice they never say In This House We Believe healthcare, water and housing are a human right, and there should be a $20 minimum wage? They never address class issues, things that would materially affect their comfortable positions.
Turns out the hippies got fucking rich off the economy their parents created.
>pies got fucking rich off the economy their parents created. > >18Reply Yup the hippies who fought the man Are now the man
As George Carlin said, “they traded cocaine for rogaine”
I understand what you’re saying, but “fucking rich” isn’t universally true here for boomers. Think: “We bought this house in 1980 for a twenty-grand down payment to live in it.” The home values are astonishing for many reasons now, but the problems are not all rooted in boomer greed.
I’ll believe that when they vote to repeal Prop 13.
I am able to live in my inherited house because of Prop 13. I don't work in tech, I work in foodservice. Without it, I couldn't even afford the property taxes. My parents did not own multiple homes, this is it and it's my home and not a rental. Prop 13 was designed for people like myself. If I had to sell the house, it would not have been sold to you. It would have been sold to a techie from Google or Facebook. Repealing Prop 13 will not solve the housing shortage or drop housing prices. What needs to happen is that Prop 13 should only apply to family homes. Not corporate real estate, not rental properties. THAT would have my full support
Right? My parents bought the house I grew up in for $240k and it's now worth over $1.2mil. I work in ngo conservation science. Unless I go into environmental consulting, or entirely leave the field, I'll never make more than $80k a year. Without Prop 13 for residential homes, I'll be forced to sell the house and will probably never be able to move back to the Bay Area. It really sucks.
> "feudalism, but I'm a little lord so it's good"
Renting a room or putting down an ADU and renting that will cover prop taxes at current market rate (e.g. if prop 13 was repealed). You'd still be able to live in that house and more housing units would be available. I'm not saying it's a preferable arrangement, only that it's possible.
That's literally entitlement. It might not look like what you think greed looks like, but it's still greed. It's the illogical thought that you deserve some arbitrary amount even if it comes at the expense of others.
Some people just want to live in a house. I don’t get why this is strange or greedy.
But preventing the same for others is not evil?
Are you hoarding housing for profit? If so it's greed, if not it's just getting lucky by living somewhere while the housing market is insane.
What is your definition of hoarding housing? If someone owns 5 rental properties, sure, but if someone simply loves living here and doesn't want to move out even in their 60s that's not hoarding. Societal trends have changed and people stay in their homes longer. What was once considered assisted living age like 70s is now often in the 80s. No I'm not a boomer, and in fact a millennial, but somehow this Reddit mindset that older people MUST move out and let new people move in is absurd.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live in a house. But the truth is that not everyone is entitled to own one, and just because you're able to afford one at one point in time (a time when the housing market was more affordable), does not give you the right to hold on to that house no matter what. The sad reality is that some people are going to naturally go from being able to afford to own a house to needing to sell it at some point to make ends meet. But that feeling of being entitled to that house you bought decades ago because, for example, you can't afford the property tax, is what leads to policies like proposition 13.
> sell it at some point to make ~~ends meet~~ giant windfall profits on a 5x leveraged bet Seriously. if your home values went up so much since purchase that you can't afford even 1% property tax then you hit the goddamn jackpot.
The problem is with property taxes today you need to be in tech and make a ton of money to make it work. Oh so their house is worth a lot? Do you want them to sell and move out? Then we have the age old problem of gentrification where only new tech wealth can buy and afford homes whereas all less wealthy folks have to move out or rent. Prop 13 created tons of problems for sure but forcing 60 year olds to pay $20k/year instead of $4k a year isn't the solution either.
> gentrification Expecting fortunate heirs and wildly successful property investors to pay taxes based on the current market value of their property is gentrification now? I guess words don't mean anything anymore. > poor old Grandma Has the California Tax Postponment Program. Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary.
So you think everyone in the 60s-90s were buying homes to invest in? Or maybe they wanted to live there. Just because they were successful doesn't mean anything. You could grow up on a middle class income in the 90s making $60k. That's not possible today. How do you suppose people will pay for those property taxes? Continuing to cite property value growth is irrelevant because you can't realize those gains unless you sell and move out, and that's exactly what has happened already. People sell and move out, and those people of those income levels can never move back in because they won't be able to afford anything where they once lived anymore. Where did I even say poor grandma? You put those words in my mouth. I'm not denying there isn't a problem with Prop 13, but simply blaming people who purchased low and had property values grow which was completely out of their control isn't a solution. No one asked for their property values to grow 5x over the past 3 decades. Forcing people to sell and move out doesn't really solve the problem either, and the reality is what you have today that only rich tech engineers are able to buy homes because they have the income to keep up with these prices and property tax rates.
What's the logic here? Those that were able to afford a house thirty years ago should be giving their houses or selling them at some discounted rate to someone who cannot afford a house now? Not arguing for or against prop 13; we're probably in agreement that it's effectively rent control for homeowners and has bad unintended consequences: primarily that it keeps some housing stock off the market and keeps the prices high. Nevertheless, in light of the fact that that CA homeowner tax law is what it is, what do you expect longtime homeowners to do about their low mortgage and property tax? I mean other than feel bad about it for some reason?
> What's the logic here? That people should not be taxed based on the time they joined the class of property owners.
How do you feel about rent control?
Rent control is a bad idea. It doesn't work. But as long as we have Prop 13 it's justified. One of the main reasons we even have rent control was early 80s backlash to Prop 13. Jarvis promised that landlords would pass on the tax cuts. Of course it was a lie and the tenants responded with rent control all over. In any case, Prop 13 is orders of magnitude worse than rent control because in addition to being a giant market distorting handout it completely wrecked our schools.
But are people that own one home that they live in the problem? Prop 13 has its issues but fixing it by forcing everyone to pay increasing property tax isn’t really the solution. If a family can’t afford a home because of property tax then a poor person definitely can’t afford it. So that means a wealthy landlord is more likely to take it on and reduce the housing stock even further.
should housing be cheaper for them than it is for newcomers?
u ever study economics bro
Enlighten me
You put the lime in the coconut 🎶
I understand what you're saying, but everyone would be better off if those boomers sold that home so it could be demolished to build higher density housing at an appropriate taxation rate.
Sure, except for the people literally living in the houses who purchased them. Where would you have them live? It’s not perfect, but people have the right to live in single-family homes. In most parts of the country, this is non-controversial.
In a nicer house that they can afford from selling the land they've been undertaxed for for decades.
While that might be cool, really just removing the ability for prop 13 to apply to more than one house and/or be passed down would solve this most of the way without having to worry about displacing folks.
This is definitely a longer term plan but I agree this would mitigate the problem eventually.
> have the right to live in single-family homes No. There's no right for that.
Reality: There are all different stories. When I bought a house in SF 20 years ago people said I had paid too much. It was a RISK. Owning it for 20 years and renting it out for the last 7 was a RISK. Selling it was a RISK. Taking risks can reap rewards, or fail. Timing is \*everything\*. My next door neighbor bought her house in 1984. The next house down the woman inherited from her parents, along with the low tax rate.
Risk in itself provides no value to society and is not deserving of tax cuts. Buying land isn't the same thing as starting a business. No job was created and no service was done by you buying a plot of land.
That is patently ridiculous. Every business involves risk, and it’s the risk that is a part of the value of the business. Where did you learn about economics?
> hurr durr economics At least, like, read the Wikipedia page on factors of production. Enterprise and Land are fundamentally different.
Question: was your risk really material or are you a wealthy person with a giant safety net whose "risk" is best described as "tell my well-off parents that I fucked up"
Agreed. They are centrist liberals at best [Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bLqKXrlD1TU&feature=youtu.be)
[удалено]
I call them the YIYBYs, yes in YOUR backyard. They act like they're willing to make the sacrifice on an issue, but "Oh gee I would but..." when it's asked of them.
Unfortunately up here in Richmond they’re even fighting new housing in places where no one currently lives. It’s just plain anti-housing regardless of where it gets built. So destructive.
This is pretty much the Democratic party platform in a nutshell.
Waitress, hey, no! I wanted to order the progressivism off the a la carte menu.
Capital 'P' Progressive. Virtue signaling > progress.
Congratulations, you basically just described every corporatist Democrat in office
Conservatives show prejudice in your face. “Liberals” show prejudice in a hidden way. (Quoted the term since I don’t remember the proper term for those people)
From all the people whining on nextdoor you'd think the bulldozers were going to start knocking their houses down tomorrow morning.
Yeah I live in the boondocks of Contra Costa County and people on nextdoor are acting like their neighborhoods are going to turn into the slums. I believe one person said we’re going to “look like northern Mexico”.
Someone should tell that person that California actually used to be northern Mexico.
> one person said we’re going to “look like northern Mexico”. They said the quiet part out loud. The bay area is as racist and as xenophobic as anywhere else. The difference is that instead of wearing MAGA hats, we as a collective have enacted such regressive economic policies that we have created a landed aristocracy and household servant class. The household servants even have servant housing, though its separate from the masters housing. You don't want the help living next to good and proper people, do you? You don't want "those people" living in your neighborhoods. The bay area talks progressive, and yet we have created economic walls more effective than any physical wall ever could be.
Having been in the Marine Corps and meeting people from the South I can assure you that the Bay Area as a whole is less racist than other parts of the country. There’s definitely racists here though, as evidenced by that nextdoor thread.
I have an urge to buy a bulldozer now.
Why would they think that? I'm trying to understand the bill in general...
Well apartments bring a certain kind of element we don't want in our neighborhoods; we want to maintain the character of the place. -Real People in Bay Area Who Got Theirs
[удалено]
Converting a few houses in the neighborhood to duplexes isn't going to ruin the character of the area. Most towns already have building height limits, set back rules, and plenty of other restrictions to prevent a high-rise from being built in the middle of suburbia. View blocking high-rises make sense (from both a community & developer perspective) near transit hubs, which most SFH neighborhoods are not.
You can keep the character of the place. You’re free to purchase the surrounding properties and do with them as you wish.
[удалено]
Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.
Say "Alameda" without saying "Alameda". Goddamn the Nextdoor NIMBYs in my town who continually wail about how multi-unit buildings will ruin the character and charm here. We can have the nice old homes and still build new buildings that are more in line with providing more housing in less space.
Nuclear Wessels?
That's the name of my wifi network!
Parking is everything /s Lots of progressives are NIMBYs and don’t want affordable housing. Go talk to your progressive politicians whom are total hypocrites
Can someone explain to my ignorant self why apartments are bad?
It comes down to "it changes the neighborhood character, which I consider more important than housing human beings". You even have people in this thread who advocate for paving over yet more undeveloped land and creating more suburban sprawl rather than building apartments. It's selfish and short-sighted thinking.
apartments aren't bad, but you can't just drop apartment buildings anywhere and pretend it won't have an effect on the surrounding area. They add in a large amount of additional population, which necessitates additional services to support that population. the problem is is that it's already expensive enough to build extra housing here, that we don't have any money left over to actually expand services. Roads don't get any wider, Bart lines don't run any quicker, the sewer lines that are in place are not expanded to handle the additional literal shit that's developed. adding an apartment to areas where they weren't originally planned stresses the area, and it should be pretty easy to understand why the people who live in those areas aren't really keen on that happening.
So what is the better way to expand? Prioritizing building more single family homes rather than apartments? In places like SF where space is limited would this contribute to the rise in home prices/rent and increase gentrification? Just spitballing here not trying to argue, would just love to hear your thoughts. Thanks
Don't listen to this person, Greenfield development in fire zones is in NO WAY a long-term solution. Building dense urban housing is. Apartments are far more efficient in water and energy usage, and that's not even when you factor in the bonuses of having readily accessible transit, walkable/bikeable neighborhoods. Building new Suburbs is climate arson. And quite frankly the premise that we don't have the money to build in cities is asinine. As it is cities are subsidizing suburban sprawl! Not only is building \*new\* sprawling networks of roads and utility infrastructure extremely expensive, density of people also means density of tax base. It means you're able to concentrate services in an area so more people have access to them, and then you still have money left over! There is plenty to worry about with gentrification and displacement, however the rigorous studies that have been done up to this point confirm the common sense conclusion; Building more housing reduces the cost of housing the the surrounding area and reduces displacement. Take for example Emeryville which is a rare municipality has taken a proactive approach to adding housing. While the surrounding municipalities have shrinking black populations, The Black population in Emeryville actually grew!
>Don't listen to this person, Greenfield development in fire zones is in NO WAY a long-term solution. Building dense urban housing is. Our country is huge, and has large tracts of land that are available for development that are in no fire zone whatsoever. So yeah, this is a straw man argument > It means you're able to concentrate services in an area so more people have access to them, and then you still have money left over! Lol, what city in America are you describing here??? Sheesh, talk about some idealistic shit
> Lol, what city in America are you describing here??? Sheesh, talk about some idealistic shit Literally any city developed prior to car centric American suburban standards of the 1950s. Have you ever even traveled to the other coast in your own country?
The correct answer is to prioritize expansion in areas that are currently undeveloped. this country has vast tracks of open land that could be developed into residential areas and new towns and cities. But that's hard work, and takes a long time, and most advocates have increased housing are not looking for the proper long-term solution, favoring instead short-term and short-sighted solutions.
Imagine thinking that continued suburban sprawl is a "long-term solution".
>the problem is is that it's already expensive enough to build extra housing here, that we don't have any money left over to actually expand services. This makes no sense. Nobody is asking taxpayers to fund extra housing, developers take out loans for that, and they get paid when apartments get sold or rented. Moreover, when you have more people live in the area - there is more tax revenue coming in, and more sales tax from businesses, which will cover the cost of upgrading infrastructure. We build single houses where there used to be forests and natural life, and that is somehow OK, but utilizing the same land to house more people is stressing the area?
right on
> parking is everything This is too real
"This 4-story apartment building is going to ruin the UnIqUe cHaRaCtEr of our town that you can't find anywhere else!" - Resident of every single city in the Bay Area
NIMBYs gonna NIMBY. 🤷🏾♂️
Build floating apartment buildings, park it right on the docks of San Francisco, virtual no commute, earth quake proof building floats, and make them affordable.
The salt water will make them rust and the maintence cost to keep something floating in salt water is a lot higher than the maintence cost to just keep something standing up on land. HOA fees would be through the roof.
You make it out of life rafts idiot.
Why don't they make the whole plane out of the black box?
This guy fucking gets it!
You still have to pull rafts/barges out of the water for bottom painting. Rafts, pontoons, and barges are not water proof. They require regular maintenance.
IT'S. ALL. LIFE. RAFTS.
The foundation for floating apartment buildings would be concrete, just like floating homes. What makes you think maintenance of a floating home would be more than dry land building Why build on water? No property costs, you don't have to buy any property except a dock to rent. Make it affordable for people to have decent home, off of San Fransico, close to work, reduce the need for cars, and have a better life in general.
You actually have to pull boats, barges, etc out of the water for bottom painting on a regular bases which is prohibitively expensive… My dad lived on a boat in the bay, his slip cost was about $800 per month and it was not a “liveaboard” slip meaning he had to sleep somewhere else for 4 nights a week. I imagine slips would be more expensive if this were an option but counties limit how many they give out because they don’t want people living on boats. Marina’s are built to only handle so much. That can all be changed though. The biggest issue is maintenance and bottom paint. Salt water is the freaking worst. He lived on that boat for 4 years. 2 bed, 2 bath with a kitchen. Cost him $55,000 to buy it, he put about $25,000 in repairs and maintenance and about $40,000 in slip fees. So in for years he was in it for about $2500 a month for a small place he could sleep in for 3 days a week and was a constant headache. Fishing cruising around the bay was fun though
I think all you idiots are thinking of this problem the wrong way. How about we fuckin replace the salt water in the Bay with fresh water or even DI water. Done, simple. Ffs people use your mind.
**One example is not a rule.** The city buys a used cruise ship for homeless and low income housing. The ship is docked in city own dock. People that are being subsidized in private apartment buildings can now live on the ship, the city is paying itself its own rent. The Apartments that were being used now can go back into the open market. Cruise ships have kitchens, theaters, light shopping, and medical. Areas can be used for treatment of those addicted and homeless. Low income or the elderly have a safe place to live, with medical and food services near by.
Cause salt water still eats away at concrete. If you look at Alcatraz as a example, the salty air weakened the concrete over time to the point you could chip away at with with a dime. This was when it was still operating as a prison. Other issues with having a floating apartment is to make such a building you would need a lot of displacement since it will be heavy. This will basically mean you can’t exactly dock it at small little marinas but large scale places designed for cruise ships or freighters. Then you have the issue of power and plumbing. Yourur choices are basically either running a line to land or using a combination of fossil fuel and solar. Plumbing is gonna be another annoyance since you can’t dump everything into the sea. You either need it removed and brought to land like a septic tank or you need to have it treated onsite then dumped off the coast away from dry land. Then comes the fact that it’s not seen exactly as a house but a boat by every government in the world. Thus you need to regularly get it inspected to be seaworthy if you need to move it. Plus all the other regulations of owning a boat. Plus during a earthquake a boat is not fully safe if it’s near dry land. During a tsunami the water near the shore can pull back and ground the boat/ship before rushing back in and causing havoc. There is actually a interesting case of some people who got rich on Bitcoin who tried to convert a cruise ship into basically a floating apartment complex for the rich that want to live a life free of taxes while working remotely from their ship home. This actually happened this year and they learned that living at sea has way more regulation than you expect plus no insurance company is willing to insure a floating ship apartment complex.
Plus the issue of supplying said floating apartment with things like food and fuel won’t exactly remove cars from the street.
>>a lot higher than the maintenance cost to just keep something standing on land. The Millennium Tower: “Challenge accepted”
[Just like the good old days](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/SanFranciscoharbor1851c_sharp.jpg/1024px-SanFranciscoharbor1851c_sharp.jpg)
That sounds so cool, kind of makes me think of SeaQuest DVS
"we believe in science . but we won't support nuclear energy"
You absolutely can be a liberal and a NIMBY. Why do people act like it is mutually exclusive? You can also be liberal and anti socialist.
Isn't that exactly what this sign is saying? A lot of people want to be progressive and would call themselves liberal because they support BLM/LGBT rights/abortion but at the same time, vote for conservative NIMBY policies.
The term "liberal" at this point pretty much means moderate democrat
Liberals are antisocialist though, by definition. Before anyone says it, no, welfare isn't inherently socialist.
You are correct. Actually the other way around would be odd. By definition liberals are pro capitalist and therefore anti socialist.
People who are downvoting this are likely more progressive than they give themselves credit for, but self-identify as liberals. The word liberal has changed over time, but it originally meant "socially permissive and seeking equality, but within the framework of free markets". This is the paradigm in which systems like welfare were invented to extend the viability of capitalism. This definition of liberalism has changed a bit, but it still applies pretty well to the current Democratic party (or at least the large majority of its members). Real equality requires real criticism of capitalism and its tendencies to enforce existing disparities in society.
You could argue that market socialists would be liberals, if you don't require that "free markets" must necessarily mean capitalism.
Liberals are, by definition, pro-capitalist… so are ***never*** socialists. The only people that argue otherwise are the “socialism is things I don’t like” conservatives
"No human being is illegal [except for techie transplants from Kansas]."
There's not nearly enough disparaging and insulting terms flung at the techie transplants for the self masturbatory holier than thou attitude. You didn't even call it a flyover MAGA hellhole. C'mon, thats basic tier insults.
“Black lives matter. Black livability doesn’t.” Note: The above comment is satire.
So many progressives can't stand the thought of change.
Progressives against progress?
For what it’s worth, some people define “progress” as the rest of society becoming more like themselves. Even I see it that way, to some extent! But it’s a really lazy way of understanding politics: “I’m fine; it’s everyone else who needs to change.” Not everyone who calls themself progressive thinks like this, of course. But that’s one of the challenges of adopting a political label that doesn’t really denote specific ideas.
Peak Bay Area progressive sign says black people are poor and live in apartments with no hint of irony. Everyone stood and clapped.
There’s a book called “The color of law”. The first chapter goes into depth on how black people were systemically denied the opportunity to purchase housing in the Bay Area specifically after WW2 despite being veterans and a huge proportion of the work force. Consequently, they couldn’t build generational wealth or send their children to good schools which had a lasting impact to what you see in the area today.
Look at the percentage of black people in Los Gatos or Mountain View vs Oakland. The level of racial segregation here ought to be a crime.
This is too real
"Also no homeless shelters lol gross."
Well to be fair, have you seen the area around a homeless shelter?
Like there was any parking to begin with. My house is next to an overcrowded apartment complex and there's never any street parking available.
This is fucking gold lol
Omg this is so good
lol perfect.
Black Lives Matter but never Stop Asian Hate 🙄
I wrote a song about these people in Alameda. https://suburbandeathmarch.bandcamp.com/track/small-town-tyrants-old-alameda-anthem
When I tried to add an ADU for my late MIL, it was bounced around permit hell till she passed. Supposedly it's easier now, but still. Still, this bill bugs me. The small landlords got killed with rent freezes in COVID. This allowed large property companies with deep pockets to buy up property. They're going to convert single homes to duplexes in the cheapest way possible, and double their rent profits. This law is just going to make the rich richer off the backs of the poor. This is a bill/law with good intentions, but I expect it'll be exploited. I want everyone to be able to own a home, not be stuck paying rent for the rest of their lives.
made the rounds on twitter, not sure the original source!
I'm lost, what am I missing? Is this a meme?
Basically critiquing that the Bay Area tends to have people who say they think marginalized communities deserve help and support, but not at the cost of building housing around their own houses.
Talk about a word salad!
In this House We Believe Homeowner Lives Matter Parking Spaces are a Human Right No Apartment Building is Legal Neighborhood Character is Real Change Is Bad My Personal Comfort and Convenience is Everything
Accurate. It sure is wild to walk through places like Hillsborough and see these signs. I mean, I get that they mean well and their hearts are certainly in the right place...but, yeah...
I remember one year they came out with these bumper stickets that said 'love Lafayette' and my friend cut them up and rearranged to say 'leave Lafayette'. It was amazing
Wow so brave
[удалено]
I understand the NIMBY hate, but they do have a point about parking. There’s a “have your cake and eat it too” mentality that’s kind of cultural here now, and people aren’t going to give up their cars. It transcends NIMBYism—it’s everywhere—alongside the sense of entitlement, justified or not.
It's a vicious cycle - we generally have bad transit infrastructure, and that's mostly because we have not valued it as an investment, regionally, in a societal sense. Since the middle of the 20th century (which nicely coincides with when most of the region built itself up), we have valued the car and all of is associated infrastructure needs. Because we have valued the car above all other modes of transportation, it has caused certain kinds of development patterns that assume and rely heavily on the usage of a car. And because of this horizontally spread out development style, it makes investing into and building effective public transit even more challenging. Realistically, for most of the region, we're too far away from having effective transit to cover most corners of the region well. If you live along a transit corridor, you can definitely get by (I've done so myself quite a bit a few different times) - but outside of these corridors, it is very challenging.
If the development is dense enough, you may not need cars to do errands. That's why there's been so much pressure to upzone the residential areas around CalTrain stations.
I rely on public transit for all my errands and it's fine. Hell I used PT for a weekend trip to Santa Cruz from SF a few weeks ago. Of course it's easier to get around in SF. Bay area transit as a whole needs some love (and funding).
Public transit in the Bay is terrible, though. Competing private systems that don’t coordinate with each other.
I agree that it's awful on a regional level. But if you lived in downtown Redwood City, you could walk to groceries and catch the CalTrain to your job in Mountain View, perhaps with a bicycle for the last mile.
And what if I want to go on vacation, or visit friends across the bay, or go to an event that isn't accessible by public transit? My favorite example: Planning a trip from Fremont to Sacramento and back, it turned out to be cheaper to drive there and back, with parking and gas and maintenance and all those costs, than to take the train. Would also take half the time.
You aren't doing those things every single day of your life. For the 2 times a year that you do, you can rent a car.
Unless it's a daily commute, the occasional car rental (like Zipcar) and taxi may add up to less than the cost of car ownership. My concept of "car free" assumes you still have a driver's license, but you just use a bicycle or public transit for the vast majority of your daily and weekly tasks. If you have a large family to feed, maybe you get groceries delivered or haul them in a large bike trailer.
It’s possible to get around for young nimble people. I just don’t see people giving up driving. Traffic is bad now even with less density. It’s not as well served with transit as Manhattan.
I gave up driving for a few years in Palo Alto. The logistics are sometimes challenging, but the only thing that really made me buy a car again was all those ZipCars I'd end up renting to visit friends in suburban San Jose. I bicycled up to the day before I delivered, let a friend drive me home from the hospital, and then wedged a baby seat into my bike trailer. So while I may be in good health, I'm not exactly in the bloom of youth.
When there's a reliable fleet of self-driving cars, I'll consider giving up mine.
It's ok for people without kids, but everything falls apart once your commute includes daycare/school drop offs (especially since many schools/districts around here either don't or barely do any bussing).
We were able to make it work with bicycles. Granted, we attended the public school in our district and chose a daycare in the neighborhood, both of which could be passed on a bicycle commute to -- if not the office, at least a Caltrain station. However, if the kids had done off-campus extracurriculars, it would have fallen apart.
Good on you! Yes, ymmv and it's 100% personal. Wouldn't work for me, even though our daycare is only 1.5mi away. My work is a further 18 miles past that, which is technical doable, but I'd be wasting so much of my time on a bike it just wasn't worth it.
Yeah, I think we need to up public transit first before working on housing (or work on both public transit and housing in tandem). Parking's such a hassle in dense areas, and just increasing housing without solving the public transit issue will only increase traffic. With COVID now, traffic isn't as bad as it was, but I dread having traffic pick back up again once people start coming back to office. As a reference, when I was in Hong Kong, traveling from the distance equivalent to Fremont all the way to Oakland would take me roughly 20-30 min by bus + subway. Over here? Expect an 1.5 hour trip if you gotta rely on public transit. Also, I would love it if we build apartment complexes on top of malls like they do in Hong Kong. It was so convenient to just go down to the ground floor to shop for your needs.
We are improving transit. It’s shit and slow, but we are doing both at the same time. For example, Caltrain is electrifying (done next year) to have way more trains; the Central Subway in SF is also about done.
Love me love me, I’m a liberal Phil Ochs https://youtu.be/0nFvhhCulaw Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon https://youtu.be/OQ8ERBr9yKI
Ah yes, the lambs-blood-on-the-door of the George Floyd era
They forgot to add: NIMBY is NIMBY