I live at the end of the BART, and our houses are only affordable if you use Cupertino as a baseline. I haven’t checked prices in Dublin recently, but I doubt they’d be considered affordable for most of the country. I don’t know if people are still doing 3 - 4 hour commutes to get to affordable housing like they did in 2007, but I bet they are. 580 is crowded enough.
It is a hard problem to solve, but it is a problem.
The zoning laws aren’t the only problem. Right before my commute took me past lots of high density condos in San Jose and Santa Clara. They screwed up traffic real good, but didn’t seem to make a dent in housing prices. We’re fairly built out, and while I’m all for building high density houses near transportation centers, it’s not going to solve the problem for the middle class, not to mention lower income people.
It represents a cost on their children as well. And we all know the children today become the tax-paying citizens of tomorrow. You have to worry about the societal ramifications of having a large cohort of parents who are too tired at the end of the day to help with homework or make healthy dinners or read bedtime stories. Do kids somehow magically cope with these things? Or do we end up with a generation of illterate layabouts who only confirm the worst fears of living next to the rabble and the hoi-polloi?
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“They should just move” is very truthy, but not nearly as simple as you make it sound.
For this and other reasons, we need to eliminate “local” counties, cities, and towns and do this planning on a metropolitan-wide basis, to reflect the true needs and costs to the economy and community as a whole. The very fact that these tiny jurisdictions exist in the first place is to enable affluent whites, in particular, to benefit from the economy while escaping the consequences of their own lifestyles. It makes no sense from the perspective of the larger economy or society to put so much power in the hands of so few.
If it keeps going in the direction that the OP wants, then I suppose one outcome would be that people like the OP would have to provide housing on their own property for their groundskeepers, governesses, etc.
Hmm … kinda reminds me of feudalism.
People like the OP don’t seem to realize there’s such a thing as prosperity sprawl. It’s not just the middle and lower classes who move a town or six away and commute: as the self-styled patricians are forced to find housing a bit farther away, those housing prices become ridiculous as well.
But hey, if you want to keep middle- and lower-class people out of your town, OP, let’s also keep the wealthy out ofmiddle-class towns. Tearing down attractive little houses so they can build bloated McMansions that take up entire lots and block the view isn’t doing the rest of us any favors.
I wonder if NIMBYists tend to be the same people who expect their young adult children to live on your own after a certain age. It is pretty hard to live on your own when you are just starting out if there is no stock of affordable housing. So I wonder how many NIMBYists are fans of multigenerational households. And how many NIMBYists are fine with their grandchildren attending subpar public schools since the neighborhooda with “par” schools are too expensive for their adult children.
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Another way to look at this is that the OP’s property value is substantially made up of a public subsidy, in the form of zoning restrictions. But someone is paying for this subsidy, and that’s everyone who is affected by skyrocketing housing costs, and bearing the brunt of the resulting negative externalities.
A great alternative is building much smaller, working-week rentals on the edge of cities. It’s worked so well in other countries.
Zero. People do, they share, they rent rooms of houses, they rent out rooms.
But yeah, you can find 'reasonable" price places within 30 minutes.
Unless you’re prepared to rent a room to your kids’ teachers, They’ll be riding the luxury bus to Gilroy. Heck, maybe just turn the buses into classrooms.
Subsidized housing is a facet of the overall scenario, but it’s not one that I’m focused on. I’m talking about zoning, density, and state mandates of cities primarily.
Why do you think the housing stock has to increase? Someone mentioned Belvedereup thread.Here is the one for Belvedere. The RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) is listed in table 30, which mandates that Belvedere needs to provide for 16 additional housing units across multiple income levels by 2023. Why is it appropriate that the state mandate that Belvedere increase its housing stock? It’s not like any low income people are going to be able to live in a place where the median home price is in excess of $2M.
This is a good point, but only to the extent that the entirety of law enforcement breaks down. Barring that, this problem is addressed with more prisons, maybe in Bakersfield. 
Commute times in the bay area can get quite high. At every job I’ve been at, I’ve known people who commute greater than 2 hours each way. Public transit is somewhat passable, although I hate it for many other reasons. But that’s only if you work in SF proper because SF is treated like a hub.
I don’t really agree or have concerns with the current income/housing situation. Ultimately if people can’t afford to live where they want, they should get used to disappointment and move somewhere they can afford.
High wage earners are not living in their cars, at least not with any significant magnitude, and not unless it’s by choice.
For those people that commute a long distance - they made a choice. They don’t have to work and live in a place that is virtually unaffordable except for the affluent. It sucks to commute a long way. I used to do it - about a 4.5 hour commute round trip. I saved money. I worked my ass off. But that was my choice and for me the tradeoff was worth it.
There is “inclusionary housing” in every city. But the cost is variable based on local metrics. It’s usually keyed off of a percent of median income.
Of course, the farther away from the economic center you go, the lower the price, typically. Eventually those will increase in price as demand rises, and around those areas another economic center may arise. Eventually those on the lower rung of income will be pushed out of those areas as well. Rinse repeat. The market will work, and those that can’t afford to live in a given place will have to move. That’s the whole point, no one has right to live in a certain place at a certain price.
And this is the approach that Newsome and others are taking in CA. Consolidating power at the state level and reducing local control and governance. This is precisely what I’m opposed to. Look at the recent example of Huntington Beach. The state is suing the city for not updating their zoning plan fast enough:
Why does this smaller, affluent coastal city need to have the same state wide housing mandates imposed the same way is done for SF, LA, San Jose, or Oakland?
Here’s one of many cites I found refuting the OP’s claim of reduced property values. the worst that could happen is a modest reduction in the skyrocketing rate of increased value.
“Just move” might work for single and young people, but there are tons of people who just can’t move without abandoning elderly/disabled family or their children. NIMBYism does a lot of harm to these folks, just to benefit relatively well-off people. Does this concern you at all, Bone?
It’s rich to see someone hanging an argument on “the free market will work” when there’s not a free market. In an actual free market, when demand rises, low density “suburban”-style housing would be torn down and replace with high density housing, allowing demand, supply, and cost to re-equilibriate. The OP is actively blocking the free market and then calling it a free market solution.
Exactly. Local government regulation is still regulation, and what the OP is arguing for is extremely tight regulation of the housing market by his local government. Bone, you’re arguing for the opposite of a free market housing solution.
Here’s a sample of NYC affordable housing in my neighborhood that has pretty much pissed off people on both sides of the debate.
The link describes 7 affordable apartments, 3 1-bedroom and 4 2-bedroom. A quote from the link
“The one bedroom units are priced at $2000 a month and are available for household sizes of up to two people. The minimum income to qualify begins at $68,572.00 and goes up to $100,200.00”. Then it describes the higher requirements for the two bedroom units.
There are programs where developers can get tax credits or abatements in exchange for putting a certain number of “affordable” below market rent units in their buildings. These apartments are awarded via highly competitive lotteries. Lotteries that may not be completely honest - I haven’t read any news stories regarding fraud in the lotteries but I once met someone that got into an affordable housing unit because her son knew someone and pulled some strings.
The issues with the units in the linked article are:
1: The market value rent for these units is probably only about 20-25% more than the subsidized rents. And rents in these new luxury style buildings are considerably higher than the rents in the older prewar buildings. So the subsidized affordable rent is actually in line with rents in the area. Yet the developer is getting huge concessions, and they will probably cheap out on the finishes in the affordable units, bringing them even closer in line to market rents.
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These affordable rents are taxpayer subsidized ( either directly or indirectly ). Yet they are not available to people making less than 68K a year. People with 6 figure incomes are eligible for these subsidized apartments. And there aren’t a lot of them ( the apartments, not people who qualify for them). I’m a pretty solid liberal and I don’t have much of a problem with my tax dollars helping folks that are less fortunate than me. I don’t much like them used to help folks that are more fortunate than me because they won a lottery.
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I’m suspicious. I’m concerned that these subsidized rentals are all going to be going to the adult children of people that know someone and can pull some strings. This program seems really corruption prone.
Yep.
I don’t believe I’ve asserted that the free market will work. I fully acknowledge that restrictive zoning rules are not an example of the free market at work. It is a market that is heavily impacted and influenced by local and state regulation. Nothing is going to change that aspect, so to the extent it exists, I’d want to use it to push policies I find favorable. This is a ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’ scenario.
It’s unfortunate for them, certainly. It’s a concern also. But not enough to make me change my evaluation or desired outcome.