The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: Unionville on April 05, 2019, 06:18:38 PM
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I live in a Bay Area neighborhood of teachers and plumbers, but now outsiders are moving in and paying almost $3 million cash for a house because they like our neighborhood. But these same buyers rarely interact with the community, especially when they should (one of them got broken into). Curious if anyone else has experienced a sudden neighborhood wealth gap and how it changed your community.
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Is it solely a wealth gap or a culture gap as well? My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.
The Bay Area was a nice place to live prior to the late 1980's. Not so much today for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.
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This is happening in my community, except homes are being purchased as "vacation homes or rentals" and the real owners of the homes are rarely actually in my town, or interacting with our community. Instead, random VRBO guests come every weekend, and the neighborhoods are now just filled with tourists who stay up late drinking, being super loud, and parking in really annoying ways. What used to be a quiet small town is now completely unsustainable because of real estate prices, and the demand for short term rentals...it's pretty much ruining our neighborhoods, and small town community.
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I've noticed a positive change - parts of my neighbourhood which used to be ratty and run-down are now replaced with upscale apartments, cafes and open spaces.
Unfortunately there's always a price to pay with gentrification - some people like the old times, some like the new times.
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I live in a Bay Area neighborhood of teachers and plumbers, but now outsiders are moving in and paying almost $3 million cash for a house because they like our neighborhood. But these same buyers rarely interact with the community, especially when they should (one of them got broken into). Curious if anyone else has experienced a sudden neighborhood wealth gap and how it changed your community.
Don't worry. With house prices tripling, your county will continue to raise property taxes to a point where the teachers and plumbers can't afford it. Then all that will be left are the rich folks that interact with each other.
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I live in a Bay Area neighborhood of teachers and plumbers, but now outsiders are moving in and paying almost $3 million cash for a house because they like our neighborhood. But these same buyers rarely interact with the community, especially when they should (one of them got broken into). Curious if anyone else has experienced a sudden neighborhood wealth gap and how it changed your community.
Don't worry. With house prices tripling, your county will continue to raise property taxes to a point where the teachers and plumbers can't afford it. Then all that will be left are the rich folks that interact with each other.
This is California. Crazy property tax increases don't happen there.
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Don't worry. With house prices tripling, your county will continue to raise property taxes to a point where the teachers and plumbers can't afford it. Then all that will be left are the rich folks that interact with each other.
One small benefit of CA where you don't completely get ripped off (like all other areas) is that they can only increase the assessed value by a max of 2% each year, below the inflation rate. The longer you own, the lower your property tax is relatively speaking (i.e. people who purchased 20 years ago pay very little in property tax). It's a huge advantage of owning real estate here, if you can get over the initial hurdle of a high purchase price.
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Why would a teacher or a plumber choose to live in the bay area??? What is going on!?!?
Take your cash and get out while you can.
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I have recently had a similar experience from the opposite side (though renting, not buying). Some of our neighbors were nice and welcomed us to the neighborhood, while others won't even say hi. We tried to invite people over for welcome party and about half showed up (mostly the ones who also have kids). There was no correlation with their wealth or how long they've lived in the neighborhood. I think a lot of this is due to people essentially being too busy at work to have free time, and not wanting to use any of that free time to interact with people they don't already know. I live in southern California in an area prized for its nice weather, and see almost no adults (other than our friends with kids) who spend greater than 30 minutes outside. Same thing with parks: only people there are parents, children, and bums. I guess the internet and TV are more interesting than neighbors.
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Don't worry. With house prices tripling, your county will continue to raise property taxes to a point where the teachers and plumbers can't afford it. Then all that will be left are the rich folks that interact with each other.
One small benefit of CA where you don't completely get raped (like all other areas) is that they can only increase the assessed value by a max of 2% each year, below the inflation rate. The longer you own, the lower your property tax is relatively speaking (i.e. people who purchased 20 years ago pay very little in property tax). It's a huge advantage of owning real estate here, if you can get over the initial hurdle of a high purchase price.
Here's a hint. People here generally don't like jokes about rape, even if you're being fun and flighty.
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This is happening in my community, except homes are being purchased as "vacation homes or rentals" and the real owners of the homes are rarely actually in my town, or interacting with our community. Instead, random VRBO guests come every weekend, and the neighborhoods are now just filled with tourists who stay up late drinking, being super loud, and parking in really annoying ways. What used to be a quiet small town is now completely unsustainable because of real estate prices, and the demand for short term rentals...it's pretty much ruining our neighborhoods, and small town community.
Sounds exactly like my town. It is sad.
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This has happened in the neighborhood where I grew up in NYC. Growing up it was a mixture of artists and musicians with some relatively low-earning professionals like teachers, journalists, human rights lawyers, film makers, writers etc. My parents were in one of those categories. Things were kind of counter-culture in my neighborhood growing up and it was nice to grow up around creative people who weren't money focused. Lots of health food stores, book stores and record stores.
Fast-forward to now and the only people who can afford my old neighborhood are Wall Street types. They mostly don't come from the city, are obsessed by money and have armies of "help" who do everything for them. In my father's building there have been several clashes between the young Wall Street types, who don't want to spend a cent on maintaining the building (that's how they got rich, I suppose) and couldn't care less about getting on with their neighbors and the old "hippy' types who still live there. The hippy types are really shocked by the Wall Streeters life stype - private school for the kids, nannies, house in the Hamptons, ski vacations. And the Wall Streeters appear to be kind of jealous that the hippy types paid so little for their apartments back in the day. Because they paid mega-bucks for their apartments, they don't want the hippy types to do anything to 'bring down the tone' of the building. For example, one elderly musician cycles around NYC on an ancient bike (he's done this for the 40 years that I've known him) and leaves it parked in the lobby. The Wall Streeters tried to get him to take his bike upstairs. The hippy types were outraged.
The neighborhood is now totally bland - full of expensive baby boutiques and pilates studios. The book and record stores are gone as are all the bodegas, shoe repair places etc. Literally the cheapest place to buy food in the neighborhood now is Whole Foods - there are several stores that cost more.
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I live in southern California in an area prized for its nice weather, and see almost no adults (other than our friends with kids) who spend greater than 30 minutes outside. Same thing with parks: only people there are parents, children, and bums. I guess the internet and TV are more interesting than neighbors.
The same thing can be said for kids too. When I was a kid, I had plenty of video games to play, internet to surf and TV to watch but I was outside just about everyday rain or shine — it just seemed like the natural thing to do as a kid. Maybe it's just the neighborhood that I live in, but as an adult, I rarely see anyone outside unless they're taking their dog for a walk, racing down the street going 20 mph over the speed limit in their clown car or when the power goes out in the neighborhood. I think people are too consumed by their smart phones, internet, tv, amazon.com shopping and social media to realize there's a world outside their own. It may not necessarily be a wealth or culture thing.
As far as immigrants moving into a neighborhood and keeping to themselves — they may just need time to acclimate to the rest of the neighborhood's culture and community. As a non-caucasian individual, I never really know what beliefs my immediate neighbors hold towards culture's and individuals that differ from their own. I assume the best in everyone until proven otherwise, but I prefer to "trust but verify" before outwardly introducing myself. With that said, if someone waves, says hi, or attempts to welcome me to the neighborhood, I certainly welcome and enjoy the interaction.
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I'm an immigrant where I live now - although I'm white and most of the people around me are white. I look a bit 'different' and my language and culture are different which creates a bit off a barrier. Sometimes when people hear by accent, they recoil and assume that they have to speak to me like I'm 5 years old. I have to admit that my best friend is a fellow immigrant from the US. We share not just a language but also a culture and the experience of fitting into and raising kids in a foreign culture. I have plenty of Italian friends and speak the language well, but Italians tend not to have had the experience of living in a foreign culture and they have their families around them. My experience here has definitely given me a new perspective on immigrants in my home country - the US. Especially when you have kids, it's nice to hang onto the culture of your childhood. For example, my American friend and I are organizing an Easter Egg hunt (and we're dying Easter Eggs) on Easter. Italians don't do this but it's something that we preserve from our culture.
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I also agree the rape comment being inappropriate
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Not so much about blending into the community but the biggest change I have noticed is the Mom and Pop shops are leaving. The You Pull It junk yard I used for cheap car parts just closed. Small non-chain restaurants are leaving.
The second is the type and cost of home services. Two years ago I got my first flyer about a company that will hang Holiday lights on my house for me. Now there are several companies that advertise this. When neighbors discuss or I see flyers for lawn care, handyman, and tradesmen the cost for the work is shockingly (to me) expensive.
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Objectively, I don't see that much of a difference between a person who would spend $1MM vs $3MM on a house. Perhaps I don't understand. It seems out of reach for a household of a teacher and a plumber to afford the first value. Many of those households probably also have a working tech person or skilled medical clinician. I would argue that perhaps when you spent $1MM on your home, you may have displaced the first round of people who were truly lower working class and you might not have noticed it.
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Well, communities change. I live in my childhood home, and I've seen my neighborhood go from middle class to upper class. People come in here, pay $1MM for a house, tear it down, and spend another $1MM on a new one, that's as big as they can make it within the lot lines and a cookie-cutter McMansion. A lot of them appear to have way more money than brains, and it'll be fascinating at the next downturn to see how many have been swimming naked.
But there are also a lot of really nice new people as well. And you can tell a lot about the newcomers by how they treat the remaining middle- and lower-middle-class people who bought smaller properties decades ago and are still hanging on. Some people appear standoffish just because they're busy and don't have a lot of time to socialize, but will spend a few minutes chatting if you run into them when you're picking up your mail, walking your dog, etc.
I'm taking the position of "I'm thisclose to FI, and will be retired in my 40s, having achieved what I wanted to. I don't have anything to prove, and can be friendly to everyone." As a bonus, that attitude really messes with the minds of the social climbers. I can be nice and still confuse the hell out of the snobs.
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I forgot to mention - be really careful how you choose to think about new immigrants moving into your community. Racism and xenophobia can sneak into your thoughts awfully easily. They may be cliquish out of an abundance of caution, given that racism and xenophobia has experienced a resurgence in the world lately, and is suddenly "acceptable" in a way that is just... shitty.
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I find this whole thread interesting and sort of alien in terms of the idea of 'a neighborhood culture or community'.
Do you guys mean how houses/yards are kept? Or neighborhood events that people go to, and if so, what events do you mean? Or somehow getting to know the names of the people up and down your street, and if so, how? Or actual socializing with neighbors, as in developing real friendships?
I ask not b/c I want this sort of neighborhood, but b/c I'm almost 50 and I've never lived anywhere that any of these occur, or if they do occur, they are not happening where I can see it (apart from parents attending athletic games down the street at the grade school; some of them presumably get to know each other).
Honestly, it would never in a million years occur to me to hang out with neighbors...I've lived on the same street for almost 20 years and I only know the name of 1 or 2 people on the street b/c our mail person mis-delivers mail constantly. I mean, we greet people on our street when we are out walking, but we've hardly ever 'met' any of them. I realize that both my husband and I are nature-oriented introverts, who would prefer to live miles from other people, if it were an option, but I'm wondering if I'm totally blind to some sort of 'culture' that is occurring all around us. Maybe it's that we don't have kids, and thus are not 'automatically' exposed to other adults on our street that have kids. Or maybe it's that we've lived 20 years in a 'starter' neighborhood (because it's mustachian LOL) with quite a bit of turnover. On the other hand, during college, we lived in a very ritzy, old, prestigious, established neighborhood in Tucson, and we were constantly out and about walking and biking, and we almost never even SAW people there, let alone 'neighborhood activities'.
Regardless, it's an interesting topic. I know both my parents grew up in the 50s in neighborhoods where people socialized all the time. And a couple of my childhood friends grew up in the same neighborhoods, and there was still some of that vibe during the 70s, but I thought that was a long-gone era.
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wenchsenior - in the NYC of my childhood we knew everyone. Maybe because we were all in apartment buildings and walked or took the subway everywhere. So I've known all the "hippy" neighbors of my dad since childhood. I knew all the store and bodega owners and the other kids on my street as we used to all play outside on the sidewalk. Now that the neighborhood has become a rich person's playground, there's a huge cultural chasm between the working artists or a journalists who have been there since the 70s and the Wall Street hedge fund owners. The Wall Street people are all about money and lots of it and the artists, journalists etc care about other things.
I think in the suburbs people often don't know their neighbors. I guess that's because people drive everywhere and don't live in apartments. In both my old neighborhood in NYC and where I live now we see the same people all the time at community events, in the park, in the elevator, on the street at the local stores. After a while, you get to know all their names. For example, last night I was drinking a glass of wine with friends on the street outside the wine bar on the end of my street and three people I knew walked past and sat down briefly with us to chat.
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Here's a hint. People here generally don't like jokes about rape, even if you're being fun and flighty.
Sorry about that, you're right. I was being careless with language there, I'll be more careful in the future.
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Objectively, I don't see that much of a difference between a person who would spend $1MM vs $3MM on a house. Perhaps I don't understand. It seems out of reach for a household of a teacher and a plumber to afford the first value. Many of those households probably also have a working tech person or skilled medical clinician. I would argue that perhaps when you spent $1MM on your home, you may have displaced the first round of people who were truly lower working class and you might not have noticed it.
Just to clarify my original statement - none of the teachers/plumbers I mentioned paid 1 million for their house. When I said housing prices tripled, that was just tripling from about 5 years ago. The teachers/plumbers bought their houses several decades ago when a teacher's salary could buy a house. My immediate neighbor is still a delivery man who is the main breadwinner for his household - but he can only continue doing that because they bought their house in a "normal" market.
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We've had a similar phenomenon happen in Seattle. I moved here a decade ago and house prices have doubled since then. My neighborhood used to be pretty middle class, somewhat popular with student renters since we're less than two miles from the university. Now it's next to impossible to buy a home here without a six-figure salary. Many of the old, smaller homes have been demolished in favor of 3,000 square foot mini-mansions that sell for $1.5 million or more.
This change has led to some disagreements about zoning policy, breaking largely along generational lines. The people who have been here for 30 years still have it in their heads that this neighborhood is affordable for all sorts of folks and so there's no need to change anything.
However when the only thing that anyone can build anymore is a $1.5 million house for one rich family, whatever income diversity we still have in this area isn't going to last long. A lot of us are pushing to liberalize the zoning restrictions. If you can build a huge home for one rich family for $1.5 million, why can't you build something the same size and shape with three two-bedroom homes for middle-class families or six one-bedroom homes for singles and couples who don't need a whole house to themselves? Seems like a great change to me.
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Cities are living, breathing organisms. Neighborhoods change. If you're extremely lucky, you own in a city that is thriving and prosperous. If you're unlucky you're in a city that's stagnating or deteriorating. So, consider your good fortune.
Much of the Bay Area suffers from rampant xenophobia...don't get sucked into this narrative, it creates an "us" vs. "them" mentality and will only make you miserable. Accept those "outsiders" into your community, most of us will be or have been an outsider at some point in our life.
As for teachers and plumbers getting priced out: It's not the fault of those moving in paying market prices. This is an issue throughout the Bay Area, where homeowners aggressively fight to "preserve the character" of the neighborhood and prevent almost all new housing, esp. high density and/or affordable housing. We then complain that only the wealthy can afford to live here. Nefarious "outsiders" are an easy scapegoat. The real blame lies with entrenched homeowners.
Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
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I find this whole thread interesting and sort of alien in terms of the idea of 'a neighborhood culture or community'.
Do you guys mean how houses/yards are kept? Or neighborhood events that people go to, and if so, what events do you mean? Or somehow getting to know the names of the people up and down your street, and if so, how? Or actual socializing with neighbors, as in developing real friendships?
I ask not b/c I want this sort of neighborhood, but b/c I'm almost 50 and I've never lived anywhere that any of these occur, or if they do occur, they are not happening where I can see it (apart from parents attending athletic games down the street at the grade school; some of them presumably get to know each other).
Honestly, it would never in a million years occur to me to hang out with neighbors...I've lived on the same street for almost 20 years and I only know the name of 1 or 2 people on the street b/c our mail person mis-delivers mail constantly. I mean, we greet people on our street when we are out walking, but we've hardly ever 'met' any of them. I realize that both my husband and I are nature-oriented introverts, who would prefer to live miles from other people, if it were an option, but I'm wondering if I'm totally blind to some sort of 'culture' that is occurring all around us. Maybe it's that we don't have kids, and thus are not 'automatically' exposed to other adults on our street that have kids. Or maybe it's that we've lived 20 years in a 'starter' neighborhood (because it's mustachian LOL) with quite a bit of turnover. On the other hand, during college, we lived in a very ritzy, old, prestigious, established neighborhood in Tucson, and we were constantly out and about walking and biking, and we almost never even SAW people there, let alone 'neighborhood activities'.
Regardless, it's an interesting topic. I know both my parents grew up in the 50s in neighborhoods where people socialized all the time. And a couple of my childhood friends grew up in the same neighborhoods, and there was still some of that vibe during the 70s, but I thought that was a long-gone era.
That's interesting to me. I'm curious about your neighborhood and why our neighborhood is so different. Perhaps because people don't drive much here (traffic and parking is hard) , so people walk/bike outside a lot to get places (?) We have neighborhood events and even babysit the neighbor's kids (not for money, for free). It's not really a complaint, but the only problem I run into is that I have to allow an extra 5 minutes to get to the subway because neighbors will often stop to talk on the street. Maybe this is unusual?
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This is classic gentrification, breaking up communities across the US.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased around them through no fault of their own. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Maybe the people moving in should do that instead. LOL. Our neighborhood has multigenerational families of multiple ethnicities. Some rent rooms to students for a side income. If someone wealthy buys that house, I doubt they would rent to students and therefore the housing density would go down. Replacing these properties with expensive apartment buildings would throw out a lot of average income renters and we'd probably be left with same residents per block (except it would be a high income population). For example, my neighbor rents rooms to about 6 people in his house (that he lives in). Partly for retirement income, partly because he is elderly and likes having someone around the house in case he needs help at home. I can't imagine a 3 million dollar home owner doing that - nor would those same renters be able to afford newly built apartments.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Maybe the people moving in should do that instead. LOL. Our neighborhood has multigenerational families of multiple ethnicities. Our current neighbors rent out rooms to students for a side income. If someone wealthy buys that house, I doubt they would rent to students and therefore the housing density would go down. Replacing these properties with high density expensive housing would throw out a lot of students and we'd probably be left with same population per block (except it would be a high income population). For example, my neighbor rents rooms to about 6 people in his house (that he lives in). I can't imagine a 3 million dollar home owner doing that.
It was presented as an option, which it is, not a mandatory prescription.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to move out, cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Their entire family network is here. Just because someone else is rich, they shouldn't determine the future of a neighborhood.
I get the sentiment. I've lived in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area most of my life, have watched it change for better and worse in different ways. My friends and family are here, but I don't see my kids having a future here due to the insane cost of living. What's happening in the Bay Area is particularly frustrating: A lack of coordination and planning across the entire region along with a general no-growth attitude has driven housing up to the point of crisis, and now this is spilling into neighboring areas, including Santa Cruz.
Of course, Santa Cruz is not without blame. Like the Bay Area we've also doubled down on no-growth policies which, rather predictably, intensified the problem.
The question remains of what to do about it? You can't prevent outsiders from moving in. To be bit provocative, I find it ironic that we're opposed to "the wall" (as we should be) while at the same time want to wall off our communities to outsiders.
IMO, the solution is to build up and much more densely. Not just in SF, but in all the Bay Area counties, esp. near BART. And invest heavily in BART, CalTrain, VTA, and other mass transit. It's about time for the Bay Area to grow up and become a real metropolis rather than a collection of suburbs. This would make the region much more socioeconomically inclusive. Alas, our instinct is to cling to visions of the past with single family homes, lawns, and pools (https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/26/skelton-california-ranch-style-living-is-a-dying-species/).
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FINate - As a person from another extremely HCOL area, I completely agree.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Maybe the people moving in should do that instead. LOL. Our neighborhood has multigenerational families of multiple ethnicities. Our current neighbors rent out rooms to students for a side income. If someone wealthy buys that house, I doubt they would rent to students and therefore the housing density would go down. Replacing these properties with high density expensive housing would throw out a lot of students and we'd probably be left with same population per block (except it would be a high income population). For example, my neighbor rents rooms to about 6 people in his house (that he lives in). I can't imagine a 3 million dollar home owner doing that.
It was presented as an option, which it is, not a mandatory prescription.
Right. Nobody who owns their home is being "chased out" by rising home values. That said, if your house has tripled in value it can be perfectly rational to reevaluate from time to time whether staying put would make you happier than redeploying your home equity toward a richer lifestyle someplace else.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Maybe the people moving in should do that instead. LOL. Our neighborhood has multigenerational families of multiple ethnicities. Our current neighbors rent out rooms to students for a side income. If someone wealthy buys that house, I doubt they would rent to students and therefore the housing density would go down. Replacing these properties with high density expensive housing would throw out a lot of students and we'd probably be left with same population per block (except it would be a high income population). For example, my neighbor rents rooms to about 6 people in his house (that he lives in). I can't imagine a 3 million dollar home owner doing that.
It was presented as an option, which it is, not a mandatory prescription.
Right. Nobody who owns their home is being "chased out" by rising home values. That said, if your house has tripled in value it can be perfectly rational to reevaluate from time to time whether staying put would make you happier than redeploying your home equity toward a richer lifestyle someplace else.
But it kind of is like being chased out. It is saying: "Millionaires get to decide the future of this neighborhood just because they have money". Not every decision should be made on the basis of "for the money". Otherwise we could build factories in public parks. I can't imagine many of my neighbors moving for money. It's not the way they think. Maybe it's an American national problem: Money controls everything. If our neighbors moved away, we would lose so much. One man has a wood shop that helps people fix things. Another person is a retired Navy Seal who knows a lot about emergency preparedness (and is a boy scout leader). A retired teacher helps kids with homework. A legal secretary helps people with legal stuff. It's a major loss to a community when these valuable, skilled (and generous) people move away. This is not the type of people who are buying houses here. You can't put a value or price on a self sustaining "community." People moving here are paying all-cash for houses - are they going to babysit neighbors kids, help in the wood shop, etc? I doubt it.
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I have mixed feelings about the property tax situation in California. On the one hand it is good to be able to stay in your home on a reasonable salary (not getting priced out of the neighborhood) but on the other hand it really is unfair to young couples who would like to purchase a home but are saddled with the burden of paying a much higher share of the tax.
A fair solution might be to keep the property tax low but collect it on the back end, when someone eventually sells. So when you collect your $3,000,000 for a house you paid $200,000 for a couple decades back, you pay back some of that cheap property tax rate you enjoyed.
But hey, Californians voted for it, so they get the government they want/deserve I guess.
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But it kind of is like being chased out. It is saying: "Millionaires get to decide the future of this neighborhood just because they have money". Not every decision should be made on the basis of "for the money". Otherwise we could build factories in public parks. I can't imagine many of my neighbors moving for money. It's not the way they think. I think it all comes down to our national problem: Money controls everything. If our neighbors moved away, we would lose so much. One man has a wood shop that helps people fix things. Another person is a retired Navy Seal who knows a lot about emergency preparedness (and is a boy scout leader). A retired teacher helps kids with homework. A legal secretary helps people with legal stuff. It's a major loss to a community when these valuable, skilled people move away. This is not the type of people who are buying houses here. You can't put a value or price on a self sustaining "community." Isn't that why co-housing communities started? They try to artificially create this kind of community? Why should we sell it out just because someone else feels that money is the final say-so for decisions? People moving here are paying all-cash for houses - are they going to babysit, help in the wood shop, etc? I doubt it.
Your area has created a bunch of very prosperous people. They understandably want to live close to their jobs, and many of them could afford to buy even at twice the price. The thing is, nobody particularly enjoys paying millions of dollars for a relatively modest home. Nobody really wants to be that guy who needs to wave ever-increasing amounts of cash in peoples' faces in hopes of convincing a retiree or a Scout leader or a woodworking enthusiast to move out. But when your whole area is zoned such that it's basically illegal to add more housing, the whole thing becomes a game of musical chairs. Nobody can move in without someone else moving out, and the people who leave are those with less rather than more money, those who value a million dollars cash much more than staying in their community. It's so predictable and so preventable, but here we are. At least those who managed to buy a home 30 years ago get to leave with a big pile of cash, on their own terms. Those who have been renting have less say in the matter of when or if they leave, and when they do go they don't get a big cash windfall on their way out.
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Cities are living, breathing organisms. Neighborhoods change. If you're extremely lucky, you own in a city that is thriving and prosperous. If you're unlucky you're in a city that's stagnating or deteriorating. So, consider your good fortune.
Much of the Bay Area suffers from rampant xenophobia...don't get sucked into this narrative, it creates an "us" vs. "them" mentality and will only make you miserable. Accept those "outsiders" into your community, most of us will be or have been an outsider at some point in our life.
As for teachers and plumbers getting priced out: It's not the fault of those moving in paying market prices. This is an issue throughout the Bay Area, where homeowners aggressively fight to "preserve the character" of the neighborhood and prevent almost all new housing, esp. high density and/or affordable housing. We then complain that only the wealthy can afford to live here. Nefarious "outsiders" are an easy scapegoat. The real blame lies with entrenched homeowners.
Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures. If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
Once Google finishes the San Jose campus, I will be a landlord for the house I live in now. I bought many years ago, and I will collect the ridiculous rent from some newly transferred high income pair of professionals, while living in a far nicer environment. At least until the earthquake hits...
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Cities are living, breathing organisms. Neighborhoods change. If you're extremely lucky, you own in a city that is thriving and prosperous. If you're unlucky you're in a city that's stagnating or deteriorating. So, consider your good fortune.
Much of the Bay Area suffers from rampant xenophobia...don't get sucked into this narrative, it creates an "us" vs. "them" mentality and will only make you miserable. Accept those "outsiders" into your community, most of us will be or have been an outsider at some point in our life.
As for teachers and plumbers getting priced out: It's not the fault of those moving in paying market prices. This is an issue throughout the Bay Area, where homeowners aggressively fight to "preserve the character" of the neighborhood and prevent almost all new housing, esp. high density and/or affordable housing. We then complain that only the wealthy can afford to live here. Nefarious "outsiders" are an easy scapegoat. The real blame lies with entrenched homeowners.
Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures. If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
Once Google finishes the San Jose campus, I will be a landlord for the house I live in now. I bought many years ago, and I will collect the ridiculous rent from some newly transferred high income pair of professionals, while living in a far nicer environment. At least until the earthquake hits...
You're so right, it's always those damn immigrant's fault! They never integrate fast enough. Ruins the damn place.
/sarcasm
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But it kind of is like being chased out. It is saying: "Millionaires get to decide the future of this neighborhood just because they have money". Not every decision should be made on the basis of "for the money". Otherwise we could build factories in public parks. I can't imagine many of my neighbors moving for money. It's not the way they think. I think it all comes down to our national problem: Money controls everything. If our neighbors moved away, we would lose so much. One man has a wood shop that helps people fix things. Another person is a retired Navy Seal who knows a lot about emergency preparedness (and is a boy scout leader). A retired teacher helps kids with homework. A legal secretary helps people with legal stuff. It's a major loss to a community when these valuable, skilled people move away. This is not the type of people who are buying houses here. You can't put a value or price on a self sustaining "community." Isn't that why co-housing communities started? They try to artificially create this kind of community? Why should we sell it out just because someone else feels that money is the final say-so for decisions? People moving here are paying all-cash for houses - are they going to babysit, help in the wood shop, etc? I doubt it.
Your area has created a bunch of very prosperous people. They understandably want to live close to their jobs, and many of them could afford to buy even at twice the price. The thing is, nobody particularly enjoys paying millions of dollars for a relatively modest home. Nobody really wants to be that guy who needs to wave ever-increasing amounts of cash in peoples' faces in hopes of convincing a retiree or a Scout leader or a woodworking enthusiast to move out. But when your whole area is zoned such that it's basically illegal to add more housing, the whole thing becomes a game of musical chairs. Nobody can move in without someone else moving out, and the people who leave are those with less rather than more money, those who value a million dollars cash much more than staying in their community. It's so predictable and so preventable, but here we are. At least those who managed to buy a home 30 years ago get to leave with a big pile of cash, on their own terms. Those who have been renting have less say in the matter of when or if they leave, and when they do go they don't get a big cash windfall on their way out.
I don't mean to be provocative but: Are saying that we should tear down our houses and replace them with high rise apartment buildings? Are the plumbers and teachers now expected to take on an additional burden of solving the housing crisis? I think my neighbor is contributing a lot by renting to roommates. No need for him to build apartment buildings for each of them.
And to another point - just because you are a family does not mean you must automatically own a home. I grew up and we never owned a home, and more shocking (compared to these days) is we only had one bathroom (which is still the case). It's not that weird for a family to rent, and for kids to share a bedroom. And where I live there are a lot of apartments for rent. Yes, they are expensive, but way cheaper and less stressful than trying to enter bidding wars for houses. AS MMM often recommends -- you don't need a lot to have a fulfilling life and happy family - especially in a place where you can spend most of your time outdoors.
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Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Please help me understand, how am I being pompous and arrogant? I'll try not to be, but I have strong opinions about this because I'm tired of seeing people suffer due to poor housing policies. The science is pretty clear (https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.aspx): high demand + low supply.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
How can you claim to know what others want on such a broad scale? Sure, people may prefer a SFH on a large lot, but the question is how much they value this. What would they choose if given the option between a 500K efficiency condo close to work or a 2M house on a large lot? I don't think anyone can really say because the former option doesn't exist in large numbers.
Also, not sure what density has to do with the quality of schools?
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures.
I would argue that density increases as the value of land increases as a way to make the economics of development pencil out.
If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
...the housing crisis in a nutshell.
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Cities are living, breathing organisms. Neighborhoods change. If you're extremely lucky, you own in a city that is thriving and prosperous. If you're unlucky you're in a city that's stagnating or deteriorating. So, consider your good fortune.
Much of the Bay Area suffers from rampant xenophobia...don't get sucked into this narrative, it creates an "us" vs. "them" mentality and will only make you miserable. Accept those "outsiders" into your community, most of us will be or have been an outsider at some point in our life.
As for teachers and plumbers getting priced out: It's not the fault of those moving in paying market prices. This is an issue throughout the Bay Area, where homeowners aggressively fight to "preserve the character" of the neighborhood and prevent almost all new housing, esp. high density and/or affordable housing. We then complain that only the wealthy can afford to live here. Nefarious "outsiders" are an easy scapegoat. The real blame lies with entrenched homeowners.
Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures. If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
Once Google finishes the San Jose campus, I will be a landlord for the house I live in now. I bought many years ago, and I will collect the ridiculous rent from some newly transferred high income pair of professionals, while living in a far nicer environment. At least until the earthquake hits...
You're so right, it's always those damn immigrant's fault! They never integrate fast enough. Ruins the damn place.
/sarcasm
Fault? Who said anything about fault? I'm making an observation about something I see.
The motivation to move out of the area is as described above, too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Where people are from and how long they or their ancestors have been here is irrelevant. The people that will want to buy or rent my house are likely used to these problems and apparently tolerate them better than I am willing to do.
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Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Please help me understand, how am I being pompous and arrogant? I'll try not to be, but I have strong opinions about this because I'm tired of seeing people suffer due to poor housing policies. The science is pretty clear (https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.aspx): high demand + low supply.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
How can you claim to know what others want on such a broad scale? Sure, people may prefer a SFH on a large lot, but the question is how much they value this. What would they choose if given the option between a 500K efficiency condo close to work or a 2M house on a large lot? I don't think anyone can really say because the former option doesn't exist in large numbers.
Also, not sure what density has to do with the quality of schools?
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures.
I would argue that density increases as the value of land increases as a way to make the economics of development pencil out.
If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
...the housing crisis in a nutshell.
It's your arrogant condescending attitude about what people should do if they don't agree with you.
Families with children don't want cramped $500k condos with no yards and lots of stairs. Those that can afford it will buy single family houses with yards in proximity to excellent public schools. Prices tell you what people "value." $2MM is a lot more than $500k. It's as simple as that.
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Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Please help me understand, how am I being pompous and arrogant? I'll try not to be, but I have strong opinions about this because I'm tired of seeing people suffer due to poor housing policies. The science is pretty clear (https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.aspx): high demand + low supply.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
How can you claim to know what others want on such a broad scale? Sure, people may prefer a SFH on a large lot, but the question is how much they value this. What would they choose if given the option between a 500K efficiency condo close to work or a 2M house on a large lot? I don't think anyone can really say because the former option doesn't exist in large numbers.
Also, not sure what density has to do with the quality of schools?
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures.
I would argue that density increases as the value of land increases as a way to make the economics of development pencil out.
If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
...the housing crisis in a nutshell.
It's your arrogant condescending attitude about what people should do if they don't agree with you.
Not sure what you're referring to. I provided another option to consider, not a "should do". Will add this is an option we're likely taking in the near future, though making this decision has not been easy and comes with a mix of sadness and excitement. When we move away we'll make room for someone else who values our house more. Essentially, it's economics at work responding to the incentives created in the local housing market.
Families with children don't want cramped $500k condos with no yards and lots of stairs. Those that can afford it will buy single family houses with yards in proximity to excellent public schools. Prices tell you what people "value." $2MM is a lot more than $500k. It's as simple as that.
Agree, most people would like more space. But for many folks housing is truly at a crisis level. I volunteer for an afterschool program at my local elementary school. Many families are living in single room garages and other substandard housing. One day a kid was tired and I asked him what was up - it rained overnight the the roof was leaking and soaked his bed. Many of these folks would not be able to afford a 500k efficiency condo, but a SINK, DINK or retiree could, which in turn reduces demand for other housing and helps with the filtering effect that has been disrupted by failure to increase housing supply sufficiently (https://lao.ca.gov/publications/report/3345).
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As a pompous professional transient, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to shovel large sums of money for unremarkable housing to unremarkable people who happened to make one good decision 20 years ago. That really shows them!
I then make sure to invite all my Indian friends over to the local park for some curry and cricket, to assert dominance over the remaining mortgage-carrying plebs.
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Re: the bay area housing crises -- Even MMM would say: Just because you have kids does not mean you must own a home. There are many benefits to renting. There are 3 bedroom apartments available in a decent price range throughout the bay area ($2500-$4000). This is way cheaper than owning a home (or paying the expensive property taxes, repairs, crime, parking), and the new complexes often provide security and often have shared community spaces. And when the earthquake happens you won't be stuck fixing a house and losing half the value.
Example of just one of many nice neighborhoods and near BART: https://www.rent.com/california/el-cerrito-apartments/3-bedroom_max-price-4000?WT.mc_id=23000&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhPHh3pC84QIVPyCtBh0NPA7HEAAYAiAAEgK53PD_BwE&boundingbox=-122.335,37.881,-122.205,37.947
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Cities are living, breathing organisms. Neighborhoods change. If you're extremely lucky, you own in a city that is thriving and prosperous. If you're unlucky you're in a city that's stagnating or deteriorating. So, consider your good fortune.
Much of the Bay Area suffers from rampant xenophobia...don't get sucked into this narrative, it creates an "us" vs. "them" mentality and will only make you miserable. Accept those "outsiders" into your community, most of us will be or have been an outsider at some point in our life.
As for teachers and plumbers getting priced out: It's not the fault of those moving in paying market prices. This is an issue throughout the Bay Area, where homeowners aggressively fight to "preserve the character" of the neighborhood and prevent almost all new housing, esp. high density and/or affordable housing. We then complain that only the wealthy can afford to live here. Nefarious "outsiders" are an easy scapegoat. The real blame lies with entrenched homeowners.
Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
All of these folks buying where I live want the same thing I want, a spacious single family home on a large lot with excellent local schools. They don't want to settle for what you propose and they are willing to pay up to get what they want.
The existing residents in the Bay Area are tired of all that density crap being shoved down their throats. Too many people, too much traffic, more crime and more pollution. Cities push high density as the cheapest way to fill housing needs and fulfill legal mandates. It minimizes their infrastructure expenditures. If cities had their way, there would never be any new residential development, because residents cost money, while businesses whose employees live elsewhere would be recruited and subsidized.
Once Google finishes the San Jose campus, I will be a landlord for the house I live in now. I bought many years ago, and I will collect the ridiculous rent from some newly transferred high income pair of professionals, while living in a far nicer environment. At least until the earthquake hits...
Can we quit with this rhetoric? It's divisive, insulting, & we are better than that. We live in the Bay Area, and I've found people to be generally inviting & welcoming, regardless of their nationality. If they aren't, I don't assume it's because of their nationality, but rather about who they are as a person. Perhaps people are picking up on your attitude & are not including you as a result. Do you go out of your way to include others, despite where they come from?
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It's your arrogant condescending attitude about what people should do if they don't agree with you.
As an outsider observing this back and forth it really appears that you are the one being offensive and condescending.
OP, you can’t have both ways: skyrocketing property values that make you rich simply because of when you bought into the market AND stable neighborhoods without a lot resident turnover. Were I in your situation I would be saying a little prayer of thanks every single morning for my good fortune rather than perseverating on how not all of the changes in the neighborhood are to my liking. Maybe work on shifting your mindset to focus on the good you have or will experience as a result of this change.
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Then maybe those people cannot afford to live here. They need to make a different choice than living in a leaky garage. There are lots of opportunities in other parts of the country, especially for lower income wage earners. And maybe we should take a serious look at illegal immigration to see what it is costing all of us. Because, whether you like it or not, that is a not unsubstantial source of pressure on housing.
In the long run, maybe we need not to create more jobs here. They need to go where land is cheaper and people can afford to live comfortably. Lots of people would be willing to move elsewhere if the move came with a decent job and affordable housing. My guess is many people would choose an affordable single family house with a decent job over your $500k condo, all else being equal.
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As a pompous professional transient, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to shovel large sums of money for unremarkable housing to unremarkable people who happened to make one good decision 20 years ago. That really shows them!
I then make sure to invite all my Indian friends over to the local park for some curry and cricket, to assert dominance over the remaining mortgage-carrying plebs.
Please move to my neighborhood and make some new friends! We have a nice little non-park park that would benefit from this.
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Then maybe those people cannot afford to live here. They need to make a different choice than living in a leaky garage. There are lots of opportunities in other parts of the country, especially for lower income wage earners. And maybe we should take a serious look at illegal immigration to see what it is costing all of us. Because, whether you like it or not, that is a not unsubstantial source of pressure on housing.
Moving out of the area is often the right choice, but it's difficult to come to this conclusion if you've rented here for a long time and/or your landlord hasn't kept up with market rate (happens around here with mom-and-pop landlords). Then the house is sold and then there's the sudden shock of trying to find a reasonably priced rental on the open market. I've helped several people in this situation over the years, mostly by providing free housing for a few months while they get stabilized and find work and housing elsewhere. But it takes time.
Things are different for the very poor. These folks are on the very edge financially. Moving is expensive. Finding a new job in a far away location isn't simple and takes away from work time they need to make ends meet. For multi-income families (many are muti-generational) there's the problem of everyone having to find work in the new location. Basically, there's not a lot of cushion in the budget.
In the long run, maybe we need not to create more jobs here. They need to go where land is cheaper and people can afford to live comfortably. Lots of people would be willing to move elsewhere if the move came with a decent job and affordable housing. My guess is many people would choose an affordable single family house with a decent job over your $500k condo, all else being equal.
Many people are moving. Many of our friends and family have already moved making our decision easier. Good jobs aren't easy to come by, so this is never taken lightly. For us being FIRE makes it all much simpler, but understand it's way harder for others.
As for what people would choose, condo or a house: If sophisticated developers are willing to risk tens of millions of dollars to build mid-rise condo complexes then there must be demand for this option. Reminds me of the Yogi Berra quote "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
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Then maybe those people cannot afford to live here. They need to make a different choice than living in a leaky garage. There are lots of opportunities in other parts of the country, especially for lower income wage earners. And maybe we should take a serious look at illegal immigration to see what it is costing all of us. Because, whether you like it or not, that is a not unsubstantial source of pressure on housing.
In the long run, maybe we need not to create more jobs here. They need to go where land is cheaper and people can afford to live comfortably. Lots of people would be willing to move elsewhere if the move came with a decent job and affordable housing. My guess is many people would choose an affordable single family house with a decent job over your $500k condo, all else being equal.
My relative in Indiana has been trying to sell his 2 story brick house (+basement/attic) for $35,000 and my cousin (lives in the same area) was complaining to me that he couldn't find enough employees for good paying jobs. If people are willing to consider small towns (1,000-2,000 people) - they might welcome a rural lifestyle.
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Seriously, the OP reminds me of those people who inherit a million dollars and then proceed to complain about the taxes they have to pay.
House tripling in value? Take the win ffs.
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I have recently had a similar experience from the opposite side (though renting, not buying). Some of our neighbors were nice and welcomed us to the neighborhood, while others won't even say hi. We tried to invite people over for welcome party and about half showed up (mostly the ones who also have kids). There was no correlation with their wealth or how long they've lived in the neighborhood. I think a lot of this is due to people essentially being too busy at work to have free time, and not wanting to use any of that free time to interact with people they don't already know. I live in southern California in an area prized for its nice weather, and see almost no adults (other than our friends with kids) who spend greater than 30 minutes outside. Same thing with parks: only people there are parents, children, and bums. I guess the internet and TV are more interesting than neighbors.
My wife and I are introverts, we like our neighbors, we wave and say hello but that’s about it.. We love the fact that nobody is outside, we take long walks and enjoy the serenity. It’s really strange walking around the neighborhoods in our suburb and wondering where all the people are?.. I guess the internet and 4K tv really has improved our lives. We can go hiking, biking, and on long walks without too many people clogging up the trails. I guess that movie WALL-E wasn’t too far off from reality. We’re shifting our perspective and enjoying how things have changed.
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"As for what people would choose, condo or a house: If sophisticated developers are willing to risk tens of millions of dollars to build mid-rise condo complexes then there must be demand for this option."
Sophisticated developers build what the City will allow them to build, as long as there is a profit.
For example, the old IBM plant in San Jose is nearing the end of redevelopment into retail and high density housing. The townhouses built were three story with steep stairs and no landings and no yards. In other words, unfriendly to families with small children and older people. The units were not absorbed quickly, at least not at first. I asked the salesperson not too long after the development opened who they were selling to. Her answer? Rental investors and young couples with no children. I asked her why not build single family homes? She said this is what the City required, they had no choice.
The larger development has been a disaster for the surrounding low density neighborhoods, with single family houses, duplexes, and some low density two story apartment style condos. Traffic in the area is now beyond awful, and because the City lowered parking requirements for the new project, including unassigned on-site parking, every single parking space within a few blocks is occupied by cars belonging to residents of the new condos and apartments. The shopping center that was constructed as part of the development has parking issues as well, thanks to the under-parked high density projects and the residents that park their cars in the lot.
Why did the City decide to do this? Proximity to "transit," i.e. the light rail to nowhere, was the excuse. A large number of these residents were projected to use public transport. Not going to happen. No one walks or drives to the light rail terminus, and this was simply a cynical move on the part of the City to jam as many of their deficit of housing units in as small a space as possible.
These units did nothing to solve the problems of low income housing, housing for young families with children, or housing for older people. Meanwhile, mid-rise office buildings are sprouting up an every piece of available land further north, bringing in more office workers needing a place to live.
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The thread has taken a turn so maybe my response is no longer entirely relevant, but I've just moved to a new area, one where housing prices are obscene and likely to rise even more quickly (thanks HQ2!).
I've just been added by a friend to a "buy nothing" facebook group. They are very particular that members must be residents of a specific, fairly small area. I didn't understand at first because doesn't it make more sense to offer that free widget to anyone who can use it, or to request size 3 kids clothes from as large a pool as possible so you are more likely to get the help you need? But then reading the FAQ causes it all to make sense. Yes, this is about saving money and keeping things out of landfills. But it's also about creating community. As an introvert, I admit it's challenging. I was actually going to respond to ask for something that had been offered, but social anxiety kicked in when I realized I might actually have to ring a doorbell and talk to a stranger. But I also understand the point. My friend asked to borrow a sweater shaver. Someone had one for her to use, she borrowed it for a few days and then returned it. And she also met that person and maybe made a connection.
What does this have to do with the cost of tea in the Bay Area? I think there are ways to create community. Maybe they just require more effort. And maybe some of those new neighbors will never buy into it. Cultural issues and fears of racism in all directions aside, some people aren't like that. (I'm not, due to extreme social anxiety and introversion) But if this is a problem for you and your neighbors, maybe you can start some projects intended to create more community-feeling. And maybe you create that Buy Nothing XXX neighborhood group, and you leave a flyer on each house encouraging them to join. Perhaps some of "the new people" will. And of those who do, perhaps some will sit back and observe, and maybe eventually participate. And if they don't? You've still contributed to part of your community and a very real way.
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For example, the old IBM plant in San Jose is nearing the end of redevelopment into retail and high density housing. The townhouses built were three story with steep stairs and no landings and no yards. In other words, unfriendly to families with small children and older people. The units were not absorbed quickly, at least not at first. I asked the salesperson not too long after the development opened who they were selling to. Her answer? Rental investors and young couples with no children. I asked her why not build single family homes? She said this is what the City required, they had no choice.
Strange, while working in Singapore and Germany I got to know many families and old people living in small flats with several flights of stairs and no yards. Somehow they managed it. Same for families I know living in NYC.
These units did nothing to solve the problems of low income housing, housing for young families with children, or housing for older people. Meanwhile, mid-rise office buildings are sprouting up an every piece of available land further north, bringing in more office workers needing a place to live.
All the units were eventually sold, either owner occupied or to rental investors. Every person housed is one less competing for housing in the market. A single project isn't going to make a dent in the problem, and the Bay Area continues fall further behind the demand curve. We need housing of all shapes and sizes, from small efficiency units up to luxury houses.
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"As for what people would choose, condo or a house: If sophisticated developers are willing to risk tens of millions of dollars to build mid-rise condo complexes then there must be demand for this option."
Sophisticated developers build what the City will allow them to build, as long as there is a profit.
For example, the old IBM plant in San Jose is nearing the end of redevelopment into retail and high density housing. The townhouses built were three story with steep stairs and no landings and no yards. In other words, unfriendly to families with small children and older people. The units were not absorbed quickly, at least not at first. I asked the salesperson not too long after the development opened who they were selling to. Her answer? Rental investors and young couples with no children. I asked her why not build single family homes? She said this is what the City required, they had no choice.
The larger development has been a disaster for the surrounding low density neighborhoods, with single family houses, duplexes, and some low density two story apartment style condos. Traffic in the area is now beyond awful, and because the City lowered parking requirements for the new project, including unassigned on-site parking, every single parking space within a few blocks is occupied by cars belonging to residents of the new condos and apartments. The shopping center that was constructed as part of the development has parking issues as well, thanks to the under-parked high density projects and the residents that park their cars in the lot.
Why did the City decide to do this? Proximity to "transit," i.e. the light rail to nowhere, was the excuse. A large number of these residents were projected to use public transport. Not going to happen. No one walks or drives to the light rail terminus, and this was simply a cynical move on the part of the City to jam as many of their deficit of housing units in as small a space as possible.
These units did nothing to solve the problems of low income housing, housing for young families with children, or housing for older people. Meanwhile, mid-rise office buildings are sprouting up an every piece of available land further north, bringing in more office workers needing a place to live.
Wow, that is exactly what is happening in Oakland too...
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"Every person housed is one less competing for housing in the market."
While this project was being built (and there are more phases under construction now), many more jobs were created than the units could house workers. So the net number of people needing housing increased. The real draw of this project to residents is not light rail, but the proximity of Highways 85 and 101, the roads to jobs up north. Those roads are more crowded than they were because of the people occupying these units, commuting 20 plus miles to their jobs, and taking over an hour to do so.
Companies don't care where their workers live or how long it takes them to get to work. Those costs are all on the employees. Cities want more commercial and industrial development, because residents cost money and commercial and industrial development is net revenue positive. Maybe if you had built housing where the office buildings were built, you could have reduced the housing deficit. That did not happen and it's not going to happen in the future.
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Some years ago Google tried to build housing near its Shoreline campus. The city of Mountain View wouldn't approve it.
Competition for tech talent is fierce, and companies care a great deal about how long it takes to commute. Hence the tech shuttles which are not cheap to operate. Also, tech companies are increasingly choosing to expand outside the Bay Area. A part of what's driving this, though not entirely, is the cost of living and commute.
I did the commute on 85 for about ten years. Yes, it's bad and has gotten much worse. But the VTA from Los Gatos, through downtown, then on to Moffett is terribly slow, about 2 hours each way last I checked. People drive because we haven't developed good alternatives. It would be an expensive but worthy investment to greatly improve this.
Yet I've lived here long enough to understand this isn't a problem people really want fixed since it's another way to stop growth. So I agree with you that building lots of new housing is unlikely, which is unfortunate. People want to live here, there are good jobs, and a mild climate. The Bay Area had an opportunity to build an inclusive eco friendly metropolis, but instead we're promoting low density urban sprawl into the Central Valley and other surrounding areas. In trying to avoid Manhattanization (lovely city, BTW) we've created Los Angeles Basin North. Pitty.
We aren't going to agree on the vision for the Bay Area. My claim is that change is inevitable. You can try to stop change by stopping development, but this doesn't stop change and instead causes it to manifest in unintended ways. Therefore, embrace the change and engage in growth with a plan. But that's just me, and I know I'm in the minority position.
So my question to you is this: What's the solution to the housing crisis and people on the lower rungs getting priced out?
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I don't mean to be provocative but: Are saying that we should tear down our houses and replace them with high rise apartment buildings?
Not necessarily. The need for more housing is large, but still finite. There’s no need to go to full-on Manhattan densities across the region. Existing dense areas and places around BART stations should absolutely be allowing more high rises, but other areas can do their part by allowing more backyard cottages, duplexes, townhomes, small apartment buildings, etc. in more places.
Are the plumbers and teachers now expected to take on an additional burden of solving the housing crisis? I think my neighbor is contributing a lot by renting to roommates. No need for him to build apartment buildings for each of them.
Do they have an obligation? No, but they should absolutely have the option. Traditional single-family zoning is incredibly restrictive. Right now your neighbors have two options: either keep using their $3 million worth of real estate all for themselves (and any roommates), or take their money and run. I propose a third way: let these folks be more creative and entrepreneurial with their property. Let people build a rental unit or three and the rental income might be enough to keep them from deciding to sell out and retire to a luxurious life somewhere else.
Change of some sort is inevitable. You can either change the way your neighborhood looks so that there’s still enough room for people with a range of incomes to live there, or you can hold fast to the existing zoning and watch as your neighbors are gradually replaced by folks who can actually afford $3 million for a house with a big yard.
And to another point - just because you are a family does not mean you must automatically own a home. I grew up and we never owned a home, and more shocking (compared to these days) is we only had one bathroom (which is still the case). It's not that weird for a family to rent, and for kids to share a bedroom. And where I live there are a lot of apartments for rent. Yes, they are expensive, but way cheaper and less stressful than trying to enter bidding wars for houses. AS MMM often recommends -- you don't need a lot to have a fulfilling life and happy family - especially in a place where you can spend most of your time outdoors.
I fully agree that renting often makes a lot of sense, even for families. I loved MMM’s article about how cheap it looks to rent in Toronto compared to buying. What I was trying to say is that for your particular situation where prices went up so much so fast, those who bought ended up much better off than those who were renting. While both groups may have plenty of incentive to leave the area, the owners are leaving with millions on their own schedule. The renters, on the other hand, are leaving on short notice when their landlords jack up rents to the new normal, and they aren’t leaving with millions of equity. I have much more sympathy for these folks being actually forced out than your homeowner neighbors who are getting a gentle nudge to leave rich when an un-refusable offer comes in.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased around them through no fault of their own. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Maybe the people moving in should do that instead. LOL. Our neighborhood has multigenerational families of multiple ethnicities. Some rent rooms to students for a side income. If someone wealthy buys that house, I doubt they would rent to students and therefore the housing density would go down. Replacing these properties with expensive apartment buildings would throw out a lot of average income renters and we'd probably be left with same residents per block (except it would be a high income population). For example, my neighbor rents rooms to about 6 people in his house (that he lives in). Partly for retirement income, partly because he is elderly and likes having someone around the house in case he needs help at home. I can't imagine a 3 million dollar home owner doing that - nor would those same renters be able to afford newly built apartments.
Did anyone force your neighbors to sell? Did someone apply pressure for your neighbors to move against their will? If not, they weren't chased out.
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"So my question to you is this: What's the solution to the housing crisis and people on the lower rungs getting priced out?"
I'm a big fan of letting the market decide who gets to live where. If there is an imbalance, people will either live with it or make some changes. The private employer operated buses are a small step.
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, the semiconductor and other manufacturing companies decided that having manufacturing here was too expensive. A number of them opened up facilities in the Austin area and in similar locations. Shortly after doing that, manufacturing started moving offshore, and many of these facilities were shuttered. Eventually costs will push some operations out of the Bay Area again, to other states or overseas. When the big earthquake occurs, my guess is that the movement will accelerate.
The building process is so time consuming and expensive, it will never make financial sense for developers to build low cost housing. A few projects with BMR units and subsidized apartments will be built to satisfy various political requirements, but there will be no large scale construction of truly affordable housing. Rent control drives landlords out of the market. That will lessen the availability of rental homes and condos if it's implemented.
I don't see a "solution" anytime soon, just a shift in equilibrium points here and there.
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California retirees are cashing out and moving to surrounding states like Nevada, Oregon, Washington, etc. Now these areas are starting to experience the same problem with not enough affordable housing, rents and housing costs escalating and pushing out the average residents. There really is no solution as you cannot stop people from moving. We have lived all over the country and many places are cheap. We raised the kids in the Midwest for that reason. We didn’t care about how much there was to do because we were too busy. Now retired we live somewhere that has lots of activities, festivals, etc.
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Agree there's no short term solution. The housing situation in California has been decades in the making, will take a decade or more to correct.
Also agree that it's something the market needs to sort out, and that rent control makes the problem worse. That said, I think we need to let the supply side of the market work as part of reaching equilibrium. Free markets are not just about buying and selling, also includes adding new supply to meet demand. In the Bay Area this means increased density. Subsidized housing plays a role, but mostly we need market rate. Upzoning near transit is a way of responding to the supply side, and developers are willing to invest in these areas.
It's true that developers prefer to build for the higher end, but this has always been the case. Upthread I cited a paper from the California LAO addressing this concern. Housing degrades as it ages even if the overall property value increases. It gets worn, goes out of fashion. As time passes it filters down market and becomes more affordable (this is not the same as "trickle down economics" - just to nip that in the bud). However, we've built so little new housing that we've disrupted this filtering process. So now the wealthy consume older housing that otherwise would be consumed by lower income folks. Again, no quick or easy fix.
To be honest, I don't think the state as the political will to address the real problem, which means we're likely to see ever increasing ham-handed solutions such as rent control and just cause evictions.
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I live in a Bay Area neighborhood of teachers and plumbers, but now outsiders are moving in and paying almost $3 million cash for a house because they like our neighborhood. But these same buyers rarely interact with the community, especially when they should (one of them got broken into). Curious if anyone else has experienced a sudden neighborhood wealth gap and how it changed your community.
Don't worry. With house prices tripling, your county will continue to raise property taxes to a point where the teachers and plumbers can't afford it. Then all that will be left are the rich folks that interact with each other.
This is California. Crazy property tax increases don't happen there.
No, but they can special assessment district you to death.
Why would a teacher or a plumber choose to live in the bay area??? What is going on!?!?
Take your cash and get out while you can.
OK, I'll bite: Go where?
I teach in the Bay Area, and the reason I stay is that as a 20 year in employee, I make close to 100K. I rent (cheaply) and save around 60% of my gross. If you include mandatory contributions to STRS, closer to 70%.
If I left, no way could I pull down the kind of money I do. No district will grant me year for year salary credit on their salary schedule. I'd be back to making 50K a year. my savings would drop from 65K a year to a lot less.
So I stay.
I'll retire in 2025 and move to a more tax friendly state. If I were to move now I'd have to work an additional 5 years. I grew up here, and living here is mostly convenient. but I have been to a lot of other places in the US that are just as convenient. I'll probably end up in Idaho (family) or Wyoming (more family).
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I'll confess that I'm uncomfortable with being part of a wave of gentrification. The people in my neighborhood who own their homes haven't been directly affected by people like me moving in (middle-class professionals entering a historically working-class district), but there are other impacts. Two new bars have opened in our village since we moved in four years ago, and one has closed down: the now-closed bar was solidly ordinary, while the two new ones have plenty of options if you want a seven-dollar craft beer or a fifteen-dollar dinner but not much if you're just looking for a pint of Guinness and a cheese toastie. There are new cafes, but the kind that have notes on the menu about the welfare conditions of the pigs the bacon comes from and enough kale to make a vegan demand steak. I know where to get a fancy brunch option, but I'd have to cook my own classic Irish breakfast if I wanted one where I live. All of this is fine for me, because I happen to like cooking for myself anyway and I really like fancy beers with silly names, but I'm not sure my neighbours like it much. And their children are often being priced out of living near their families, and end up moving fifty miles west in an effort to find a place they can afford - while commuting to jobs that are three miles from where their parents live.
I don't have any proposals for solutions, or even a clear idea of whether it's something to be solved, and I'm certainly glad to be living in a place I like and paying 1200 a month on a mortgage instead of 2,600 on rent. But gentrification does impose real costs on people and communities, and we should at a minimum be conscious bof those costs and seek to minimise them where possible.
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I'll confess that I'm uncomfortable with being part of a wave of gentrification. The people in my neighborhood who own their homes haven't been directly affected by people like me moving in (middle-class professionals entering a historically working-class district), but there are other impacts. Two new bars have opened in our village since we moved in four years ago, and one has closed down: the now-closed bar was solidly ordinary, while the two new ones have plenty of options if you want a seven-dollar craft beer or a fifteen-dollar dinner but not much if you're just looking for a pint of Guinness and a cheese toastie. There are new cafes, but the kind that have notes on the menu about the welfare conditions of the pigs the bacon comes from and enough kale to make a vegan demand steak. I know where to get a fancy brunch option, but I'd have to cook my own classic Irish breakfast if I wanted one where I live. All of this is fine for me, because I happen to like cooking for myself anyway and I really like fancy beers with silly names, but I'm not sure my neighbours like it much. And their children are often being priced out of living near their families, and end up moving fifty miles west in an effort to find a place they can afford - while commuting to jobs that are three miles from where their parents live.
I don't have any proposals for solutions, or even a clear idea of whether it's something to be solved, and I'm certainly glad to be living in a place I like and paying 1200 a month on a mortgage instead of 2,600 on rent. But gentrification does impose real costs on people and communities, and we should at a minimum be conscious bof those costs and seek to minimise them where possible.
I just don't understand the problems people have with gentrification. I suppose for me it might go back to the fact that I was a military brat, so I moved around a lot growing up. It seems to me that gentrification is a huge boon to the people already in the neighborhood. They went from owning a $200k asset to owning a $500k asset. That's a win for them, and for zero effort on their part. They can cash out any time they want to.
In my experience, if we want to talk about things like "walkability" scores and making cities "bike/pedestrian friendly", those things are ONLY driven by gentrification. Those are things that the blue collar working class simply does not care about, and even if they did, they don't have the $$ or political clout to affect any changes. No, if we want improvements to the cities, to move toward a more European style neighborhood, it's gentrification that's going to make it happen.
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I completely get what @runbikerun says. I feel the same as a professional living in a solid working class environment. It's all we could afford back then. We were the first non-working class people to move in the street but now there are several professionals living there. We're all in relatively low-income fields (teaching, music, art, social work) but we aren't cleaners or factory workers like the others. We are in Europe and what may be different in the US is that many people in this town have roots going back a long time here. It's difficult for them to even consider moving to another city, let alone another part of the country. Plus usually jobs are in HCOL areas and not as much in LCOL areas.
I moved to this city when I was 20 and didn't grow up here but my roots in this place literally go back centuries. My family has been here since the 1600s. My grandparents left after the town was heavily bombed in WWII but they grew up here, my great grandfather was on the crew that built this neighbourhood during the Depression. I can point out the homes where my grandparents' grandparents used to live. I'm seeing my street and my town change ( there are 20 high rise tower buildings in progress or planned right now) and proces go up and it feels less and less like home. I will eventually sell and move back to the countryside, that was always the plan, but I hadn't imagined my home would change so much that it doesn't feel like home anymore.
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In my area in Seattle, they tear down the smaller "more" affordable SFHs (800k++) and build enormous single family houses that sell for 1.8MM. People complain.
They also tear down the smaller, more affordable SFHs and build 6 or 8 10 foot wide townhouse skyscraper things that are as ugly as all get out. People complain because of the population density and lack of parking, etc.
People complain if they don't tear down the smaller more affordable SFHs because they are really not affordable in any way at resale prices. No plumbers, teachers, or people that don't work in CS/IT/medicine can afford.
There's basically too many people in Seattle right now, if you ask any one.
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It's all a pretty tricky business. @wenchsenior had a good point - but here's how our neighborhood is. We bought 15 years ago, and didn't really know anyone for a long long time.
We knew our back neighbors (the lot was split in the 50s, so our driveway goes to someone else's house). They moved, and then we really got to know the new neighbor. But that was it, for quite a long time. When you are working full time, that's how it goes.
This used to be a really working class neighborhood. It still is, to a degree, because only about half of the houses have turned over in the last 15 years. But it will depend a lot on when you bought. A small, 1940s or 1950s 2 BR ranch will run you $900k now. So...working class people aren't buying those houses. They *did* buy at the bottom of the market in 2011/2012, and some bought in the 1990s or early 00's before the run up. I haven't seen a great amount of gentrification, but a fair bit of accessory dwelling units, which is how many can afford it.
Fast forward to 15 years later, and I know a LOT of my neighbors. Many through kids. On our street and the next one alone, I have at least 7 families in my contacts. Many of us get together every Sunday for a potluck. These are my people. I know the names of at least a few more than that.
Onto housing. I live in So Cal, in a coastal community. It's beautiful here, and insanely expensive. Our city, and many like the bay area, are between a rock and a hard place. It's really really hard to build the amount of housing needed for the increased population. The politics and funding are difficult.
For example, did you know that the state of California requires builders to specify where the water is going to come from before they build a new community "somewhere new"? Makes total sense, right? Before you build a new city just outside the last city in the greater expanse of Los Angeles, figure out where these people are going to get their water.
Yet the same thing is NOT done for existing cities. My city is expected to build >3000 new units in the next 4 years. Um, where? We aren't even really out of the drought and we are living on borrowed time and borrowed water. For some reason, the state doesn't really give a shit about water if you are forcing areas to build. And then, there's little to no coordination between cities. A city near ours built SO MUCH in the last 5 years that traffic has gotten much worse.
I honestly cannot blame locals, or people who have lived here a long time, to be unhappy about change. They like their 10 minute commutes. They don't want the new traffic, they don't want the new density (that comes with very little parking). They just want zero growth and the same quality of life. Equally strident are the people who want more affordable housing. Our rental vacancy rate is 1%. That's insanely low. Rental costs are very high. However nothing has worked. We allowed a couple of larger, more dense projects to go up to address the housing shortage, and the fucking developer built uber-expensive apartments that are $3000-4500 a month, for a 1-2BR apartment. And you want to know something? They are empty. (This ain't the bay area with the associated salaries.)
The bad thing is that it is so hard to find a happy medium. At first, I HATED the ADU law that the gov signed (accessory dwelling unit, requiring cities allow these, period - no restrictions). I though the AUD (Average unit density, high density) was a good idea. Now I've flipped it. Our city requires ADUs to be owner occupied - which means people are being a lot more mindful of what happens in the neighborhood. AUDs and developers kind of suck.
I figure that we have SO MANY vacancies in commercial real estate that maybe there will be talk about converting them to condos or apartments. And as long as a certain % are affordable (seriously, stop letting people "out" of that), then it may work.
But it may not. Commercial issues come from on line shopping, and the homeless population, which means locals and tourists avoid downtown.
Added to that - homelessness itself is a problem that is hard to fix
And not everyone can afford to live here. After spending 5 years in DC, it was easy to learn that. This town is never going to have the mix that it did in the 1950s.
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Do they have an obligation? No, but they should absolutely have the option. Traditional single-family zoning is incredibly restrictive. Right now your neighbors have two options: either keep using their $3 million worth of real estate all for themselves (and any roommates), or take their money and run. I propose a third way: let these folks be more creative and entrepreneurial with their property. Let people build a rental unit or three and the rental income might be enough to keep them from deciding to sell out and retire to a luxurious life somewhere else.
CA governor signed a law last year I think to allow accessory dwelling units with very few caveats. Does not allow 3 rental units for the most part though.
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Of course, another option (if you own) is to sell your highly appreciated house, take your capital gains exclusion (assuming you meet the requirements), and walk away with a big chunk of tax free cash.
But people shouldn't be chased out of their neighborhood just because property values have increased. Some people have lived here their whole lives. It seems unfair to expect people to move out, cash out and go live in Utah (or wherever). Their entire family network is here. Just because someone else is rich, they shouldn't determine the future of a neighborhood.
I get the sentiment. I've lived in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area most of my life, have watched it change for better and worse in different ways. My friends and family are here, but I don't see my kids having a future here due to the insane cost of living. What's happening in the Bay Area is particularly frustrating: A lack of coordination and planning across the entire region along with a general no-growth attitude has driven housing up to the point of crisis, and now this is spilling into neighboring areas, including Santa Cruz.
Of course, Santa Cruz is not without blame. Like the Bay Area we've also doubled down on no-growth policies which, rather predictably, intensified the problem.
The question remains of what to do about it? You can't prevent outsiders from moving in. To be bit provocative, I find it ironic that we're opposed to "the wall" (as we should be) while at the same time want to wall off our communities to outsiders.
IMO, the solution is to build up and much more densely. Not just in SF, but in all the Bay Area counties, esp. near BART. And invest heavily in BART, CalTrain, VTA, and other mass transit. It's about time for the Bay Area to grow up and become a real metropolis rather than a collection of suburbs. This would make the region much more socioeconomically inclusive. Alas, our instinct is to cling to visions of the past with single family homes, lawns, and pools (https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/26/skelton-california-ranch-style-living-is-a-dying-species/).
~clapping~
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...We allowed a couple of larger, more dense projects to go up to address the housing shortage, and the fucking developer built uber-expensive apartments that are $3000-4500 a month, for a 1-2BR apartment. And you want to know something? They are empty.
So here's my question: why did the developer build apartments that didn't meet the local demand? I totally understand the desire to pursue the higher rents that come with more expensive apartments, but if they sit empty, that does the developer no good. Did they misunderstand the market? Are they hoping for an influx of high earners at some point, so they're just holding onto it?
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I have a lot of sympathy for the points @Another Reader is making. Perhaps not the Indian community* rant but more so on this idea that densification is the solution.
My city has been completely taken over by an army of developers, at one point in the recent past there was a statistic put out that there are more cranes above Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane than the 13 largest US cities combined.
Here's a hint, if I wanted to live in in a city like Hong Kong or Taipei, I'd go live in Hong Kong or Taipei! Don't go around telling me the solution is to cram more and more people into less and less space. Just because it is the norm elsewhere, doesn't mean those mistakes should be repeated.
When the sun is blocked out because of endless apartment towers, each with their own air conditioner, and there's no green space and your city is a maze of motorways and the water runs out.... you have to question, what on earth is the point of it all?
Time to get out once FIREd.
*Yes we have one too. They are generally good citizens, and I guess the locals quite enjoy their food so it's all good...
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There are aspects to prop 13 that make sense to prevent taxing old folks out of their homes. However Props 58 and 193, allowing inheritance of tax basis on real estate between parent-child and grandparent-granchild, is extremely inequitable. It's possible to keep a 1970s tax basis in perpetuity. And it creates crazy distortions in the market and people staying in the area longer than they would otherwise, and/or im houses that are too big for.
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I tend to agree with economists on questions of housing affordability: it is a fairly simple supply and demand equation. We have a wonderful place to live in the Bay Area with perfect weather and lots of educated, smart, innovative people with lots of good jobs. So naturally people want to live here. Lots of demand pushes prices up like crazy if supply isn’t allowed to keep pace. You have a couple of options: 1) you can basically do nothing and then watch as more and more people get priced out (what is happening actually), 2) you can increase supply by building more densely/intelligently, and 3) you can wait for some external factor to make the area less attractive, reducing demand, which will then reach a new and more affordable equilibrium with supply.
Even as a homeowner who is one of the lucky people, I can see that the NIMBYism here has been detrimental to a lot of people. Out zoning rules are very inefficient at properly allocated our very scare resource: land. Dense housing doesn’t have to be soulless, ugly Soviet-Area concrete apartment blocks. It absolutely is possible to have a wonderful urban feel while housing lots more people per square hectare. For example, what about keeping all of our current green space as green space, but redeveloping suburban peninsula neighborhoods so it is more like Paris? Beautiful, denser buildings that aren’t sky scrapers but still way more efficient with land, coupled with awesome public transportation and all the amenities and culture that come with being a real city. I’d love something like that. Sure, my kids like our backyard, but they have way more fun st a great city park. I’d take that trade in a heartbeat if it meant real public train options to get me to where I need to go and stores I frequent being walking distance from my house.
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Somewhat related podcast I listened to recently: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/rent-control/
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Our city just voted against tiny houses in the backyard after people raised a big stink. Our neighborhood is old and has small homes. It''s very popular and it's hard at times to find on street parking if you need it. I was originally for it but after studying the issues changed my mind.
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Our city just voted against tiny houses in the backyard after people raised a big stink. Our neighborhood is old and has small homes. It''s very popular and it's hard at times to find on street parking if you need it. I was originally for it but after studying the issues changed my mind.
The parking thing actually irritates me also and is a problem in my neighborhood. I dream up solutions to try out while biking home: resident parking permits so neighborhood streets are for neighbors and not businesses on the main drag; develop the parking lot down the street from us that literally is empty most of the time into something useful (business ground floor, housing above, parking below ground), parking garages instead of lots on the main drag, etc. We just need to get in the mindset that our land has become way more valuable than it used to be and plan accordingly.
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...We allowed a couple of larger, more dense projects to go up to address the housing shortage, and the fucking developer built uber-expensive apartments that are $3000-4500 a month, for a 1-2BR apartment. And you want to know something? They are empty.
So here's my question: why did the developer build apartments that didn't meet the local demand? I totally understand the desire to pursue the higher rents that come with more expensive apartments, but if they sit empty, that does the developer no good. Did they misunderstand the market? Are they hoping for an influx of high earners at some point, so they're just holding onto it?
I think they very much misunderstood the market. Urban millennials and all that. If someone has $4000 to spend, most likely they are looking to rent a house. In this town/ neighborhood anyway.
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There are aspects to prop 13 that make sense to prevent taxing old folks out of their homes. However Props 58 and 193, allowing inheritance of tax basis on real estate between parent-child and grandparent-granchild, is extremely inequitable. It's possible to keep a 1970s tax basis in perpetuity. And it creates crazy distortions in the market and people staying in the area longer than they would otherwise, and/or im houses that are too big for.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for people wanting to will their houses to their kids, and I think it keeps the neighborhoods "mixed".
I don't agree with the grandparent thing, and I most certainly voted against whatever the recent prop was that was trying to allow someone over 50 to "trade up" to a more expensive house and keep their tax basis. Um. No. There's already a law allowing you to trade down to a less expensive home (in today's dollars) and keep your tax basis.
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Our city just voted against tiny houses in the backyard after people raised a big stink. Our neighborhood is old and has small homes. It''s very popular and it's hard at times to find on street parking if you need it. I was originally for it but after studying the issues changed my mind.
The parking thing actually irritates me also and is a problem in my neighborhood. I dream up solutions to try out while biking home: resident parking permits so neighborhood streets are for neighbors and not businesses on the main drag; develop the parking lot down the street from us that literally is empty most of the time into something useful (business ground floor, housing above, parking below ground), parking garages instead of lots on the main drag, etc. We just need to get in the mindset that our land has become way more valuable than it used to be and plan accordingly.
We have similar issues. Our city allows backyard flats (they are required to), and owners have to live on property. They do not have to provide additional parking if the home is within 1/2 mile of public transit. People complain a LOT about parking. I have neighbors with one off street spot and 3 or 4 cars.
My suggestion has always been paid parking zones. Our downtown area already has them. City can limit you to a certain number per house. If you have a 2BR house and a granny unit apartment, you can have 1 or 2.
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We have similar issues. Our city allows backyard flats (they are required to), and owners have to live on property. They do not have to provide additional parking if the home is within 1/2 mile of public transit. People complain a LOT about parking. I have neighbors with one off street spot and 3 or 4 cars.
My suggestion has always been paid parking zones. Our downtown area already has them. City can limit you to a certain number per house. If you have a 2BR house and a granny unit apartment, you can have 1 or 2.
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The town I lived in from 2000-2003 near NYC (Floral Park NY) solved this by stating that no cars can be parked on the road between 4-6am. The solution was that my apartment offered 1 parking space for the tenant. If I need more I could either purchase a space in a city lot a mile away or park for "free" on the grass next to Belmont Race Track fence about a 1/4 mile away. I was one of about 10 cars that regularly parked along the Race track fence.
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Comments on many issues here:
Gentrification: I support it. People will complain regardless of whether a nice neighborhood goes to shit, a shit neighborhood becomes nice, or any neighborhood stagnates. Therefore I support the one that ends in a nicer neighborhood. Let's gentrify the whole country. In fact we already have several times over. Let's keep at it. People will always be a little nolstalgic for the way things used to be, but that doesn't mean anywhere should be stuck with how it was 30 years ago.
Soaring real estate prices: I am against them. If your area experiences these, it is probably a result of bad governance. The government should do everything possible to encourage the construction of new housing units because that is the only way to keep prices down in a place everybody wants to move to. High prices in Canadian cities are especially funny because if there are two things which Canada does not lack it is land and building materials. Even San Francisco is not at all lacking in either. I have far less sympathy for people who don't want their low-density neighborhood to change than I do for people who don't want their low-cost neighborhood to change. YIMBY for life! Except for the most painfully obvious ones like keep fertilizer plants far away, thanks.
Should California do things to get its real estate prices under control: Absolutely. The high prices there are starting to affect prices for hundreds of miles around, and the fleeing ex-Californians who are unjustly and smugly newly wealthy from the sales of their humble homes are super annoying.
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My city has been completely taken over by an army of developers, at one point in the recent past there was a statistic put out that there are more cranes above Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane than the 13 largest US cities combined.
Here's a hint, if I wanted to live in in a city like Hong Kong or Taipei, I'd go live in Hong Kong or Taipei! Don't go around telling me the solution is to cram more and more people into less and less space. Just because it is the norm elsewhere, doesn't mean those mistakes should be repeated.
When the sun is blocked out because of endless apartment towers, each with their own air conditioner, and there's no green space and your city is a maze of motorways and the water runs out.... you have to question, what on earth is the point of it all?
Time to get out once FIREd.
Semi-serious question: where are you going to go? Isn't Australia basically those 3 cities and a whole lot of dirt?
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After being in my area of Toronto, new people moved in, they were flashy with their wealth and thought they had, 'made it' when they got a house in the neighbourhood. Two storey homes were demolished to make way for the newer, larger homes on 30' frontages. Almost everyone in the area belonged to the private Cricket Club. I was the one who did not blend it at the moment. Attitudes changed hugely--it was all about what wealth you showed. I sold my house for 1.6 and then it sold eighteen months later at 2.5 mill. I only wish I had stayed a bit longer........
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Is it solely a wealth gap or a culture gap as well? My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.
The Bay Area was a nice place to live prior to the late 1980's. Not so much today for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.
Wow, I cannot believe the bias you show.
So, you are surprised that they did not drop their culture and immediately convert to whatever religion you follow.
First generation immigrants always do this. See the Italians and the Irish. The second generation will melt into the melting pot.
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... .
[/quote]So here's my question: why did the developer build apartments that didn't meet the local demand? I totally understand the desire to pursue the higher rents that come with more expensive apartments, but if they sit empty, that does the developer no good. Did they misunderstand the market? Are they hoping for an influx of high earners at some point, so they're just holding onto it?
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I think they very much misunderstood the market. Urban millennials and all that. If someone has $4000 to spend, most likely they are looking to rent a house. In this town/ neighborhood anyway.
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Seeing the same thing here in Phoenix. Seems like everyone bought into the idea that millennials want to live in hip, downtown neighborhoods, so we're seeing lots of places building and advertising "luxury" apartments. Some of these were regular apts. that were just remodeled with new paint and granite countertops. So, where does that leave the average renter, especially given the very average income levels of a typical Phoenix worker?
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Is it solely a wealth gap or a culture gap as well? My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.
The Bay Area was a nice place to live prior to the late 1980's. Not so much today for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.
Wow, I cannot believe the bias you show.
So, you are surprised that they did not drop their culture and immediately convert to whatever religion you follow.
First generation immigrants always do this. See the Italians and the Irish. The second generation will melt into the melting pot.
There is no bias. It's an observation. When the US was largely a European derived population and value was placed on assimilation, what you described happened. No value is placed on assimilation today and I see second generation immigrants staying within the closed community. There seems to be a split in the Vietnamese community. Some embrace the broader American culture, some do not.
It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
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Is broader modern American culture worth embracing?
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Is broader modern American culture worth embracing?
It's not much different than broader Canadian culture. Are you happy with that?
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It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
By your own admission, they ARE participating in a larger community, one in which the common ground is a shared ethnic heritage. What makes that community inferior to your conception of community?
We've lived in the same house for nearly 7 years and I don't know the name of a single neighbor. My community is spread around the USA, and I use the miracles of phone calls and texting to keep up with them. We're only home to cook, eat, rest, and sleep. The rest of our time is spent at work, gym, or visiting friends and family in the area. There is no rationale for me to know my neighbors and "participate".
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It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
By your own admission, they ARE participating in a larger community, one in which the common ground is a shared ethnic heritage. What makes that community inferior to your conception of community?
We've lived in the same house for nearly 7 years and I don't know the name of a single neighbor. My community is spread around the USA, and I use the miracles of phone calls and texting to keep up with them. We're only home to cook, eat, rest, and sleep. The rest of our time is spent at work, gym, or visiting friends and family in the area. There is no rationale for me to know my neighbors and "participate".
And you miss the benefits of neighborhood and community as a result. What about your kids? Are you involved in their schools and activities? Do you know what's going on at school beyond their grades and what they mention at dinner? When a tornado or flood strikes your neighborhood, who are you going to rely on? Phones and texting won't likely help much then.
I'm older, from an era where everyone knew their neighbors and relied on them to some extent. The evening after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake demonstrated the value of having neighbors that you know and trust. No power, no phones or internet, and only the car radios for information. People shared food, flashlights and information with their neighbors. The response to the next disaster will likely not be as neighborly.
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Is broader modern American culture worth embracing?
It's not much different than broader Canadian culture. Are you happy with that?
Not entirely, no.
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It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
By your own admission, they ARE participating in a larger community, one in which the common ground is a shared ethnic heritage. What makes that community inferior to your conception of community?
We've lived in the same house for nearly 7 years and I don't know the name of a single neighbor. My community is spread around the USA, and I use the miracles of phone calls and texting to keep up with them. We're only home to cook, eat, rest, and sleep. The rest of our time is spent at work, gym, or visiting friends and family in the area. There is no rationale for me to know my neighbors and "participate".
And you miss the benefits of neighborhood and community as a result. What about your kids? Are you involved in their schools and activities? Do you know what's going on at school beyond their grades and what they mention at dinner? When a tornado or flood strikes your neighborhood, who are you going to rely on? Phones and texting won't likely help much then.
It sounds like the neighbors you aren't a fan of are intimately involved in their kids' lives and those of their local community though. Anecdote alert, I find that immigrant families tend to eat more meals together as a family and have much stronger social connections. Personally, we don't have kids and don't have plans for any. But if a tornado or flood struck both sets of our parents are within a 10-15 minutes drive, a half dozen brothers and sisters within a half hour, and several dozen work/gym friends and extended family within an hour. It wouldn't be too difficult to get help.
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Is broader modern American culture worth embracing?
It's not much different than broader Canadian culture. Are you happy with that?
Not entirely, no.
And a better broad culture can be found where?
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Is broader modern American culture worth embracing?
It's not much different than broader Canadian culture. Are you happy with that?
Not entirely, no.
And a better broad culture can be found where?
How long is a piece of string?
You're asking a meaningless question there, because it's not valid to classify all aspects of any culture as simplistically as better/worse. There are many aspects of culture in Canada and the US that are worthy of praise, many that are worthy of denouncement, and many that don't really matter one way or the other. The question becomes even more meaningless when you realize how changeable these things are. The current culture in Canada is quite different from the prevailing culture even just 40 years ago. I'd expect the same is true of the US.
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Our city just voted against tiny houses in the backyard after people raised a big stink. Our neighborhood is old and has small homes. It''s very popular and it's hard at times to find on street parking if you need it. I was originally for it but after studying the issues changed my mind.
The parking thing actually irritates me also and is a problem in my neighborhood. I dream up solutions to try out while biking home: resident parking permits so neighborhood streets are for neighbors and not businesses on the main drag; develop the parking lot down the street from us that literally is empty most of the time into something useful (business ground floor, housing above, parking below ground), parking garages instead of lots on the main drag, etc. We just need to get in the mindset that our land has become way more valuable than it used to be and plan accordingly.
Ah, parking. This seems to be the one thing that is most likely to get otherwise reasonable people riled up into a frenzy where new development is concerned.
My unpopular opinion: one should not generally expect to be able to park free of charge in an urbanized area. The land is scarce and expensive. People pay for their use of this land when they rent a home or patronize a business that has its own rent bill to pay. Why should parking be any exception to this?
The widespread proliferation of free parking has led to a number of bad side effects.
- People are more likely to drive somewhere when the parking at the destination is free. This leads to more traffic and more pollution and worse health outcomes than if more people chose a more active form of transport such as biking, walking, or public transit.
- There's no free lunch. When parking is given away for less than its true cost, someone is still paying for it, but that someone isn't the motorist! Instead the cost is spread out over all the other people using the building attached to that parking lot, whether they use the free parking or not, whether they own a car or not. This means the non-drivers are subsidizing the drivers in a pretty significant way.
- As a neighborhood with free parking densifies, this parking often tends to fill up at peak times. This leads to uncertainty for people traveling to that neighborhood by car: will there be anywhere to park? Hard to say! A lot of time you might find yourself circling the neighborhood for quite a while waiting for someone to leave, maybe making you late, and definitely causing you to spew excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Much better to charge a nominal market price, just high enough to ensure that each block will have an open space or two most of the time. That way if you do need to travel by car to a place you'll be pretty confident you can find a space near your destination.
Quite a few voters put a very high value on the maintenance of abundant, free public parking. This leads to rather ridiculous policies such as requiring each new building to come with a certain number of off-street parking spots attached. These policies have their own set of bad side effects.
- The policy is only truly effective if the required off-street parking absorbs all of the parking demand from the new development. The new development isn't going to be adding curb space to your neighborhood, but it is going to be adding people. If the people in the new place use the curb space in the same per-capita ratio as the people in the existing buildings use it, eventually you're going to run out of curb space. The new building's residents need to use zero curb space for the policy to be effective in the long term.
- This is inequitable on its face, as the residents of the new building are paying the same taxes as anyone else, but they're expected not to use the public parking that their neighbors use. Imagine if we did this for any other infrastructure! We'd require new apartment buildings to come with athletic facilities and lending libraries and classrooms so that their residents will never feel the need to use parks or the public libraries or send their kids to public schools. That's not what we do. If we need more parks or schools, we pool the tax money and build some! No reason this couldn't be done with parking if the voters prioritized free parking highly enough.
- Parking is expensive to construct, increasingly so in a denser development. Asphalt is pretty cheap, but there's only so much population density you can support with one surface parking spot per home. Eventually you need to put the parking in your building, at a cost of $30-50k per spot in an underground garage. This raises the cost of building homes, suppressing the rate of construction and causing rents to be higher than they would be if we let market forces choose how many parking spaces to construct.
- Note that simply allowing parking spots to be rented separately from apartments is not a real solution to the above bullet point about costs. Remember that for the required parking policy to be sustainable, the residents of the new building must not choose to park outside the building in any significant numbers. Therefore if rent is charged for these required parking spots, the rent must be set to a low enough level that it can compete against the free street parking outside. This level will not be anywhere near enough to recoup the actual cost of building the parking garage, which means most of the cost will still be borne by apartment renters whether they use the garage or not.
Here's a real example from my previous neighborhood in Seattle. A developer purchased a one-story commercial building on a pretty small lot in a mostly higher-income neighborhood. They proposed to replace this building with a new one that had the same amount of commercial space, plus 55 small studio apartments on top, apartments that would rent for a low enough price that a full-time minimum wage worker would be able to pay the rent.
No parking would be included, as allowed by a rule that exempts housing developments from parking requirements in "designated urban villages" (which this was in), near bus lines running at least every 15 minutes for most of the day (which this was). Many neighbors were irate about this. They raised tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to bury the developers in every conceivable legal appeal possible. They eventually prevailed on a technicality. The parking exemption was written in a way that it could be interpreted to mean that the bus had to actually come at least every 15 minutes in practice rather than merely being scheduled to come every 15 minutes. In other words, it could never ever be late. Of course, every bus is late from time to time, so this interpretation would render the parking exemption pretty meaningless across the whole city. The city council amended the law shortly thereafter to explicitly use scheduled times, as was their intent all along.
The building is now under construction, basically the same as what was originally proposed, save for a couple extra years added to the schedule. These are years that 55 lower-income people who work in restaurants and shops in the neighborhood have had to wait for a relatively affordable home near their workplace.
What if the parking requirements had stuck? The developer claimed the whole time that the lot was too small for an underground parking garage; the ramp would have needed to be rather steep to get down far enough, and there wouldn't be much room for actual parking spots aside from the ramp. I saw someone else who works in architecture claim that it would be tight, but a 15-car garage could maybe be squeezed in there. If they were held to the 1:1 parking ratio that prevails in much of the city, the developer would be unlikely to build just 15 small studios on top of an expensive parking garage; more likely is that they build larger apartments to maximize the allowed building envelope on the site.
In fact, a building right across the street was finished last year and did just that: an underground parking garage with larger condos on top. These ranged in price from ground-floor studios (larger than in the building across the street) selling for $400k to two-bedroom units on the top floor with pretty nice views that sold for $1 million. Needless to say, nobody on minimum wage is going to be buying these.
In the end it comes down to priorities. The policies that keep parking free and abundant also keep lower-cost housing from being built. Which would we rather have: an exclusive neighborhood with free parking, or a mixed-income neighborhood where car owners pay the true cost of their transportation choices?
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Beyond parking, what about other infrastructure concerns? Look at the traffic in the greater DC area. And what about schools? More homes in the area means more kids to educate. But we've filled all the land with schools, so where do the kids go? What about sewage systems and electrical grids and water supplies in drought-prone areas?
I think it's easy to assume those who don't want to increase density are simply NIMBYs who don't want lower income people in their vicinity. But there are very real problems and I think we dismiss them at our peril. Perhaps some of them are solvable or mitigate-able (Traffic? Build better public transport--although that may be hard to do when you've already eaten up all the land with the extra homes. But water in SoCal? More challenging. ). But just "more homes=more affordable housing=good", and "people who don't want more housing density just don't want change, or don't want poor people around them".
It's an incredibly complex issue.
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We have been in a drought for most of the past 30 years. People from California are moving in like crazy. The weekly motels were a eyesore but now housing for the poor is gone. We have land to build but builders got burned in 2008 so not being as aggressive.
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Our city just voted against tiny houses in the backyard after people raised a big stink. Our neighborhood is old and has small homes. It''s very popular and it's hard at times to find on street parking if you need it. I was originally for it but after studying the issues changed my mind.
The parking thing actually irritates me also and is a problem in my neighborhood. I dream up solutions to try out while biking home: resident parking permits so neighborhood streets are for neighbors and not businesses on the main drag; develop the parking lot down the street from us that literally is empty most of the time into something useful (business ground floor, housing above, parking below ground), parking garages instead of lots on the main drag, etc. We just need to get in the mindset that our land has become way more valuable than it used to be and plan accordingly.
Ah, parking. This seems to be the one thing that is most likely to get otherwise reasonable people riled up into a frenzy where new development is concerned.
My unpopular opinion: one should not generally expect to be able to park free of charge in an urbanized area. The land is scarce and expensive. People pay for their use of this land when they rent a home or patronize a business that has its own rent bill to pay. Why should parking be any exception to this?
The widespread proliferation of free parking has led to a number of bad side effects.
- People are more likely to drive somewhere when the parking at the destination is free. This leads to more traffic and more pollution and worse health outcomes than if more people chose a more active form of transport such as biking, walking, or public transit.
- There's no free lunch. When parking is given away for less than its true cost, someone is still paying for it, but that someone isn't the motorist! Instead the cost is spread out over all the other people using the building attached to that parking lot, whether they use the free parking or not, whether they own a car or not. This means the non-drivers are subsidizing the drivers in a pretty significant way.
- As a neighborhood with free parking densifies, this parking often tends to fill up at peak times. This leads to uncertainty for people traveling to that neighborhood by car: will there be anywhere to park? Hard to say! A lot of time you might find yourself circling the neighborhood for quite a while waiting for someone to leave, maybe making you late, and definitely causing you to spew excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Much better to charge a nominal market price, just high enough to ensure that each block will have an open space or two most of the time. That way if you do need to travel by car to a place you'll be pretty confident you can find a space near your destination.
Quite a few voters put a very high value on the maintenance of abundant, free public parking. This leads to rather ridiculous policies such as requiring each new building to come with a certain number of off-street parking spots attached. These policies have their own set of bad side effects.
- The policy is only truly effective if the required off-street parking absorbs all of the parking demand from the new development. The new development isn't going to be adding curb space to your neighborhood, but it is going to be adding people. If the people in the new place use the curb space in the same per-capita ratio as the people in the existing buildings use it, eventually you're going to run out of curb space. The new building's residents need to use zero curb space for the policy to be effective in the long term.
- This is inequitable on its face, as the residents of the new building are paying the same taxes as anyone else, but they're expected not to use the public parking that their neighbors use. Imagine if we did this for any other infrastructure! We'd require new apartment buildings to come with athletic facilities and lending libraries and classrooms so that their residents will never feel the need to use parks or the public libraries or send their kids to public schools. That's not what we do. If we need more parks or schools, we pool the tax money and build some! No reason this couldn't be done with parking if the voters prioritized free parking highly enough.
- Parking is expensive to construct, increasingly so in a denser development. Asphalt is pretty cheap, but there's only so much population density you can support with one surface parking spot per home. Eventually you need to put the parking in your building, at a cost of $30-50k per spot in an underground garage. This raises the cost of building homes, suppressing the rate of construction and causing rents to be higher than they would be if we let market forces choose how many parking spaces to construct.
- Note that simply allowing parking spots to be rented separately from apartments is not a real solution to the above bullet point about costs. Remember that for the required parking policy to be sustainable, the residents of the new building must not choose to park outside the building in any significant numbers. Therefore if rent is charged for these required parking spots, the rent must be set to a low enough level that it can compete against the free street parking outside. This level will not be anywhere near enough to recoup the actual cost of building the parking garage, which means most of the cost will still be borne by apartment renters whether they use the garage or not.
Here's a real example from my previous neighborhood in Seattle. A developer purchased a one-story commercial building on a pretty small lot in a mostly higher-income neighborhood. They proposed to replace this building with a new one that had the same amount of commercial space, plus 55 small studio apartments on top, apartments that would rent for a low enough price that a full-time minimum wage worker would be able to pay the rent.
No parking would be included, as allowed by a rule that exempts housing developments from parking requirements in "designated urban villages" (which this was in), near bus lines running at least every 15 minutes for most of the day (which this was). Many neighbors were irate about this. They raised tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to bury the developers in every conceivable legal appeal possible. They eventually prevailed on a technicality. The parking exemption was written in a way that it could be interpreted to mean that the bus had to actually come at least every 15 minutes in practice rather than merely being scheduled to come every 15 minutes. In other words, it could never ever be late. Of course, every bus is late from time to time, so this interpretation would render the parking exemption pretty meaningless across the whole city. The city council amended the law shortly thereafter to explicitly use scheduled times, as was their intent all along.
The building is now under construction, basically the same as what was originally proposed, save for a couple extra years added to the schedule. These are years that 55 lower-income people who work in restaurants and shops in the neighborhood have had to wait for a relatively affordable home near their workplace.
What if the parking requirements had stuck? The developer claimed the whole time that the lot was too small for an underground parking garage; the ramp would have needed to be rather steep to get down far enough, and there wouldn't be much room for actual parking spots aside from the ramp. I saw someone else who works in architecture claim that it would be tight, but a 15-car garage could maybe be squeezed in there. If they were held to the 1:1 parking ratio that prevails in much of the city, the developer would be unlikely to build just 15 small studios on top of an expensive parking garage; more likely is that they build larger apartments to maximize the allowed building envelope on the site.
In fact, a building right across the street was finished last year and did just that: an underground parking garage with larger condos on top. These ranged in price from ground-floor studios (larger than in the building across the street) selling for $400k to two-bedroom units on the top floor with pretty nice views that sold for $1 million. Needless to say, nobody on minimum wage is going to be buying these.
In the end it comes down to priorities. The policies that keep parking free and abundant also keep lower-cost housing from being built. Which would we rather have: an exclusive neighborhood with free parking, or a mixed-income neighborhood where car owners pay the true cost of their transportation choices?
Amen! It should be possible in the US to develop housing that does NOT include guaranteed free parking, or any parking for that matter! The idea that in order to build more housing it should be required of developers to also provide parking is just wrong. If local governments auctioned off all of the street parking and new developments were built without parking lots/garages, guess what? People who chose to live in those buildings/neighborhoods would figure out other ways to get around: on foot, bicycle, public transit, Uber, or maybe work from home and rent cars for weekend trips. It shouldn't be required that public buses be already scheduled to run every 15 minutes before new housing is built. Maybe some of the people who choose to live in the new, more affordable (because there's no place to park for free) housing don't have any intention of ever taking a bus anywhere. Maybe they work online and like to walk to the local market to do their shopping. Maybe they carpool to work with coworkers who live in other neighborhoods. Who cares? It shouldn't be the job of the government to micromanage people's lives. People need housing, but they don't necessarily need a bus or a place to park a car. If we just make it clear to people purchasing or renting the new housing that there will definitely not be any nearby convenient, and definitely not free, place to park a car, it should be up to them whether they want to live there or not.
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Is it solely a wealth gap or a culture gap as well? My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.
The Bay Area was a nice place to live prior to the late 1980's. Not so much today for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.
Wow, I cannot believe the bias you show.
So, you are surprised that they did not drop their culture and immediately convert to whatever religion you follow.
First generation immigrants always do this. See the Italians and the Irish. The second generation will melt into the melting pot.
There is no bias. It's an observation. When the US was largely a European derived population and value was placed on assimilation, what you described happened. No value is placed on assimilation today and I see second generation immigrants staying within the closed community. There seems to be a split in the Vietnamese community. Some embrace the broader American culture, some do not.
It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
So, I guess you do not like the Indians and the Vietnamese. Who's next? The Chinese? I guess the only acceptable community is the one you are from. You could have argued about housing and prices without bringing in any specific community.
I love the "European derived population" statement. This was the argument used in discrimination against Asians (Asian Exclusion Act) in the first half of the twentieth century (1917).
I do sense a strong undercurrent of bigotry with a dash of racism thrown in. Sorry for being blunt, but in my old age, I do not tolerate BS.
This is the last I am going to post on this thread. I am done with it.
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"So, I guess you do not like the Indians and the Vietnamese. Who's next? The Chinese? I guess the only acceptable community is the one you are from. You could have argued about housing and prices without bringing in any specific community.
I love the "European derived population" statement. This was the argument used in discrimination against Asians (Asian Exclusion Act) in the first half of the twentieth century (1917)."
You clearly did not read what I wrote and you raised a bunch of irrelevant history so you could call me names and devalue what I said.
In the past, the population was dominated by people originating in Europe. Therefore, while not completely homogeneous, the culture was predominately European derived. Assimilation into that culture as modified here was what most immigrants, also largely from European countries, sought to achieve. Things are different now. If, as you say, you are older, then you have seen the change.
The thread was not originally about housing and prices, it was about neighborhoods changing in ways that make the existing residents uncomfortable. Sometimes is money, sometimes it's cultural differences that causes that. In the OP's case, highly educated professional people with money were replacing the historical residents, and not integrating into the existing community. With very few exceptions, my neighborhood has always appealed to highly educated professionals. The people choosing not to participate in the larger community here are immigrants, largely from India. People that value neighborhood here are not happy about losing that amenity and some are uncomfortable with the change. The issue is the same, whatever the cause.
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I agree with Spartana and others. I can see how your new neighbors aren’t excited about hanging out with you and rather want to stick with people they already know. I’m sure you’ve realized your insistence on them assimilating won’t help and can be ostracizing. Maybe they just don’t think your neighborhood ‘s culture (I assume it has some distinct culture you haven’t articulated yet) isn’t to their liking. Also, as others point out, people may have support networks outside of their immediate geographical area, mostly due to the existence of vehicles and telecommunications.
My neighborhood has people for varied social and economic backgrounds and some of us hang out while preserving our cultures of origin. My question for you is should my Lithuanian neighbors behave more like me, or me more like them, in your ideal scenario. Or should we be more like our Chinese neighbor? Maybe the Cubans down the street? The world changes, make of it what you will.
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I really don't care what people do or who they associate with. I don't insist that anyone do anything. I am older than the people moving in here and not having school age kids I would probably not have much in common with the new residents anyway. That's not my point. I am making an observation about what is happening. The OP's community is changing and she is losing her sense of community. The same thing is happening here, for different reasons.
As for Spartana's comment, I did not say one way was better than the other. I simply made an observation about the past being different than today. The difference makes for less slow evolution in neighborhoods and more jolting change. That is difficult for a lot of people to accept, especially people that have lived in a neighborhood for a long time.
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The idea that European populations assimilated into America is, to put it mildly, balls. It looks that way because you're conditioned to see the differences as marginal - the Polish identity of northwest Chicago, or the Irish edge to Boston, are just mild differences compared to those Indians coming in, right?
Except the ancestors of those Dropkick Murphy's fans in Boston and those sausage obsessives in Chicago were regarded as being just as different and put up with just as much bullshit, and the fact that those spots in America even now retain that intense identity is pretty clear evidence that they didn't simply assimilate. The cousins of my ancestors who left Ireland put up with a torrent of bullshit bigotry for decades, and it was only when more visible ethnic minorities started appearing in America and Britain that the Irish started being seen as equal to the preexisting white populations.
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This is happening in my community, except homes are being purchased as "vacation homes or rentals" and the real owners of the homes are rarely actually in my town, or interacting with our community. Instead, random VRBO guests come every weekend, and the neighborhoods are now just filled with tourists who stay up late drinking, being super loud, and parking in really annoying ways. What used to be a quiet small town is now completely unsustainable because of real estate prices, and the demand for short term rentals...it's pretty much ruining our neighborhoods, and small town community.
The DW and I were looking at a small town with lake access. I started noticing the increase in traffic, the excess drinking (and boating at the same time) loud music, and generally people who didn't care about others living in the area.
We backed out of a deal for various reasons but those were issues that pushed us to reconsider buying in that area.
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I took the OP and this thread to be about a wealth or income gap between older and newer residents. Not a difference in ethnicity. As I said above, my old neighborhood has been taken over by extremely wealthy people, which has completely changed the neighborhood. Their ethnicity is beside the point - the neighborhood has always been a mixture of new immigrants (like my parents) and Americans whose families have been there generations. It's their extreme wealth that has caused issues.
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It's a free world. Perhaps the old resident should assimilate to the new resident's culture / socio-economic niche. I don't think it's possible for one group to tell another group to assimilate; the other group could just as validly (or invalidly) ask the first group to assimilate. I don't really believe in there being any such thing as an incumbency when it comes to free movement.
I can understand consternation if newcomers to a neighbourhood are committing crimes, dabbling in drugs, etc. But it seems this is not what the thread is about.
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Much of the Bay Area suffers from rampant xenophobia...don't get sucked into this narrative, it creates an "us" vs. "them" mentality and will only make you miserable. Accept those "outsiders" into your community, most of us will be or have been an outsider at some point in our life.
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Your pompous, arrogant attitude is offensive.
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
You're not going to convince anyone that "xenophobia isn't a problem" by talking about a specific group of foreigners that way.
Toque.
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I really don't care what people do or who they associate with.
That's not what your posts would seem to indicate though. You appear to care very deeply about what people do, who they associate, and what cultural practices they follow.
You said that Indian people are making the Bay Area a bad place to live:
Is it solely a wealth gap or a culture gap as well? My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.
The Bay Area was a nice place to live prior to the late 1980's. Not so much today for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.
You implied that your Indian neighbours would not be willing to share food, flashlights, and information with you in a crisis:
I'm older, from an era where everyone knew their neighbors and relied on them to some extent. The evening after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake demonstrated the value of having neighbors that you know and trust. No power, no phones or internet, and only the car radios for information. People shared food, flashlights and information with their neighbors. The response to the next disaster will likely not be as neighborly.
You then argue that it's important to participate in a larger community. But only if it's not Vietnamese. . . forgetting that Vietnamese Americans are also American, and contribute to American culture.
There is no bias. It's an observation. When the US was largely a European derived population and value was placed on assimilation, what you described happened. No value is placed on assimilation today and I see second generation immigrants staying within the closed community. There seems to be a split in the Vietnamese community. Some embrace the broader American culture, some do not.
It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
You made another argument that Europeans desperately sought to emulate American culture:
In the past, the population was dominated by people originating in Europe. Therefore, while not completely homogeneous, the culture was predominately European derived. Assimilation into that culture as modified here was what most immigrants, also largely from European countries, sought to achieve. Things are different now. If, as you say, you are older, then you have seen the change.
Yet you appear to have forgotten the many distinct communities that European immigrants started and maintained. How many cities still have a 'Little Italy', or German, Polish, Ukranian, Irish neighbourhood? Look at the Pensylvania Dutch, who have never given up their German roots. I really think that you're forgetting that every group of immigrants has always banded together and brought over customs and culture from their original home. Nothing that Indian or Vietnamese people are doing is particularly different
Another argument that these immigrants are totally different, and terrible. With a side order of 'they could all turn into murderers at the drop of a hat . . . like they are in their own country'!
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
Viewed together, it's hard to see your arguments as anything other than an ethnocentric kind of xenophobia.
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I really don't care what people do or who they associate with.
That's not what your posts would seem to indicate though. You appear to care very deeply about what people do, who they associate, and what cultural practices they follow.
You said that Indian people are making the Bay Area a bad place to live:
Is it solely a wealth gap or a culture gap as well? My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.
The Bay Area was a nice place to live prior to the late 1980's. Not so much today for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.
You implied that your Indian neighbours would be willing to share food, flashlights, and information with you in a crisis:
I'm older, from an era where everyone knew their neighbors and relied on them to some extent. The evening after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake demonstrated the value of having neighbors that you know and trust. No power, no phones or internet, and only the car radios for information. People shared food, flashlights and information with their neighbors. The response to the next disaster will likely not be as neighborly.
You then argue that it's important to participate in a larger community. But only if it's not Vietnamese. . . forgetting that Vietnamese Americans are also American, and contribute to American culture.
There is no bias. It's an observation. When the US was largely a European derived population and value was placed on assimilation, what you described happened. No value is placed on assimilation today and I see second generation immigrants staying within the closed community. There seems to be a split in the Vietnamese community. Some embrace the broader American culture, some do not.
It's not about religion or cultural background, what religion you practice or how you celebrate your cultural traditions. It's about whether you in some way join and participate in your larger community. If I'm biased, it's in favor of assimilation to some degree into the broader American culture.
You made another argument that Europeans desperately sought to emulate American culture:
In the past, the population was dominated by people originating in Europe. Therefore, while not completely homogeneous, the culture was predominately European derived. Assimilation into that culture as modified here was what most immigrants, also largely from European countries, sought to achieve. Things are different now. If, as you say, you are older, then you have seen the change.
Yet you appear to have forgotten the many distinct communities that European immigrants started and maintained. How many cities still have a 'Little Italy', or German, Polish, Ukranian, Irish neighbourhood? Look at the Pensylvania Dutch, who have never given up their German roots. I really think that you're forgetting that every group of immigrants has always banded together and brought over customs and culture from their original home. Nothing that Indian or Vietnamese people are doing is particularly different
Another argument that these immigrants are totally different, and terrible. With a side order of 'they could all turn into murderers at the drop of a hat . . . like they are in their own country'!
Xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue. It's the new immigrants that rebuff becoming part of the larger neighborhoods and stick to their clans. It's kind of funny to see people of the different cultures from India not interact other than superficially with people from other cultures from their own country. At least they are not killing each other here, as happens sometimes in India.
Viewed together, it's hard to see your arguments as anything other than an ethnocentric kind of xenophobia.
Well, European Americans are allowed to keep their cultural identity because they are the REAL Americans, dontchaknow? /sarcasm
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"Well you made a comment on another post that the Bay area used to be nice in the '80s but not so much anymore."
It was even nicer in the 1950's. The population growth, the automobile traffic and the air pollution have all negatively impacted QOL. Also the COL. When I went to college, there was a big uproar because UC was going to add a $100 tuition per quarter, making it $200 a quarter plus books to go to UC. Now it's far more competitive and expensive.
I'm not going to even bother to address GuitarStv's twisting of my words.
Spartana describes a different version of what is happening here that happened in Orange County. It's happened a lot of places over decades, centuries, and probably millennia. As far as who would share what in an emergency, I have no idea what the attitude is of people I do not know. I do know the remaining original neighbors that were here in 1989 during Loma Prieta and would be comfortable relying on them. I don't know where you get the idea that I don't like the Vietnamese. There are now multiple generations made up of everyone from the original boat people to new immigrants. My observation is that there has been a split over time, with some adopting mainstream culture and some preferring to stay insulated within their communities. Look at the City Council for San Jose. It represents a broad range of cultures and is largely reflective of the cultural makeup of San Jose today.
I'm addressing the OP's comments. The reasons are different, but the feelings of not belonging for a lot of people in the community as the community changes are the same. Sorry, but xenophobia by the existing residents is not the issue here. Neighborhood and community comprise a two way street. If new people want to be part of the community, they need to do their part, as do the existing residents. If either side does not step up, the community is the worse for that failure.
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Beyond parking, what about other infrastructure concerns? Look at the traffic in the greater DC area. And what about schools? More homes in the area means more kids to educate. But we've filled all the land with schools, so where do the kids go? What about sewage systems and electrical grids and water supplies in drought-prone areas?
I think it's easy to assume those who don't want to increase density are simply NIMBYs who don't want lower income people in their vicinity. But there are very real problems and I think we dismiss them at our peril. Perhaps some of them are solvable or mitigate-able (Traffic? Build better public transport--although that may be hard to do when you've already eaten up all the land with the extra homes. But water in SoCal? More challenging. ). But just "more homes=more affordable housing=good", and "people who don't want more housing density just don't want change, or don't want poor people around them".
It's an incredibly complex issue.
Oh yes. I just finished reading a book about ... um ... waste. Very educational about human waste and infrastructure (or lack thereof). It's The Big Necessity, if you wanted to read the book.
Waste, water, electricity, schools - all sorts of things are important.
Parking is an interesting topic to me because I grew up rural (parking not an issue), moved to the city (Pittsburgh, home of the Parking Chair) - but I didn't have a car, so it didn't matter. Then on to the DC area, where it was parking by permit only. You had to have proof that you lived there (like an electric bill), and you had to pay for your permit. (I never bothered to do that, so I got a few tix for parking in front of my house when I couldn't fit in the driveway). In high rise apartments, each apt came with assigned parking.
In So Cal here, some of the locations have paid and permitted parking. Downtown areas and wealthier areas near apartments. Also, some of the older downtown homes have no off-street parking - they are on flag lots. I was pretty shocked at people complaining at the cost to park at UC (these are employees, and you have to buy a permit), as in the 1990s, we were paying $75-100 a month to park at work in DC.
Obviously people who already live in a neighborhood don't want to lose their off street parking (esp since there are often 3-4 cars per house - sometimes because that many adults, sometimes because people like cars). If a 20 unit apartment building is built with 20 parking spots, that's at least 20 more cars that will spill onto the streets. Kind of sucks. So: permits.
Of course people would prefer free parking. I do too unless I'm with my kids, then I pay to be closer. I think it's really funny here - we just got our first Target store. But it's a mini. And there is very little parking, so it has messed up traffic. Our large, and very much dying mall is next door - they've put up signs "no Target parking". Puh-leeze. I'll park at the far end of the building, wander through the mall window shopping (with my reusable bag), shop at Target, and repeat on the way back. So will plenty of other people. (Actually, I don't shop...)
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^ But why is "the way it was and the way its always been" better? And if your new neighbors felt your way was better wouldn't they want to emulate it? Perhaps instead of assuming your way, the old way, the way it always was is the way things should remain, you can try to join in with the new neighbors for a new, and perhaps improved, future for your community.
Plus I can't speak for his particular neighborhood - but every Indian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, etc family I know has quite easily and happily integrated into the community, if not first generation than second generation.
My first-gen Indian friend married to a second-gen Indian - they live in Fremont and complain/ rage against the sheer amount of competitiveness in the schools up there. If that's not assimilating, I don't know what is!
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I'm not going to even bother to address GuitarStv's twisting of my words.
You don't have to address my comments, but could you explain why you consider quoting you in context to be twisting your words?
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I took the OP and this thread to be about a wealth or income gap between older and newer residents. Not a difference in ethnicity. As I said above, my old neighborhood has been taken over by extremely wealthy people, which has completely changed the neighborhood. Their ethnicity is beside the point - the neighborhood has always been a mixture of new immigrants (like my parents) and Americans whose families have been there generations. It's their extreme wealth that has caused issues.
Moving away from race/ethnic issues, I'm with Hula Hoop that my neighbourhood is also suffering from an influx of the extremely wealthy. Or rather, it's suffering from an influx of their money, as they themselves are mostly conspicuous by their absence. These are people who can afford to spend half a million or a million on a house to knock down and rebuild, or three quarters of a million on a house which they turn into an Airbnb. They can buy a house costing one and half million within 2 days of its going on the open market and use it for only 6 weeks a year. They are happy to leave a property empty for 5 years while they put in 10 different planning applications for redevelopment which is contrary to the local policies. They present themselves in the village as a couple with young children who will go to the local schools (badly in need of support in an ageing population) and then it turns out that the home they have bought will be a holiday home and the kids go to private schools up country.
And while all of this is going on the housing mix in the area is disappearing (many fewer small properties for non-millionaires to buy or rent), the social groups are disappearing for lack of new members, the services which are kept going by volunteers rely on smaller and smaller groups of the same faces. A lifelong resident of the area told me last week that he never goes to the village of his birth any more "because there is nothing left". And the money just keeps on coming.
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I took the OP and this thread to be about a wealth or income gap between older and newer residents. Not a difference in ethnicity. As I said above, my old neighborhood has been taken over by extremely wealthy people, which has completely changed the neighborhood. Their ethnicity is beside the point - the neighborhood has always been a mixture of new immigrants (like my parents) and Americans whose families have been there generations. It's their extreme wealth that has caused issues.
Moving away from race/ethnic issues, I'm with Hula Hoop that my neighbourhood is also suffering from an influx of the extremely wealthy. Or rather, it's suffering from an influx of their money, as they themselves are mostly conspicuous by their absence. These are people who can afford to spend half a million or a million on a house to knock down and rebuild, or three quarters of a million on a house which they turn into an Airbnb. They can buy a house costing one and half million within 2 days of its going on the open market and use it for only 6 weeks a year.
And while all of this is going on the housing mix in the area is disappearing (many fewer small properties for non-millionaires to buy or rent), the social groups are disappearing for lack of new members, the services which are kept going by volunteers rely on smaller and smaller groups of the same faces. A lifelong resident of the area told me last week that he never goes to the village of his birth any more "because there is nothing left". And the money just keeps on coming.
I feel it's the job of local authorities to prevent this from happening. It's not an easy task to fix but at least they should be trying. In my city it's now required for building projects of a certain size to build homes in several sizes and price categories. Not just cheap studio's and expensive family homes, but apartments with several bedrooms for example. They are also trying to target people who run fulltime AirBnB's - what they are doing is basically run an illegal hotel without the necessary paperwork and health and safety rules. If you want to own a business in the tourist industry, you need to follow the same rules.
That doesn't always mean that the right people still get to live in the houses meant for them - landlords still get to decide who can rent and it seems landlords much prefer DINKs for those bigger apartments than couples with several kids and maybe a SAH or parttime parent, but at least local authorities are trying to influence builders to build what the city needs instead of what makes the developer earn the most money. A new big apartment building that's being built close to my home will contain loads of homes targeted at families, but also smaller studio's and apartments targeted at older people who are downsizing. I'm curious to see how that will work out. Since it's close to several good schools I'm hopeful that a lot of families will want to live there and put down roots, which will be good for the community. A lot of people originally didn't want a high rise building but this project looks really good.
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Beyond parking, what about other infrastructure concerns? Look at the traffic in the greater DC area. And what about schools? More homes in the area means more kids to educate. But we've filled all the land with schools, so where do the kids go? What about sewage systems and electrical grids and water supplies in drought-prone areas?
If you're inherently biased against density, it's easy to think of a million reasons why your city couldn't possibly handle more residents. If you view increased population density as a necessary and good thing, these concerns become solvable problems rather than intractable roadblocks. These concerns can mostly be addressed with money: namely the tax money generated by the people living in the new buildings.
Here in Seattle we actually shuttered a bunch of schools in latter part of the 20th century as people had fewer kids than they did during the baby boom years. The overall population dipped slightly from 1960-1980, but the school-age population dipped much more. Some of these schools were sold off, while the district mothballed a few of them and offered long-term land leases to private businesses in a few other cases. Keeping up with the increasing population is a challenge for the school district, but I think they're responding pretty well to it. There's a formerly mothballed middle school in my neighborhood that has been acting as a temporary home for various elementary schools as their permanent buildings are renovated and expanded. A lot of these old schools have a bunch of deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed whether population is growing or not. Each year they pick a school to move into the temporary building for a year, do the necessary renovations (or complete demolition and replacement in some cases where it's seen as more cost-effective), and in the process they add a few more classrooms to the old school to handle the growth in the neighborhood.
For sewage systems, at least here in Seattle we have a legacy "combined sewer" where storm water and household waste water goes in the same pipes. The pipes can therefore handle quite a bit more average flow from toilets and stuff, so long as the peak usage during heavy rains can be reduced somehow. Toward this end we have regulations about ground permeability and storm water retention that new construction needs to comply with. The result is that new buildings tend to place less load on the sewer system than what they replaced.
Water supplies in drought-prone areas are something I have less knowledge about, but surely there are ways to economize here too? Like, start charging enough for water usage past basic survival needs that nobody in their right mind would think of watering a lawn?
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Objectively, I don't see that much of a difference between a person who would spend $1MM vs $3MM on a house. Perhaps I don't understand. It seems out of reach for a household of a teacher and a plumber to afford the first value. Many of those households probably also have a working tech person or skilled medical clinician. I would argue that perhaps when you spent $1MM on your home, you may have displaced the first round of people who were truly lower working class and you might not have noticed it.
I live in a mixed income community. Some of the houses were sold at market rate (near or over $1M), some of the houses were intended for teachers and police and plumbers. Those "workforce" houses are worth nearly as much, but the city holds a $100,000, zero interest loan that is payable in 30 years. There is also "affordable housing" in the form of rentals where residents pay 1/3 of household income. This is gentrification and it's actually nice to live in a place with economic diversity. It's easier for me to understand more about how the "other half lives".
Is it perfect? No. But it seems to get a little easier for some and it's too much for others to bear. Some people move away (typically out of the city) where they can control who lives next door to them. Others accept that people are different and learn to deal with the differences. There does seem to be some culture clash, but as the neighborhood kids grow up and play with each other at school, then they start to play with each other at home as well. I hope these things will make a difference in the long run, and we shall see.
For the OP, if you want the new buyers to blend into the community, sometimes you have to be the one to reach out. Invite them into your home for dinner. Or bring cookies over to their house to welcome them to the neighborhood. Make an effort.
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The idea that European populations assimilated into America is, to put it mildly, balls.
This. How is history so easily forgotten?
Ah, parking. This seems to be the one thing that is most likely to get otherwise reasonable people riled up into a frenzy where new development is concerned.
Amen! It should be possible in the US to develop housing that does NOT include guaranteed free parking, or any parking for that matter!
Amen +2
When did driving a personal vehicle become a right?
@Another Reader: You’re not coming across well, but you aren’t devolving into a crazy passionate responses either. Thank you.
I propose an improvement in future comments: not mentioning ethnicity as a generality when you’re talking about an individual’s actions that you observe. For example:
“My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.”
--> “My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being sold and repurchased by new owners who do not interact with original residents. They are civil but not friendly to other residents.”
Your original writing had an emphasis on peoples’ background and not on the action that was irritating you. You even addressed the current residents with labels: “native born original”, “outsiders”, etc. (I’m pretty sure you weren’t the first ones to inhabit the area). Since this is an internet post, this emphasis is what us readers see and makes us think that your issue is more about ethnicity than about the non-inclusive behavior that you’re perceiving.
You also use many words to express an Us vs Them mentality: they, those people, clan, immigrants, etc.
How about using: my neighbors, the community, the family on the other street, etc?
Just food for thought. Maybe next time you feel an audience is misunderstanding you then you can be aware that your vocabulary is impacting your message and making you sound like a biggot.
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We are on both sides of this coin.
My husband and I live in Capitol Hill in Seattle. The gayborhood of Seattle. Many years ago it was very run down and nasty and then gay and lesbians moved in, cleaned it up, made it fabulous, and then everybody else wanted to live where it's trendy and nightlife, etc.
In the past several years, we've had both an influx of straight families and tech workers which has basically made it unaffordable for a lot of people that have lived there many years. Even us who own our own condo are struggling with the property taxes going up and up and all the new development that brings in tons of people, traffic, and pets. And yes we do have a huge homeless population and drug/mental health people, garbage, feces, etc.
Many people we know have moved away, mostly to the south and west of seattle neighborhoods or further. We have our condo on the market and are moving to said south and west. The neighborhood we are moving to is lower income, and more "gritty" but it's also being revitalized. New bars, new restaurants are going in, little coffee shops and cafes are popping up, etc.
The townhouse we're buying is bigger than our condo but will be cheaper as well. The plot it's on used to be the "projects". So in effect as we're being pushed out of one area, we're moving into another than is also being redeveloped and I don't have any illusions that we (collectively) won't be pushing some of those people out of that neighborhood too. As the prices there for housing are rising and there is a lot of development happening, it will push a certain amount of people out of there who will no longer be able to afford to live there.
I'm not sure what the solution is though.
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In regards to the OP: I hear your frustration that you feel your values aren’t being addressed in how the neighborhood is changing. From what I heard, the changes that you mentioned were the lack of interaction between neighbors and that the larger spenders don’t have the skills that the neighborhood has previously traded around (wood working, emergency preparedness, legal expertise, etc.)
You said that your neighborhood was a place where “people walk/bike outside a lot to get places. We have neighborhood events and even babysit the neighbor's kids (not for money, for free). It's not really a complaint, but the only problem I run into is that I have to allow an extra 5 minutes to get to the subway because neighbors will often stop to talk on the street.” This combined with all the fantastic skills that are being traded make for a pretty ideal neighborhood, where can I sign up? :)
While your neighborhood experience doesn’t match mine, I think they are great community characteristics to continue, so how are you showing the new residents what your neighborhood is all about? If one bbq fails it isn’t the end, it’s just one lightbulb design that didn’t work. Onto the next outreach effort!
Can we help the OP think of some ways to involve the new residents?
@Villanelle, I appreciated the perspective on the small No Buy group. I tend to go too big.
@BlueHouse, great suggestions
Outreach Brainstorm
- Buy Nothing Group
- Dinner
- Food offering
- BBQ out front
- Front yard games on Saturday
- Figure out a way to mention all the great skills that are being traded around. Tactfully ask what skills they could share with the community.
*ETA another bullet
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I kind of feel like gentrification IS the solution. If the people being displaced own their homes, they are getting a massive windfall, maybe the biggest ball of cash they will ever see in their lives. They can use it to move someplace cheaper and have more financial independence, or use it to pay for things they might not be able to afford otherwise, like college for their kids.
If gentrification doesn't happen, then the city stagnates. Then you end up with entrenched poverty.
And to all the people complaining about parking and costs - you just got a MASSIVE increase in value on one of your investments (your home), and you're complaining? Really?
I mean seriously, I never thought I'd hear anyone complain - "Oh man, my neighborhood is becoming TOO NICE". WTH?
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I mean seriously, I never thought I'd hear anyone complain - "Oh man, my neighborhood is becoming TOO NICE". WTH?
I think one issue comes from lower-cost options being pushed out, so that the current residents are priced out of the area even when they want to keep their homes (homes=neighborhood & community as well as a physical structure).
Some examples from above: the local pub where you could get a simple beer and sandwich was pushed out by a place with $15 pints and up-charged meals (or something like that), and the situation where the less expensive grocers were replaced with Whole Foods.
On a broader level, who easily excepts change? Especially when it's quick, you're not asked your opinion on it, and it replaced your go-to shops(habits) with new ones?
Seems like a generally helpful approach is to avoid an Us vs Them mentality as quickly and as much as possible. However, it takes a lot of effort to interact with a new group of people and to create situations where relationships are built.
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Re: renters, agreed it's crappy for them. But as a renter, that's an inherently unstable living situation. IME renters move a lot, even when there's not gentrifiation.
I've been through gentrification twice during the past 12 years here in Denver. First it was a small condo in a re-claimed industrial section just south of Downtown, and now it's to the west of Denver near Sloan's Lake. In both cases there were really run down, crappy areas that got bought and developed first. Which lifted the whole neighborhood. Then when my daughter was a bit older, we moved West to be near her elementary school. Great neighborhood, old 1950s brick houses. Mostly working class 5 years ago. And more than a few abandoned lots or places that were completely neglected and run down. 3 years later, all the crap lots are gone, replaced by very nice new homes. 2 years after that, the smaller houses have been bought and built into larger, nicer, more expensive homes. My house went from $455k when I bought it to $710k now. That's awesome. That makes me very happy. And guess what, my next door neighbors, they didn't even buy their home, the inherited it from their parents. They now are sitting on $700k that they can cash out any time they want.
Yes, we have a Natural Grocers, but we also still have Sprouts and King Soopers (Safeway). And a Costco a few miles away and a SAMS, etc...
Re: taxes, that seems to vary quite a bit from state to state. Here in CO it's about .6%. So my neighbors can easily afford that. But at some point, they have the option to sell their current home, move 2 miles west to Wheat Ridge and get a new, nicer, bigger home for half the price. And they aren't alone - I asked around, most people here bought their homes for less than $100k around 20 years ago. So everyone like that is sitting on a massive windfall. And the crap houses are all gone now and there's much nicer homes in their place.
Saying "but its our home and we feel like we're being forced out", dunno that just sounds very complainypants to me. Sorry if that's harsh. I think it's because I grew up with my dad in the Air Force and we moved around a lot so I just don't have these weird attachments to buildings that others seem to.
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The idea that European populations assimilated into America is, to put it mildly, balls.
This. How is history so easily forgotten?
Ah, parking. This seems to be the one thing that is most likely to get otherwise reasonable people riled up into a frenzy where new development is concerned.
Amen! It should be possible in the US to develop housing that does NOT include guaranteed free parking, or any parking for that matter!
Amen +2
When did driving a personal vehicle become a right?
@Another Reader: You’re not coming across well, but you aren’t devolving into a crazy passionate responses either. Thank you.
I propose an improvement in future comments: not mentioning ethnicity as a generality when you’re talking about an individual’s actions that you observe. For example:
“My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being filled by immigrants, mostly from India. Not from just one part of India, but different areas, cultures, and religions within India. Not only do they not interact with the mostly native born original residents, they maintain their cultural and religious affiliations within the community. Carpools, nannys, and social gatherings are very clannish. They are civil but not friendly to outsiders.”
--> “My neighborhood of 30 year-old houses on large lots is slowly being sold and repurchased by new owners who do not interact with original residents. They are civil but not friendly to other residents.”
Your original writing had an emphasis on peoples’ background and not on the action that was irritating you. You even addressed the current residents with labels: “native born original”, “outsiders”, etc. (I’m pretty sure you weren’t the first ones to inhabit the area). Since this is an internet post, this emphasis is what us readers see and makes us think that your issue is more about ethnicity than about the non-inclusive behavior that you’re perceiving.
You also use many words to express an Us vs Them mentality: they, those people, clan, immigrants, etc.
How about using: my neighbors, the community, the family on the other street, etc?
Just food for thought. Maybe next time you feel an audience is misunderstanding you then you can be aware that your vocabulary is impacting your message and making you sound like a biggot.
Personal vehicle usage is not written into the Constitution, but try taking it away from the vast majority of people that want that mode of transportation. Not going to happen.
The non-inclusive behavior is cultural in origin in this particular case. Saying anything else is inaccurate and misleading. In other cases, non-inclusive behavior results from other differences, such as education or money. The OP's situation is an example.
Your arrogance and condescension are showing. How something is interpreted by someone with your obvious bias and dictatorial attitude is unimportant to me. Your "Newspeak" doesn't fly with me and I certainly would not take direction from you on what to say or how to behave.
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It's amazing to me how many people on this thread don't like change. For the anti-gentrifiers, they hate that things are getting nicer and more expensive. For the anti-immigrants, they hate that the new neighbors are "not American" and "ruining the neighborhood".
Now, I'm originally from the South, so I've seen a LOT of bigotry from "nice white people" re: the 2nd situation. So Another Reader's soft bigoted views are par for the course, IME. I'm shocked at the anti-gentrification ideas though. Just blows my mind.
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It's amazing to me how many people on this thread don't like change. For the anti-gentrifiers, they hate that things are getting nicer and more expensive. For the anti-immigrants, they hate that the new neighbors are "not American" and "ruining the neighborhood".
Now, I'm originally from the South, so I've seen a LOT of bigotry from "nice white people" re: the 2nd situation. So Another Reader's soft bigoted views are par for the course, IME. I'm shocked at the anti-gentrification ideas though. Just blows my mind.
To the extent that "gentrification" means investment in better houses, cleaner streets, better schools, I don't suppose anyone is going to argue with you. Unfortunately that's not all it means. Gentrification doesn't just mean the effects you can see, it means a great many effects you can't. It means that working class kids can't live near their parents, fracturing families between the generations and isolating young parents from their support systems and meaning that their kids might not get such a stable family upbringing. It means ageing pensioners seeing the community they grew up in disappear, and they too lose their support systems and social interactions. It means teachers can't afford to live near the schools they teach in but have to commute long distances. It means police are separated geographically from the communities they are supposed to understand in order to serve. It means homelessness - and homelessness is not just rough sleepers on the streets, there are "hidden homeless" too. You just don't see them.
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It's amazing to me how many people on this thread don't like change. For the anti-gentrifiers, they hate that things are getting nicer and more expensive. For the anti-immigrants, they hate that the new neighbors are "not American" and "ruining the neighborhood".
Now, I'm originally from the South, so I've seen a LOT of bigotry from "nice white people" re: the 2nd situation. So Another Reader's soft bigoted views are par for the course, IME. I'm shocked at the anti-gentrification ideas though. Just blows my mind.
To the extent that "gentrification" means investment in better houses, cleaner streets, better schools, I don't suppose anyone is going to argue with you. Unfortunately that's not all it means. Gentrification doesn't just mean the effects you can see, it means a great many effects you can't. It means that working class kids can't live near their parents, fracturing families between the generations and isolating young parents from their support systems and meaning that their kids might not get such a stable family upbringing. It means ageing pensioners seeing the community they grew up in disappear, and they too lose their support systems and social interactions. It means teachers can't afford to live near the schools they teach in but have to commute long distances. It means police are separated geographically from the communities they are supposed to understand in order to serve. It means homelessness - and homelessness is not just rough sleepers on the streets, there are "hidden homeless" too. You just don't see them.
Exactly. Not one adult child that grew up in my neighborhood has moved back. Maybe a few could, but none has.
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It's amazing to me how many people on this thread don't like change. For the anti-gentrifiers, they hate that things are getting nicer and more expensive. For the anti-immigrants, they hate that the new neighbors are "not American" and "ruining the neighborhood".
Now, I'm originally from the South, so I've seen a LOT of bigotry from "nice white people" re: the 2nd situation. So Another Reader's soft bigoted views are par for the course, IME. I'm shocked at the anti-gentrification ideas though. Just blows my mind.
To the extent that "gentrification" means investment in better houses, cleaner streets, better schools, I don't suppose anyone is going to argue with you. Unfortunately that's not all it means. Gentrification doesn't just mean the effects you can see, it means a great many effects you can't. It means that working class kids can't live near their parents, fracturing families between the generations and isolating young parents from their support systems and meaning that their kids might not get such a stable family upbringing. It means ageing pensioners seeing the community they grew up in disappear, and they too lose their support systems and social interactions. It means teachers can't afford to live near the schools they teach in but have to commute long distances. It means police are separated geographically from the communities they are supposed to understand in order to serve. It means homelessness - and homelessness is not just rough sleepers on the streets, there are "hidden homeless" too. You just don't see them.
I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Homelessness is a whole other problem that I don't see tied to gentrification at all. I see it more as people with long term mental health issue or serious ongoing addiction issues. Those are real problems that need to be addressed but keeping rich people out won't do that. Hell, if anything having the rich people see it might actually drive some positive change. They might look at it and think "this is a problem now that it's in my back yard". Otherwise they won't see it and they won't care. Trust me, the things that rich people care about, those things get fixed.
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There are people on this board who are not American, you know. Who are from different cultures and with different experiences and have moved between different countries. Some of which might be "nations of immigrants" and some of which might not. And which can have different experiences of family and of social and economic conditions.
What makes you think that rich people moving into a neighbourhood will see and understand the "hidden homeless" problem, let alone do something about it, other than expecting those people to move out of their way?
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There are people on this board who are not American, you know. Who are from different cultures and with different experiences and have moved between different countries. Some of which might be "nations of immigrants" and some of which might not. And which can have different experiences of family and of social and economic conditions.
What makes you think that rich people moving into a neighbourhood will see and understand the "hidden homeless" problem, let alone do something about it, other than expecting those people to move out of their way?
Well the rich will definitely see it and they might not understand it at first. But if it gets irritating enough, they'll start to complain and possibly try to understand it. Humans are like this - we tend to deal with whatever we see in front of us. If we see homeless people hanging around constantly where we live and work, we might be moved to do something about it. If we don't see it, then we likely won't. My main point was really more that rich people have more political pull, so if they did in fact decide to take up the cause, they'd get way more traction within the system than working class or poor people would.
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Beyond parking, what about other infrastructure concerns? Look at the traffic in the greater DC area. And what about schools? More homes in the area means more kids to educate. But we've filled all the land with schools, so where do the kids go? What about sewage systems and electrical grids and water supplies in drought-prone areas?
If you're inherently biased against density, it's easy to think of a million reasons why your city couldn't possibly handle more residents. If you view increased population density as a necessary and good thing, these concerns become solvable problems rather than intractable roadblocks. These concerns can mostly be addressed with money: namely the tax money generated by the people living in the new buildings.
It's pretty easy to come up with a bunch of reasons why things can't be done. I liked your earlier suggestion that housing purchases be decoupled from parking. If people who wanted a parking spot could purchase one on the open market and then pay ongoing taxes on it, that would go a long way towards making it possible to build more affordable housing for people who don't want/need to have their own car parked right near where they live. Housing and taxes for people who only need a place to live and don't need/want a car would thus become much cheaper. I'm all for letting people who insist on driving cars everywhere pay for the real costs of their lifestyle choices. Why should people who don't want/need to have a car pay for the cost of building parking lots/garages?
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Beyond parking, what about other infrastructure concerns? Look at the traffic in the greater DC area. And what about schools? More homes in the area means more kids to educate. But we've filled all the land with schools, so where do the kids go? What about sewage systems and electrical grids and water supplies in drought-prone areas?
If you're inherently biased against density, it's easy to think of a million reasons why your city couldn't possibly handle more residents. If you view increased population density as a necessary and good thing, these concerns become solvable problems rather than intractable roadblocks. These concerns can mostly be addressed with money: namely the tax money generated by the people living in the new buildings.
It's pretty easy to come up with a bunch of reasons why things can't be done. I liked your earlier suggestion that housing purchases be decoupled from parking. If people who wanted a parking spot could purchase one on the open market and then pay ongoing taxes on it, that would go a long way towards making it possible to build more affordable housing for people who don't want/need to have their own car parked right near where they live. Housing and taxes for people who only need a place to live and don't need/want a car would thus become much cheaper. I'm all for letting people who insist on driving cars everywhere pay for the real costs of their lifestyle choices. Why should people who don't want/need to have a car pay for the cost of building parking lots/garages?
Agreed! I don't want to have a parking spot built into the cost of my home, when I don't own a car. It might also encourage more people to question their car ownership.
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Beyond parking, what about other infrastructure concerns? Look at the traffic in the greater DC area. And what about schools? More homes in the area means more kids to educate. But we've filled all the land with schools, so where do the kids go? What about sewage systems and electrical grids and water supplies in drought-prone areas?
If you're inherently biased against density, it's easy to think of a million reasons why your city couldn't possibly handle more residents. If you view increased population density as a necessary and good thing, these concerns become solvable problems rather than intractable roadblocks. These concerns can mostly be addressed with money: namely the tax money generated by the people living in the new buildings.
Here in Seattle we actually shuttered a bunch of schools in latter part of the 20th century as people had fewer kids than they did during the baby boom years. The overall population dipped slightly from 1960-1980, but the school-age population dipped much more. Some of these schools were sold off, while the district mothballed a few of them and offered long-term land leases to private businesses in a few other cases. Keeping up with the increasing population is a challenge for the school district, but I think they're responding pretty well to it. There's a formerly mothballed middle school in my neighborhood that has been acting as a temporary home for various elementary schools as their permanent buildings are renovated and expanded. A lot of these old schools have a bunch of deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed whether population is growing or not. Each year they pick a school to move into the temporary building for a year, do the necessary renovations (or complete demolition and replacement in some cases where it's seen as more cost-effective), and in the process they add a few more classrooms to the old school to handle the growth in the neighborhood.
For sewage systems, at least here in Seattle we have a legacy "combined sewer" where storm water and household waste water goes in the same pipes. The pipes can therefore handle quite a bit more average flow from toilets and stuff, so long as the peak usage during heavy rains can be reduced somehow. Toward this end we have regulations about ground permeability and storm water retention that new construction needs to comply with. The result is that new buildings tend to place less load on the sewer system than what they replaced.
Water supplies in drought-prone areas are something I have less knowledge about, but surely there are ways to economize here too? Like, start charging enough for water usage past basic survival needs that nobody in their right mind would think of watering a lawn?
And I didn't say and don't believe these are insurmountable problems. But the glib "just build more houses and increase density!" argument fails to take these things in to account.
DC has a system where storm and wastewater combine, I believe. And as I understand it, it leads to untreated sewage being released into the river on a semi-regular basis. And that's great that your community has mothballed schools. Many don't.
Again, these problems are all fixable, but require money (generally massive amounts) and that money is needed BEFORE these new homes are built and occupied since they are going to need water and power and parking and schools and roads from day 1, not after a year of paying those increase property taxes.
Again, I'm not necessarily against increasing density. I just don't think it's realistic when people toss out "just build more houses!" as though it's not a massive undertaking with huge repercussions that go far beyond constructing new dwellings.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Homelessness is a whole other problem that I don't see tied to gentrification at all. I see it more as people with long term mental health issue or serious ongoing addiction issues. Those are real problems that need to be addressed but keeping rich people out won't do that. Hell, if anything having the rich people see it might actually drive some positive change. They might look at it and think "this is a problem now that it's in my back yard". Otherwise they won't see it and they won't care. Trust me, the things that rich people care about, those things get fixed.
I am in complete agreement. I support gentrification. Extreme income inequality could be a problem, but gentrification is good.
Again, I'm not necessarily against increasing density. I just don't think it's realistic when people toss out "just build more houses!" as though it's not a massive undertaking with huge repercussions that go far beyond constructing new dwellings.
From an engineering perspective the issues you raise are relatively straightforward. Pipes, electricity, water, space for buildings, integrating green space; there is really nothing stopping those. The issues are political will-power and passing the costs through to those who most want to pay them, in other words allowing developers to pay for the infrastructure and then pass it on to willing customers.
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What makes you think that rich people moving into a neighbourhood will see and understand the "hidden homeless" problem, let alone do something about it, other than expecting those people to move out of their way?
Well the rich will definitely see it and they might not understand it at first. But if it gets irritating enough, they'll start to complain and possibly try to understand it. Humans are like this - we tend to deal with whatever we see in front of us. If we see homeless people hanging around constantly where we live and work, we might be moved to do something about it. If we don't see it, then we likely won't. My main point was really more that rich people have more political pull, so if they did in fact decide to take up the cause, they'd get way more traction within the system than working class or poor people would.
You have completely missed the point I was making. Please look up the phrase "hidden homeless". No, the rich don't see these people. They may employ them, at rock bottom wages, to make their lives more pleasant, of course. But do something about their need for housing? Pffft.
Here's a lovely example of the utter cluelessness of the rich towards people at the bottom of the economic pile.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word - Coupon-cutting congresswoman stumps big bank CEO.
I am in complete agreement. I support gentrification. Extreme income inequality could be a problem, but gentrification is good.
Extreme income inequality like the difference between $16.50 an hour and $31 million a year, maybe? That leaves a mother and daughter sharing a bedroom and still not able to make ends meet?
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Make new friends? What about my acquaintance in his 80s, who never goes to the village he grew up in any more "because there is nothing left"? Tell me, how is he supposed to "make friends" with the woman from the big city who 5 years ago closed down the village shop to turn it into a private home and has left it empty ever since?
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It's amazing to me how many people on this thread don't like change. For the anti-gentrifiers, they hate that things are getting nicer and more expensive. For the anti-immigrants, they hate that the new neighbors are "not American" and "ruining the neighborhood".
Now, I'm originally from the South, so I've seen a LOT of bigotry from "nice white people" re: the 2nd situation. So Another Reader's soft bigoted views are par for the course, IME. I'm shocked at the anti-gentrification ideas though. Just blows my mind.
To the extent that "gentrification" means investment in better houses, cleaner streets, better schools, I don't suppose anyone is going to argue with you. Unfortunately that's not all it means. Gentrification doesn't just mean the effects you can see, it means a great many effects you can't. It means that working class kids can't live near their parents, fracturing families between the generations and isolating young parents from their support systems and meaning that their kids might not get such a stable family upbringing. It means ageing pensioners seeing the community they grew up in disappear, and they too lose their support systems and social interactions. It means teachers can't afford to live near the schools they teach in but have to commute long distances. It means police are separated geographically from the communities they are supposed to understand in order to serve. It means homelessness - and homelessness is not just rough sleepers on the streets, there are "hidden homeless" too. You just don't see them.
I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Homelessness is a whole other problem that I don't see tied to gentrification at all. I see it more as people with long term mental health issue or serious ongoing addiction issues. Those are real problems that need to be addressed but keeping rich people out won't do that. Hell, if anything having the rich people see it might actually drive some positive change. They might look at it and think "this is a problem now that it's in my back yard". Otherwise they won't see it and they won't care. Trust me, the things that rich people care about, those things get fixed.
This is exactly how things are in my old neighborhood. Not a single person I grew up with in NYC (and went to public school with) still lives in the city. My friends are scattered all over the US - the closest ones to NYC are in New Jersey. The old neighborhood contains old "normal" people like my parents and young, incredibly wealthy families - most of whom work on Wall Street but there are also some movie stars and people who were born rich. None of them grew up anywhere near the old neighborhood.
That's fine I guess if you accept people constantly moving around and geographical separation but most working/lower MC class families I know, even in the US, tend to stay in the same geographical area for various reasons.
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I get that you care about income inequality and you want less social stratification in housing. Not everyone agrees with your views. I would be happy for my neighbourhood to gentrify. Unearned capital gains? Passive net worth increase? Sounds positively mustachian to me. Isn't that the whole point of frugality - so that your investments perform well and you can make money in your sleep.
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I get that you care about income inequality and you want less social stratification in housing. Not everyone agrees with your views. I would be happy for my neighbourhood to gentrify. Unearned capital gains? Passive net worth increase? Sounds positively mustachian to me. Isn't that the whole point of frugality - so that your investments perform well and you can make money in your sleep.
I suppose that's fine if you see your home as purely an "investment" rather than part of a vibrant community. From an investment point of view, my dad has done amazingly well and he knows it. He's elderly so I guess we as his heirs will probably do well out of it too. However, some things are more important than money and community is one of them.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
Someone shared a Persian adage with me once. It was in another language, so my translation really messes it up, but you'll get the idea:
It's very hard to pull a stone out of the ground, but once that stone has been pulled out, it's very easy to move it to another spot.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Please don't move into my neighborhood. People with your attitude are the problem.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Please don't move into my neighborhood. People with your attitude are the problem.
No, the problem is CHANGE. You're not willing/able to embrace it and so you are miserable. I, on the other hand, fully embrace it. And guess what? I'm happy.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Please don't move into my neighborhood. People with your attitude are the problem.
No, the problem is CHANGE. You're not willing/able to embrace it and so you are miserable. I, on the other hand, fully embrace it. And guess what? I'm happy.
I can understand the dissatisfaction--the neighborhood has a certain character (e.g. neighbors that are frequently outside and interact a lot) that brings a person joy. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person to object to the removal of that source of joy.
Personally, I strongly dislike the phrase "change is good," because there are plenty of changes that are *not* good. Can you imagine the reaction I'd get if I went into the Off-topic subforum and started a thread entitled "Trump's changes are good" or "We should just embrace climate change"? :D
You are correct that one's personal happiness is strongly influenced by one's attitude. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to embrace any and all change.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Please don't move into my neighborhood. People with your attitude are the problem.
No, the problem is CHANGE. You're not willing/able to embrace it and so you are miserable. I, on the other hand, fully embrace it. And guess what? I'm happy.
No, you would likely be an unpleasant person to have as a neighbor.
Do you participate in your kids' schools? Do you belong to any local organizations? Do you contribute time and money to them? I doubt it based on what you have said. If you don't, you don't really contribute anything to your community and you have no vested interest in it. My preference is to have neighbors that care enough about the community to participate.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Please don't move into my neighborhood. People with your attitude are the problem.
No, the problem is CHANGE. You're not willing/able to embrace it and so you are miserable. I, on the other hand, fully embrace it. And guess what? I'm happy.
I can understand the dissatisfaction--the neighborhood has a certain character (e.g. neighbors that are frequently outside and interact a lot) that brings a person joy. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person to object to the removal of that source of joy.
Personally, I strongly dislike the phrase "change is good," because there are plenty of changes that are *not* good. Can you imagine the reaction I'd get if I went into the Off-topic subforum and started a thread entitled "Trump's changes are good" or "We should just embrace climate change"? :D
You are correct that one's personal happiness is strongly influenced by one's attitude. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to embrace any and all change.
I agree with you - not all change is good. Maybe the neighborhood changes for the worse, and things like crime goes up and properties start to devolve into crack/meth dens. Happens. In that case, you should probably embrace the (negative) change and move to a better neighborhood. On the other hand, change can also be good. Like people moving to the neighborhood and making improvements to it. That's a good change. IME it's very rare indeed for a neighborhood to not change. Especially nowadays with cities growing like crazy. Complaining about it a bit like tilting at windmills, I think.
Taking a step back, I just get frustrated with the "get off my lawn" mentality of these posts. I'd expect that type of sentiment over on Bogleheads but not here on MMM.
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I'm sorry but a lot of that is just sentimental crap. If you move to a new place, get a job near where you choose to live next. We are a nation of immigrants, you can't tell me people are suddenly unable to cope with moving a few miles? Or even to a new city? Have these people never moved for a job before? Now that I think about it, the LARGE majority of extended families I know are already split apart geographically.
And losing your social interactions? Seriously? Make some new friends. There's all kinds of new/interesting/cool people out there. Hell, if rich people move into your neighborhood, these are upwardly mobile connections that you'd probably never had access to before. Use them.
Please don't move into my neighborhood. People with your attitude are the problem.
No, the problem is CHANGE. You're not willing/able to embrace it and so you are miserable. I, on the other hand, fully embrace it. And guess what? I'm happy.
No, you would likely be an unpleasant person to have as a neighbor.
Do you participate in your kids' schools? Do you belong to any local organizations? Do you contribute time and money to them? I doubt it based on what you have said. If you don't, you don't really contribute anything to your community and you have no vested interest in it. My preference is to have neighbors that care enough about the community to participate.
I like how you shifted the topic from how your unhappy with change to an attack on my re: being a bad neighbor. Not exactly solid debating skills there....
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This is not a debate. I'm stating the problem is not the generic concept of change. And who says I'm miserable?
If you can't say that you participate in and contribute to your local community, I would rather have someone that does as a neighbor. Living next door to someone that does not participate could be problematic or at least uncomfortable at times. Oh, and it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with your race, culture or country of origin. It's your attitude.
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This is not a debate. I'm stating the problem is not the generic concept of change. And who says I'm miserable?
If you can't say that you participate in and contribute to your local community, I would rather have someone that does as a neighbor. Living next door to someone that does not participate could be problematic or at least uncomfortable at times. Oh, and it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with your race, culture or country of origin. It's your attitude.
I actually do participate and not just in the neighborhood but with my daughter's school too. I work from home so I'm also in my neighborhood about 90% of the time. And I know my neighbors and talk to them, too!
On the other hand, I find the whole idea of "a good neighbor" kind of stupid. I have moved around a ton of places in my life and everywhere I've landed has had awesome people to get to know. As a result, "my tribe" is actually a bunch of people strung across several cities/states/countries. I love all those people and I'm so happy that I had a change to meet them and get to know them. And I'm even more happy about meeting some of the new people that are moving into my current neighborhood.
I mean, I suppose I could bitch that the new, big homes are "blocking my view of the lake". But really, what would be the point of that? Or I could complain that some of the new people tend to keep to themselves. But so what? Not everyone needs to behave how I want them to behave. Obviously not EVERY change is always for the better. The only thing I know for certain is that things WILL change, and my only real choice is about how I respond to it. I choose to be positive.
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Here's a hint. People here generally don't like jokes about rape, even if you're being fun and flighty.
Sorry about that, you're right. I was being careless with language there, I'll be more careful in the future.
Bravo HBFIRE, and thank you.
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This is not a debate. I'm stating the problem is not the generic concept of change. And who says I'm miserable?
If you can't say that you participate in and contribute to your local community, I would rather have someone that does as a neighbor. Living next door to someone that does not participate could be problematic or at least uncomfortable at times. Oh, and it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with your race, culture or country of origin. It's your attitude.
I actually do participate and not just in the neighborhood but with my daughter's school too. I work from home so I'm also in my neighborhood about 90% of the time. And I know my neighbors and talk to them, too!
On the other hand, I find the whole idea of "a good neighbor" kind of stupid. I have moved around a ton of places in my life and everywhere I've landed has had awesome people to get to know. As a result, "my tribe" is actually a bunch of people strung across several cities/states/countries. I love all those people and I'm so happy that I had a change to meet them and get to know them. And I'm even more happy about meeting some of the new people that are moving into my current neighborhood.
I mean, I suppose I could bitch that the new, big homes are "blocking my view of the lake". But really, what would be the point of that? Or I could complain that some of the new people tend to keep to themselves. But so what? Not everyone needs to behave how I want them to behave. Obviously not EVERY change is always for the better. The only thing I know for certain is that things WILL change, and my only real choice is about how I respond to it. I choose to be positive.
Since you answered in the affirmative, welcome to the neighborhood!
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This is not a debate. I'm stating the problem is not the generic concept of change. And who says I'm miserable?
If you can't say that you participate in and contribute to your local community, I would rather have someone that does as a neighbor. Living next door to someone that does not participate could be problematic or at least uncomfortable at times. Oh, and it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with your race, culture or country of origin. It's your attitude.
So you're saying that unless a person is highly involved with some sort of neighborhood activities and interacts with everyone then they are a "bad" neighbor? So a single kidless woman who doesn't have much in common with her married couple with kids neighbors who keeps to herself and her non-hood friends is a "bad" neighbor? Even if shes quiet, keeps her house and yard nice, and causes no harm to anyone and is friendly but keeps to herself then she's a "bad" neighbor? I'm that woman (minus the 100 cats ;-)) so guess I'd be a terrible addition to your hood.
Most of those folks are pleasant, decent people that at least peripherally participate. Maybe this person is older, and needs a hand unloading the groceries or relighting the pilot light on the water heater. In turn, you might get a tin of homemade candy at Christmas. Little things count. Since you are ex-military, I would think because of your background, you would use your training and skills in an emergency if your neighbors needed them. Good to have you in the neighborhood, if that's your attitude.
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This is not a debate. I'm stating the problem is not the generic concept of change. And who says I'm miserable?
If you can't say that you participate in and contribute to your local community, I would rather have someone that does as a neighbor. Living next door to someone that does not participate could be problematic or at least uncomfortable at times. Oh, and it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with your race, culture or country of origin. It's your attitude.
So you're saying that unless a person is highly involved with some sort of neighborhood activities and interacts with everyone then they are a "bad" neighbor? So a single kidless woman who doesn't have much in common with her married couple with kids neighbors who keeps to herself and her non-hood friends is a "bad" neighbor? Even if shes quiet, keeps her house and yard nice, and causes no harm to anyone and is friendly but keeps to herself then she's a "bad" neighbor? I'm that woman (minus the 100 cats ;-)) so guess I'd be a terrible addition to your hood.
Most of those folks are pleasant, decent people that at least peripherally participate. Maybe this person is older, and needs a hand unloading the groceries or relighting the pilot light on the water heater. In turn, you might get a tin of homemade candy at Christmas. Little things count. Since you are ex-military, I would think because of your background, you would use your training and skills in an emergency if your neighbors needed them. Good to have you in the neighborhood, if that's your attitude.
This definition of a "good" neighbor seems rather arbitrary and petty. Is it nice to offer a helping hand if someone needs it? Sure, but this is just generally being a kind person, doesn't automatically make one a good neighbor. Also, opportunities like this may not pop up if they don't need or what help, or if your lives don't overlap much. What are the odds that your neighbor you don't already know comes to your door asking for help with their waterheater? At our previous house it took about 5 years to get to know the neighbors around us. We eventually got to the point of helping each other out, except for one neighbor who was super nice yet very private (still a great neighbor, I might add). Everyone was busy with kids and working two jobs, so it just took a long time to make those connections.
I suppose I'm just far more concerned with the stuff spartana listed. I don't necessarily want a neighbor we don't already know offering to carry groceries into the house, or doing any kind of work on my house. But I care a great deal about neighbors being respectful, quiet, keeping their house and yard relatively well maintained.
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This is not a debate. I'm stating the problem is not the generic concept of change. And who says I'm miserable?
If you can't say that you participate in and contribute to your local community, I would rather have someone that does as a neighbor. Living next door to someone that does not participate could be problematic or at least uncomfortable at times. Oh, and it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with your race, culture or country of origin. It's your attitude.
I actually do participate and not just in the neighborhood but with my daughter's school too. I work from home so I'm also in my neighborhood about 90% of the time. And I know my neighbors and talk to them, too!
On the other hand, I find the whole idea of "a good neighbor" kind of stupid. I have moved around a ton of places in my life and everywhere I've landed has had awesome people to get to know. As a result, "my tribe" is actually a bunch of people strung across several cities/states/countries. I love all those people and I'm so happy that I had a change to meet them and get to know them. And I'm even more happy about meeting some of the new people that are moving into my current neighborhood.
I mean, I suppose I could bitch that the new, big homes are "blocking my view of the lake". But really, what would be the point of that? Or I could complain that some of the new people tend to keep to themselves. But so what? Not everyone needs to behave how I want them to behave. Obviously not EVERY change is always for the better. The only thing I know for certain is that things WILL change, and my only real choice is about how I respond to it. I choose to be positive.
Ah......the big homes blocking your view......you could keep that view if you had bought the lot across the road....
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It’s a personal preference to interact with neighbors or not. We live in a older neighborhood and the people are super friendly. I see people when I walk the dogs and sometimes have pleasant conversations. Our next door neighbor doesn’t have a lot of money so when we bought a new couch asked if they wanted ours and they did. When our big dog died I gave them the bed because it was only a few months old.