[yggydrasily]

> That homelessness persists in Silicon Valley has puzzled me.

The reason is (as the paragraphs just below this line indicate) in fact the same reason for a great deal of issues in the Bay Area: lack of regional planning.

Planning in the Bay Area is far too localized. Cities constantly pawn off problems on each other. There are cities that approve thousands of new units of office space but zero housing. Transit systems don't connect to each other. Sports stadiums are constructed with no thought as to how people will arrive. Freeways have lanes that appear and disappear at various county boundaries, causing dangerous congestion. On and on. It's also why so many cities don't have enough shelters and just seem to expect (as the article states) that other nearby cities will pick up the slack.

What is needed is for the disparate cities of the Bay Area to stop passing the buck and come together as a region and plan together. Continuing to hope someone else does the hard work of solving problems will continue to result in them not getting solved.

[tedivm]

The real question is how do we push for that to happen. Most of the tech people I know move around- they rent one place for a few years, then end up in another part of the bay shortly after that. There's no real incentive for the politicians on the local level to give up power, and the state doesn't seem to care.

Regional governance seems to be the answer, but making that happen seems like an impossible task.

[danharaj]

The New York Metro Area might be a helpful model of regional cooperation. It has its own growth problems but the New York Metropolitan Area is home to 20.1 million people as opposed to the 7 million who live in the Bay Area and involves governments across four states.

[moultano]

Like everything else in California, we amend the Constitution. (Only half joking)

[abfan1127]

you could de-regulate the planning all together and the the market decide the best way to allocate resources...

[gnarbarian]

A city is a network. When you have high congestion for a central resource you should find ways to push that resource to the edge of your network. The resources are Jobs. Deregulation would certainly help, but that's missing the big picture.

Companies are focused too much on silicon valley. People are willing to live like animals putting up with appaling conditions and subjecting themselves to insane costs and commutes. They would certainly move a few hundred miles for the same job with decent rent 10 min from the office even with a pay cut. The market can fix this problem right now without deregulation. But it won't get fixed until more companies actually start hiring outside of SV.

[crdoconnor]

While you still have land ownership the market isn't fully deciding anything.

[superuser2]

The market decides human beings are not worth shelter, and you're suggesting it needs more power? What the fuck?

[HappyTypist]

The market certainly decided that human beings ARE worth shelter and more shelter should be constructed. More supply will result in lower prices. However, cities are barely approving residential zoning and this artificial distortion is amplifying the homeless problem.

As we have seen here, regulation like rent control is much more harmful than helpful. Rather than needing to cough up an extra $50 per month for example, you wait until the market rent is double what you're paying now - and naturally, get kicked out for one reason or another.

If zoning was dramatically curtained and / or abolished, the housing problem would be solved almost overnight. The high property prices ARE a market signal saying, build more houses. Regulation is preventing efficient markets.

[superuser2]

Certainly building more housing will bring down the price, and that will make life easier for tech workers who will still be well-paid. But that won't do anything for the homeless who are unemployed or making minimum wage, who are still going to be vastly outbid compared to tech salaries.

Given the geographical constraints and the velocity of tech growth, it's really unlikely that a free market would build so many units that all the high-paid tech workers who could possibly come to the Bay Area were situated, and landlords were forced to start catering to the working poor. We have to force them to, because market incentives won't.

[gnarbarian]

Companies could build offices in other towns. That's an option too.

[landryraccoon]

Forgive me, I don't understand. Are you saying developers need to be forced to build housing? Developers will do anything to build more units, if you ask them to set aside units for affordable housing they will. In SF it's almost impossible for them to build anything..

[hkmurakami]

>However, cities are barely approving residential zoning and this artificial distortion is amplifying the homeless problem.

Aren't "cities" just manifestations of players within the greater market system coming together to assert their interests and preferences?

Or is this an example of how a group can act to block the proper functioning of a market, kind of like a cartel?

[superuser2]

Cities (and countries) are democratic communities that can choose to deploy markets if and to the extent that they are useful for some resource allocation problems. And they are quite useful. But communities come first; when the market does something that opposes its values, the community can and should override it. The difference between regulation and a cartel is that regulations pervert the market for public gain at private expense and cartels are the other way 'round.

[abfan1127]

with the bay area experiencing high regulatory restrictions, I'd say more regulation isn't going to help. Milton Freidman has some good stuff on this - check out Free to Choose, its a video series.

[superuser2]

I am aware of the market-is-God talking points. The Bay Area's regulatory restrictions are doing exactly what they were intended to do: protect the views and increase the property values of existing owners by preventing new construction. In this case, regulation works as intended. It's just that the intentions were wrongheaded.

Removing the regulation would move us further towards "people with money can get housing." I want a livable city for everyone, including those without the resources to outbid me, and that requires different kinds of regulation.

[abfan1127]

thats certainly a valid opinion, however, with those regulations come housing shortages and conditions like in the Bay area. You've chosen an optimization, and like all optimizations, there are trade offs, and some of those trade offs are hard to accept.

Not to fully respond to your trollbait, but the market isn't god. Its just smarter (i.e. crowdsourced) than a few government officials about establishing what society wants.

[landryraccoon]

I don't understand? The market values housing extremely highly, that's why rents are so high. Every single developer wants to build more housing, it's regulation that's stopping them. Is there an evil conspiracy (other than the government) to keep rents high?