|
|
|
|
|
|
by closeparen
3274 days ago
|
|
|
Okay, I'll concede you're talking about a different kind of area than I thought. > And even if we were - those more monied types who do live near transit mostly won't use it except maybe for sporting events I don't know if you count tech workers as "monied types," but we are a huge component of the urbanization and gentrification of the Bay Area, and this absolutely isn't true for us. If anyone in my office drives to work, they hide it well. Walking is a little higher status than transit, but almost everyone uses transit. I live in one of those new 5-story mixed-use mid-rises that everyone loves to hate, with rents that do seem to signal "monied types." In fact my neighbors are mostly young families, students, and few single yuppies like me. People with ordinary incomes absolutely live here, just with more adults per household than they'd probably like. Most of us have cars, but the garage is completely packed at noon on a weekday. They come out almost exclusively on the weekends, particularly when it's nice outside. The actual tophat-and-monocole owner-of-land-and-means-of-production capitalists are content in their $2m single family homes, but those are authentic neighborhood character and not problematic symbols of wealth at all. The public discourse has no problem with them, but it would be political suicide to come out in favor of housing for mere high wage workers. Only the destitute (who qualify for BMR) and the oligarchy (who can afford neighborhood-character-respecting single family houses) are welcome here. |
|
|
In a prior comment in this thread, I mentioned a verge about which I later had more to say: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14666944 - tl;dr: the plot went for a song, the developer's going to make a killing, and neither the city nor its populace is going to see any meaningful part of that killing - but, this being the city it is, I'm sure whoever sold the developer a sweetheart deal will get a tidy little kickback out of it.