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by closeparen 2888 days ago
>I live in west oakland right next to the BART and the transformation of the city is pretty cool to watch. Tons of vacant lots are being built out into usable real estate and places with broken windows are getting rehabbed into usable commercial space. It's neat to watch this on-the-ground transformation take place

I'm as YIMBY as they come, but I have to bristle at these words coming from tech people - to the marginalized communities on the ground, it's a human tragedy. We can at least recognize that, even if it's the best available option, this kind of transformation is not without downside.
1 comments
eldavido 2888 days ago
Read this: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/21/in-praise...

And this: http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research-areas/affordability

There's a lot of conflation going on here. For one, cost-burdened households are up everywhere in the country, not just here -- housing being unaffordable is a national phenomenon, not just due to "techies". Second, the Bay Area does this to itself: developer impact fees, "preserve everything at all costs" mentality, insistence on using union labor for everything, aggressive rent control, height limits, etc.

I'm not just making this up. Both of the above are rigorously-researched publications backed up by extensive study and review, not just random bullshit someone made up. My wife is an architect who deals with this stuff daily. Housing affordability is nowhere near being a priority in this region. If it was, prop 13 would be repealed, it wouldn't take 2-3 years to get an ADU permitted, the review process would be easier, environmental restrictions would be looser, and we wouldn't use union labor for everything.

Bottom line: time to get honest about where the priorities are. Affordability is nowhere close to the top.

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closeparen 2888 days ago
From a policy perspective I agree. The regulations that Bay Area homeowners institute to ensure that this remains an exclusive and premium place are effective and ought to be reversed.

We can still talk about the issue in a way that empathizes with the tragedy of poor communities losing their homes, and avoids framing gentrification as an unmitigated good.

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eldavido 2888 days ago
Very true. I'm just tired of being called the bad guy.

We might not see eye-to-eye on this issue. I think it's about 90% the fault of those who've lived here for decades and 10% the fault of new people like me (7 years here so far).

I think this is reflective of a more general problem with policymaking in the Bay Area, namely, people do what feels good, and ignore what actually works. I'm somewhere in the middle politically but this puts me way right of most bay area people. And what upsets me is that people just think they can make up their own outcomes here. There are certain issues like rent control, where every mainstream economist agrees it makes the problem worse (stifles development and divides an area into a two-tiered systems of "haves" and "have nots" for the controlled units) and yet we just ignore them here, preferring to vote with our hearts, or as you put it "empathize".

I'm trying to empathize but I'm also trying to solve the problem, you know?

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