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by oxryly1
2785 days ago
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You left out the strongly anti-development electorate in Santa Monica. There was a measure on the ballot last year to restrict all development over 32 feet to require a city-wide vote. It was only narrowly defeated. Rent control is just a scapegoat against that. |
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In Boston, for example, I would love cheaper places to live in the city, but there's no way I'd want to see the historic brownstone neighborhoods demolished. If they were, my desire to live in Boston would quickly drop. Much of that architecture is what makes the city what it is. The people there who lived through the West End's transformation realized they didn't want that to continue, and their attitudes toward development quickly shifted. Everyone knows what Manhattan is like and not everyone wants to live in such an environment.
In the end, someone will live there. Someone will work there. Someone will open businesses to serve the residents. Someone will need to employ blue collar workers, and blue collar workers will need the means to get to their job from a reasonable distance.
Some residents don't want to turn their neighborhoods into high rises and traffic nightmares. I don't blame them any more than I blame workers for wanting to be able to live near work and not spend 60% of their income on rent.
And frankly these discussions on HN always dance around the special protected class of persion - people who use urban real estate as an investment vehicle slash secondary home. Tax them harder, make vacant buildings less attractive to own and harder to profit on. Clamp down on unlicensed vacation rentals. Force them to release the property or adjust rents so that people can afford to live there. More units will open up, prices will drop, and no one has to see their street turned into a nightmare of ubers in the shadow of a generic high-rise.