Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rgppq112 2529 days ago
Luckily, my vote for single family houses will cancel out your vote.

A single family house in a good and expensive neighborhood is something many people want to get and when people want to get something, they put effort into that and drive the economy up. I'm one of those people and I'm putting a lot of effort to get such a house, paying high taxes on my way there. People who vote for dense multi family housing have probably never lived there. But I did, I came from a ghetto and don't want to go back. Those dense apartment complexes don't solve any of the problems you've listed, but rather introduce new, such as drunk addicts wandering around your complex when you're returning from work. Apartment complexes don't make anyone's lifestyle any less sedentary and any less car dependent, because you still need a car in such a huge country. The US has plenty (too much) land: that's obvious to anyone who's bothered to go on a road trip. Most of that land just sits around unused. The carbon intense lifestyle is caused by the disposable junk products that are intentionally made flawed so we'd have to keep buying new. There is nothing "carbon intense" in putting together a bunch of trees and calling that a house. The cause of materialistic lifestyle is caused by greed: a fundamental flaw in our mentality that humanity will take tens of thousands years to overcome. Petty housing laws aren't going to change that, just like laws aren't going to make a teen grow faster. Economic "segregation" is a good thing as it gives people a choice where to live. Anti-social lifestyle? ROFL. Like I've said, I lived in a ghetto good 20 years. That kind of lifestyle can't be any more anti social. Some people have that detached from reality idea that if we make all sorts of people live together in packed apartment complexes, the "pro-social lifestyle" would flourish, we'd get nice parks with crowds of happy people and kids running around. None of that would happen. What would happen is a bunch of depressing big apartment buildings with all sorts of sketchy folks wandering around your neighborhood, looking for something to keep themselves busy. And that something is rarely a talk about arts. In such neighborhoods you'd want a car even more, but now for safety reasons and you wouldn't dare to leave your kids alone in such places. "Increases barrier to connect with others" - gosh, I can't stop laughing. The kind of people you would have easier, with no barriers, communication are not MIT professors and you would want a car with tinted windows just to have that barrier to connect with others.

The single family house neighborhoods with HOAs, tiered by social status, is the right way to go as it gives everyone a choice where to live. If you want to build a bunch of tall apartment complexes next to the city center, so you could walk to work, fine, do it, vote for it, but please, keep your hands away from single family houses and HOAs.

1 comments

> please, keep your hands away from single family houses and HOAs.

No. I vote for what I believe is best for society, and mandatory single-family home neighborhoods are terrible for it.

They're bad for the environment, and they're bad for inequality. The sooner they go away, the better.