[BonnieBrown]

Yah you are entirely wrong. I lived in Santa Cruz for 4 years while going to school. If you dont think the residual wealth from just over the hill raises housing prices and drives out lower cost-of-living housing the same way that it happened in SF proper you are willingly deluding yourself of the truth.

In my 4 years at Santa Cruz I was not aware of one low-rent housing development being built. There was one developed on West Cliff near the boardwalk but it was like 3.5k for a 2 bedroom apartment and that was the only one I was aware of.

[smsm42]

> In my 4 years at Santa Cruz I was not aware of one low-rent housing development being built.

So, there's a huge demand for housing for rent. But no housing is getting built. Does Santa Cruz have a Tokyo-level population density and there's literally nowhere to put more housing? Doesn't look like it last time I was there. Do hitech companies somehow use their nefarious influence to prevent housing from being built because they know how their workers enjoy long commutes in heavy traffic? Doesn't sound likely to me. So why there's no housing being built? Somehow I don't think it's Netflix's fault...

[Danieru]

FYI, Tokyo has tons of room to put more housing. Just knock over the old un-attractive houses and build something builder.

Anyone complaining how no new low market housing has been built is wishing for a short cut. California has strangled their housing supply for so long there is unmet demand at every market level. To somehow expect development to sneak through at the low end is silly.

Houses and apartments start new then get older. Older things are less valuable and thus naturally low end housing is best met by old less desired housing.

Wishing to see new development first happen at the low end before saturating the high end is like wishing car makers built brand new cars for the used car market.

[zamfi]

> Wishing to see new development first happen at the low end before saturating the high end

Development is basically not happening at any end, low-, high-, or middle-!

This is also not the fault of Netflix, et al.

[oehtXRwMkIs]

Why Tokyo? I'm not sure if you used it as an extreme example of density (because it's not), if it's the combination of density and lack of housing (which it's not a good example of), or some other reason.

[smsm42]

No special reason, just an example of a large pretty dense city.

[nostrebored]

That's because that's not how low rent housing happens. Low rent housing is the high rent housing of yesteryear.

Trying to preserve San Francisco and Santa Cruz as a quaint tourist towns is to blame for their housing strife.

[kelnos]

Regardless of who is to blame, it's ridiculous that the response seems to be for people to stick their fingers in their ears and just go "la la la la la I don't see you" in the hopes that if they ignore the problem, all those nasty mean tech people will just go away.

Clearly, that's been working so well.

The only reasonable way out of this is to build. A lot. I don't care if people think that's "unfair" or will "change the character of the neighborhood". It's the only option, or we just end up stretching out this housing shortage crisis forever, or at least until all lower- and middle-income people are forced out of their homes and these areas turn into places where nobody but the rich can afford to live comfortably. (And then the rich realize that there are no restaurants, bars, or anything fun to do anymore because the people who'd take those service jobs don't feel like commuting from 2 hours away. So they flee the area and you end up with a wasteland.)

I've been living in the bay area for 16 years. I didn't feel financially secure enough to buy a place until about 4 or 5 years ago, and have finally managed to do it this year. And I'm one of the highly-paid tech people that you hate. We're here to stay. You can either stick your head in the ground and continue to moan about housing costs, or you can vote in politicians who will build more. Those are really the only two options.

[rcpt]

> The only reasonable way out of this is to build

In California we could fix education funding and unfuck our housing market by repealing Prop 13. It's not a total solution but it'd do than building at anything less than Shenzhen rates of construction.

[deepakhj]

I have friends who rent (and probably will never be able to own) and parents who own who freak out when apartments or new construction goes up in Santa Cruz. There’s a notion that any building will ruin Santa Cruz. They’re not in the tech industry either.

I know several folks who do work in tech and they’re able to buy a house outright and it’s better to commute from Santa Cruz and be able to surf than live in a boring city like Mountain View.

[skybrian]

It might be interesting to compare Santa Cruz with Monterey, which is too far to commute to Silicon Valley but still has high rents and not enough housing.

It seems there are a lot of rich people who don't work in tech?

[nerfhammer]

low income housing doesn't get built because it's banned almost everywhere

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21754205

[CalRobert]

"I was not aware of one low-rent housing development being built. "

And were the tech companies the ones making it illegal to build homes?

[quineoa]

nice, maybe we were in the same class with Mackey