[kindatrue]

Not surprising when you look at California's home prices.

The median home sold from Marin County to Santa Clara County is $1M+.

That's the same land mass as from Times Square to the Maryland border.

https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1440035534693232640

California is NIMBYism at its worst: the far left opposes more housing, the far right opposes more housing, and the center is sick of traffic from more housing.

[gtowey]

> California is NIMBYism at its worst: the far left opposes more housing, the far right opposes more housing, and the center is sick of traffic from more housing.

It's the banality of evil.

It's not that homeowners are conspiring to create unaffordable housing, it's just that they all just care about the benefit to themselves of rising home prices and maintaining the comfortable exclusivity of their neighborhoods. Everyone hopes someone else is fixing the problem.

Collectively, each city wants some other city to build more affordable housing. It's not a political issue. It's the haves vs. the have nots, just as it's always been.

The only solution is to have the state organize a plan that forces many cities in the bay area to build denser housing is some of their prime locations -- I'm thinking like way Palo Alto's downtown and Caltrain station area is surrounded by single-family suburban houses. Some of which are on huge lots! Any areas surrounding public transit corridors like that should be immediately built up into multi-story housing complexes.

[BlargMcLarg]

It's also shortsighted.

Who are the people moving out? Primarily those without money or assets to stay. People who tend to skew younger.

So you drive out the younger, start a feedback loop where more young people leave, inverting the population pyramid. This is accelerated by the lower birthrate.

Congrats, you now live in a place where young people are overwhelmed by grey pressure and the only realistic alternatives are decreasing quality of services, or siphoning wealth to push for more services. The latter solution nullifies most benefits stubborn NIMBYs amassed for themselves a few decades before they got old.

Aka "congratulations, you played yourself".

[pharmakom]

You just described the UK

[bestnameever]

> it's just that they all just care about the benefit to themselves of rising home prices

Personally, I do not know a single person whose NIMBY is motivated by this.

[thebigman433]

> the far left opposes more housing

What do you mean by this? Who is the "far left" and what are they opposing exactly?

[zbrozek]

Dean Preston, by way of example.

[bradlys]

Yeah - his issue is that he rather block any market rate housing rather than it not be public government housing.

That’s tough when we live in a super neoliberal country. Government housing is dreaming.

He lives from a place of comfort since he’s owned his house for a long time.

[zbrozek]

I don't understand the hate towards market rate housing. Want the market price to come down? Build more supply. We're so far short of healthy levels of stock, however, that there's no relief in sight with merely-modest pro-housing policies. We need something akin to post-ww2 levels of construction.

[bradlys]

The argument I've seen is that basically because we'll never have that post-ww2 levels of construction - building more market rate housing only pushes existing tenants out of the city. You have to usually tear down existing housing and then build new. So, the old tenants get pushed out and then new housing comes in but it's a lot of investment properties and whatnot... So, the cost of housing doesn't actually go down.

If we had post-ww2 levels of housing development but with mixed use residential then I'm thinking we'd have more of an agreement but that's the issue... No one thinks that will ever happen. So, they advocate for more government housing because that will improve more lives of lower income folks.

[ViViDboarder]

As far as I can tell, the people against market rate housing are really just using low-income housing as justification of their NIMBYism.

Kind of like how domestic espionage is justified with calls of “think of the children”. They try to make you seem heartless to oppose their position.

[anigbrowl]

the far left opposes more housing

Not true at all. The far left objects to gentrification, where the supply of housing nominally increases but prices continue to go higher. Short-term rentals and properties being kept vacant for land speculation are two factors. The far left hates landlords and property speculators, for more or less the same reasons Adam Smith did.

[MaxHoppersGhost]

Fine. The far left opposes more housing… but for different reasons than the far right.

[anigbrowl]

Please don't mischaracterize what I wrote, I clearly stated my belief to the opposite. In years of being in and around the far left, I have never seen anyone try to prevent the permitting or construction of new housing. Arguing that housing needs to be affordable to address the problem of homelessness is not opposition.

Your original claim is just not factual. No rhetorical flourishes are gonna change that.

[jeffbee]

Also explains why Texas is growing the quickest. It turns out that population is basically the integral of new home starts. Who could have predicted this, except every YIMBY I know who has been screaming about this for 25+ years?

[ryanSrich]

Yeah crazy to think that people like cheap houses and no income tax /s.

But in all seriousness. The ROI on California taxes has to be one of the worst deals in the country. I can’t think of another state (maybe NY) that does so little with so much.

[jeffbee]

California sits right at the national average for state and local revenue per capita. The real high-tax states are places like NY, NJ, CT, and MA.

[ryanSrich]

I’m not talking about tax burden, I’m talking about tax ROI. Essentially what you get in return for your taxes. You could argue that Texas is objectively a worse state to live in tax-wise because you essentially get nothing in return for your taxes. Not even a fully functioning power grid (that you still have to pay usage rates for). So tax rates are low, but return on what you do pay is even lower.

But I’m talking about California. They have high tax rates across the board, certainly not the highest as you’ve pointed out. However, even with high rates, the citizenry gets almost nothing in return.

[jeffbee]

What service specifically do you believe that comparable states provide but California lacks? Considering the fact that the bulk of taxes and services are local, I am moderately satisfied with fire fighting, law enforcement, education, libraries, parks, sanitation, transportation, and the state poet laureate. Each could be improved in some way, but I think that is true in any state.

[pandaman]

I get a nice road system both in the terms of condition and reach from TX, don't know what else is state supposed to give me. Can't complain about the grid too, though I get the electricity from the city it's pretty reliable and cheap. I did not get state electricity in CA either, but the city's utility in LA was much less reliable and much more expensive. I suppose states have their input here through banning the construction of power plants.

[ryan93]

In Texas I’ve been without power for a total of three days in last 15 years and that was a once in a century event

[ryanSrich]

Serendipitously, this tweet popped up almost right before I read your comment - https://twitter.com/ybarrap/status/1606319917229228032?s=46&...

I don’t think it’s outrageous to say Texas has one of the worst power grids in the nation. Regardless of your personal experience.

[jleyank]

No clue what it is now but the state tax was 5.3% in the 00’s when we lived in mass. Prop tax was typical for house prices. It has a high tax rate reputation but this might be as bad as one thinks.

[fzeroracer]

A lot of people are going to be surprised when they buy a decent home in Texas and end up getting slammed by property taxes. Or you buy a home in the middle of nowhere and have to deal with the worst infrastructure around.

[maerF0x0]

Texas also has a ton of NIMBYism. That's the same root sentiment for "Don't California my Texas" which says "You may be a resident, but you better not do something I don't like" -- same mentality.

I see this same resistance when it comes to building non-single family homes, and Texans are instead thinking more lanes + more sprawl is going to solve the influx of people. Then they lament pricing and make claim that long time Texans have more of a right to live here than new people. I'm sorry but for a capitalist and freedom loving state, it sure is echoing some of the exact same things that helped California's demise.

[fundad]

I wonder how housing inflation rates compare across states.

TX real estate looks cheap to ex-Californians but has TX or any state kept housing affordable for existing residents in the past few years?

[maerF0x0]

AFAIK Austin has been one of the fastest rising (and now falling) real estate markets. People have been rushing to Austin since before COVID in 2020 and but also participated in the great dispersion.

(eg a hit on google: https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/fastest-growing-real-estate...)

[ttyprintk]

I’ve heard two explanations:

The household inflation rate is highest in the Rockies.

The household inflation rate is rising fastest in the South, attributed to new arrivals.