[kindatrue]

Californians: Let's oppose all new housing

Also Californians: Let's vote in a Property Tax scheme where the amount you pay is based on when you or your ancestors bought the home.

Also, also Californians: Weird why do we have 25% of the nation's homeless population???

[abeppu]

> Californians: Let's oppose all new housing

This is like snarkily claiming "Senators: let's oppose all new laws", which refuses to acknowledge that gridlock comes from a sufficient minority exists to create hurdles for any new policy.

The problem is that roughly 0% of Californians will say they want no new housing, but a enough of them will oppose the specific projects that are near them, with the effect that all housing construction projects get hindered, even when everyone says in the abstract that more housing is needed and important.

[hifromLA]

This is certainly a more accurate and interesting analysis. I’d also like to point out how anti-gentrification activists and wealthy NIMBYs often work towards the same goal. I believe the anti-gentrification activists have the more noble cause, but the net effect is the same.

What we are seeing is only a product of extremely high demand meeting an unstoppable (ish) force. The results are not great.

[s1artibartfast]

As much as people hate on market solutions, completely ignoring Market forces simply makes them build and compound until they reach a breaking point.

[Bloating]

much like squeezing a balloon

[aidenn0]

I was talking about Newsom being anti-NIMBY and my dad says "Judging from people I talk too, that seems anti-democractic" and my response was "Well actually for any given backyard, 99% of the population wants housing built there" So it is an important, if subtle, distinction.

[_fat_santa]

Only in California will you find someone who can say with a straight face: "we need more housing" followed by "no we can't allow that housing". It seems to me that Californian's (at least the activists) like the idea of more housing, they just hate more housing.

It's almost like the folks screaming about "affordable housing" figured out they like yelling about the problem more than they actually want the problem to be solved.

[chmod600]

I met someone that seemed to experience the cognitive dissonance in real time. Voted for people who advocated affordable housing. They built some next to her and she started calling and complaining and going to meetings.

Apparently the building was too tall or too close or too many of the people in it were not the sort she wanted to live next to. But shes is still a fan of affordable housing in other neighborhoods.

[milkytron]

Definition of NIMBY

[chmod600]

True, but there's an interesting difference between this case and, e.g., nuclear power or something.

Government is one way to outsource charity. Vote for programs, pay your taxes, and you care. When it actually affects you directly, that's a very different kind of charity, and requires a different kind of caring.

[lucasmullens]

> Only in California will you find someone who can say with a straight face: "we need more housing" followed by "no we can't allow that housing".

I don't think NIMBYism is confined to California. Lots of people understand more housing is needed somewhere, but also don't want a high-rise next door to them.

[ransom1538]

"It seems to me that Californian's (at least the activists) like the idea of more housing, they just hate more housing."

As a I Californian, think it's darker. I think Californians don't believe in more housing at all. I think they will say to your face they want more lower income housing, but behind closed voting booth they vote NO to housing.

[pydry]

>Also, also Californians: Weird why do we have 25% of the nation's homeless population???

I'm pretty sure a large contingent of the most wealthy Californians (oligarch types) are secretly quite pro homelessness. Their mere presence exerts a motivating effect on the workforce simply by dint of a clear example of what may happen to you too if you lose your job.

Also, the only really effective way to arrest the rise of homelessness is to trash the value of their existing property portfolios by building sufficient housing.

[Bloating]

While its fun to point out the hypocrisy and self-centered blinders of Californians, this is how most of the country behaves.

Raise taxes, just not mine (I'm not as rich as that other guy).

More affordable housing, but less sprawl. Don't tell me what to do with my property, but subsidize that last mile of internet.

Those evil (whatevers) need to pay their fair share, and give me free stuff

[s1artibartfast]

Discussing prop 13 is a can of worms but I don't think it is a major factor in the affordability crisis.

It does not drive the cost to build or buy a new home up. In fact, it increases the cost of new home ownership and therefore drive new home price down.

It is more complicated in the case of rental prices, but it is still a 1% tax that gets passed on to renters.

The problem is that a new house costs 1 million dollars, not that there is a 1% tax on that new house. This is a supply problem. If a new house cost 250k, a 1% tax would be irrelevant

[pksebben]

fairly certain the weather has a bit to do with point 3.

as for point 1, it's kinda not the case. My area is > 70% new construction (5 years or younger). There are whole neighborhoods here that look totally finished up until a certain house, and then are just rows on rows of half built plywood.

[dougmwne]

Oh dear lord the weather. This keeps getting trotted out. And something about Regan. Newsflash: European countries with Mediterranean climates are not overrun with all of Europe’s homeless. Regan was president over 30 years ago!

California’s first problem is that it is in denial. Its second problem is that it refuses to think it is the cause of the problem or responsible for the solution.

[sagarm]

There might be a few other relevant distinctions between California (part of the US, remember?) and European states, e.g. their robust safety nets and health systems.

[dougmwne]

Bingo. And California is responsible for funding and administering many of these safety net programs.

[brewdad]

Your straw man argument might hold up better if you at least spelled the former president's name correctly.

[dougmwne]

Thanks for the spellcheck. By saying my argument was a strawman, you are implying that no one is actually saying that, when it’s truly one of the most common things that comes up when you talk to people in SF about homelessness.

[davidw]

It is not the weather:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/everything-you-think-you-k...

[hifromLA]

I buy into the idea that high housing costs are the #1 reason, but I do want to point out that mild weather increases the visibility of the homeless population.

For most Americans, when they think of homeless people they don’t really care as long as they are out of sight and out of mind. So I believe that’s where the misconception comes from.

[sopchi]

You bring up visibility of the homeless, that is one thing, but it is besides parent's point. There are government statistics on the homeless population and California has a huge share of it. See the 2022 HUD report [1] (also note the distinction between homeless and unsheltered):

• More than half of all people experiencing homelessness in the country were in four states: California (30% or 171,521 people); New York (13% or 74,178 people); Florida (5% or 25,959 people); and Washington (4% or 25,211).

• California accounted for half of all unsheltered people in the country (115,491 people). This is more than nine times the number of unsheltered people in the state with the next highest number, Washington. In the 2022 point-in-time count, Washington reported 12,668 people or just six percent of the national total of people in unsheltered locations.

[1] page 16 of https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-...

[davidw]

Absolute numbers are not very useful. You want to look at per capita statistics, which the link I posted does. It's worth a read.

[sopchi]

For sure. I was just bringing numbers to support the >25% number claimed higher, and that it is not a matter of visibility. I frequently find people seem to think the homeless are simply more visible in California.

Also didn't want to copy paste the whole page, thinking people here know that California's population is nowhere near half or even 30% of the US population. The link I shared has on page 16 a map that addresses your point, and also on the same page:

• California also had the highest rate of homelessness, with 44 people experiencing homelessness out of every 10,000 people in the state.

The link you posted is interesting. It does take numbers form a variety of different sources and it is difficult to know if the methodologies are always comparable. That page uses HUD numbers (and the map I am pointing to) as one of the sources. The states ranking it gives for homeless per capita is from 2019 (prepandemic), and different from the one HUD has in their latest report.

[pksebben]

Thanks for the link! It adds some context I didn't have. It does seem fairly obvious that the primary driver of homelessness is the cost of a home. So obvious that it almost doesn't even seem like there's a point in bringing it up, but that's just because I'm giving people too much credit, I suppose.

I guess I also always assumed that like, "hey, if it were me, I'd be going where I won't die from the cold". I hold that there's gotta be some displaced individuals in this cohort, but by the looks of the numbers, they're mostly drowned out in what looks like a much worse problem than one might assume.

At the end of the day, this is (as so many things are) rooted in the wealth gap. There's a certain level of difficulty one can be forgiven for not wanting to engage in - and it's real hard to make ends meet under the current circumstances.

[BurningFrog]

There is non zero housing being built in CA, but it's way, way below what's needed to make housing anywhere near affordable in urban areas!

[Bloating]

Housing in Cali is known to cause cancer

[masklinn]

> Also, also Californians: Weird why do we have 25% of the nation's homeless population???

doesn’t help most of the union have been busing homeless people to California. And sadly California has started turning to busing as well.