[callalex]

Unless they are going to live with you forever, a new home must be built to contain them. Unless you want your children to leave the state and live far away from you, new housing stock must be built to house them in your current town. If you don’t want your town to grow, you must take a vow of celibacy and convince every single one of your neighbors to do the same. Since that’s absurd, the only option left is to increase housing supply.

[Clubber]

>Unless they are going to live with you forever, a new home must be built to contain them.

That's not accurate. The birth/death rate is up-side down (more people die than are born), so they can live in a previously occupied house like I do. Also, people who retire often move to a lower cost of living city. I'm not against gradual, planned growth, but BUILD BUILD BUILD, like people in the Bay Area seem to want isn't what I would want either. It's happening in my city too and it sucks.

>Unless you want your children to leave the state and live far away from you, new housing stock must be built to house them in your current town.

I suspect they'll live where they want to and/or find work. I don't really have much say in that once they're adults.

>If you don’t want your town to grow, you must take a vow of celibacy and convince every single one of your neighbors to do the same. Since that’s absurd, the only option left is to increase housing supply.

There's a big difference between gradual, natural, planned expansion and rapid, explosive expansion. I want the former, not the latter. I suspect the main reason of the overpopulation of the Bay Area is directly related to the tech companies that reside there. Maybe they should spread out their workforce some more.

[callalex]

Can you provide any examples where rapid growth has occurred in the Bay Area in the last 20 years?

[Clubber]

>Can you provide any examples where rapid growth has occurred in the Bay Area in the last 20 years?

Sorry I meant what the people outside the Bay Area want. It hasn't, but that seems to be because the residents are blocking it.

For me, it seems people who don't live in the Bay Area want the people in the Bay Area to build "affordable housing," which really means "subsidized housing," which is subsidized by the residents that live there. I mean call me crazy but the people who live there don't want more building and they certainly aren't going to pay higher taxes to subsidize housing for more residents that they don't want in the first place.

Since zoning and all that is controlled by the mayor and city council, the only people the mayor and city council are beholden to is the residents, not people who want to be residents. I don't think affordable housing has a snowball's chance in hell of happening there.

They could come to my city, they're building like crazy here, road capacity be damned. It's been bumper to bumper during rush hour like never before. They're building a 1.5x0.5 mile strip of packed condos on a 2 lane road right by my kid's school. Those condos are right across the street from an even larger tract of apartments. That will be fun.

[ta1243]

If the town population doesn't grow (100 deaths each year, 100 births, equal immigration and emigration) then new houses aren't needed. Sure you have kids needing a new home, but then your parents die, freeing up an old home

The reason we need more housing is

1) Concentration of living in certain areas more than in the past

2) Smaller households (more common to have a family unit of 2 parents and 3 kids being divorced, with both parents wanting a house large enough to keep the kids on alternating weekends)

3) Increasing population (both from longer lives, more births, and net immigration)