[alexsereno]

The entire west coast is really bad about its strategy for tackling homelessness. The central issue there is the federal government needs to massively ramp up housing, it can’t be solved at a local level (there’s a role to play for cities but basically you need nationwide housing reform.)

Chicago and NYC have massively used transit systems despite their homeless populations. I lived in Chicago and I miss a real transit system here in TX badly.

That is to say, we don’t need to do A before B. We need to do A & B

[fwip]

Seattle is fine. I've lived here and commuted via bus almost exclusively for 10 years now. The bus stop I catch is right at 3rd and Pine, with is the "scary drug dealing" corner that tourists are warned to stay away from.[0] I've never had a problem with homeless people either on the bus, at the stop, or while commuting. Over literally thousands of trips, I can probably count on one hand the number of fistfights I've seen - I saw more fights outside a bar in Pittsburgh in 2 years.

Some people are just scared of homeless people, poor people, or non-white people (or a mixture of the three). For those people, the issue isn't the actual safety, but their own discomfort or anxiety.

I'd bet that the injury rates on commuting even the scary bus routes here are comparable to or below the injury rate from driving.

[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/weve-b... - the notoriously conservative Seattle Times.

[johngossman]

Agree. Riding the bus down 3rd, even at night, is depressing, but I’ve never felt unsafe.

[mrangle]

The NYC subway is "massively used" but it isn't universally used, and for good reason. It's a national embarassment, both objectively and using an informal international standard scale for equivalent cities. As a result, the NYC subway is somewhere between intolerable and unwokrable for another massive part of the population who can't abide its relative lack of reliability, the danger, the filth or a combination of these.

[epistasis]

I would love more state level control of housing, or at least permitting of housing.

Cities have proven they can not responsibly decide how much housing is permitted. Its too corrupt and the incentives are off

[brocklobsta]

I don’t understand how more state control is preferable. I live in California and the state government is not very in tune to the needs of my locality and seems very corrupt.

Some cities do not want housing/population growth. Why is that not okay?

[AnthonyMouse]

> Some cities do not want housing/population growth. Why is that not okay?

Because substantially all cities do not want housing growth. They're all operating under the same set of incentives.

In order to have a vote in local elections, you have to be a resident. In localities with predominantly owner-occupied properties, this implies that you're a property owner. So you vote for policies that increase local housing costs, because you've got yours and you want its price to go up rather than down.

Suppose there are people in San Francisco who would like to move to San Jose or Los Angeles or San Diego, and vice versa. Everyone in San Francisco wants their property in San Francisco to get more expensive and the properties they might buy anywhere else to get less expensive, and likewise for every other city. But since only the people already in San Francisco can vote in San Francisco, the interests of all the people who want to move there are not being represented, and likewise the interests of all the people in San Francisco who want to move to San Jose but don't get a vote in San Jose.

If you move this to the state level, all of the people in San Jose and Los Angeles and San Diego can vote to lower housing costs in San Francisco and vice versa, and since the people outside of a given city outnumber the people in it, the balance could shift in favor of housing affordability instead of the untenable status quo.

[true_religion]

Renters are 62% of the San Fran population, so I don’t think we can blame democracy for high housing prices.

[AnthonyMouse]

That's when they resort to the bribery which they call rent control. Instead of building more housing, they give existing tenants (who can vote in the jurisdiction) lower rents than prospective tenants (who can't). Which moves enough tenants to the other side of the ballot to keep the construction restrictions in place, and further reduces the incentive for new construction, raising long-term rents even more.

Prohibiting rent control at the state level would be a great move because economists broadly agree that it's a terrible idea and then you get all the previously paid off tenants whose rent would increase clamoring for other measures to get housing costs down and increase the incentive for new construction. (Many other states sensibly already prohibit it at the state level.)

[pandaman]

In California rent control is established by a referendum so it requires either another referendum to repeal or a some large majority in the legislature (which is unlikely to pass since the legislators understand that it's likely to be their last legislation). You cannot take away free/cheap stuff from people in a democracy, nobody is going to vote for that.

[epistasis]

We don't allow a Hokou style of internal migration controls in the US, and we shouldn't allow places to block population growth. Both of these systems lead to massive inequality, lack of opportunity, and bad outcomes.

If you want to wall off your city, it should come with consequences such that you are not allowed to pay for services at a wage less than that which would suppprt somebody living in your city. Typical homes values are at $2.5M? That requires income of $500K to purchase, so no more nurses or cashiers or anybody else's enabling your life that does not get paid at that level.

Your taking of property is a continuous denial of other people living in a place. You paid a fix price, sure, but when the value increases, you are now taking far more away from the rest of society.

Land is not made by human hands. You should have the right to the fruits of your labor, but land is our common birthright, and just by being born first your should not be absolved from paying for what you are taking from everyone else.

[mint2]

Cities councils not wanting housing is why we’re in a mess in the first place. Why would it make sense to do more of the same and expect a different outcome. That’s the definition of something.

[brocklobsta]

Outcomes change as the needs of the municipality change. Members get voted in and out. Do you think there is a misalignment between the city council and the constituents? Or is this what the residents want?

[mint2]

Again, local control wrecked housing. Constituents, city council whatever doesn’t matter, what type of local control. It wrecked housing.

Unless one contends that there is no housing crises, then it’s not up for debate that local control got us into this mess.

[Retric]

> Some cities do not want housing/population growth. Why is that not okay?

Because it’s being enforced on everyone not just those who like things the way they are. The bar is always higher when you want to force people to do something.

[bhickey]

> Some cities do not want housing/population growth. Why is that not okay?

Because "Fuck you, I've got mine" is no way to organize society. Local control enabled a race to the bottom of trying to fob the poors off on someone else.

[brocklobsta]

I think most municipalities see growth as a general good. The issue starts when the cost of growth starts to outweigh the benefits. Roads/water/utilities/waste management are all municipal services that need to be able to handle the growth.

Local democratic governments is the American way.

[FirmwareBurner]

You're right of course, but our capitalist societies are organized around making profit, and pulling the ladder from under them is profitable for those who managed to climb the ladder first.

This won't change until properties stop being good investment vehicles, and that won't change since land is finite and demand for housing in desirable areas is always growing, therefore increasing the opportunity for profit and wealth accumulation.

[jeffbee]

If your city is also not getting state roads, state universities, state law enforcement, and state fire protection then great. Any city that refuses to get on board with state housing policy should be cutoff from all of the above.

[csande17]

Aren't those things all already handled by the city in most cities? (Except state universities, which aren't in many cities anyway.) That's why fire and police departments are named after the city they operate in, and mayors talk about fixing potholes.

[jeffbee]

There are 33 state universities in California.

[csande17]

There are 482 cities in California, so presumably at least 449 of them manage without a state university.

[brocklobsta]

That’s an interesting and hostile take given we are all coerced into paying state taxes.

[epistasis]

The hostility of not wanting new people around you or any population growth seems to warrant the much more minor reciprocal hostility of forcing that population to island themselves.

[jeffbee]

I don't think people who insist their city should not grow are hostile. I think they are just ignorant and deluded. They are either not aware of, or choosing to ignore, the fact that their cities are economically dependent on neighboring cities to house their workforces, and to absorb their own natural increases.

[mint2]

That’s called living in a functioning society.

It means cities and people cant’t behave like selfish children and never pitch in for the group.

[Gibbon1]

That's what's happening in California. Newsom[1] and the legislature are on a war path against nimby's, muni and county planning departments.

City of Berkeley used 'noise' as a reason to block a UC Berkeley student housing project on environmental grounds. State just passed a law to make that illegal.

Judge just told Beverly Hills they can't issue any permits until they comply with state law.

[1] Newsom wants to be president and he knows he isn't going to get there on diversity and pronouns. He has to focus on jobs, housing, and crime.