Comment by NumberSix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NumberSix | Hacker News Reader

Urban areas in California, where most of the people live, such as the Silicon Valley have extremely high home ownership and apartment rental costs. The article notes this briefly and somewhat obliquely, but it is worth emphasizing.

The median home price in San Jose, CA is about $850,000 at present (March 12, 2017) according to Zillow.

The average rent for a one bedroom apartment in San Jose is about $2473 per month (https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-jose-rent-tre...)

The US Census lists a median home price for the United States as a whole of $221,800 in 2010 (https://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf)

Median monthly gross residential rent in the United States was $934 in 2014 according to the Census ACS survey. (http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/)

Other living expenses are often 10-25 percent higher in the major urban areas in California where most people live than other parts of the United States. (personal experience)

It is housing and rental costs that dominate the disparity with much of the country however.

A follow up as a point of reference:

The median home price in Plano, TX is $317,800 according to Zillow (March 12, 2017 https://www.zillow.com/plano-tx/home-values/)

One bedroom apartments in Plano rent for $956 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $1293. (according to RentJungle https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-plano-rent-trends...)

Plano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano%2C_Texas) is a suburb of Dallas-Ft.Worth where many people who work in the Telecom Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Corridor live. It is similar to the Silicon Valley and more generally urban areas in California but with much lower home prices and apartment rental rates.

The high housing prices are not a consistent nationwide pattern.

The direct negative effect on the quality of life of high housing costs is astonishing. Yet there's no real public uproar. When the price of gas goes up, seemingly everyone is up in arms. But housing?! People complain, but no where near as much as they should. In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue. I guess nepotism just wins the argument...

Well a lot of people own houses and are happy about it. There is plenty of uproar about it from renters. Mountain View just passed a rent control measure for example.

There is an uproar, but there's an equal and greater uproar in the opposite direction whenever there's a new housing attempted to be built. Existing homeowners and establishment rally against it and they're quite organized.

Couple this with the fact that California is entrenched in bureaucratic red tape, and you can see why nothing ever gets done about it.

It's a split issue. Renters want prices to go down. Owners want prices to go up.

Who wins the political clash? Are there more voting owners, or voting renters?

Generally there are more owners, though California has one of the lowest home ownership rates at around 53%. Cities draw this average down -- most suburbs have higher ownership rates.

With this in mind it shouldn't be a surprise that owners outvote renters.

> Are there more voting owners, or voting renters?

Doesn't matter. Owners win because we live in capitalist society, and capitalism means you must be an owner to get full rights. Non-gentry are second class citizens (no free movement, no access to clean water, no right to work the land, no right to build shelter).

No free movement: I can't travel to many places without a car because property owners decided only people who own cars should be legally allowed to access a place.

No access to clean water: water is a resource owned by corporations, the people drink at the corporation's pleasure.

No right to work/shelter ones self: all land has been sold off, new people born into this world must first serve the gentry until the gentry decide to pay them enough to buy some land of their own.

>Owners win because we live in capitalist society

NYC exists under the same capitalist system as SF or LA or wherever.

Nothing you have described (need to drive, no clean water, etc.) applies to NYC.

Therefore, your gripes aren't caused by the capitalist system you are blaming.

I guess one can say it's a similar system. But, while definitions might differ, I'm not sure how capitalist I would call one of the largest government run subway systems in the world [0], half century long water tunneling projects [1] or the longest running rent control system in the US [2].

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2012/06/03/infrastru... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/nyregion/10tunnel.html [2] http://www.tenant.net/Oversight/50yrRentReg/history.html

Much of the voting takes place in neighborhood meetings, not in general elections.

This system heavily favors existing home owners over the general public.

Renters fight new construction too. "Gentrification will raise our rents". It's absurd how hard it is to get a permit to build in SF. Mountain View fought new housing construction for a decade as google was ramping up. Nobody seems to remember first year economics when it comes to construction on their block.

A large portion of that is likely because many approach house ownership as a investment rather than a living expense.

Very few buy gas from the pump with the expectation of selling it again once the price rises.

Housing as an investment object is a disease of the mind.

> In areas with high housing costs, this should be the primary political issue.

Probably the best way to think of America is a society of land speculators. Europe was full, so we moved over the pond to settle a new land. During the expansion westward, communities built their towns up in the hopes that theirs would be the one that makes it big.

Today, renters are treated as slightly suspect drifters with 'no sense of community,' which is a coded way of saying they're okay with falling property values. Which is threatening in a society where the majority are invested in real estate. It's not too hard to look at policies and see the implicit high property value bias. Environmental regulations, property tax moratoriums, public schools, interest rate policies, urban growth boundaries, public transportation; they all tie in, if a bit obliquely.

So I'm not surprised in a country where 63 percent of people own the home they live in, that high housing prices aren't a political priority. When we've all collectively made a bet that home prices go up, should we be surprised when policies are voted in to support that opinion?

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