‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley
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Other services like healthcare in rural areas has eroded to barely existent. I can speak from experience in Oregon.
Moving costs money, something they don’t have.
Finding a new job costs time and money. They’ve got neither.
Remember: you almost definitely aren't paying for it on credit in this scenario.
You don't need to live on the major coasts or in a major city. You can live off the land in the woods, hunting and growing your own clean food, drinking clean water, etc.
[1] https://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/n...
They technically exist, but it's like...would you ever think of opening a business somewhere like Illinois? That's like opening a tin of meat in a school of pirhannas.
More the sort of place I'd go if I wanted to run a small workshop for a year or two. Rent is cheap, and in my experience the people are friendlier than around the coasts so you won't go insane if you aren't willing to take on a second job called 'trying and failing to meet people.'
I did get the feeling it was because I was a white guy, in a lot of cities, but...is it wrong to say that at least they were friendly? As opposed to condescending everyone equally? Probably; I don't really feel comfortable with that line of reasoning...or maybe I just am dealing with mild discrimination and it's hard because so far I've basically been pampered through life on that count? It seems more likely that I'm just overly sensitive, but...fuck, the looks I get from people I've never seen before...I don't know, people are so complicated
Apparently it's near impossible to fill the roles otherwise.
What I'm interested is why has the equilibrium been established where people who aren't making enough to have a decent standard of living choose to stay there.
Essentially people are not really fungible. There are costs associated with migration.
It's hard to get out of an area when you're economically distressed. Cutting that tiny lifeline is a massive risk. This is the same problem keeping poor rural people stuck in poor rural areas.
I don't think so;
> I wish the article focused more on the reasons people choose to stay in a place with a ridiculous cost of living that they can't afford.
Perhaps that's open to interpretation, but I took it to mean, why are staying if they can't afford to?
If someone needs a security guard, they'll pay the least that gets them someone competent to do the work. For the employer, the question isn't directly connected to the standard of living, it's "can I get a body in the door for this rate of pay?" I'd suspect the pay won't go up, as long as the answer's "yes".
The article was basically about the evolutionary fitness of immigrants who came to the US.
A good friend is a mechanic in the East Bay and services many people out in SF and the entire bay too. Before 2008's housing bust, about 90% of customers had 2 cars and routinely paid in checks or cash (yes really, even for a $3.5k transmission). After 2008, most people got rid of the second car, only ~15% have more than one now, and the credit card usage is about 95%. You can argue something about 2% cash back or something, but the fact is that they don't have the money to cover a brake job, let alone a new OBC.
So, no, most Bay Area families do not have mobility anymore, as they are both using the same car to drive to different workplaces. They can't move, as they don't have the money and trying to 'solve the 2-body problem' is very difficult.
Aside: buy one of these, or something like it: https://www.amazon.com/Reader-Diagnostic-Check-Engine-Light/...
Why not do something about the capital concentration? Why not do something to push some of those jobs into the Midwest? That would sure lower housing demand in those few cities, and would lead to a more equal country overall.
Yes:
http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...
Capital concentration leads to higher pay, which leads to smart people coming, which leads to cool products, which leads to an increase in the economic productivity of a society.
I don't see why anybody should "push" jobs away. That would make both the jobs and their employers less desirable.
There are few instances where central government control of economic allocation led to innovation. Even China and Singapore generally is pretty laissez faire about who does what where. It's not like the Korean government is trying to push industry out of Seoul, even though real estate there is insane.
Free markets created the Bay Area and SF (arguably the lack of enforcement of non-competes did), but that's another example of the government backing off. It's not like Communist Russia was a hotbed of innovation.
To be a bit dramatic, Venezuela, PRK, Sudan, and Cuba all have incredibly low wealth inequality. Except for the rich and corrupt, everybody else has just about the same as everybody else, which is nothing, based on government policies. Hong Kong is cutthroat with high levels of inequality, but it's also an engine of economic growth. Would you really rather like in Sub Saharan Africa than Hong Kong?
EDIT: And massive wealth and capital concentration brought us Amazon and Google. In exchange for newly minted millionaires being "equal" to us, would you rather live in a world without those technologies - next day shipping and Google Maps and Search?
Yes, we're aware that's how it works in shitty novels about trains from the 1950's.
Here in the real world, every single technological innovation in the iPhone was created by the US Government, or with the assistance of US government-funded basic research. This book breaks the whole thing down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State
Google Maps is a particularly terrible example. It wouldn't exist without GPS, a technology invented by the US government.
Hong Kong's government puts billions of dollars a year into technology research. That's not a good example, either. Furthermore, HK has lower income inequality than Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Burundi, The Gambia, Swaziland, Botswana, CAR, Sierra Leone and Namibia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... . So your statement "everybody else has just about the same as everybody else" in sub-Saharan Africa is total bullshit.
Japan and Scandinavia have relatively low rates of income inequality (especially compared to sub-Saharan Africa). Are you saying those countries are less innovative than Namibia (highest income inequality in the world)?
Finally, the idea that the sole difference between "Sub Saharan Africa" (a region that encapsulates over a billion people and over 40 countries which you regard as a monolith) and Hong Kong is due to "government policies" is childishly ignorant. Africa is not a country.
As for the government never creating wealth, most innovations that came out of government basic research came out of the DoD/partially NASA. Although mostly the DoD. Are you advocating for more defense funding, and then I'd be all behind you.
As for your income inequality chart, it shows exactly what I'm talking about. One of the highest "equality" ratings of the Gini coefficient is the Netherlands, where the Jante law holds sway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
As I said, those are countries who seem like they're stagnating. Do you really want countries with low outcome equality vs. equality of opportunitity vs countries who actually let you excel and keep the fruits of your labour and skill? Outcome inequality is not a bad thing.
Also note that in your gini chart, most of the countries which are awful have no statistics. Are they equal or just a blank slate that you can project your own feelings on?
This is a commonly given argument, but does not apply to the US -- it's nowhere near a country of equal opportunity. I'd be more open to the argument if you'd include items like no inheritance and no private schooling, to really give a more equal footing -- but I'm guessing these are not up for discussion. Thus, a certain amount of outcome equalizing is absolutely necessary.
Once you take that away, whether through inheritance tax or forbidding of public schooling or even presence of more books in the household, what incentive are you giving them to produce? Do not equalize outcome.
https://ivn.us/2014/05/23/the-psychological-effects-of-pover...
> Recent studies suggest that the mental strain undertaken by the poor far surpasses previously expected amounts.
This strain can easily affect one’s ability to succeed in school and/or work, and can even influence one’s ability to pay bills on time. Specifically, poverty affects such cognitive functions as decision-making, memory, focus, patience and even awareness. The scientific reasoning for these shortcomings is linked to the brain’s finite ability. Thus the limited brainpower resulting from poverty infringes on the ability of such people to complete everyday tasks.
The problem with many people’s understanding of the stress of poverty is that they neglect to include the added stress that most U.S. adults face on a daily basis. Such triggers include work, money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, and sleep deprivation. In fact, 76 percent of U.S. adults correlate work and money to their top stress indicators.
https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/webinars/neurobehaviora...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201210/the-e...
There are real public health consequences to high concentrations of people living without proper sanitation -- see the ongoing, major hepatitis outbreak in San Diego, for instance.
I suspect you hear more about SV homelessness here because this is a pretty SV heavy forum.
Why are local governments treating these people as dysfunctional when the dysfunction is in the government in its ability to provide an environment that is safe, stable, and affordable for otherwise functional members of society.
1) Every building is incredibly short.
2) Every building is spaced very far apart.
3) Every road is incredibly wide.
Even fairly unimportant roads, the sort that have rinky dink little cafes on them, will often have three lanes in each direction or more.
The Valley has a homelessness problem because the people who live there refuse to let anyone build tall, dense housing complexes. There's so much space here you could crush the homelessness and poverty problems instantly by just relaxing zoning rules, it wouldn't even take a social housing programme. But instead all the space is taken up with tiny low rise buildings surrounded by enormous parking lots.
Providing this entitlement requires eliminating everyone else’s freedom to move there. Obviously CA can’t directly enact an immigration policy, but affordable housing activists are focused on moving from market to lottery/waiting list allocation of housing, where longtime locals are prioritized. “Affordable housing.” Trouble is, they are only succeeding at this for new buildings; outsiders are still able to outbid locals for old buildings, which are most of the market. But stronger rent control could stop that.
Quickly surging economies create active markets which encourage owners to sell, renovations to happen, and old tenants to be removed for the purpose of raising rent. In Portland in the past 3-4 years, there were quite a few studies done on how this happens and how it is especially risky in places with less families because those left without housing suddenly often have no place to run to.
Going back to your point about Prop 13, the Portland issues I just described seem to be recovering by a lot in the last 6 months. I am pretty sure it wasn’t necessarily because of new building though, because the new building in Portland is nearly all luxury condos.
I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings.
There is opposition in San Francisco [1] (and Oakland) to development directly on top of BART stations... I don't think parking is the primary concern for those opposing new construction in the bay.
[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/21/16178682/monster-on-mission-...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
The entire car-culture and the industries that profit from that culture would need to be fought to improve transportation along with new buildout, and to the large extent, car culture has won (parking is part of local building codes, and a large part of state/federal funding for roads).
I'd like to hear how transport could be improved without transitions to mass-transit and increased walkability.
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Well, that and decades upon decades of meager housing construction.
Here's my recommendation:
- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building.
- Zone much more residential areas
- Remove all height restrictions
- invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs
- dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we need to move those companies to locations that can handle the influx of workers
- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations.
There are good reasons why this trillion dollar PROBLEM/pain point/industry has been completely ignored by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. We need to understand those reasons and mitigate those concerns.
See http://urbankchoze.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/japanese-zoning.ht... for an overview over the Japanese system. One of the key features is that the different zones allow much more different uses in Japan.
This would end disastrously. "All those earthquake safety regulations, those are really preventing me from building." "Those environmental regulations, the ones that stop me from polluting everywhere, those are really preventing me from building."
"- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations."
See above. Most of those regulations were put into place for a reason. Also, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire
Yes, we absolutely can. If business can get around it, they will. And then when an earthquake hits, all that housing is destroyed.
I don't buy that argument for a second. Take, for instance, the Grenfell tower fire. Regulations were ignored, and 68 people died because of it.
High quality housing in my city is about $120/ft.
You can't cheat supply and demand.