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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

I'm 33. Literally no one my age or younger I know owns a home unless they live in a smaller city somewhere in mid-america.

I'm a senior engineer at a large tech company. I cannot afford a home where I live unless I want to live in a shitty condo, which I do not. I cannot work remotely, so moving is not an option unless I want to find another job, which I'm considering.

Once baby boomers start retiring and moving to assisted living homes, a large supply of houses will enter the market. This should hopefully alleviate some of the cost issues. But millennials are a ticking time bomb. So many millennials have no hope for lucrative careers, unless they're engineers or in finance, which is a small percent.

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I suggest lobbying your state and local representatives to allow fast and easy approval of building more high-density housing and to upzone your neighborhood. The reason California is so expensive is because the generations who already own homes have long asked to maintain the status quo with low height limits (most of San Francisco is 40 feet!) and density limits. This creates an artificial shortage. And those homeowners have somehow created a political coalition with lower income renters afraid of gentrification by offering them things like rent control and token amounts of subsidized housing. The thing is, if you do the math, it quickly becomes obvious that there is no world where we create enough subsidized housing to make a dent in the problem. And rent control works to keep people in their homes but at the expense of everyone else. Subsidized housing is a lottery, and always will be in California. We don't suggest buying lottery tickets as a solution for income inequality; we shouldn't for housing inequality either.

The only viable long-term solution is relax zoning laws, and make new construction approvals easier and faster.

SB-827 is a start in the right direction.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the OP is asking for more high-density (and low income) housing.

This.

If SB-827 doesn't pass, we'll know that California's priorities are not with the young/it's future - it's with those who were lucky enough to get in the right place at the right time.

I'm not very hopeful, and the insane cost of living/owning a home is the primary reason I've pretty much given up on moving there at this point.

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