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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

I live in a fairly low income area of the bay area, and when I drive into the Berkeley hills, Marin, or Piedmont/rich Oakland the density of Black Lives Matter signs in front of houses increases. Thats anecdotal evidence obviously, but there is something funny about our status quo when people live in a $2m home on a 1/2 acre of extremely sought after real estate while loudly advertising their desire for more equality.

It is an interesting time watching the intersection of all these disparate ideals trying to coalesce into a coherent worldview and lifestyle in everyones minds.

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There recently was a kerfuffle in Berkeley when Robert Reich, ex-Secretary of Laber, UC Berkeley professor, and author of "The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It" was found to have written a letter to the city in opposition of a small apartment building that is proposed to replace an empty detached house on the block where he lives in his 2-million-dollar house. There is often a gap between the positions taken in print, and the actions taken in practice.

Which, to my knowledge, he hasn't addressed or offered any rebuttal.

Perversity of doing good at others' expense!!

> when I drive into the Berkeley hills, Marin, or Piedmont/rich Oakland the density of Black Lives Matter signs in front of houses increases.

Because unfortunately, a large part of the phenomenon is just virtue signaling.

Love to see how much money those supporters of whatever virtual signaling they are cheerleading donate their wealth to such causes. Is it 25% ... is it anything at all?

On a recent hiking trip up a popular mid-Atlantic hike virtue signal supporters defaced a huge sign/plaque dedicated to union soldiers. I was confused .. just as much as they are!

Those are called "luxury beliefs". The very same people would start locking their doors at night if a black family were to move in next door, and move their kids to a different private school if it got a little too "diverse" with Hispanic and black kids. That's why they move their kids out of public schools in the first place.

Classic hypocrisy and NIMBY-ism. Nominally, they support the lofty causes as long as they're paid with someone else's money and are in someone else's backyard. Ex: Beverly Hills calling the police on the rioters while supporting the riots just the day before, or Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan who, when rioters showed up at her house, had CHOP bulldozed the very next day.

There are are almost no exceptions to this that I could personally observe. And they will of course vehemently deny it (just watch the downvote count on this post), but in private that's how they behave.

Realistically, what do you expect them to do? Bulldoze their own homes, become real estate developers, and build high-density housing on the lot?

Living in an expensive house shouldn't disqualify someone from advocating against racial injustice. Simply buying a home and living in it is hardly equivalent to being a NIMBY.

They should stop lobbying the city to make it illegal to build houses that cost less than $2 million.

Or even just stop lobbying the city to make it illegal to build houses.

Unfortunately there's a large overlap in the Venn diagram between NIMBYs and progressives, and those afflicted don't realize the inherent contradiction in holding both of those views. Personally I'm in the "build lots more housing everywhere because that'll make it cheaper for everyone" camp.

Yeah there’s a certain irony living in Palo Alto and seeing all of the black lives matters signs while the owners here do everything in their power to prevent any housing from getting built. Housing that would actually make this area more affordable to a larger audience.

Who are the signs even for?

The feeling I get is, “black lives matter but they can stay a town or two away from us - like in East Palo Alto.”

It doesn’t look better when the history had explicit racial constraints on zoning.

Well, people want to live in safe neighborhoods with good schools, with a well funded police, etc. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not their job to fix the systematic issues in the US. It's not about race, it's about socioeconomic status.

The inequitable aspect of "safe neighborhoods" is they depend on other cities for their existence. The people of Piedmont, as an example, require access to the cities of Oakland and San Francisco for their livelihoods, because there are no jobs, no businesses, and no cultural institutions of any kind in the town of Piedmont. They are purely parasitic.

When you look at Berkeley you have somewhat of the opposite issue: they have the same population they had in 1950, but the number of jobs in Berkeley has doubled in the meantime. The general taxpayers of the Bay Area have paid to build three subway stations and an interstate highway through Berkeley, but Berkeley stubbornly refuses to let anyone enjoy the fruits of these investments except for people who already lived there half a century ago.

That's true for many US cities but it doesn't mean it should be that way. In Europe for example there are many safe cities that are great places to live and raise a family but also have businesses and everything else you find in major urban areas. I can also give examples of such cities in the US.

It sounds like we're all agreeing then. The other cities you're alluding to that actually do build enough housing to meet the demand for local jobs are doing things right. Contrast with the cities we've been discussing in this thread which have not been allowing much new housing development to meet demand and thus are creating all of the problems being talked about here.

This is a bit of a strawman.

The people I’m talking about aren’t funding those things anyway because they pay next to nothing in property tax compared to their new neighbors thanks to prop13.

I’m also not arguing for housing projects. The median housing cost in Palo Alto is well over a million. Prop13 means that old owners aren’t paying the tax on that cost and are incentivized to restrict building. This drives costs higher for really low quality housing.

This means only multimillionaires can afford to buy housing here. Everyone else is someone who got in long ago or are new kids out of college with high paying jobs renting with three roommates.

Increasing the housing supply makes the cost less absurd for everyone, a natural extension of that is more people can afford to live there and you get more diversity (since history has skewed who has that kind of wealth on average).

The people restricting housing are acting in their own financial interest, they should have to pay that cost in property tax at their house FMV. At a minimum on sale, but I’d prefer some percentage each year closing the gap unless their town builds some large amount of new housing.

I don't argue with that. My comment was more general, not about the Palo Alto area and its property tax laws. I don't live in California and not familiar with the specifics of housing in the Bay Area. My main comment was in response to "black lives matter but they can stay a town or two away from us - like in East Palo Alto.".

You argued that it wasn't race, but socioeconomic status.

It was explicitly race historically:

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/not-all-neigh...

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/07/03/black-in-palo...

Restricting supply now is often justified by 'keeping neighborhood character', but that character is one which explicitly excluded others based on their race.

I'd argue there are also examples where it's race and not socioeconomic status today. There was a recent story from a black VC jogging in Palo Alto who had the police called on him because 'he was up to something'. (I searched around, but couldn't find the link to his story).

Increasing housing supply doesn't make neighborhoods unsafe and would increase the funding available to the local communities.

> "There's nothing wrong with that. It's not their job to fix the systematic issues in the US."

It may not be their job to fix everything, but I'd argue they're responsible for not pushing policy to make things worse.

And allowing more development doesn't run counter to those goals. It may not be their job to fix all the problems in the US but it's certainly not their job to make things explicitly worse through actively pushing for exclusionary housing policies.

I don't see why it's funny. The fact you're rich doesn't mean you don't support equality. Also the slogan BLM can mean many things. The fact someone supports BLM (for whatever it means) doesn't mean they also think money should be equally distributed.

How do you reconcile that some of the most respected and influential US politicians (the main authors of the US Constitution) were essentially rich people from well off families?

If you think about it it makes sense: poor families do not have the luxury to care for societal level change or to promote it in any shape or form. They are more worried about putting food on the table, keeping themselves clothed and a roof over their heads. I think it's only logical that people who do not have to struggle with such issues are the ones that are more likely to influence political change, even if at a glance the changes they are proposing do not seem to directly serve their interests.

Now whether their stated ideas are followed with action is a different matter.

I thought BLM was about equality before law (enforcers), not economical egalitarianism.

>here is something funny about our status quo when people live in a $2m home on a 1/2 acre of extremely sought after real estate while loudly advertising their desire for more equality.

This isn't isolated to the Bay either. I struggle with understanding activists who have careers in tech/pharma/etc who publically express these types of problems but privately are willing participants in the systems they deride. Sometimes I'm not sure if they actually want to live in the world they're fighting for.

I know plenty of eco-activists who saddle up to the bar and order a hamburger after attending a meeting about how factory farming is destroying the world and we need to stop eating meat as a society yesterday.

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