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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Another way to look at it is that there is absurd amounts of empty land throughout the country. Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area.

Young people need to go to shitty places that are cheap and then make the place better. Many young people want to live in SF or NYC. Go to Detroit instead.

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The process of making unwanted real estate wanted is called real estate development. It's not done by "young people just moving there." That just makes crappy real estate more crowded.

Real estate development is very much a "build it and they will come" sort of deal. It takes capital, a lot of it, to make an area desirable. You can't just dump it anywhere, there has to be a good reason to dump it in this particular area otherwise the hip young people will go somewhere that did have a good reason. And the poor investors who poured money into a development in that area won't see any appreciation or significant profit, because no one else is developing the area, just them. Lots and lots and lots of money going into lots and lots and lots of developments, that's what turns the sticks into the burbs.

You just can't put the family cart before the development horse, every young person starting a family has different reasons for moving out to the sticks. Left alone without already-developed real estate, they'll just spread out evenly across rural America.

What are the good reasons to develop an area? Proximity to a better one? Fresh water sources? Desirable weather? Good schools? Unpolluted environment? Nice parks?

All of these things. The more the better, and places with better potential get developed first. Commercial opportunities tend to be developed first, followed by better weather. As all these places got developed, tertiary concerns become more important. Rural America will mostly stay rural and suburbs will slowly develop economies and become part of the metro areas they surround.

Suburbs are a Ponzi scheme. They do not cover their existing infrastructure maintenance costs...

https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

Perhaps the problem with the availability of housing is the "real estate development" model you describe, which is capital intensive and therefore will be undertaken by large corporations instead of by the people who will actually live in the area and who therefore have a personal stake in how livable it is. Perhaps if more development was done by "young people just moving there", we would have more livable areas and less competition for housing.

Ordinary people don't have the money to, say, build sewers and roads.

They do if they pool their resources through, say, property taxes paid to their locality. Localities can build out basic infrastructure without having to have large corporations do all the development. That has the added advantage that you get actual communities that grow and evolve over time instead of sterile cookie cutter suburbs.

Without the advantages of upfront planning and design, they'll pay more for crappier services. If the area grows significantly, then they'll have to pay even more on top for upgrades.

But hey, at least it'll be idyllic. Good luck keeping your kids around after they graduate high school.

> Without the advantages of upfront planning and design, they'll pay more for crappier services.

I've had that experience in neighborhoods that did have the "advantages" of upfront planning and design. I don't think upfront planning and design is the panacea you are making it out to be.

Most rural roads are majority funded by federal grants.

Or just move to a shitty area that is cheaper, plenty of those around.

It won't make the areas better in any meaningful sense.

When I moved to my neighborhood it was dangerous to walk in at night and there were no children. 10 years later and plenty of families are here. The movement of all of these people are what made it safer - people who want a safe and healthy community. I don’t know why you are so defeatist, it must be a depressing mindset.

You alone won’t but how else do crappy areas get nicer?

You’d be surprised at how some of the most desirable neighborhoods in SF were once “crappy” only 20 years ago.

That’s at the root of all these stories about, ”I can’t afford to live where I grew up”. Buddy, I can’t either, but when my parents bought it was a fruit orchard. Today it’s the hottest real estate market in the world. It’s apples and oranges.

A colleague told me about her daughter - she finished college and has a regular job but cannot afford to move out. That's in rustbelt central. Yes, you can live with roommates, but if you are late 20's it becomes awkward, and when at some point the children arrive it becomes a habitability issue.

Living with roommates or even your parents is pretty common globally. Not the end of the world.

Dr Zhivago is a role model now? Also, they didn't have code enforcement then and minimum numbers of bedrooms.

I mostly agree with your point but how does living with roommates become awkward?

> Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area.

Generally by doing things that are now illegal (sometimes that were already illegal but not enforced at the time).

What things described in this article are now illegal?

Well, the author described an illegal one-room micro-apartment in downtown SF.

The article explicitly points out that the shed they originally lived in would certainly be illegal now (and quite possibly also at the time, but it was easier to get away with then); building their own cabin would also be a lot more difficult (maybe it's not flat out illegal, but there are a lot more requirements about what kind of qualifications you have to have to sign off on a design, do wiring/plumbing/...).

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