I was astonished that Michelle Chen could write about the problem of homelessness in Silicon Valley at The Nation without mentioning zoning ordinances or anti-development regulations once. She mentions lots of other things including low wages (other than in the tech sector), joblessness, rent controls, and unionization but not those.
Why are you surprised? Outside of Matt Yglesias and libertarians, there is very little interest in that part of the equation.
I assume that was astonished with a large dose of sarcasm.
Yeah, I should have picked up on that.
No one anywhere in the Bay Area builds, everything is frozen in amber. As a result we not only have wildly overpriced homes, we have run-down, ugly homes. But as for joblessness, if you’re jobless in the Bay Area you’re working at it. Sears at Northgate Mall has a huge ‘we’re hiring’ banner up and Sears barely has a pulse.
The slight problem is that jobs don’t pay anything close to the cost of living. So you can work here, but you can’t live here. We are up to our necks in NIMBYism, and utterly hypocritical when it comes to affordable housing.
Let me state it more clearly. I think that zoning and limitations on development are today’s version of Jim Crow and restrictive covenants.
Dave:
To an extent, sure. But the greatest motivation is just keeping property values high and holding onto a ‘lifestyle’ that involves lots of bikes and hiking trails and coffee shops and no parking lots. If we start building in Marin we’ll need to start doing some major road work. Look at Fairfax, Ross, or Mill Valley on a map and you see towns fed by a single road – two lane in parts – from a single freeway.
If you planted a thousand new apartments in Fairfax Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, the main artery, would be a parking lot. And to expand SFD Blvd. you’d need to cut through a lot of rich people’s yards. Come the other way, from San Rafael and you’d need to knock down a bunch of businesses. That’s not even getting into the shitshow that is the San Rafael bridge – the toll bridge that brings all the workers from the East Bay. The very architecture of Marin makes it all-but impossible to expand in many areas.
There’s another motive, too, that comes closer to Jim Crow: school ratings. Top-rated schools keep property values high, and the easiest way to keep your school performing well is to exclude poor kids and ESL students.
Why talk about it? Not one of you guys wants to do anything about it.
Pearls before swine, oh and the swinelets, too. Your’e all LUCKY, or CONNECTED. Look, everybody I know works hard, harder than you. It just doesn’t pay shit, unless you know the right people. What do you think eager, hard physical labor does to a man by the time he’s 62?
Breaks him, that’s what, and then he blames himself, because he was taught hard work pays off, so he just didn’t work hard enough.
You bankers and businessmen are lucky we were made Christians, or we might take vengeance.
Gray:
I write kid’s books, I’m not a banker.
And yes, just about everyone works harder than me. I got lucky.
Shorter:
The rich liberals have their utopia, don’t want the deplorables spoiling it, are willing to legislate it under sham logic, and the deplorables be damned.