California Politics: Madame Senator, this is a morgue

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Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

It's me, I'm one of those guys driving up housing prices in the bay area. The weird thing is, it's not like these tech companies are exactly thrilled about high housing prices either, as that drives up the cost of their office space and forces them to raise salaries in order to attract workers from other parts of the country. If Google or Apple or whoever could have mongo-sized apartment complexes within walking distance, they'd be ecstatic.

# ¿ May 2, 2014 01:31

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 01:59

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Mayor Dave posted:

I don't know what this is about, since it's a lot cheaper to live in San Jose than in the city proper and it's closer to the mothership for most tech employees. Google and Apple can't make that area more appealing than The City, no matter what type of housing is available in San Jose.

Right, so those who currently live in SF proper wouldn't be interested in right-next-to-work apartments for Google/Apple, probably. But many of the employees who live in the peninsula and south bay would be interested, and rents in those areas have been climbing very quickly too (I'm in Sunnyvale right now and average apartment rent is like 2k, ones in Mountain View probably a few hundred more than that).

# ¿ May 3, 2014 00:40

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computer parts posted:

Why are there apparently insignificant numbers of Hispanics, despite California being a minority-majority state?

I work at Google, I can venture a guess at least for the tech portion, although I don't think I have any unusual insight into this problem, I don't speak for the company, etc.

Google hires from all over the country. Of course, they hire proportionately more from CA, especially when you're talking about new college grads, but you still have to factor in that they have offices in other places, and are more than willing to do relocations (as they did in my case).

There aren't that many Hispanic CS majors even now. Plus, college enrollment right now is a leading indicator of occupational demographics; if overnight, Hispanics became the majority of CS majors, it would still take many years for that to be reflected in software engineering stats, as old guys gradually retired and new guys gradually came into the workforce. Since Hispanics are a growing demographic in the US (and I'd bet that they're growing as a proportion of CS majors as well), it'd be more realistic to look at how many there were 10-20 years ago.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 23:03

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mA posted:

Yeah - I agree. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

I work with youth in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood community of San Francisco, within the schools and within local youth organizations. I've done my share of outreach to tech organizations and companies to try to get volunteers to work with students, as tutors or mentors, or even teach code.

Literally 99% of responses I get are "Invite your kids to our "#HACK4POVERTY" event! While my story is anecdotal, I don't think it's a stretch to say that it's also symptomatic of how tone deaf and out of touch they are issues regarding poverty and inequity, which is sad considering the publicly extolled mantra of SF CEOs (Benioff) and VCs (Ron Conway) is to "give back".

Have you tried talking to TEALS? http://www.tealsk12.org/

Leperflesh posted:

The "hilariously pathetic" hiring track record for Google, and other tech companies, is a reflection of the pool of candidates more than some kind of institutional racism throughout the software industry. Our country is doing a very bad job at graduating non-Asian minorities who are highly qualified for software positions.

This is true. In particular, there are few black or Hispanic CS majors. I'd bet there were even fewer black or Hispanic CS majors in the past, percentage-wise, which is important when you consider that changes in college demographics aren't instantly reflected in workplace demographics.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jul 1, 2014

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 21:11

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Trabisnikof posted:

I'm not talking about how technology improves productivity, I'm talking about how software companies don't really create jobs on the same scale as non-software companies.

How true is this? I mean, most startups aren't Whatsapp, getting multiple billion-dollar valuations on like 16 engineers. And it seems like as these companies mature, they inevitably bloat up with normal levels of employees. For example, Microsoft is at 127k employees now.

quote:

In SV there are companies worth $100B+ dollars yet have less than 10k employees.

Wait, who else besides Facebook?

edit: Facebook is the only one I see here in the tech sector that has < 10k employees - http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/audit-services/capital-market/publications/assets/document/pwc-global-top-100-march-update.pdf

Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jul 12, 2014

# ¿ Jul 12, 2014 01:33

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Trabisnikof posted:

But that's my point exactly, companies like Microsoft and Apple actually produce physical products. So, I should have said "companies with $100s Billion of market caps and 10s of thousands of employees" which does then include google et al

Ok, so Google/MS/Apple have large market caps and lots of employees, how does that fit into your point?

It's true that some software companies are unusually profitable per employee, of course, but I'm not convinced that's the norm.

(On a related note, Facebook will be in the business of physical products as soon as their acquisition of Oculus completes)

# ¿ Jul 12, 2014 02:38

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Kobayashi posted:

"mah taxes are too damned high goddamn government bureaucracy"

This is more an American thing than a Republican thing, I think. Plenty of independents and Democrats still complain about government waste and taxes.

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Sure, so long as we can also stop referring to software developers as engineers.

It was an issue awhile back in Texas that the software industry tried to fight:

Of course, this attempt at loosening failed handily because the title actually means something beyond "uses a computer" and now has some pretty serious requirements in order to qualify to call yourself such, due to the impact on public safety and criminal liability it imposes.

The title encroachment in California is even more widespread, and almost certainly for the same marketing reasons while misusing both the term and title. So that should be pretty funny to watch get fought when the California engineering board finally has enough and tightens enforcement. Right now "software engineers" are a pretty big laughingstock in the real engineering field; I'm thinking it won't be too much longer myself.

This is a weird complaint to have and just sounds like sour grapes from 'real engineers' who don't like the level of hype and attention the software industry has gotten in recent years.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 21:13

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H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Just like all those jealous physicians whining about holistic doctors appropriating the term. Just roll with it doctors, naturopathy is the new hype!

if you think these are equivalent problems. Oh no, we thought that startup with that corgi social network I signed up for used licensed professional engineers to write its software, but they were just programmers all along!

I mean, I don't disagree that software engineering is nothing much like 'real' engineering*, the dispute over the name just seems silly to me.

* with possible exceptions for medical/military/transportation software

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 22:10

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Leperflesh posted:

No it's more like "Oh you're an electrical engineer? My nephew is a software engineer, you guys must have so much in common! He got his bachelor's degree from Redwood Community College, where did you go to school?" *electrical engineer is incensed*

Yes, basically this. Although IIRC not all 'real' engineers who use the title engineer are professionally licensed either. My dad is a electrical engineer who designs integrated circuits, and I've never heard him mention getting licensed or passing an exam.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 22:19

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In the PacNW thread someone once posted a chart showing a county-by-county breakdown of state tax revenues/usage for Washington State, so you could see which counties were subsidized or were doing the subsidizing. Is there something similar for California?

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 22:03

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As a bike enthusiast, I'm happy that SF's measure L failed, even though I don't live there.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2014 18:43

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Just saw this incredibly depressing graphic:

# ¿ Nov 17, 2014 04:29

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Kobayashi posted:

The Bay Area really needs a regional transit authority.

Would it be possible to institute that via a state-level proposition?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 01:21

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Trabisnikof posted:

Well, seeing how 30%+ of luxury condos are second homes, the impact of new luxury building will be highly mitigated.

Have any cities ever tried extra-high property taxes that only apply to people's second homes? It seems like such a proposition would be a slam dunk at the ballot box.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 22:26

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tsa posted:

If you don't have cost controls runaway costs is inevitable. Other ways to control it would be to require colleges / students to be able to justify the amount borrowed based on the programs placement rate/ average salary. As an example the only reason low tier law programs still exist is because of borrowed money. If we actually lent money based on a standard risk analysis these loans would not exist- nobody is going to loan someone 200k at an affordable rate when the average salary upon graduation is 50k if they are lucky enough to get a job.

This is sort of happening: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2014/10/30/new-gainful-employment-rules-tighten-screws-on-for-profit-colleges/

quote:

As for the accountability piece, schools must certify that their gainful employment programs meet federal and state certification, accreditation and licensure requirements. The kicker � while not sufficient to satisfy some ed reform appetites � is that to maintain their eligibility to receive title IV funding, a school�s gainful employment program must meet a minimal debt-to-earnings benchmark.

Colleges whose graduates have average annual loan payments less than 8% of their total earnings, or less than 20% of discretionary earnings, will net a green, or passing, grade for their Gainful Employment program. Colleges whose graduates on average have annual loan payments between 8% and 12% of total earnings or between 20-30% of discretionary earnings will net a yellow grade, or what the DOE weirdly terms �the zone.� Schools whose graduates have annual loan payments surpassing 12% of total earnings and greater than 30% of discretionary earnings will earn a red, or failing grade.

It's at the institution level instead of by major/program, but still a huge improvement over the status quo.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2014 21:41

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etalian posted:

lol

Does this control for population density though? Without that it's kind of meaningless.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 20:12

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ComradeCosmobot posted:

[The] Cali Thread: From Frisco to The O.C., It's Hella Cool to Hate Fresno, Brah

Yes, do this.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2014 03:11

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Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Is this a good excuse to say "loving techies"?

The impression I get is that 'techies' (especially young ones) are generally for multimodal transportation and higher density. It's the old guard that's against it.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 19:13

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cheese posted:

Sounds like the free market hard at work here folks. Sorry you guys arnt down with the creative disruption of an archaic old economy

The restrictions on housing supply/density are pretty much the opposite of a free market.

At this point, I don't really care if it's more private or public housing that gets built, as long as there's a lot of it either one would help to relieve pressure on rents.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 08:05

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Was reading an article about Houston in the Economist and saw this:

quote:

Last year authorities in the Houston metropolitan area, with a population of 6.2m, issued permits to build 64,000 homes. The entire state of California, with a population of 39m, issued just 83,000.

That is not very many homes, guys.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 23:58

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Trabisnikof posted:

That's because its out of context:

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2014/08/05/which-states-are-building-the-most-homes-and-why

Also, Houston's lack of zoning making getting new building permits a breeze.

Skinnymansbeerbelly posted:

About those homes that are coming, they aren't being built anywhere you want to be, and are far far away from any mass transit, and lack water.

I don't really care about Houston (I don't want their ridiculously sprawling cities), but I was just struck by how few homes that is for California. If the on average you have 2 people to a home, that's an increase in the number of homes of 0.43%. Even if you assume each home houses 4 people on average, that's still only a 0.85% increase, which seems absurdly low for state where the cost of housing is so high.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 01:36

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ComradeCosmobot posted:

Fight fire with fire.

I hope this actually gets on the ballot, I'd vote for it.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 19:30

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In a conclusion that I'm sure will shock everyone here, the Legislative Analyst�s Office of California has determined that high housing prices in California are mainly a result of not building enough housing:

quote:

On March 17 the Legislative Analyst�s Office of California, the non-partisan state research agency, released a comprehensive report on the high cost of housing in the State. The report documents a 40-year trend in which the costs of housing within California rose at near four times the national average, and highlights the impact that local �no growth� policies have had in limiting private development within the coastal areas.

...

The report lays bare what it believes to be the primary contributing factor to California�s high housing costs, that is insufficient development in the State�s coastal areas to meet the demand for housing. California�s largest metro areas are building new housing at a rate less than half of comparable metro areas in other parts of the country. This new development is also less dense than in other areas, meaning that California is developing fewer livable units per parcel of land, being on average 40 percent less dense than other metro areas in the United States. The graphs below compare the rate of new housing development between the national average, the state average, and the average of the California coast.

Also it's our own fault:

quote:

The report goes on to say that the reason why cities and counties simply don�t build more housing is primarily due to public resistance. The state�s environmental review process, outlined under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is consistently used to halt or delay projects on environmental grounds, and provides significant opportunity for legal resistance even past the point of legislative approval. Furthermore, most local municipalities in the state have significantly burdensome project approval processes, usually involving approval from multiple departments and public commissions, forcing private developers into uncertain market conditions and costing them added time. Two thirds of California coastal communities have even adopted specific growth control measures, which vary from placing new restrictions on certain types of development, to direct caps on the number of units that can be built.

http://blog.civinomics.com/2015/03/30/the-future-of-housing-in-california/

Who could have possibly foreseen that restricting the supply of a thing would result in high prices for that thing??

Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Mar 31, 2015

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 00:25

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Zeitgueist posted:

The only thing that got any new higher density buildings in LA built is that they're all luxury units taking advantage of the crazy market.

Well yeah, when demand across the spectrum isn't being met, fixed costs are high, and you can only build so many units, targeting the high end makes the most business sense. Somehow other metros manage to get reasonably affordable housing though, it's not like developers there wouldn't build all luxury housing all the time if they could get away with it.

Really if we're worried about those darn greedy developers only serving rich people, why not make how many units they can build a function of how affordable the housing will be? E.g. the lower your socio-economic target demographic, the higher you can build? Lower profit-per-unit would be offset by a larger number of units.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Mar 31, 2015

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 00:32

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enraged_camel posted:

No one asked you to.

It's funny to see the spite for developers, as if they were the problem. Even if developers only ever made middle-class housing instead of rich housing, that still wouldn't fix the fundamental problem of there's not enough housing.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 03:44

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Zeitgueist posted:

There's huge amount of new development going on downtown, there's quite a bit of it along the new rail lines. Like any city, if you have the funds or the friends, you can get your project through.

Isn't that exactly the problem? If you need to have "the funds or the friends", won't that be more of an impediment to relatively affordable development than luxury development?

Plus, "huge amount of development" is relative. It may be huge on an absolute scale, but is construction for the LA metro huge relative to its current size? Which is, y'know, huge?

Ron Jeremy posted:

Plenty of housing out in Tracy or Los Banos. Pittsburgh is on Bart! Here's a 3bed 2 bath for $330k. http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/461-Pamela-Dr-Bay-Point-CA-94565/18337450_zpid/ Gentrify away!

I work at the big G in Mountain View. Pittsburg is a bit far.

(also there's no H in Pittsburg, tee hee)

Cicero fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Mar 31, 2015

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 05:26

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FRINGE posted:

I was originally addressing the hand-wringing over the "poor real estate developers".

Do you have some kind of mental block? Literally no one in the last few pages has wrung their hands over "the poor real estate developers". I don't care about their plight as it affects them specifically, but stopping them from building more (and specifically more densely) hurts everyone who doesn't already own a house, and especially the poor.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2015 18:06

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Kaal posted:

I understand what you're saying here, but the metaphor is indeed quite clumsy because manufacturers can of course build a new affordable compact that costs less than a used luxury sedan.

Right, but even those 'affordable' cars are affordable for the middle class, not for poor people. A compact that costs 15k new is a huge stretch if you're making 20k/year (particularly if you don't have good credit, which I'm guessing most poor people don't). It makes way more sense for a poor person to buy a 5k car that's 10 years old and used to be 15k, than to buy a car that can be sold at 5k brand new.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2015 19:44

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ShadowHawk posted:

This actually happened in Mountain View. The city has wildly shifted from representing nimby no-growthers to approving some rather large dense housing projects near something resembling an actual downtown.

Yeah, this last election three outgoing councilmen (councilpeople? councilpersons?) who were against housing in north bayshore (area around Google, linkedin, et al) were replaced with three candidates who were in favor of it, so that's good. Maybe Mountain View will become a True City between SF and SJ.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 02:28

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I want to believe you're being sarcastic, but I don't think you are.

quote:

Stop trying to solve affordable housing through market-rate housing, and instead tax large businesses directly.

Huh, well I guess getting rid of the high-paying jobs probably would help the rent situation.

quote:

Housing needs are driven by economic activity and growth, so why not look to the industries that create the needs for housing to provide subsidies for affordable housing?

They already do this. It's called, "paying wages." Are they seriously asking, "why don't businesses help pay housing costs for people who aren't their employees, huh??"?

quote:

There's plenty of high-cost housing being built. That part of the market takes care of itself.

It's almost like if you heavily restrict the amount of production for a certain type of good, the producers of that good will try to exclusively target the high end of the market. Wow!!

quote:

Better for the economy to look instead to tie economic activity and economic growth to the creation of affordable housing.

What makes housing affordable is having a lot of it.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Apr 5, 2015

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 18:35

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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Because what you just said is totes working for San Fran already.

Oh, has SF been building a lot of housing?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 18:43

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FRINGE posted:

Well you see vicious and destructive profiteering is a sign of health because

Restricting development of housing has clearly been working so well for SF to control housing costs, why fix what ain't broke?

Obviously it's just greedy developers causing the problem. Developers in places like Phoenix or Houston aren't as greedy, so that's why housing is more affordable there.

Leperflesh posted:

"Profiteering" is an opinion. Developers attempting to build housing in SF face an approvals process that can be measured in decades, along with incredibly unusual and burdensome restrictions and requirements. A developer does not have unlimited funds to devote to a multi-year planning and design and approvals process that could (and often does) end up with the project simply failing. That same developer can take their money and time elsewhere.

The only incentive for a developer to bother with SF's hosed up system is profit. And in order to provide sufficient incentive to brave the hosed up process for years, there has to be a very fat profit. SF has done this to itself. "Profiteering developers" are the only kind of developers SF can have, because SF has made it impossible for a profit-based business to attempt to build less profitable housing.

No, I'm pretty sure this is a market failure, you kkkapitalist! Highly restrictive zoning ordinances and onerous approval processes are part of the free market, right?

Cicero fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Apr 5, 2015

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 18:48

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Trabisnikof posted:

Its almost as if both of those cities aren't incredibly confined by geography or something!

Yeah, SF can't build out, obviously, but it can build up.

quote:

Also, Houston has no zoning laws, not sure if you're trying to advocate for that too.

Houston does have a sort of zoning law in that they still have minimum parking requirements, which does the normal American thing of slanting transportation towards cars, which discourages density.

I don't want to get rid of zoning laws entirely, that's silly. I do want SF, and most cities in the bay area for that matter, to loosen up their zoning laws as far as building denser housing goes.

nm posted:

San Francisco is not really the same as the groups that get blamed for the housing crisis are google et al which are 50 miles away near San Jose.

This is getting less and less true over time with the number of startups in SF proper:

FRINGE posted:

Cities should start discouraging business congestion that creates some of these problems.

"business congestion", aka "having a bunch of good jobs in one place"

You can't make this stuff up.

FRINGE posted:

Amazon is empowering is drones to boot people out of their own neighborhoods.

hahaha

News posted:

Company paying its workers crap

D&D Leftists: This is an outrage! These people deserve way more money for their labor than this!

News posted:

Company paying its workers very well

D&D Leftists: This is an outrage! Company is enabling its drones to push out real people!

Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 6, 2015

# ¿ Apr 6, 2015 00:27

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enraged_camel posted:

This is relevant:

As an aside: Those chart axes are messed up. One's y-axis starts at 0 while the other's starts at 450,000; one chart's x-axis starts a bit before 1970 while the other starts a bit before 1990. Makes it a lot harder to compare them.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2015 03:37

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enraged_camel posted:

Said no one ever. But go ahead, keep embarrassing yourself by arguing against ridiculous strawmen you set up.

If you're against me, you're with whoever I hate!!

# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 00:11

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ShadowHawk posted:

To be clear, we could still subsidize the hell out of agriculture if we wanted to because farmers are such important special political snowflakes. Just make the subsidy based on something other than how much water they use.

For example, we could subsidize their investments in higher water efficiency. But no, that would be too logical.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2015 22:24

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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

I'm down for a Prop 13 dump as long as the taxes have some stickyness for residential owners, it would have hurt me bad to have my property taxes double between 2004 - 2008. People need protection from market speculation.

I'm down for loving over baby boomers, though.

It sounds mean to say, but hurting you bad is actually good, in a way, for two reasons:

1. Higher property taxes will bring down home values somewhat itself.
2. Higher property taxes incentivize homeowners to vote for more housing supply, thereby acting as a counterweight to the incentive of higher home values = free money when you eventually sell.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2015 22:44

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Is there any evidence that the Idaho stop actually results in more injuries/fatalities? Everything I've seen on the internet indicates it's neutral or good, e.g. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop)

quote:

Idaho is both the largest and longest practitioner of the safe stop. Mark McNeese, Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator for the Idaho Transportation Department says that "Idaho bicycle-collision statistics confirm that the Idaho law has resulted in no discernible increase in injuries or fatalities to bicyclists."

# ¿ Aug 2, 2015 06:06

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Trabisnikof posted:

Its a pity that Idaho doesn't have any dense large cities to make a meaningful comparison to the places in California we're talking about.

For context, Idaho's largest city is less than half as dense as LA and less than 250,000 people.

Paris is apparently in the process of trying it out: http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-09/paris-follows-path-idaho-and-lets-bicycles-run-red-lights

The article also mentions that it's been successful in Bordeaux, which is denser than LA.

edit: huh, treating stop lights as yield signs is actually more extreme than what the Idaho stop is described as usually (which is stop sign as yield sign, stop light as stop sign).

Cicero fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Aug 2, 2015

# ¿ Aug 2, 2015 19:56

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 01:59

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FRINGE posted:

The lucky homeowners that want to keep the neighborhoods they moved into looking the way they did when they moved in are less to blame than giant companies flooding a geographically constrained area with their servants. Seattle is having the same problem. If Google, Amazon, etc moved to Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, or South Dakota, there would not be an unneeded housing crisis around their fiefdoms.

Yeah, because Google could totally move their headquarters to Nebraska and get everyone to move there. Google, Amazon, et al. aren't in the expensive, desirable cities because they love having to pay expensive office rents and huge salaries to match housing costs in the area. They're in those cities because that's where most good developers are or want to live.

This is so incredibly true that tons of Googlers who work in Mountain View endure a horrifyingly bad commute from SF and somehow even higher rents than MTV because that's how much they want to live in a real city. If they can't even stomach living in the South Bay or Peninsula, how do you think Google could get them to move to Kansas?

NIMBYs are absolutely to blame for the housing crisis. They got in and then decided to shut the door behind themselves. Sure, it's rational on some level for them to oppose more density, just like it's rational on some level for the affluent to vote for social welfare cuts and more tax cuts for themselves. That doesn't mean it's an ok thing to do. NIMBYs are using rising housing costs to fund their retirement off the backs of the young.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 19:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > California Politics: Madame Senator, this is a morgue

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