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A comment on The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing. Parent comment

Re:The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on... by dekhn on Monday August 15, 2016 @10:04AM (#12290491)
Well, she and I share a great deal of things in common in this situation. We're both dual professional marriages with families in the Bay Area who are in the situation where housing in the areas where we want to live is unaffordable. The difference is while I also want to see denser and more affordable housing and shorter commutes, I didn't rage-quit on the internet over not being able to buy a $2.7M home in exactly the place where I want to live. Instead, I was extremely rational, considered a wide range of issues, decided that the problem with housing in California is effectively systemic and unchangeable because existing homeowners are an extremely powerful voting block.

If I wanted to live in Palo Alto the first two things I'd drop are the requirement for "walkable to downtown" and "my kids can bike on my street". Those are great attributes, but that's about half a million of additional house cost, and I think any rational person buying a home would drop those requirements if they truly want to live there. Adding on to that, I'd also suggest buying a fixer-upper, fixing it up, and living there (not flipping it).

Ultimately, if you rage-quit on the internet, you can't complain if people call you on the irrational parts of your rage.

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Re:The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on... by tkxxx7 on Monday August 15, 2016 @03:26PM (#12292775)
"Rage-quitting"? She couldn't find what she wanted, so she left. Her argument is not "everyone should get what they want" but that the majority of people's situations are worse than hers. You having different priorities regarding where/how you want to live is great, doesn't mean that they're right for her, or that the choices others have made to get by are right for her. It's great that you can zero in on what the actual problem is, but it seems much more valuable to do what she's doing and spread the information (including how the voting block would have to be overcome) than to give up and suggest everyone else give up, too. "systemic and unchangeable" sounds more like quitting to me than anything in the article.
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