There is discussion of reducing demand, primarily by attacking the tech industry. Example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/02/palo-alto...
Obviously, implementing such a policy at such a regional scale has major side effects, both on the tech industry and on America. The jobs and people have to go somewhere, and we are already exporting our housing crisis to other tech cities (Austin, Seattle, Portland) at an alarming pace. Eventually this will become a national problem.
I hear you, but we are out of space in the Bay Area. Still lots of land in other parts of the country. And quite simply, there's too much money in the Bay Area --with that inequity leading to homelessness in the lowest wage earners-- and too little money circulating in other parts of America (with therefore no low-wage employment opportunities in all the necessary support roles).
This could not be further from the truth. Consider: the Terraces at Lafayette, a proposed new apartment building that would replace an empty field. The City of Lafayette delayed the project for almost a decade entirely on spurious grounds. We are not out of space, it just feels like it because we refuse to allow our space to be used efficiently.
Why isn't anyone building brand new cities shaped the way they want, instead of trying to force people out of where they live? I'd much rather live in a blank slate city designed the way I'd like, than constantly fight people who don't want me around.
- All existing land is already claimed by someone, or by the government. There are insanely large parcels owned by individuals or small groups.
- Most existing water is claimed by someone hundreds of miles downstream.
- The overall US mindset (there are definitely exceptions!) has changed over the 20th and early 21st century from one of maximizing tangible accomplishment, to maximizing financial gain and minimizing loss. We're playing musical chairs instead of making more chairs.
- Mass media (Disney -- kid shows, superhero movies) creates the impression that the current geographic and cultural structure of society is the only possible structure of society, by making a few views seem ubiquitous, and everything else the domain of pure fantasy.
- Prior attempts eventually got ridiculed, like EPCOT (ironically enough also Disney). People won't leave you alone -- they'll insist that any hope of new ideas is unforgivable hubris, and do whatever they can to make their ridicule a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your comment that I should think about my suggestion "for a second" is dismissive and assumes I haven't put any thought into it. Again, this has no value in furthering your argument.
Iconic landscapes, nature, and almost perfect weather make it expensive.
Since you are the one in favor of curtailing the freedoms of businesses and people, the burden of proof should be on you to demonstrate why we cannot simply build our way out of this problem.
I have no burden. I already stated: it would be far easier to restrict hiring for the very large, high-salary companies, than scaling out housing to accommodate for the yearly influx of tech works with explosive earnings.
Anyhow, the point of all of this legislation isn’t that duplexes alone will necessarily provide enough housing. It just gives cities a fair chance to meet their housing targets via duplex building and preserve some local zoning preferences. If they fail, the state will step in to void local zoning laws and approve dense apartment buildings.
Is it? Certainly lots of people have moved to California, but lots have also left. Since 2000, California's population has grown by 17%, while the US has grown by 16%, and the world by around 27%.
I’m from here, and have a lot of friends who left. The primary factor for most of them is wanting to afford a single family home, which is easier elsewhere. Restricting movement would be insane, but two thirds of the population being from migration is a huge factor in pricing my friends out, and it does kinda rub me the wrong way when someone from thousands of miles away complains that there isn’t cheap space for them here, and demands that we change the area to accommodate them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco
In the Bay Area in the last 20 years, I think I can count the number of non-hispanic gardeners I've seen, on one hand. The number of non-hispanic custodial workers, maybe on 2 hands. Restaurant workers, regardless of the cuisine and regardless of the restaurant price range, are also most often hispanic.
Some people scream that hispanic immigrants are "stealing our jobs." I think, they're doing the job that white America now refuses to do. Without them, business couldn't survive. But as businesses have thrived --especially tech-- they're the first to get fucked by rising prices.
Certainly you could make the argument that if not for immigrants to the US settling in California it would result in less population growth here, but I think a housing policy which can't even keep up with very little net migration is broken.
And naturally when we talk about housing shortage we always mean in desirable areas. Even in California you can get land for dirt cheap today if you don't mind being in the middle of nowhere.
And when you say “desirable areas”, what this means is where jobs are located. Unemployed people living in the middle of nowhere are not good for society.
So why is there never discussion of reducing demand instead of increasing supply? As in, put a limit on how many employees can be hired in the Bay Area by any company. Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and all the rest bring in many tens of thousands of employees (and their families) every year. They crowd out the nicer apartments, making them unavailable and unaffordable to low-wage employees. And eventually the tech worker cashes in their fantastic stock growth and over-bids on a house, driving prices up.
The suggestion of capping hiring in the Bay Area seems to be a taboo suggestion, not sure why. Seems to me, when your house is flooding from a broken pipe, first thing you do it cut the main.