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    PeteRRHamilton Nolan
    4/12/16 11:09am

    When you’re right, you’re right. Good luck getting the local zoning boards and zoning regs changed to get that housing built in LA, SF, or NYC.

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      Roll with the SquanchesPeteRR
      4/12/16 11:10am

      How do we get this to happen?

      Same way as we do every other thing: protest until we get arrested.

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      IanPeteRR
      4/12/16 11:13am

      Because it’s strictly a zoning issue, right?

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    ReburnsABurningReturnsHamilton Nolan
    4/12/16 11:49am

    These are the very cities that have historically offered the best chance of economic mobility to poor kids.

    I have to wonder if upward mobility for the truly poor (as compared to the “poor” person who makes no money but who went to Stanford on mommy & daddy’s dime and has an inside track with his tech-bro-douche friends) isn’t easier to attain away from the bigger coastal cities nowadays. I think that might be especially true if you happen to be young, single and college educated.

    I know it certainly was for me.

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      ARP2ReburnsABurningReturns
      4/12/16 12:01pm

      Possibly, but the big cities tend to be the place with the best public transportation systems and often where their support network is located. When you add the cost of a car + daycare, any progress made can be quickly eroded.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsARP2
      4/12/16 12:10pm

      Well, that can be true, but given rents in those cities, I doubt it. The cost of owning a reasonable sized car is several hundred dollars a month. The rent on a place the size of the one I’m in right now in NYC or LA would be insane. Even a smaller place that would work for me would still be thousands of dollars more expensive, far more than I pay for a car, all in.

      To be clear, what I said was “young, single and college educated”. Throwing a kid into the mix complicates everything, including your ability to attain upward mobility at all. Kids are expensive & time consuming, having them super early in your career makes it hard to do things like work longer hours and/or squeeze in some extra education. I know this from direct personal experience.

      I also think it can be very hard to rely on extended family & friends to substitute for day care.

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    IAMBlastedBiggsLostBurnerHamilton Nolan
    4/12/16 11:15am

    While there's always been an acceptance of the fact that there will be people on the lower socioeconomic strata, it wasn't until Dubya's administration that they were considered completely disposable, unworthy of assistance or upward mobility due to their own individual deficits, and left to survive or die with little consideration given to the loss of those who couldn't make it. They've now been relegated to a group akin to untermenschen, and we don't have to look much further past O'Reilly's bullshit for proof.

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      JeususMessiahComplexIAMBlastedBiggsLostBurner
      4/12/16 11:42am

      “ it wasn’t until Dubya’s administration that they were considered completely disposable, unworthy of assistance”

      Actually they became disposable under Bill Clinton when he decided to pass Welfare Reform. Dubaya exasperated it, but Bill started it. But I guess we shouldn’t mention that here, cause he’s a Democrat

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      Sid and FinancyIAMBlastedBiggsLostBurner
      4/12/16 11:51am

      What now?

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    BrianGriffinHamilton Nolan
    4/12/16 11:17am

    But who is going to build it? Even if there was land and proper zoning and everything possible to entice low-income housing, will there be developers in SF content to build $100k apartments when they could build $1M?

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      GloryHoleHustlerBrianGriffin
      4/12/16 11:32am

      If there’s money to be made someone will come in and fill the void - that much is a guarantee.

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      MattyWollyBrianGriffin
      4/12/16 12:08pm

      Yes.

      In fact reports on affordable housing policy housing developers in Germany underscore developers can profit making less luxurious properties.

      Development in SF would be much less expensive if zoning allowed for more density as the competition for land would go down.

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    GrizzlyAdamsBeardHamilton Nolan
    4/12/16 11:12am

    If you cannot afford New York, you shouldn’t live there. New York is one of the most expensive places to live on Earth. It’s the equivalent of a Bugatti or a Patek Philippe - it’s unnecessary extravagance. Only the worlds top half of the 1% can afford New York City. There’s nothing wrong with living some place else.

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      RabbleRabbleHeyGrizzlyAdamsBeard
      4/12/16 11:16am

      Then who will serve the people who can afford to live in NYC?

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      GrizzlyAdamsBeardRabbleRabbleHey
      4/12/16 11:21am

      No one. With fewer low income individuals, there will be a shortage of cheap labor (i.e. wages eventually increase). The problem with New York is that you have a million people willing to work for less than $10 an hour. Lower the available minimum wage workforce by 80% and you’ll see a massive increase in wages.

      Seriously, they pay the same salary at a Central PA McDonald’s as they do in NYC, but you can live in PA for a tenth of the cost of the city and there are better schools, less crime and more opportunity.

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    raincoasterHamilton Nolan
    4/12/16 7:35pm

    In Canuckistan we’ve been known to give developers breaks (big ones, like permission to build at all) on condition that a percentage of units are made available at subsidized rates to the poor. The way developers have taken advantage of that should account for a considerable number of them buring in hell. Things like, agreeing to a third affordable units and producing one tenth or less. Using unsafe, substandard materials and then claiming they’d be “too expensive” to rip out and replace with safe materials. But most of all, clumping the poor onto one floor, with a separate entrance, which sort of negates the societal benefits of mixed housing, which were supposed to be the whole point of the exercise.

    I don’t support capital punishment, but there are some developers who would render the world a better place by running full-tilt into the front of a moving bus.

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      ARP2Hamilton Nolan
      4/12/16 11:58am

      Requiring a certain number of affordable housing in any development tends to result in two things:

      1) It drags down the value of the complex, most of the wealthier or middle class move out (or don’t move in at all), and the only ones remaining are poor.

      2) There are so few units set aside as affordable, that won’t even dent the demand.

      Here’s an interesting article on the definitional issues with Mixed Income housing, let alone the efficacy.

      http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/us-mi…

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        XrdsAlumHamilton Nolan
        4/12/16 12:12pm

        The housing problem in these cities now has gone beyond poor people over the past decade. Middle class people are being priced out of desirable cities as well, and adding more mandatory low-income housing won’t remedy that.

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          OctoberSurpriseHamilton Nolan
          4/12/16 1:21pm

          I live int he greater Boston area and their seems to be an uptick in new housing developments, but it seems all of the new construction are for “luxury” apartments, and while those new units once online may relieve some of the pressure on the existing inventory of rental units, rents are still obscenely high, forcing people further away from the city core.

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            kittykatpatsOctoberSurprise
            4/12/16 1:39pm

            I live up in Salem and it’s the same here. Every new apartment is a luxury building, pricing current residents out. My hubz and I have a one bedroom apartment for $1100 a month, with nothing included. We can’t afford to move, all other apartments in decent areas are much more expensive. The only places we can afford to buy are foreclosed on 500 square foot pits. We’re stuck. If we have to move we’ll have to look even further out. It sucks.

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          dwaynegothisballsironedtotakethewrinklesoutHamilton Nolan
          4/12/16 11:12am

          What do you mean “less economic mobility”?

          That little Mexican kids got a razor scooter which I assume he is riding from his job at McDonalds to his job at CVS.

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            Misteaks were madedwaynegothisballsironedtotakethewrinklesout
            4/12/16 11:13am

            He can write off those commuting miles between jobs.

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