zlacker

>>NaOH+(OP)
> shepherding him through what one Recreation and Parks Department official described as the “arduous and achingly bureaucratic tasks” necessary just to be eligible for housing.

I'm going to risk a political statement and say that this is why I'm mostly hopeful about DOGE, even if parts of it are a shit show.

Building civilization comes with a hefty dose of institutional entropy, which keeps accumulating, despite (or often because) good intentions and competence. Everybody is improving their piece of the map, but this means you get stuck in a lot of spots of local maxima. Some can be fixed from a level above, but some need a round of creative destruction every 10 years or so.

I've read this yesterday: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-japan-succ...

It's a good read and a good blog for many reasons, but the relevant part to this conversation: Japan managed to keep a very high level of living even through decades of economic stagnation and aging population in large part by having a sane zoning system. Yes, that simple. They have 12, nation-wide, mostly inclusive zoning types. This means the permitted building types carry over as you move up the categories, allowing mixed-use development by default.

And indeed, you can actually go to Japan and buy a house for about the price of a decent car - which coincidently used to be the case in most of the world, before the double pressure of zoning/coding on one hand, and migration towards urban centers on the other squeezed the housing pricing way above what actual costs would have it be.

>>radu_f+px
DOGE comes from the political machine that believes more restrictions on eligibility for government assistance are a GOOD thing and that spending on such assistance should be dramatically cut.

So good luck with that.

Zoning as a silver bullet? When you have a huge economic difference as a conflating factor? If the US had had decades of economic stagnation the housing price pressure caused by the beneficiaries of many sectors of the economy NOT stagnating, but instead of booming at more-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world-levels, seen in SF in particular, would be far less.) Look at housing prices in hollowing-out former industrial towns in the Midwest. Economic stagnation and lower cost of living go hand in hand. Japan stagnated at a pretty high level, quality-of-living-wise. That doesn't seem like a bad thing. It's certainly not comparable to Nigeria, Pakistan, or Chile. It's also not comparable to the US. And do you know who else doesn't want the US to stagnate like that for the elite professional class? Elon Musk. (And Japan's economic situation has more than a few darker aspects to it.)

(Republicans also fucking love zoning, so..... again... wtf)

>>majorm+QF
> If the US had had decades of economic stagnation the housing price pressure caused by the beneficiaries of many sectors of the economy NOT stagnating, but instead of booming at more-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world-levels, seen in SF in particular, would be far less.) Look at housing prices in hollowing-out former industrial towns in the Midwest.

But the article isn't wrong though. Zoning things like Tokyo in San Francisco would be a silver bullet to the woes there and it would go a long way to making people feel prosperous. If you live in the bay area, you'll be shocked to see people with quite large net worths, feel like they have nothing because the only place they can afford near their workplace is $1M or more and we're talking about condos here.

>>aprilt+LK
Zoning while important isn't a silver bullet. Often cities who change zoning reform realize there is a whole lot of other issues that cause problems. But yes, zoning one of the most important ones.