Yeah but it contributes to screwing over Portuguese people.
Who seemed to be a particular focus of HP Lovecraft’s hatred for some reason. Irrelevant I know but it just popped into my head.
Nice thought.
Not sure I can agree here 100%.
I don’t think it’s a win-win.
In fact, if I sold our Austin home right now, I wouldn’t even be able to buy it for what I sold it for.
… is happening worldwide.
I have reason to believe the absurd real estate price bubble is not U.S.-specific.
Regular working folks 20, 30, 40 years old, in Ireland, for example, are having to live with their parents because hedge funders and vulture capitalists have pwned the housing market completely.
The Irish Precariat are also living in emergency accommodations (gov’t pays hotels to house those in need).
Berlin has or perhaps had Ireland’s problem–we will have to see if housing justice improves after the passing of a near-revolutionary referendum.
In addition to hedge funder crap like this…
we also have AirB&B to thank (heaven forfend that the place you live in garners the attention of hipsters, private equity investors, and hedge funders looking for big fast profits):
(doesn’t appear to be Oneboxing correctly so here’s the header:)
The Airbnb Effect: It’s Not Just Rising Home Prices
A new Economic Policy Institute study finds that Airbnb contributes to rising home prices in cities, yet often escapes comprehensive regulation (emphasis mine).
This wiki entry gives us a few more of culprits, in the U.S., to consider:
While there are towns in the U.S. that are much cheaper to live in than Austin, some are now finding they have no more open hospitals close by, or are in food deserts. Because… guess what?
Cory Doctorow’s got a buncha facts and receipts and reality-based evidence over here:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/16/die-miete-ist-zu-hoch/
… it’s got a lot of the gory details.
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As can be easily verified by scrolling around Google Maps in satellite mode, there is plenty of land in the Bay Area with hardly any buildings or people on it
It doesn’t snow on those “mountains” and they’re not particularly steep, and there is nothing stopping us from building up San Mateo County to the same density as The City except that the people who make these decisions don’t give a shit
There is no crisis for THEM, they’re doing great
Do you mind circling the empty mountain areas you propose to build on? Because I’m pretty sure you’re referring to the 4000 acre Rancho Corral de Tierra open space that’s currently protected against development and is being managed by the National Park Service.
I guess you can make an argument that this unique, natural landscape which currently serves as a home for endangered plants and animals could be better put to use as space for more urban sprawl. But I certainly don’t agree that the only reason that it’s not happening is because people don’t give a shit.
And even with that open space, San Mateo county has an average population density of just over 1000 people per square mile, which is very close to Travis county (home of Austin)
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(I think you missed the implicit sarcasm tag)
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Yes, every time somebody cuts down a tree to build an apartment building it’s a fucking environmental tragedy, but we used to do it anyway because PEOPLE NEED SOMEWHERE TO LIVE
Building next to where the people already are is the least bad option—“sprawl” is when they have to commute from Davis
What’s the endgame? How dense does any given region have a responsibility to be? Should they have to keep building on any possible open space until such time that anybody who wants to buy/rent a home in the area can afford do so? (Which could never happen anyway). There’s plenty of policies that can and should be implemented to improve housing affordability for essential workers who are needed to make a city function, but just building more sprawl until there’s no land left isn’t going to solve the problem. And there’s no fundamental reason why a whole bunch of new people need to move to the Bay Area specifically.
I would argue that a population center like SF and the surrounding area which already has some of the highest density housing in the country has, to an extent, earned the right to set aside some portion of open space for natural preservation and public recreation.
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He’s moving the headquarters, not the factory.
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So it’s not that “sprawl” is bad so much as that it’s somebody else’s job to do it 
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