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I'm honestly not really going to bother... I've answered your original post with my perspective on the matter, as have many others. I'm pretty much done with this "debate" as I don't feel like you're truly looking for answers anyway. I think you're just looking to vent about not being able to afford a home since your posts have not been very cohesive to begin with.
you think "that" people are needing to put 20% down these "days" so yeah, there's no point in debating. i sold a house in the last year to people who got a 3.5% fha loan. that "is" very common. putting me down as being a renter isn't going to "make" you less ignorant.
...Also some of the open space that you see on the satellite maps are actually crops. What will happen when those are concreted over?
You must know that huge swaths of California and the U.S. have been tamed and logged for farming. Most regional parks in the Bay Area allow cattle grazing as a compromise use. People get attacked by the cows now and then.
The total area designated as farmland is about 41% of U.S. gross acreage and California has a large piece of that (ers.usda.gov).
Now, ironically, homes are being built on that very farmland that we will "need" to feed the growing hordes and/or grow more biofuels.
The fundamental problem is that a finite planet can't support endless numbers of people. California is a prime example, with a population projected to reach 60 million by the middle of this century if people don't step up birth control.
In fact, most of California's chronic problems are caused by the insane expectation that growth can be absorbed indefinitely. Most of our "droughts" are perfectly natural for the climate, outside the context of 500,000+ more people demanding water each year.
My question is more of why there is so much state park land? You could technically build around a resevior if the land was sold to a developer. Take lafayette resevior for example. It had houses maybe 1/4 mile from it. There is so much open space in the US. Just drive across the country one time and 90% of what you will see is open land. It doesn't make sense to have all this open land in such prime areas. There is no shortage of land in most cases unless we make it that way. I think we would benefit by lower housing prices and businesses would do better as well because some people won't work here due to high cost of living. Maybe the state will get desperate enough for cash and sell some of that land.
You need to learn how land is actually being used. Dense cities and urban sprawl only exists because close to a billion acres in the U.S. is used for farming. Cattle grazing is also present in many Bay Area parks. There's not an infinite supply of water either, though growthists could seem to care less.
I am tired of people who think acreage is wasted unless people are living on it or making a buck off it somehow (pillaging in many cases). Nature wasn't put here by a supernatural power as a slave to the whims of businessmen.
The amount of animal habitat already lost is staggering. Just looking at aerial photos only tells part of the story. Breaking the land up into parcels has many side-effects. Same goes for all the rivers that have been dammed to coddle population growth.
I hope you're not someone who thinks the U.S. can and should support a billion people by whenever. 300 million back in Oct. 2006 was already too much.
Last edited by ca_north; 03-04-2010 at 10:54 PM..
Reason: minor
You need to learn how land is actually being used. Dense cities and urban sprawl only exists because close to a billion acres in the U.S. is used for farming. Cattle grazing is also present in many Bay Area parks. There's not an infinite supply of water either, though growthists could seem to care less.
I am tired of people who think acreage is wasted unless people are living on it or making a buck off it somehow (pillaging in many cases). Nature wasn't put here by a supernatural power as a slave to the whims of businessmen.
The amount of animal habitat already lost is staggering. Just looking at aerial photos only tells part of the story. Breaking the land up into parcels has many side-effects. Same goes for all the rivers that have been dammed to coddle population growth.
I hope you're not someone who thinks the U.S. can and should support a billion people by whenever. 300 million back in Oct. 2006 was already too much.
I don't think agriculture is the cause of dense cities. I think it's more convenient to have people closer together. I have heard industrialization was more of a cause of big cities. A lot of people like to be in dense urban areas so we can shop, eat out, have more forms of entertainment and be close to work. Also, when we get to a point where we run out of oil, we will be better off being close together. I would prefer more dense cities with really good public transportation. Then people would have the option to go without cars. That is part of why I prefer that some of the central park areas be built on rather than building out where there are no jobs and people need to drive an hour each way to get to work. There should be more small urban parks like golden gate park and then the houses built out in brentwood should be closer in. You can say I am against the environment by wanting to fill in some of the open space, but isn't burning gas doing harm? That brings me to another question, why aren't we riding horses anymore? So here's the plan. We build a larger faster trains system, then when we get off at our stop, we have a horse share program, where we can take the horse to our destination. There. Problem solved.
Is it necessary to build out the open land which serves the area so well in order to do what you're asking? Part of what makes the area so attractive is the proximity of dense urban spaces and residential areas to these open lands. Maintaining these spaces in the face of development probably has had some effect on attracting the many lucrative industries in the area as well as tourism. These are amenities that people are willing to pay a premium for whether for living or visiting.
Mass transit certainly needs more work in the Bay Area but it wouldn't make it easier by having to serve an even more spread out population--and there's certainly no guarantee that developing more land is going to result in high-density neighborhoods and *less* gas burning and commuting. Besides, there are places already developed that can be primed for redevelopment before tackling more open space which has the advantages of already being incorporated within the preexisting urban fabric. Besides, it's time for houseboats.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-05-2010 at 01:40 PM..
Like I said before, now a middle class family has to rent, move farther away to buy (or buy in a really ghetto area) or buy a condo in a cheaper area
People can buy into "ghetto" areas and fix them up. The housing is here, it's just not all going to be the stuff people want. That's not a good reason to keep building.
My question is more of why there is so much state park land? You could technically build around a resevior if the land was sold to a developer. Take lafayette resevior for example. It had houses maybe 1/4 mile from it. There is so much open space in the US. Just drive across the country one time and 90% of what you will see is open land. It doesn't make sense to have all this open land in such prime areas. There is no shortage of land in most cases unless we make it that way. I think we would benefit by lower housing prices and businesses would do better as well because some people won't work here due to high cost of living. Maybe the state will get desperate enough for cash and sell some of that land.
In general, I agree with you. But that is the NIMBY attitude you get in California, especially coastal CA. Then they say they're doing it in the name of the environment....but all they're really doing is keeping an area the way they like it for themselves. All the NIMBY attitude has done is push housing further out to places like Livermore, Tracy, Hollister, etc. forcing people to commute long distances. Doesn't sound environmentally counscious to me.
There's no question there would be a benefit of lower housing prices if the supply were increased. But that would mean higher densities...and that's what the NIMBYs don't want.
Ask yourself this: Would you really want to see our open spaces turned into development like LA?
It depends. If these spaces are hills on the outskirts of built up areas, maybe, maybe not. Some of the hill areas are just boring dry grass 1/2 the year anyway, so why not build on them? (I have the hills east of Fremont in my mind as an example).
I live in San Jose, and there is still one fairly large swathe of land on a flat area in the middle of town that is not developed. Seems like a waste to me.
In general, I think we need more well constructed high density housing to be built near transit lines (SJ has been working to do that in the last 10-15 years...I'm not sure about other areas). But that doesn't preclude more suburbanish development patterns in so-called open space areas where it seems reasonable.
Better to build in the Bay Area than out in the Central Valley or down in Hollister and Salinas.
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 03-06-2010 at 05:04 AM..
No, that's incorrect. You should read up a little on the collapse of the economy which was caused by the housing bubble.
We can take a place like San Ramon as an example..Most of that town was built up with new housing estates--tons of urban sprawl and development, yet those houses went for 1.1 million and up (I know, because my husband and I checked them out). They went for so much, not because they didn't have enough of them. They went for that much because people got loans for them from the banks (whether or not they had down payments or an income that could support a mortgage)
Sorry, but where exactly have you been over the past 4yrs?
But ClonGirl....despite the housing bust, prices in the Bay Area are still not in line with the area's median incomes.
No, it was always expensive to live in the Bay Area... areas surrounding job centers throughout the country are.
But when houses quadruple in price over a very short time it's not because there's a sudden lack of housing. I can use many areas as examples where this was also the case (like West Sacramento, the Central Valley). Nobody was scrambling to find a house over some huge 14yr. population boom.
The housing industry was thriving and supporting our entire economy (this also happened across parts of Europe, when I lived there also). So to limit your belief that building more will bring down costs is not correct. If your theory that building restrictions would have made everything more affordable in the region, then again you are mistaken. The same theory would apply to other areas. The Bay Area is absolutely not unique in that regard.
I don't believe you can school me on economics since you don't seem to understand that the housing bubble wasn't actually about economics, but deregulation and greed, and a lack of any oversight by both the government and the banking/mortgage/real estate industries, and a lack of knowledge by the naive or uninformed consumer.
You also seem to be contradicting yourself in your assertions. You don't need to paste links of houses that are still out of reach for the majority of people. The prices must fall to the median salary of any given city's residents.
Felix isn't contradicting himself at all. It's true the Bay Area has always been more expensive than most areas. However, after the 1970s it gradually went from a modest "above average" premium to an EXTREME premium.
Now, you are right. A lot of that has been because of the insane lending by the banks. Credit standards have slowly but surely gotten looser since about 1980, leading to the mess we have now.
All that said, the I'm willing to bet the median house price to median income ratio was more reasonable in the 1970s than it is today. And I know, I know. Interest rates were a lot higher then. Even so, prices in the Bay Area are STILL out of whack relative to incomes today compared to then, even when the higher interest rates of that era are factored in. And a good bit of the reason for that is the NIMBY attitude that exists here, which, as Felix said, just forces people to live further and further out.
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Bay Area open space is also cow pasture
