Although, you should expect this with gentrification even when population remains the same, since wealthy people moving in are more likely to use professional movers.
I vacated California for New Mexico 14 years ago (No regrets). The price of a U-Haul was so high that I was able to buy a used, good condition 12 foot cargo trailer for about 20% more than the price of a same sized rental. I still have it and use it as a big storage locker. When prices get that lopsided it's time to go shopping.
Texas and Oregon are starting to look pretty nice. Too bad about the cannabis laws in Texas, though. As soon as I persuade the court to terminate my probation I'll consider selling a few properties and getting out of here, too.
That depends on how you figure. Do you mean socially? Legally? Business-wise? There are a lot of complex forces at play to make Silicon Valley the way it is (including history). I don’t think it’s fair to tell any group not to “make” some city like their previous one. Furthermore, one nice thing about the American melting pot is everyone gets a voice. If enough people move to Texas and change its culture, that’s just something you have to deal with (or move, I suppose).
It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect everyone to assimilate, if for no other reason than people bring the entirety of their experiences with them wherever they go. There will always a bit of a Californian in transplants to Texas, just like there will always be a bit of a Texan in transplants to Pennsylvania or Florida or Germany or wherever. I think this adds to the richness of life, but I suppose not everyone feels that way.
He mentioned marijuana, though. I can easily see all 49 other states legalizing pot with Texas being the sole remaining hold out. For the next 100 years.
>Families with kids and those with only a high school education predominate among those moving from California to its top destination states (Texas, Arizona, and Nevada). College-educated 18 to 35 year olds led the way among those moving to California from its top feeder states (New York, Illinois, and New Jersey).
A cursory read of the graphics indicates that people with graduate degrees and higher-paying jobs are forcing the people with less money and less education out, and they are moving to states with lower costs of living.
So imagine being completely unable to live in the place you grew up in once an adult, and forced to emigrate not from choice but financial necessity. Its pretty much a bummer.
We like to forget that much of the early USA was populated for largely this reason. Our ancestors didn't move half-way across the damn world because they wanted to, they were forced out due to circumstances beyond their control, be it oppression, famine, or a general lack of opportunity (no land or jobs).
My iRobot Scooba does that--poorly, but it does that. The Roomba handles the initial hard floor cleaning, and also the carpets.
I don't have a robot yet to clean the toilets, but I hear they exist in Japan, and my parents have one on their most heavily used commode.
Thank goodness California phased out most of its public telephones before sending all their telephone sanitizers on the 'B' Ark to Texas.
Whether there is a problem in pushing out all the low-skilled labor depends largely on whether all the work that those people do is automated yet. My concern is that jobs that require some on-site human judgment, but not a lot of skill, will start to go unfilled before robots are ready to step in.
Less people to do things involving less educated labor (flipping burgers, building houses, delivering packages, etc) will increase prices. That higher income will be meaningless.
IBEW local 82 journeyman electricians union rate in Ohio $29.05/hr
IBEW local 234 journeyman electricians union rate in California $71.36/hr
Of course I'm not sure the education level or IQ of the typical electrician is much different than than the typical software developer with respect to the lower education specification; however it does seem likely that labor costs in CA for similar work are currently about 147% higher than Ohio costs.
According to Zillow "The median home value in Salinas is $436,900" and "The median home value in Dayton is $57,300" for a journeyman electricians income, you'll be one of the poorest people in the highest crime neighborhood in CA, or live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city if you live in Ohio. Given the choice of top or bottom 10% of neighborhoods and amenities, I'd certainly rather live in Ohio. This probably cascades thru every career path.
There's nothing wrong per se with an educated, wealthy populace. It's the gentrification process that is problematic.
It forces the poor and marginalized out, which is basically the last thing those populations need.
It's also bad for innovation of all kinds. People who have ideas and are willing to take a chance on executing them are deterred by the threat of being forced out of their communities if they fail. You're already seeing this with the loss of artists and musicians from the bay.
My housemate is a professional artist and straight up can't afford to move within the bay. Our house is being sold, so she's moving to Georgia.
Yeah the people who think this is a bad thing are pretty confused. The real story here is that everybody in California is becoming very highly educated [1]. California is experiencing a remarkable brain gain as the best and the brighest in the world relocate to the state. This may drive out lesser educated Americans but the idea that this is a disaster or a bad thing is mistaken. California's future is very bright (even if too much value gets captured by real estate speculators.)
Either? Former citizens presumably get an increase in quality of life in a lower cost of living area, and California has a richer (newly imported) middle class.
The ones that have it hard are the ones who can't afford to stay and can't/won't leave.
It's hard to say with certainty that the emigrants are poor and uneducated.
It's just as likely that people are becoming rich and then leaving for lower tax states.
There are also stronger political incentives for richer folk. "An individual’s likelihood of being a Democrat decreases with every additional dollar he or she earns."
For most of it's history it has voted Republican, with only the last decade or so being Democrat [1]. But the state still holds a lot of very conservative views. It's very down the middle.
Oregon is interesting in that it's D because of Portland. The state is mostly conservative small cities or rural and yet the population of the Portland metro area leans so far left and has such a large population relative to the other parts of the state that it changes the entire state. Remove Portland voters from the polls and Oregon would be R.[0]
By and large califirnia is a red state: outside the major urban areas the state is mostly quote red; some urban areas (e.g. Orange county) are also quite red and those populations send conservatives to congress.
But because the majority of the population do live in major urban areas you see the state legislature about 70/30 D/R and the statewide offices tend to go to the majority as well.
But within recent memory there have been several republican governors, two of whom (nixon and regan) became US presidents.
So though I don't see much chance of the state tipping "red" any time soon it's not an utterly outlandish idea.
That's the cliché but it seems a bit unfair, because in my mind, "rural" evokes small towns of 21 people and vast expanses of farm/ranch land. My hometown has a population of about ~70,000 spread out over 55 square miles (~1,300 people per square mile); is that "rural" or "urban?"
What I'm getting at is, it's more precise to say "most of the US--rural and urban--is red, while the densest population centers are overwhelmingly blue."
The definition of "urban" according to the USA census department have cores of 1000ppl/sqm and are surrounding by areas of 500ppl/sqm.
So if you have a density of 1,300, then there is a higher chance the area went blue. Of course, there can be lots of exceptions, and 1,300 is rather close to the crossover point.
It would be interesting to see those 2012 calculations updated, especially with regards to the results of the 2016 Presidential election; judging by the resulting red-or-blue-by-county political map, things have changed since then.
> Here's another divide that started to get more attention this election: the rural-urban gap. Rural voters vote more Republican, while urban voters vote more Democratic, and that divide grew this year from where it was in 2012 and 2008. It's a nuanced divide, too; strikingly, as counties get progressively more rural, they more or less steadily grow more Republican. And it's possible that living in a rural area caused people to vote more Republican this election.
> Exit polls show that the rural-urban divide grew from 2008 to 2012, and again this election. What's particularly interesting is that the rural vote seems to have moved more than the urban or suburban votes.
In turn, I was born in a hospital next to a Seoul apartment complex that was part of a 3-apartment complex thing that had more people than your hometown. That's density.
Oh most definitely, a friend from my hometown spent a couple of years in Seoul and related just how different it was from our hometown but also any other US city he'd lived in, including the greater Seattle area. But I would never mean to imply that my red/blue density supposition would apply to a place as culturally and politically distinct from the US.
It wasn't a very long time ago that California was red. You don't have to imagine. It was only after Pete Wilson decided to crackdown on latinos that the state shifted into solid D.
It's been almost 20 years since Pete Wilson was governor. In the meantime, the GOP has moved quite a bit to the right, and CA as a whole has moved left on most issues. If anything, it looks like the remaining red districts in places like Central Valley could be at risk as first generation Latinos hit voting age and start to outnumber the conservatives.
Eg for the Central Valley districts:
"Walters’s district has grown by 33,000 residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Of those new residents, 30,000 are nonwhite. The white population actually declined in Royce’s district while the overall population grew by 10,000 residents. In Denham’s district, 17,000 of the 21,000 new residents are nonwhite."
(Not to mention the new tax plan was hugely unpopular in CA in general.)
It's lower income, lower education people who are out-migrating, and those groups tend to be more right leaning on average. So if anything, the states are becoming even more uniform politically.
Most other "blue" states suffer from the same problem as California: massive wealth concentration and the subsequent sky-high rents and real estate prices.
I know when I was seriously considering relocating, the politics of the region wasn't a consideration. I was far more concerned about availability of jobs (and cost of living relative to what I could earn). If I were in SF and couldn't get a job at Big Tech, I'd be looking to move to a red state. Not for political reasons, just because it's better to be a median dev in a flyover state than a bottom quartile dev in SF/Seattle/NYC/etc.
...you'd be able to send your kids to a better school. And your kids would be better off.
California has some of the worst public schools in the country. In a red state you could send your kid to private school or afford a house in the best school districts.
California has some great schools, but in those districts you’ll pay a huge premium. For example Sunnyvale homes are 1mil more than East Palo Alto homes.
So you either end up paying for private school. Or pay the same amount more for a more expensive home.
I was hoping someone else would make this connection in the comments.
What I see happening is a slow but steady demographic shift based on politics. I know my own recent move from Virginia to Arkansas was largely because of this, and statistics from the past few elections have been showing a decrease in the number of "swing" counties.
Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War, and if there were even enough data collected to accurately measure it.
> Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War
Not particularly; compared to today, US states, in national partisan terms, were more homogenous for most of the history of the nation; this got a bit shook up with the New Deal Coalition and further when the LBJ committed to civil rights and then Republicans targeted the Democrats disaffected segregationist base. Greater political homogeneity is just a reversion to historical norms after some mid-20th Century disruptions.
"The graph below shows data from the Internal Revenue Service on the movement of income tax filers in and out of California since 1990. (Data on tax filers does not cover the entire population because some people do not earn enough income to necessitate filing taxes.)"
It also doesn't cover populations who don't pay taxes, and who get paid under the table.
The graph introduced with that paragraph comes from IRS data, the total population estimate (and the other material that is not that graph) is derived from the American Community Survey (which is not restricted to tax filers.)
The middle class can no longer afford to remain in CA. A combination of egregious housing policies and other anti-bussines/anti-people regulations stifle the economic well being of it's inhabitants. It's sad to see people having to leave behind their friends and families, for all this. Not only are people leaving, but the birth rate for millineials in CA hasn't been this low since the great depression: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-birth-rate-...
> but the birth rate for millineials in CA hasn't been this low since the great depression
I think this might need a rewording to convey whatever idea you were trying to convey, because I have a hunch there weren't many millennials around during the Great Depression. :-)
And the birth rate for Millennials has been zero for pretty much all of history, except for a short blip on the late 20th Century. And that's not an effect limited to CA.
I think it's fairly clear that they mean "the birth rate for people in the 20-35 age range, which happens to coincide with the millenials at the moment."
It's pretty clear what they meant, but humorously even your rewording isn't accurate.
A named generation is static, based on the birth dates. The "20-35 age range" is dynamic, anchored to the present time.
Also, named generations (like "Millennials", "Gen Y", "Gen X", "Baby Boomers", etc) don't have rigid definitions. Some media groups define it as starting as early as 1976 and others as late as 1984, which is 50% of your "20-35" range.
In the end, the boundaries of named generations are more or less arbitrary unless there is an extremely specific event which defines it (Baby Boomers started with an explosion of birth rates immediately after the end of WW2).
> A named generation is static, based on the birth dates. The "20-35 age range" is dynamic, anchored to the present time.
Yes, that's why my phrasing used "at this moment." At this moment, millenials are around an age range of 20-35 years old, give or take a bit depending on the very fact that you point out, there aren't well defined boundaries and the exact age range could vary. I was very careful to include "at this moment" in my phrasing, for the reason that you point out. I didn't bother to hedge about the unclear boundaries of the millenial generation, since that wasn't the topic at hand, but yes, these terms are somewhat vague.
The actual article cited simply discussed the nationwide birthrate at different points in time; it didn't talk about particular generations.
Given that millenials are currently the generation that are of prime child-bearing age, it's pretty clear what the original poster meant "people of child bearing age right now, who happen to be millenials, are having less children than those of child bearing age at any point since the great depression."
The original phrasing was humorously incorrect, I just thought that asking for clarification was a bit much, since it was pretty clear what they meant to say, it was just a funny mistaken phrasing.
[California has been experiencing a years-long downward trend that likely stems from the recession, a drop in teenage pregnancies and an increase in people attending college and taking longer to graduate, therefore putting off having children, said Walter Schwarm, a demographer at the Department of Finance. When people do complete their schooling, they're interested in taking some time to pursue their careers or other goals, he said.]
Except recession everything else that is contributing to lower birth rate seems side effect of progress.
a solution is on the table— sb-827. please research it. californians (and i am one too) need to stop complaining and start fixing things. this bill fixes things. it needs our attention and support.
UPDATE: sb-827 prevents local governments in california from banning density near public transit. it represents the most radical housing bill in recent california history, because it rebalances control from hyperlocal municipalities to the state level. it could unlock 3m housing units in a state building <100k a year. that's 30 years of pent-up supply, and it could actually affect market prices.
SB-827: Planning and zoning: transit-rich housing bonus [0]
Edited:
Nevermind, I see your other posts below.
Original:
I'm a urban California resident... (have been for a good chunk of my life). I'm don't see why this is a solution to the problem of why people are leaving the state.
Can you provide your thoughts on why you believe this to be the solution? Or links to material you've found to be compelling?
If I get the idea behind it, we're going to eliminate/reduce parking requirements and give a density bonus. And the primary way this will be feasible is if (more) people take transit.
Then the thing about SB827 that doesn't make sense to me is why the bonus is only for residential development.
Yes, I understand that residential pricing is the problem. But, we're not just taking transit to our friend's house. We're taking transit to work and services.
Sure, I can see this working in San Francisco given the transit coverage and relatively centralized business core. (Scary though given the quality of service that Muni/BART offers presently.)
But in LA/SD/Greater Bay Area/Sacramento? I think there's a ton of jobs that aren't off transit lines. Doesn't seem to work well there.
Yes, I agree that things probably need to change in California. But SB827 seems to be about stirring the pot.
What density are they talking about? If 4-6 levels, then you can likely accommodate residential in the upper tiers and light commercial (consultancies, etc) at the bottom.
Here in Southern California, we are running out of room for housing. You can basically drive all the way from San Diego to Santa Barbara, or from the coast to about a 100 miles inland and it's all city. Unless you are going to tear down existing housing and rebuild with more high density housing which is just cost prohibitive. I figure at some point availability of water will become the limiting factor.
this wouldn't happen overnight, but it would be the biggest increase in housing supply in recent history. there are quite a few maps you can google to see where the increased density would be likely to go: https://transitrichhousing.org/ (it looks like most of SB will not be affected, because you don't have as much transit as California's other cities)
Since agriculture uses the bulk of water, it is a matter of allocation and proper pricing.
California’s is a knowledge-based economy—Agriculture contributes but a small percentage to it (about 2%). Why should we restrict the number of productive people who can live in the state in favor of crops?
The world has an excessive amount of food production capacity. That is why all the subsidies many governments give to prop up their farmers.
I thought a key American ideal is freedom. Why would you want to restrict people’s freedom and only give the privilege only to the few who just happen to be born early enough to get property there? (Even some California native sons and daughters cannot afford to buy a home in their own home city.)
By the way, flippant answers are not appreciated. Consider reading more about the topics before giving thoughtful answers?
There's an absurd number of crops that would effectively disappear from American (and probably even global) diets if California started to downsize its agriculture. The Central Valley is very unique in having both fertile soil and year-round reasonably-temperate weather. That's a resource which - if anything - ought to be prioritized and expanded to as high of a degree as possible.
Water is quite literally the only issue, and it's a very recent one. It's also an easy one to solve: follow Israel's lead and build desalinization plants up the wazoo. That, or pray that we mountain folks keep getting decent winters to sustain the summers. Pushing ranching (which is disproportionately-water-intensive) out-of-state is another option, as is figuring out ways to reduce ranching's water impact.
As for the low proportion of California's economy to which agriculture contributes, it's worth remembering that agriculture doesn't exactly have high margins. California's farms in particular are also heavily staffed with undocumented labor (which I reckon will skew a lot of data in all sorts of crazy directions).
Put simply: crops ain't the problem, and scapegoating the "dumb and dirty" farmers was already a tired trope five years ago, let alone now.
It seems like this is now the middle class experiencing the same pain that gentrification inflicts on the lower class as the cost of housing continues to climb.
> The middle class can no longer afford to remain in CA
It seems like the immigration is mostly the middle and upper middle class, as those terms are most often used [0]. The out-migration looks to be mostly below national median income.
[0] which, sure, is the upper income end of the working class and not the petit bourgeoisie, for the most part, but aside from me, no one seems to use “middle class” to mean that in the US.
> The middle class can no longer afford to remain in CA. A combination of egregious housing policies and other anti-bussines/anti-people regulations
To me this doesn't make sense. Middle class can't survive in CA because too many people get paid middle class and up in CA. Is it 'anti-people' to pay teachers 70+k? Or is a state like WV more 'pro-people' where teachers are going on strike because they get no raises. There are a lot of wealthy businesses in CA. You have to be richer than in other places to actually feel rich.
truth is, the problem is too much competition and there always has to be somebody at the bottom. Look at the inflow of people. People with high incomes and advanced degrees.
I'm surprised this isn't covered more, but this talk of boosting 'affordable', actually government subsidized housing as a solution doesn't seem like an actual solution to me either.
how many middle class families are going to register with a government entity, stay under low yearly income limits to 'qualify' for affordable housing? number of kids you have in your family is factored in as well...becoming a metric that factors into your qualification for housing.
seems sort of orwellian to me. we should be creating bills to expedite all housing. not just subsidized housing.
For SF you don't need To stay under the limit. Technically you could apply as a college student, buy a BMR condo, then start your 6 figure job while keeping the place.
Your right. I never said anything about subsidized housing. We just need vastly more supply of market rate housing to bring it down to a level where it's cost effective enough for everyone
> The middle class can no longer afford to remain in CA
But that's not what most of the data shows. The bulk of the data shows lower-income, lower education Californians moving out. The strongest peak is for minimum wage incomes.
While middle class incomes are still shown as leaving CA, it's far less than those at the lower end. For me the starkest and most concerning contrast is not wealthy vs. poor, but young vs. old.
They're moving in part because CA continues to push out businesses that require unskilled labor, through a combination of taxes, minimum wage hikes, regulations, and other roadblocks. Generally it's dressed up as a Good Thing, but I'm not so sure.
CA has the highest poverty rates in the country, along with the highest taxes. SF is rich as all hell, but can't keep feces and needles from littering the sidewalks or car windows intact. Cupertino had virtue signaling signs up supporting undocumented immigrants and welcoming them to their city - but their housing policy shows only the rich of any race or creed are welcome.
All the while places like Houston are booming, with development happening everywhere, affordable housing, diverse population, and jobs.
Coming from south-eastern US and visiting Mountain View / Palo Alto on business several times, the property valuations are amazing to me. Poorly maintained looking ranch homes with bad landscaping and giant Land Rovers, Porsches, Jags in the driveway or on the street. Downtown looks almost like my semi-rural hometown except there are full parking garages and you have to park under an over-pass. It's a weird place.
Native Texan here. I and many other Texans I know welcome newcomers with open arms.
We all just have one message though: Please do not turn Texas into the places y'all are leaving. There's a reason y'all are leaving after all.
EDIT: Newcomers: We generally don't care what anyone does or thinks, we only care when people try to force us to conform to their beliefs, including what to do with our money, eg) raising taxes.
Wow, the back-and-forth on upvotes/downvotes is crazy. Sorry, didn't mean for this to be controverisal.
This is my fear as well. As a Californian who's looking to move to Texas at some point in the future, I really hope the people leaving aren't taking "California values" to Texas with them.
One of the greatest strengths of the Texas legislature is that almost everything is written in to the constitution, thereby being almost impossible to change. So for this reason the (proven disastrous) legal and business theories that have messed up housing costs in California would have a very hard time taking root here.
Of course when the bad ideas bear their dark fruit, they will be hard to change too.
But more seriously can you expand more on this "almost everything is written into the constitution"? Is this a back-door way of getting Swiss-style direct democracy. Skimming wikipedia it seems that amedments are passed by a referendum approving a legislative proposal (and this processes has happened hundreds of times).
if this is the only practical way of creating legislation, then you basically have the people as a third house of the legislature.
Amendments must win two-thirds of the legislature and a simple majority of the public. In some sense, it's a swiss-style democracy and-ed to one of the most conservatively designed legislatures ever implemented.
Regular laws don't have to pass the same gauntlet, but because the constitution is so expansive nearly every new law has to get it amended to prevent a contradiction.
> One of the greatest strengths of the Texas legislature is that almost everything is written in to the constitution, thereby being almost impossible to change. So for this reason the (proven disastrous) legal and business theories that have messed up housing costs in California would have a very hard time taking root here.
> At 310,296 words,[1] the document is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 44 times longer than the U.S. Constitution, and is the longest[2] and most amended[3] constitution still operative anywhere in the world.
As someone from Dallas here, the people from California that move here never fully adapt but they do conform to Texas after a year or two. That being said there are places that are much more "California like" than Texan like popping up on occasion.
My parents came to Houston, Texas from California because of job opportunities. Even after 15 years they still whine very loudly about Texas policies and want to move back to California.
Conform? Barely. Fully adapt? Hell no. I hope my parents are the exception though, for Texas' sake. This place is way better than California (I visit plenty of family who still live there) and I would hate for it to be gutted in such fashion.
That's not how this works. You're not a "native Texan" but one of millions of American citizens born in the state of Texas. Texas is no more yours than any other citizen's.
There are no second class citizens in the US. If you move to New York, you become a New Yorker. If you move to Texas, you become a Texan. Just like your parents or grandparents did. This is one reason America society is great.
You have no right to tell anyone where or how to live. If you don't like Texas because other people are moving there, you're free to leave.
Welcome to a free country!
P.S.
If you don't like California things, then leave this web site, throw away your computer, smartphone, and most of your modern possessions, also all the crap Hollywood makes.
> If Californians want to move to Texas and bring their fiscal ideas with them, tough luck!
> You get to decide where and how you live. I get to decide where and how I live. This is freedom.
And I also get to decide to ask you not to do something, just as you get to decide on whether or not to vote for it. Freedom works both ways, not just only for one group.
I hope I made my edit more clear, sorry about that.
> That's not how this works. You're not a "native Texan"
Yes, it is. The fact you don't want to think that policies are restricted to borders, which have a history and effect unique to a locality, is irrelevant.
> There are no second class citizens in the US.
You are now making things up to fit your view of everyone as earthlings (why you stop lumping at the US is odd).
> If you don't like California things, then leave this web site
It's likely hosted at a CDN not in California (but sometimes is).
On the east side of Washington in Spokane, the houses are going up due to the influx of Californians. Average price was around 120k, now you can see houses in the 300k for entry level with basic kitchens.
Also, lots of modern brew pubs are popping up that easily charge Seattle prices for food and beer. (Way too expensive for locals)
Had a co-worker who's family moved up from California and bought a 600k house on 10 acres. The price per acre has been going up like crazy, use to be 2-3K per acre in the rural areas,its upto 10K+ now, even 20K, for forest land in the sticks, when 5 acre lots going for 100k, thats nuts, no well or power...
Crazy, since the local wages don't even support those price.
Who wants to do a startup that finds and invests in the 'next places'? Some days I'm hopeful we can fix things, and others I think maybe we should just try and sell people on the 'new hotness' and make a buck from it.
I joked about doing this back in 2013. I was watching Portland, OR and Bend, OR real estate on it's steady climb back when homes in both of those cities were what I'd consider/call affordable. I know of a few "next places" but I try to hold them close to the chest just in case I convince my wife to finally leave California. My point is that it's quite disheartening seeing the so-called value of land and homes rise at such high rates in basically _every_ city and town west of the Rockies.
Prop 13 is what ruined California. Not only did it institute rent control for property owners with all its associated problems, but it also tied the hands of legislators for funding government programs, directly leading to the initiative-based rigid monstrosity of a state budget California suffers from today.
Economic growth in California happens in places with a lot of new construction and a robust real estate market, where each real estate transaction resets the assessment price. In some areas of California the prices still haven't recovered to the pre-housing crash levels.
You'd only get significant advantage from Prop 13 if you bought during the 80s and held. While there are some places like that (Berkeley?) the state is hardly over-populated by elderly people clinging to their 40+ year old housing.
Any new taxes, even revenue neutral ones, or increases in existing taxes require a 2/3 majority vote in both houses, which was essentially impossible until very recently. A consequence is that loss of revenue from one source could not be made up by taxing other sources. Conservatives even tried to argue that Cap and Trade was a new tax and was not allowed by Prop 13: http://legal-planet.org/2017/04/06/court-of-appeal-confirms-....
The only way to fund new programs was by ballot initiative, which requires a simple majority vote. Ballot initiatives don't pass unless all funds are earmarked for the specified program, even if revenues for the proposed tax or costs of the proposed program change over time. Ballot initiatives that issue bonds are even more likely to pass because they don't require an immediate tax increase. The result of a few decades of Prop 13 is California's ongoing budget problems with high taxes and poor allocation of revenues.
It closed a loophole where Prop 13 (and other tax-restricting props) could be circumvented by introducing new taxes with slightly different names.
It is still circumvented (Mello-Roos, special assessments, bond measures which shift the bond payments to a special tax that acts as a property taxes, but is not called one, versus servicing payments through property taxes revenue) but through well-defined legislative routes versus political backrooms.
The broader goal was to limit the maintenance costs.
Areas with no new residential construction and no changes in ownership would experience predictable rise in maintenance expenses. Areas with high growth will have modern-day assessments and be able to operate at higher budgets necessary for higher growth.
It's the case with any other industry that has cost-of-living adjustments. Why shouldn't it be the case with public finance?
> It closed a loophole where Prop 13 (and other tax-restricting props) could be circumvented by introducing new taxes with slightly different names.
No, property taxes are local. Prop 13 tied the hands of the state government. Prop 218 then applied the same shackles to local governments, which ensured that California would see the wave of municipal bankruptcies during the great recession and which prevented local governments from switching to progressive water usage rates during the drought.
> through well-defined legislative routes versus political backrooms.
The only feasible route that is allowed is ballot initiative, which is why we're in this mess. Every other state and local government in the country has a representative democracy that allows its representatives to manage state taxes and budget.
"Completed" means they finished debt restructuring. Your "attempts" are actual bankruptcies that still hadn't exited bankruptcy at the time your LAO document was written.
Prop 13 tax rates can also be passed on to family members if they purchase or inherit the house. It’s a great deal for those who can take advantage of it, but it is also unfair and decreases mobility.
I suspect Texas will wish it had California's problems in a decade. California is experiencing a brain gain [1] as the best and the brightest relocate to the state en mass. Texas is meanwhile experiencing a brain drain by experting college educated and college-seeking citizens en masse. A quick look at industries in decline (oil, coal, meat) and industries on the rise (automotive, tech, healthcare) does not suggest that Texas is the place to be or that these people leaving for Texas are doing so voluntarily.
Texas is growing, lots of large companies leaving other states to move there. So to say their is a large brain drain is disingenuous. All of those companies you listed as "on the rise" are relocating to Texas, a few examples: State Farm, Toyota, and soon Amazon HQ2(Amazon hates taxes). This is a small sampling, there are many more companies moving to Texas all the time.
it costs too much to live here because of zoning. zoning is largely driven by local governments, dominated by homeowners who benefit when prices rise.
but california might fix it with sb-827, which would prevent local governments from banning density near transit hubs. california builds <100k units per year. McKinsey did a deep dive that shows that sb-827 could unlock 3 million units—this would be transformational.
If you (as in the generic you, not the comment I'm responding to) live in CA, and care about this stuff, you should get involved with the YIMBY folks there. They're doing great work, and achieving real results.
Tokyo is huge though, it's population is about 1/3 that of the whole of California. So we are talking about a ratio of only 3+ in housing built per capita. Significant for sure, but hardly bizzare.
This is all primary research. The most shocking piece was that cities like Sacramento are permitting half as much housing per capita as peer cities like Seattle. Land is not the issue—this is a policy failure.
absolutely. if you want to go beyond simply pressuring politicians on sb-827, and be part of continued movement to increase housing affordability in california, you should support the YIMBYs.
Maybe they're doing it but keeping quiet about it, but I'm kind of surprised VC type people aren't funding the YIMBYs in a massive way. Think of how many millions of their investment dollars simply go towards paying exorbitant rents in SF and elsewhere in the bay area.
That implies a VC deploying capital in a place with cheap rents will harvest higher ROI. But the biggest exits so far (WhatsApp, Snap) don’t reflect that.
That can also be accomplished by using more productive frameworks and infrastructure services that allow a company to hire fewer people to begin with.
But I think what you’re describing happens with larger companies - setups where engineers are in the Bay Area and support is some place else like Nashville or Austin are becoming more commonplace.
1) Construction labor is expensive in California, a good number of occupations (electricians, etc.) are unionized, which leaves little alternative.
2) Code compliance is expensive, and not just in some bureaucratic-red-tape way. Coastal California is on a fault line, so there are earthquake safety regulations, fire code requirements, etc. Folks from Millennium Tower in SF probably wish there were more regulations as far as ground inspections and surveys.
5) Modern construction materials are not getting cheaper.
6) Unless you're a giant construction firm, there are waiting times associated with heavy equipment, such as building cranes, bulldozers, excavators, etc. as it's typically leased and it might be contracted out to another job.
Unless you are able to procure a major cost advantage on building materials, labor costs or skirt a few regulations in the building code and get away with it, you're unlikely to end up with very cheap housing in a major city.
I'm mystified as to why big Californian cities still put parking on building codes. NYC and Chicago have accepted that parking isn't a right, and parking regulations here make it feel like more of the same NIMBY-ism that retards growth in the state.
Otherwise developers will externalize the parking spot problems to nearby streets, which makes for unhappy residents. Even people who swear off cars might have friends, family or coworkers who might visit.
A proper way to go about it is to set up a permit-only parking zone, and then allow some high-density housing to be built with an explicit provision that they will never be eligible for parking permits. But that also kicks up enforcement costs.
It's pretty simple to incentivize enforcement. Give police officers a commission for each parking ticket they levy, like Chicago does. I think incumbents just want to keep the situation the way it is which is why this is taking so long.
did you have a chance to check out the nber article i linked to at the top? it does a deep dive on construction costs and land economics. here is the direct link: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8835 (it is a super interesting read, even if you just read the intro)
i too am skeptical of magical fix-all solutions, but I actually believe this could be a silver bullet. many of the issues you describe are circular—construction costs are high because labor is expensive because housing is expensive... the root cause is that california has stifled supply.
I guess I am kinda agreeing with the thesis - I am observing that “marginal, physical costs of new construction” is not as low as people expect it to be.
Downtown SJ is another good example - they zone pretty much anything, the debate in the local papers is whether developers deserved tax breaks, not whether the zoning decision was right.
Prices are below SF and PA for sure, but we’re still not seeing dramatic drops. There’s some $/sq.ft. floor that developers in SJ and LA are not able to breach even when all regulations are fast-tracked.
i believe that's because the bay area's housing costs are set by bay area labor costs, which are extremely high due to high housing costs, so even if San Jose is building (which, per capita, it's doing just as badly as other california cities, fyi), it will still be screwed by the regional issue
My house is worth almost double what I paid for it and yet I would vote against prop 13 in a heartbeat. Even if it were repealed today, it will take at least a decade to recover from the harm it has done to the municipalities.
I appreciate the effort that went into making this, but I get really annoyed with analyses like this that show heatmaps comparing highly heterogeneous groups (in this case, states, income groups, age groups, and education groups) that use an absolute scale. Of course absolute migration looks extreme in NY and Texas compared to, say Missouri or Iowa. This would be a much more interesting story if they used a lift metric that controlled for state/group size and/or state/group migration volume.
Seattle is full and the weather is dreadful. It rains 364 days a year and the other day of the year is full of smoke from forest fires. Please consider Portland instead.
Seattle has plenty of room, and the weather is beautiful during the spring and summer. We had one smoky period last year due to a freak fire in BC. It's a great place to raise a family, and make a killing in tech.
It's no wonder that high-earning individuals are moving into California. A few numbers I ran across on the web:
- Bay Area economy is growing 3X (!!!) faster than average in US.
- Santa Clara region has an income average of $98,000, top 5 amonst the nation
- Average salary for Software Engineers for San Francisco is $210,000
This of course doesn't bode well for mid to lower income citizens, who now have to move out as far as antioch or stockton to afford a home. Bad for a family of 4, still doable for singles that can room with roommates near work. We really do need to have more housing in regions that are underdeveloped and soon will be served by the BART extension, google's building foray in downtown san jose, buildout in the caltrain stops between Redwood City and South San Francisco, etc.
Portland Uber drivers complained about this phenomenon when I visited a while ago. Bay area transplants were buying into Portland through new high rise developments that locals detest.
This has been the attitude for years in Oregon. It's not just in the cities through new high rise developments; in the rural areas, they buy out the properties for cash -- generally above asking price -- which jacks up the prices out of reach for the locals.
Frankly, it happens everywhere that the cost of living is lower.
I'm sure there is a $$$ number that would convince me to move to California, but I'm not sure there are many companies willing to pay it and I would be super worried the entire time I was there about possible unemployment.
I feel like there is going to be a blood bath in the Bay Area if we're actually in a bubble and it bursts. The next five to ten years should be an interesting ride.
One difference is that with a industry/geography isolated crash, we are unlikely to get the kind of federal stimulus support that we saw in response to the Great Recession.
From a near-miss in my own life: A bubble that bursts may look a lot like The Great Recession. A bubble that bursts just after you move to a new city, where you don't have any professional track record? That's worse. A bubble that bursts harder in the new city than in the one you came from? I'd think hard before I signed up for that...
California is also losing residents by discouraging migration via high taxes. For example, I had two job offers: one in California and one in Washington. Since this was a $200k+ job, that income tax in CA would have cost me $40 grand per year. Suffice it to say I now live in Washington.
> California is also losing residents by discouraging migration via high taxes.
California, despite high and progressive income taxation, has net in-migration at high income levels. If high taxes are keeping people out, it's things like gas taxes, road tolls, and sales taxes, that are regeressive relative to income.
You appear to be quite bad at math, as other comments have demonstrated, so it's probably better for California that you now live in Washington.
Snark aside, CA taxes do pay for a significant amount of government services. It may not always seem like it, but CA is the third largest state by area and the largest by population.
> Unfortunate reality of CA is that or every resident that's moving out there are two people going to take their place.
Actually, for every 6 moving out, 5 are going to take their place, per the article. But I suspect that a lot of the out migration isn't from the urban economic powerhouses and most of the in migration goes to them, so that for urban California, your statement may be closer to true, though exaggerated.
The article seems to ignore a big group: California nets about 100K or more immigrants from outside the US each year, which would cover the gap in recent year.
> The article seems to ignore a big group: California nets about 100K or more immigrants from outside the US each year, which would cover the gap in recent year.
Yes, the article specifically about internal migration doesn't address external migration.
> California nets about 100K or more immigrants from outside the US each year, which would cover the gap in recent year.
Sure, but it doesn't change it from near balance to anything but even nearer balance; it's nothing like 2 in for 1 out on a statewide basis.
The article's clear, but the headline is misleading, since it's not actually true that "California is losing residents" as an broad statement - it's more narrowly true that CA is seeing more people move to other US states than from other states, but I guess that's less compelling as a headline.
California's population has grown every year since at least 1960, but the headline and article would make you think otherwise.
It would be really interesting to see the difference in trends between the Bay Area, LA, and the more rural areas. Seems the housing price issue is much more of a problem in the Bay Area.
According to Trulia's market trend reports, both LA and Sacramento's median housing prices have increased faster in the last five years than San Jose's: LA went from $400K to $779K, a 94% increase, while Sacramento went from $143K to $305K, a 113% increase. San Jose went from $490K to $865K, a "mere" 77% increase. Stockton also more than doubled in the same period.
Obviously one could argue San Jose was already overpriced, but in terms of trends, California's housing prices are kind of on fire -- you don't have to be in the SF Bay area for costs to be rising much faster than the national trend. (Which is still higher than I would have guessed: the median price over that five-year period across the entire country rose from $154K to $205K.)
> Doesn't the chart in TFA directly directly contradict the point of TFA?
No.
Though it might contradict an incorrect inference about the point, which is not “this effect is getting worse” but “this effect exists, and here is a detailed breakdown”.
It's also noteworthy that a lot of people from Illinois are moving to California even though California income taxes are higher. It seems to me that the California outmigration is mostly from economically depressed parts of California, not from LA or Bay Area.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadPerhaps you can keep Austin a containment zone for SF outcasts and the rest of Texas will be left alone.
City folk usually aren't fond of sprawling rural areas, so you have that going for you.
They're definitely more pronounced in Austin. But, (in my opinion: un-)fortunately, both Houston and Dallas are feeling the effects too.
We have learned nothing.
and Oregon covers an area approximately 25 times as large as Los Angeles County.
It's a horrible place; stay out.
I would not be surprised Texas to have legal gambling and liberal MJ laws in the next 20 years.
The state has overridden cities' ability to regulate shooting on large properties (over 10 acres). If you are anti gun you definitely wont like it.
I don't have a robot yet to clean the toilets, but I hear they exist in Japan, and my parents have one on their most heavily used commode.
Thank goodness California phased out most of its public telephones before sending all their telephone sanitizers on the 'B' Ark to Texas.
Whether there is a problem in pushing out all the low-skilled labor depends largely on whether all the work that those people do is automated yet. My concern is that jobs that require some on-site human judgment, but not a lot of skill, will start to go unfilled before robots are ready to step in.
IBEW local 82 journeyman electricians union rate in Ohio $29.05/hr
IBEW local 234 journeyman electricians union rate in California $71.36/hr
Of course I'm not sure the education level or IQ of the typical electrician is much different than than the typical software developer with respect to the lower education specification; however it does seem likely that labor costs in CA for similar work are currently about 147% higher than Ohio costs.
According to Zillow "The median home value in Salinas is $436,900" and "The median home value in Dayton is $57,300" for a journeyman electricians income, you'll be one of the poorest people in the highest crime neighborhood in CA, or live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city if you live in Ohio. Given the choice of top or bottom 10% of neighborhoods and amenities, I'd certainly rather live in Ohio. This probably cascades thru every career path.
It forces the poor and marginalized out, which is basically the last thing those populations need.
It's also bad for innovation of all kinds. People who have ideas and are willing to take a chance on executing them are deterred by the threat of being forced out of their communities if they fail. You're already seeing this with the loss of artists and musicians from the bay.
My housemate is a professional artist and straight up can't afford to move within the bay. Our house is being sold, so she's moving to Georgia.
[1] http://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-brain-gain/
The ones that have it hard are the ones who can't afford to stay and can't/won't leave.
It's just as likely that people are becoming rich and then leaving for lower tax states.
There are also stronger political incentives for richer folk. "An individual’s likelihood of being a Democrat decreases with every additional dollar he or she earns."
https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demogra...
That would be true, if, you know, there were breakdowns of income and education demographics in the article.
There are multiple ways to interpret though.
Texas (#1): Solid R
Arizona (#2): R
Nevada (#3): Lean D
Oregon, Washington (#4, #5): Solid D
Colorado (#6): D
Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma (#7, #8, #9): Solid R
Georgia (#10): R
That's 6 R, 4 D.
[1] https://www.270towin.com/states/Colorado
[0]http://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/212726-70134-how-liberal-i...
But because the majority of the population do live in major urban areas you see the state legislature about 70/30 D/R and the statewide offices tend to go to the majority as well.
But within recent memory there have been several republican governors, two of whom (nixon and regan) became US presidents.
So though I don't see much chance of the state tipping "red" any time soon it's not an utterly outlandish idea.
What I'm getting at is, it's more precise to say "most of the US--rural and urban--is red, while the densest population centers are overwhelmingly blue."
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/11/what-republicans-are-...
The definition of "urban" according to the USA census department have cores of 1000ppl/sqm and are surrounding by areas of 500ppl/sqm.
So if you have a density of 1,300, then there is a higher chance the area went blue. Of course, there can be lots of exceptions, and 1,300 is rather close to the crossover point.
https://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/501737150/rural-voters-played...
> Here's another divide that started to get more attention this election: the rural-urban gap. Rural voters vote more Republican, while urban voters vote more Democratic, and that divide grew this year from where it was in 2012 and 2008. It's a nuanced divide, too; strikingly, as counties get progressively more rural, they more or less steadily grow more Republican. And it's possible that living in a rural area caused people to vote more Republican this election.
> Exit polls show that the rural-urban divide grew from 2008 to 2012, and again this election. What's particularly interesting is that the rural vote seems to have moved more than the urban or suburban votes.
...unpopulated.
Seriously, compare the Bay Area + LA metro + San Diego Metro population to the state population.
Sure, most of the land area is Republican-majority, but...
Much of the potential 2018 shift in Congress may come from CA, for example: http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/369254-perfect-storm...
Eg for the Central Valley districts: "Walters’s district has grown by 33,000 residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Of those new residents, 30,000 are nonwhite. The white population actually declined in Royce’s district while the overall population grew by 10,000 residents. In Denham’s district, 17,000 of the 21,000 new residents are nonwhite."
(Not to mention the new tax plan was hugely unpopular in CA in general.)
Even then, the Legislature was consistently Democrat-controlled (in recent years, Democrat supermajorities).
Without looking it up: when do you think was the most recent time that Republicans controlled both houses of the Legislature?
I looked it up.
The answer?
1970. And that just 1 2-year term and with bare single-seat majorities in both houses.
Before 1969? Next most recent: 1956.
https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demogra...
I know when I was seriously considering relocating, the politics of the region wasn't a consideration. I was far more concerned about availability of jobs (and cost of living relative to what I could earn). If I were in SF and couldn't get a job at Big Tech, I'd be looking to move to a red state. Not for political reasons, just because it's better to be a median dev in a flyover state than a bottom quartile dev in SF/Seattle/NYC/etc.
Why wouldn't you consider the local politics?
California has some of the worst public schools in the country. In a red state you could send your kid to private school or afford a house in the best school districts.
California has some great schools, but in those districts you’ll pay a huge premium. For example Sunnyvale homes are 1mil more than East Palo Alto homes.
So you either end up paying for private school. Or pay the same amount more for a more expensive home.
What I see happening is a slow but steady demographic shift based on politics. I know my own recent move from Virginia to Arkansas was largely because of this, and statistics from the past few elections have been showing a decrease in the number of "swing" counties.
Communities are becoming more politically homogenous. I wonder if this happened prior to the US Civil War, and if there were even enough data collected to accurately measure it.
Not particularly; compared to today, US states, in national partisan terms, were more homogenous for most of the history of the nation; this got a bit shook up with the New Deal Coalition and further when the LBJ committed to civil rights and then Republicans targeted the Democrats disaffected segregationist base. Greater political homogeneity is just a reversion to historical norms after some mid-20th Century disruptions.
"The graph below shows data from the Internal Revenue Service on the movement of income tax filers in and out of California since 1990. (Data on tax filers does not cover the entire population because some people do not earn enough income to necessitate filing taxes.)"
It also doesn't cover populations who don't pay taxes, and who get paid under the table.
I think this might need a rewording to convey whatever idea you were trying to convey, because I have a hunch there weren't many millennials around during the Great Depression. :-)
A named generation is static, based on the birth dates. The "20-35 age range" is dynamic, anchored to the present time.
Also, named generations (like "Millennials", "Gen Y", "Gen X", "Baby Boomers", etc) don't have rigid definitions. Some media groups define it as starting as early as 1976 and others as late as 1984, which is 50% of your "20-35" range.
In the end, the boundaries of named generations are more or less arbitrary unless there is an extremely specific event which defines it (Baby Boomers started with an explosion of birth rates immediately after the end of WW2).
Yes, that's why my phrasing used "at this moment." At this moment, millenials are around an age range of 20-35 years old, give or take a bit depending on the very fact that you point out, there aren't well defined boundaries and the exact age range could vary. I was very careful to include "at this moment" in my phrasing, for the reason that you point out. I didn't bother to hedge about the unclear boundaries of the millenial generation, since that wasn't the topic at hand, but yes, these terms are somewhat vague.
The actual article cited simply discussed the nationwide birthrate at different points in time; it didn't talk about particular generations.
Given that millenials are currently the generation that are of prime child-bearing age, it's pretty clear what the original poster meant "people of child bearing age right now, who happen to be millenials, are having less children than those of child bearing age at any point since the great depression."
The original phrasing was humorously incorrect, I just thought that asking for clarification was a bit much, since it was pretty clear what they meant to say, it was just a funny mistaken phrasing.
Except recession everything else that is contributing to lower birth rate seems side effect of progress.
UPDATE: sb-827 prevents local governments in california from banning density near public transit. it represents the most radical housing bill in recent california history, because it rebalances control from hyperlocal municipalities to the state level. it could unlock 3m housing units in a state building <100k a year. that's 30 years of pent-up supply, and it could actually affect market prices.
Edited: Nevermind, I see your other posts below.
Original: I'm a urban California resident... (have been for a good chunk of my life). I'm don't see why this is a solution to the problem of why people are leaving the state.
Can you provide your thoughts on why you believe this to be the solution? Or links to material you've found to be compelling?
[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
also, i've considered this quite a bit and written on it mediocre-ly: https://medium.com/@justinkrause/how-to-save-san-francisco-8...
Then the thing about SB827 that doesn't make sense to me is why the bonus is only for residential development.
Yes, I understand that residential pricing is the problem. But, we're not just taking transit to our friend's house. We're taking transit to work and services.
Sure, I can see this working in San Francisco given the transit coverage and relatively centralized business core. (Scary though given the quality of service that Muni/BART offers presently.)
But in LA/SD/Greater Bay Area/Sacramento? I think there's a ton of jobs that aren't off transit lines. Doesn't seem to work well there.
Yes, I agree that things probably need to change in California. But SB827 seems to be about stirring the pot.
this wouldn't happen overnight, but it would be the biggest increase in housing supply in recent history. there are quite a few maps you can google to see where the increased density would be likely to go: https://transitrichhousing.org/ (it looks like most of SB will not be affected, because you don't have as much transit as California's other cities)
California’s is a knowledge-based economy—Agriculture contributes but a small percentage to it (about 2%). Why should we restrict the number of productive people who can live in the state in favor of crops?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California
I thought a key American ideal is freedom. Why would you want to restrict people’s freedom and only give the privilege only to the few who just happen to be born early enough to get property there? (Even some California native sons and daughters cannot afford to buy a home in their own home city.)
By the way, flippant answers are not appreciated. Consider reading more about the topics before giving thoughtful answers?
Water is quite literally the only issue, and it's a very recent one. It's also an easy one to solve: follow Israel's lead and build desalinization plants up the wazoo. That, or pray that we mountain folks keep getting decent winters to sustain the summers. Pushing ranching (which is disproportionately-water-intensive) out-of-state is another option, as is figuring out ways to reduce ranching's water impact.
As for the low proportion of California's economy to which agriculture contributes, it's worth remembering that agriculture doesn't exactly have high margins. California's farms in particular are also heavily staffed with undocumented labor (which I reckon will skew a lot of data in all sorts of crazy directions).
Put simply: crops ain't the problem, and scapegoating the "dumb and dirty" farmers was already a tired trope five years ago, let alone now.
It seems like the immigration is mostly the middle and upper middle class, as those terms are most often used [0]. The out-migration looks to be mostly below national median income.
[0] which, sure, is the upper income end of the working class and not the petit bourgeoisie, for the most part, but aside from me, no one seems to use “middle class” to mean that in the US.
To me this doesn't make sense. Middle class can't survive in CA because too many people get paid middle class and up in CA. Is it 'anti-people' to pay teachers 70+k? Or is a state like WV more 'pro-people' where teachers are going on strike because they get no raises. There are a lot of wealthy businesses in CA. You have to be richer than in other places to actually feel rich.
truth is, the problem is too much competition and there always has to be somebody at the bottom. Look at the inflow of people. People with high incomes and advanced degrees.
how many middle class families are going to register with a government entity, stay under low yearly income limits to 'qualify' for affordable housing? number of kids you have in your family is factored in as well...becoming a metric that factors into your qualification for housing.
seems sort of orwellian to me. we should be creating bills to expedite all housing. not just subsidized housing.
http://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20170123-senator-wiener-relea...
But that's not what most of the data shows. The bulk of the data shows lower-income, lower education Californians moving out. The strongest peak is for minimum wage incomes.
While middle class incomes are still shown as leaving CA, it's far less than those at the lower end. For me the starkest and most concerning contrast is not wealthy vs. poor, but young vs. old.
CA has the highest poverty rates in the country, along with the highest taxes. SF is rich as all hell, but can't keep feces and needles from littering the sidewalks or car windows intact. Cupertino had virtue signaling signs up supporting undocumented immigrants and welcoming them to their city - but their housing policy shows only the rich of any race or creed are welcome.
All the while places like Houston are booming, with development happening everywhere, affordable housing, diverse population, and jobs.
By what metric? looking at the census data, it appears the poverty rate of California, while not great, is certainly not the worst.
https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/saipe/saipe.html?s_ap...
http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/jan/20/...
We all just have one message though: Please do not turn Texas into the places y'all are leaving. There's a reason y'all are leaving after all.
EDIT: Newcomers: We generally don't care what anyone does or thinks, we only care when people try to force us to conform to their beliefs, including what to do with our money, eg) raising taxes.
Wow, the back-and-forth on upvotes/downvotes is crazy. Sorry, didn't mean for this to be controverisal.
But more seriously can you expand more on this "almost everything is written into the constitution"? Is this a back-door way of getting Swiss-style direct democracy. Skimming wikipedia it seems that amedments are passed by a referendum approving a legislative proposal (and this processes has happened hundreds of times).
if this is the only practical way of creating legislation, then you basically have the people as a third house of the legislature.
Regular laws don't have to pass the same gauntlet, but because the constitution is so expansive nearly every new law has to get it amended to prevent a contradiction.
https://www.laits.utexas.edu/txp_media/html/cons/0405.html
Prop 13 is a constitutional amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
CA is virtually identical to Texas in the sense it has an extensive constitution that is almost impossible to change.
So, be careful what you wish for.
> At 310,296 words,[1] the document is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 44 times longer than the U.S. Constitution, and is the longest[2] and most amended[3] constitution still operative anywhere in the world.
Conform? Barely. Fully adapt? Hell no. I hope my parents are the exception though, for Texas' sake. This place is way better than California (I visit plenty of family who still live there) and I would hate for it to be gutted in such fashion.
I wonder if you can share what that looks like?
I've lived in California most of my life, but I lived in Georgia, Arkansas, Mississppi and Missouri for 16 years.
There are no second class citizens in the US. If you move to New York, you become a New Yorker. If you move to Texas, you become a Texan. Just like your parents or grandparents did. This is one reason America society is great.
You have no right to tell anyone where or how to live. If you don't like Texas because other people are moving there, you're free to leave.
Welcome to a free country!
P.S.
If you don't like California things, then leave this web site, throw away your computer, smartphone, and most of your modern possessions, also all the crap Hollywood makes.
If Californians want to move to Texas and bring their fiscal ideas with them, tough luck!
You get to decide where and how you live. I get to decide where and how I live. This is freedom.
> You get to decide where and how you live. I get to decide where and how I live. This is freedom.
And I also get to decide to ask you not to do something, just as you get to decide on whether or not to vote for it. Freedom works both ways, not just only for one group.
I hope I made my edit more clear, sorry about that.
Yes, it is. The fact you don't want to think that policies are restricted to borders, which have a history and effect unique to a locality, is irrelevant.
> There are no second class citizens in the US.
You are now making things up to fit your view of everyone as earthlings (why you stop lumping at the US is odd).
> If you don't like California things, then leave this web site
It's likely hosted at a CDN not in California (but sometimes is).
Also, lots of modern brew pubs are popping up that easily charge Seattle prices for food and beer. (Way too expensive for locals)
Had a co-worker who's family moved up from California and bought a 600k house on 10 acres. The price per acre has been going up like crazy, use to be 2-3K per acre in the rural areas,its upto 10K+ now, even 20K, for forest land in the sticks, when 5 acre lots going for 100k, thats nuts, no well or power...
Crazy, since the local wages don't even support those price.
Who wants to do a startup that finds and invests in the 'next places'? Some days I'm hopeful we can fix things, and others I think maybe we should just try and sell people on the 'new hotness' and make a buck from it.
Too bad Texas is too progressive to have a Prop 13 - I can't go back anywhere in TX w/o people whinging about their property taxes or toll road fees.
You'd only get significant advantage from Prop 13 if you bought during the 80s and held. While there are some places like that (Berkeley?) the state is hardly over-populated by elderly people clinging to their 40+ year old housing.
The only way to fund new programs was by ballot initiative, which requires a simple majority vote. Ballot initiatives don't pass unless all funds are earmarked for the specified program, even if revenues for the proposed tax or costs of the proposed program change over time. Ballot initiatives that issue bonds are even more likely to pass because they don't require an immediate tax increase. The result of a few decades of Prop 13 is California's ongoing budget problems with high taxes and poor allocation of revenues.
It is still circumvented (Mello-Roos, special assessments, bond measures which shift the bond payments to a special tax that acts as a property taxes, but is not called one, versus servicing payments through property taxes revenue) but through well-defined legislative routes versus political backrooms.
The broader goal was to limit the maintenance costs.
Areas with no new residential construction and no changes in ownership would experience predictable rise in maintenance expenses. Areas with high growth will have modern-day assessments and be able to operate at higher budgets necessary for higher growth.
It's the case with any other industry that has cost-of-living adjustments. Why shouldn't it be the case with public finance?
No, property taxes are local. Prop 13 tied the hands of the state government. Prop 218 then applied the same shackles to local governments, which ensured that California would see the wave of municipal bankruptcies during the great recession and which prevented local governments from switching to progressive water usage rates during the drought.
> through well-defined legislative routes versus political backrooms.
The only feasible route that is allowed is ballot initiative, which is why we're in this mess. Every other state and local government in the country has a representative democracy that allows its representatives to manage state taxes and budget.
I've seen the past and I see Texas' future - they'll either go to an initiative system or income tax. Check back in 10 years.
The discussion in the sibling thread shows that this isn't the case.
Keep reading. Then look up "analogy" in the dictionary.
[1] http://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-brain-gain/
it costs too much to live here because of zoning. zoning is largely driven by local governments, dominated by homeowners who benefit when prices rise.
but california might fix it with sb-827, which would prevent local governments from banning density near transit hubs. california builds <100k units per year. McKinsey did a deep dive that shows that sb-827 could unlock 3 million units—this would be transformational.
https://standupcalifornia.com (this is my site supporting sb-827)
please, if you care about california, learn about these issues and support sb-827!!!
it appears to penalize the submission for voting directly on your linked HN page
The statistic that always amazes me is how Tokyo built more housing than the entire state of California in 2014.
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-...
If you (as in the generic you, not the comment I'm responding to) live in CA, and care about this stuff, you should get involved with the YIMBY folks there. They're doing great work, and achieving real results.
This is all primary research. The most shocking piece was that cities like Sacramento are permitting half as much housing per capita as peer cities like Seattle. Land is not the issue—this is a policy failure.
But, we can fix it :)
also the "head yimby's" Q&A on the bill with Vox is a must-read: https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/s...
But I think what you’re describing happens with larger companies - setups where engineers are in the Bay Area and support is some place else like Nashville or Austin are becoming more commonplace.
I am somewhat skeptical of a large complex problem having an easy, magical, fix-all solution.
LA construction (downtown area specifically, which is close to transit and zoned for pretty much anything) is booming https://la.curbed.com/2017/1/23/14364926/cranes-los-angeles-... but the dream of the dirt-cheap units remains a pie in the sky http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/when-it-comes-to-affordab...
And it's not because developers dislike money.
1) Construction labor is expensive in California, a good number of occupations (electricians, etc.) are unionized, which leaves little alternative.
2) Code compliance is expensive, and not just in some bureaucratic-red-tape way. Coastal California is on a fault line, so there are earthquake safety regulations, fire code requirements, etc. Folks from Millennium Tower in SF probably wish there were more regulations as far as ground inspections and surveys.
3) Parking spaces are expensive to build and are still required by the building codes. As millennials mature, public transit use is declining and car ownership is on the rise https://www.scpr.org/news/2018/01/31/80354/transit-ridership...
4) Land near transit hubs is not cheap.
5) Modern construction materials are not getting cheaper.
6) Unless you're a giant construction firm, there are waiting times associated with heavy equipment, such as building cranes, bulldozers, excavators, etc. as it's typically leased and it might be contracted out to another job.
Unless you are able to procure a major cost advantage on building materials, labor costs or skirt a few regulations in the building code and get away with it, you're unlikely to end up with very cheap housing in a major city.
A proper way to go about it is to set up a permit-only parking zone, and then allow some high-density housing to be built with an explicit provision that they will never be eligible for parking permits. But that also kicks up enforcement costs.
i too am skeptical of magical fix-all solutions, but I actually believe this could be a silver bullet. many of the issues you describe are circular—construction costs are high because labor is expensive because housing is expensive... the root cause is that california has stifled supply.
Downtown SJ is another good example - they zone pretty much anything, the debate in the local papers is whether developers deserved tax breaks, not whether the zoning decision was right.
Prices are below SF and PA for sure, but we’re still not seeing dramatic drops. There’s some $/sq.ft. floor that developers in SJ and LA are not able to breach even when all regulations are fast-tracked.
I wish San Diego would just make it's own state, adopt Texas' taxes and it'd be hands-down the best place to be in the US.
(I'm not currently selling real estate.)
- Bay Area economy is growing 3X (!!!) faster than average in US.
- Santa Clara region has an income average of $98,000, top 5 amonst the nation
- Average salary for Software Engineers for San Francisco is $210,000
This of course doesn't bode well for mid to lower income citizens, who now have to move out as far as antioch or stockton to afford a home. Bad for a family of 4, still doable for singles that can room with roommates near work. We really do need to have more housing in regions that are underdeveloped and soon will be served by the BART extension, google's building foray in downtown san jose, buildout in the caltrain stops between Redwood City and South San Francisco, etc.
Where did you get that figure?
Curious where you got that? I looked at the Hired salary info yesterday, and it was far shy of that.
On second thought, this might not be accurate as there's no direct references.
Indeed says senior software engineers is around $187,000 https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Computer+Programmer-Salaries...
Frankly, it happens everywhere that the cost of living is lower.
I feel like there is going to be a blood bath in the Bay Area if we're actually in a bubble and it bursts. The next five to ten years should be an interesting ride.
California, despite high and progressive income taxation, has net in-migration at high income levels. If high taxes are keeping people out, it's things like gas taxes, road tolls, and sales taxes, that are regeressive relative to income.
Snark aside, CA taxes do pay for a significant amount of government services. It may not always seem like it, but CA is the third largest state by area and the largest by population.
Actually, for every 6 moving out, 5 are going to take their place, per the article. But I suspect that a lot of the out migration isn't from the urban economic powerhouses and most of the in migration goes to them, so that for urban California, your statement may be closer to true, though exaggerated.
http://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/
Yes, the article specifically about internal migration doesn't address external migration.
> California nets about 100K or more immigrants from outside the US each year, which would cover the gap in recent year.
Sure, but it doesn't change it from near balance to anything but even nearer balance; it's nothing like 2 in for 1 out on a statewide basis.
California's population has grown every year since at least 1960, but the headline and article would make you think otherwise.
Obviously one could argue San Jose was already overpriced, but in terms of trends, California's housing prices are kind of on fire -- you don't have to be in the SF Bay area for costs to be rising much faster than the national trend. (Which is still higher than I would have guessed: the median price over that five-year period across the entire country rose from $154K to $205K.)
From TFA: http://lao.ca.gov/Blog/Media/Image/957
Net out migration is at a fairly low level compared to other times since 1990.
No.
Though it might contradict an incorrect inference about the point, which is not “this effect is getting worse” but “this effect exists, and here is a detailed breakdown”.