Current Events > 'Progressive boomers are making it impossible for cities to fix housing crisis'

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/as-cities-try-to-fix-housing-boomers-are-radicalizing-to-stop-progress_n_5d1bcf0ee4b07f6ca58598a9

In May 2018, a public meeting in a wealthy enclave of one of Americas most progressive cities devolved into a two-hour temper tantrum as longtime residents incensed about a proposed tax to fund homeless services shouted down its proponents.

Lies! the crowd bellowed as an attendee explained that the tax would be levied on corporations, not citizens. Shill! Plant! Phony! they shouted as another supporter spoke. Coward! a man yelled at a homeless woman as she took the microphone.

Kirsten Harris-Talley, the co-chair of Seattles Homelessness Task Force, had to pause to ask the increasingly unruly crowd to calm down: Can I finish what Im saying?

No! the audience chanted back.

Seattle is not the only city where locals are losing their minds over issues related to housing, zoning and transportation. Ugly public meetings are becoming increasingly common in cities across the country as residents frustrated by worsening traffic, dwindling parking and rising homelessness take up fierce opposition.

Last September, a community hearing over a proposed homeless shelter in Los Angeles had to be cut short after boos and jeering repeatedly interrupted speakers. Throughout 2018, public meetings in Minneapolis to discuss changing the citys residential zoning code erupted into shouts and insults from audience members. At a public meeting last August on homelessness in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, audience members chanted, Lock her up! at a female representative of the mayors office.

These scenes are usually sparked by projects or policy changes intended to address Americas worsening housing crisis. More than 200 American cities now have median home values above $1 million. The construction of new dwellings has lagged behind the number of new households eight years in a row. Both congestion and climate change are prompting many cities to explore expanding their public transportation networks.

And yet, despite the urgency of the need and the expert consensus on solutions, individual efforts to increase density, improve transit or alleviate homelessness can spend years bogged down by local opposition. In March, neighborhood activists in Los Angeles threatened to sue the city over the installation of a 0.8-mile bike lane. Residents of Seattles wealthiest neighborhood demanded reserved seats on city buses and exemptions from road tolls in exchange for permitting a light-rail station. A crowd of more than 1,000 people booed a homeless man who got up to speak in support of a new shelter in Salt Lake City.

Rowdy public hearings are nothing new in city politics, of course. But campaigners and elected officials told HuffPost that the nature of local opposition has changed in recent years. Where protest movements and civil disobedience were once primarily the tools of the marginalized, they have now become a weapon of privilege a way for older, wealthier, mostly white homeowners to drown out and intimidate anyone who challenges their hegemony.

Most of the abuse I got came from older suburban or retired folks, and always from people who considered themselves progressive, said Rob Johnson, a Seattle City Council member who retired in April after three years in office. During his tenure, he supported proposals to increase housing density, expand public transit and establish safe use sites for drug addicts.

Despite representing a constituency with bright-blue voting records on immigration, reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality, Johnsons progressive positions on local issues provoked a large and organized backlash.

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Progressive

Well I didnt read all, but I think people dont want corporations telling them what to do.
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Lame.
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it'll be nice when the boomer generation no longer has a say in politics

Antifar posted...

Despite representing a constituency with bright-blue voting records on immigration, reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality, Johnsons progressive positions on local issues provoked a large and organized backlash.

This will always be the problem. People from ivory towers telling the rest of the country what's best for them while refusing to apply their own logic to their own towns. More taxes! More policies! More immigration! More agencies!

Just not here where I would have to live with it.
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As someone who works in retail:
Color me surprised that boomers tend to be loud, abusive, and entitled.
Absolutely shocked.
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meestermj posted...

As someone who works in retail:
Color me surprised that boomers tend to be loud, abusive, and entitled.
Absolutely shocked.

This is true source of the problems facing California including the poop problem in San Fransisco and the plague and typhus in LA, rich virtue signaling fake liberals. There are reasons why people call the far left regressive and this is one of them. California needs the housing, it's time to give these people the finger before things get worse.
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meestermj posted...

As someone who works in retail:
Color me surprised that boomers tend to be loud, abusive, and entitled.
Absolutely shocked.

Big shocker, progressives dont want to practice what they preach. They just want to screw the rest of the country over.
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treewojima posted...

it'll be nice when the boomer generation no longer has a say in politics

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What makes them progressive? They clearly aren't, given their attitudes toward the disadvantaged in their own community.
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Hop103 posted...

There are reasons why people call the far left regressive and this is one of them

What makes these people "far left"
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Things Americans hate:
Tea
Taxes
Countries with squiggle writing
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Gee, you're telling me boomers don't want to pay extra taxes to have homeless shelters built in their neighborhoods that will destroy property value and potentially increase crime rates? How utterly selfish!

It's a good thing we have a bunch of enlightened millennials who don't own property or pay meaningful taxes to show them the selfishness of their ways.
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The Admiral posted...

Gee, you're telling me boomers don't want to pay extra taxes to have homeless shelters built in their neighborhoods that will destroy property value and potentially increase crime rates? How utterly selfish!

It's a good thing we have a bunch of enlightened millennials who don't own property or pay meaningful taxes to show them the selfishness of their ways.

That would be an excuse if they didn't let all of those homeless into the state in the first place. The regressive left's virtue signaling caused the crisis an now they need to fix the problem.
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Hop103 posted...

The Admiral posted...

Gee, you're telling me boomers don't want to pay extra taxes to have homeless shelters built in their neighborhoods that will destroy property value and potentially increase crime rates? How utterly selfish!

It's a good thing we have a bunch of enlightened millennials who don't own property or pay meaningful taxes to show them the selfishness of their ways.

That would be an excuse if they didn't let all of those homeless into the state in the first place. The regressive left's virtue signaling caused the crisis an now they need to fix the problem.

Don't worry, they can all move to Austin once the problems pile too high and pretend it had nothing to do with their policies.
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The Admiral posted...

Gee, you're telling me boomers don't want to pay extra taxes to have homeless shelters built in their neighborhoods that will destroy property value and potentially increase crime rates? How utterly selfish!

It's a good thing we have a bunch of enlightened millennials who don't own property or pay meaningful taxes to show them the selfishness of their ways.

I own property and pay meaningful taxes (whatever that means). These assholes are blocking every possible solution to this problem and in fact created the problem with the obsession on "property value" which is artificially inflated. They cannot pretend to be progressive and then fuck over the disadvantaged.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Yeah what if we just push the homeless somewhere else? Brilliant solution from the conservatives!

They operate on an "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy.
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Hop103 posted...

rich virtue signaling fake liberals. There are reasons why people call the far left regressive and this is one of them.

Are they fake liberals, or far left?
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1337toothbrush posted...

These assholes are blocking every possible solution to this problem and in fact created the problem with the obsession on "property value" which is artificially inflated.

This, who gives a damn about properly value? It's extremely inflated in many areas, and keeping people that just want to buy a home from doing so. I don't know about other people, but I couldn't care less about my property's value since I'm not going to be moving every year.
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Master_Bass posted...

1337toothbrush posted...

These assholes are blocking every possible solution to this problem and in fact created the problem with the obsession on "property value" which is artificially inflated.

This, who gives a damn about properly value? It's extremely inflated in many areas, and keeping people that just want to buy a home from doing so. I don't know about other people, but I couldn't care less about my property's value since I'm not going to be moving every year.

The way the two of you are so casual about throwing away tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, does not bode well for your future finances.

Like, you realize that you still have to pay off your mortgage even if a home's value drops, right? And that even if you stay there until your mortgage is paid off, you've significantly hurt your long-term Financial prospects because you'll have far less Capital to work with when you do eventually decide to move.
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Antifar posted...

Hop103 posted...

rich virtue signaling fake liberals. There are reasons why people call the far left regressive and this is one of them.

Are they fake liberals, or far left?

Fake liberals tend to be part of the far left, that's why I mentioned the far left in my post. They're pretty much one in the same in most cases.
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Master_Bass posted...

1337toothbrush posted...

These assholes are blocking every possible solution to this problem and in fact created the problem with the obsession on "property value" which is artificially inflated.

This, who gives a damn about properly value? It's extremely inflated in many areas, and keeping people that just want to buy a home from doing so. I don't know about other people, but I couldn't care less about my property's value since I'm not going to be moving every year.

LOL, who cares about property value? Literally everyone who has a mortgage or would like to sell their home at some point. My Lord.
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The title is misleading. It should read, "boomers in progressive cities," not "progressive boomers."
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bover_87 posted...

The title is misleading. It should read, "boomers in progressive cities," not "progressive boomers."

I just borrowed HuffPo's headline, but that's probably a fair critique. These may well be people who, to borrow from Phil Ochs, are "ten degrees to the left in the best of times, ten degrees to the right if it affects them."
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Master_Bass posted...

who gives a damn about properly value?

lol what

Its nice to see that Admiral actually cares about a problem instead of just bashing the left...oh wait.
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Cities have to decide whether the construction and preservation of value for homeowners is worth the barriers it raises to affordability for everyone else. If I'm reading this right, ~46% of households in Seattle are homeowners.
That rate is 43% in San Francisco.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOWNRATEACS006075
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What's wrong with building new homeless shelters? If these rich regressives fell on hard times, I'm sure they'll sing another tune.

s0nicfan posted...

Master_Bass posted...

1337toothbrush posted...

These assholes are blocking every possible solution to this problem and in fact created the problem with the obsession on "property value" which is artificially inflated.

This, who gives a damn about properly value? It's extremely inflated in many areas, and keeping people that just want to buy a home from doing so. I don't know about other people, but I couldn't care less about my property's value since I'm not going to be moving every year.

The way the two of you are so casual about throwing away tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, does not bode well for your future finances.

Like, you realize that you still have to pay off your mortgage even if a home's value drops, right? And that even if you stay there until your mortgage is paid off, you've significantly hurt your long-term Financial prospects because you'll have far less Capital to work with when you do eventually decide to move.

I bought my house with cash. The key is I'm not living in a "center of the universe" city where people craft stupid policies to drive up property values and where houses are bought up by speculators who don't even live there. My house has gone up in value regardless, but I'd be happy to accommodate policies making housing more affordable. Not having to pay rent to some landlord has already saved me tens of thousands of dollars and I'd much rather make lives easier for many other people than make myself an extra few tens of thousands. There are better ways of making that money.
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Despite Admiral's trolling, they do kind of have a point.

The problem with California is, our property values are massively over-inflated. So if these people bought their homes at peak hype, diminishing that value means they become underwater on their mortgage.

We can lol all we want but that is a valid point.

Imo, what we can do is, build more houses and shelters thus dropping the value but we can recompense all the people who bought at peak hype so they're no longer underwater but just break even.

The True Neutral solution.
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MutantJohn posted...

Despite Admiral's trolling, they do kind of have a point.

The problem with California is, our property values are massively over-inflated. So if these people bought their homes at peak hype, diminishing that value means they become underwater on their mortgage.

We can lol all we want but that is a valid point.

Imo, what we can do is, build more houses and shelters thus dropping the value but we can recompense all the people who bought at peak hype so they're no longer underwater but just break even.

The True Neutral solution.

Except there's still the question of how are you going to pay for both all the new shelters, the additional infrastructure, employment to maintain the shelters, and then paying back all the people whose property value has been hit. In California, the answer is traditionally tax the same people whose property values are being hit. So now not only are they ending up underwater by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but now they're probably being taxed extra to pay for all of this of which a small portion ends up back in their own pocket.

It's an extraordinarily complicated situation, and one not easily solved by just expecting homeowners to fall on their swords.
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MutantJohn posted...

Despite Admiral's trolling, they do kind of have a point.

The problem with California is, our property values are massively over-inflated. So if these people bought their homes at peak hype, diminishing that value means they become underwater on their mortgage.

We can lol all we want but that is a valid point.

Imo, what we can do is, build more houses and shelters thus dropping the value but we can recompense all the people who bought at peak hype so they're no longer underwater but just break even.

The True Neutral solution.

We should not guarantee profits on investments. If you do, you get things like the student loan bubble. There are winners and losers in every system. We should not prioritize the few who overpaid for housing in order to screw over the many who can't afford housing at all.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Good ol NIMBYs, always ruining everything

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s0nicfan posted...

The way the two of you are so casual about throwing away tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, does not bode well for your future finances.

That's a lot of assumptions there, buddy. I'll be fine in retirement and will be retiring earlier than most people on my current track.
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The Admiral posted...

Master_Bass posted...

1337toothbrush posted...

These assholes are blocking every possible solution to this problem and in fact created the problem with the obsession on "property value" which is artificially inflated.

This, who gives a damn about properly value? It's extremely inflated in many areas, and keeping people that just want to buy a home from doing so. I don't know about other people, but I couldn't care less about my property's value since I'm not going to be moving every year.

LOL, who cares about property value? Literally everyone who has a mortgage or would like to sell their home at some point. My Lord.

I care more about the people who dont have homes than those whose needs are already met.
If you bought your house when it cost $750,000, then you did so under the understanding that you could afford that house.
While also bearing in mind that the housing market is intrinsically linked to economic crises and bubbles bursting, you should also know that buying at an inflated value means you may be selling for less. And again, if you buy at $750,000 and sell at a deflated $500,000, then youre still walking away with more money than most have ever had in their bank at once anyway.

Seriously, youre saying that you care more about an already-wealthy person taking a loss while still walking away with some substantial wealth that can ensure theyll still live comfortable and happy lives, moreso than you care about hungry people whose lives are constantly at risk and who will be walking away from any of these situations in a far worse place no matter what.
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manmouse posted...

Seriously, youre saying that you care more about an already-wealthy person taking a loss while still walking away with some substantial wealth that can ensure theyll still live comfortable and happy lives, moreso than you care about hungry people whose lives are constantly at risk and who will be walking away from any of these situations in a far worse place no matter what.

It's a balancing act. You can care more about the poor than the wealthy all you want, but you need the wealthy to generate the revenue to fund the programs to help the poor. Pull too much on the area, and people move out which further hurts property value which results in businesses closing which results in more joblessness which means more homelessness. Don't pull enough, and you end up with an area that only the wealthiest can afford to live in, which doesn't really help homelessness any, but the homeless couldn't afford housing anyway.

The goal is to get somewhere between the bay area and Detroit. But if it were easy, it would already be done. The point is this is a massively complex, interconnected system of dependencies and that the problem is not ever as simple as "well you just don't want to help the homeless." It's about ensuring that you don't create more homeless, and keeping enough wealth in the region to fund support programs without scaring off the people who would fund them.
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most progressives and conservatives are NIMBYs, it's not just a boomer thing

manmouse posted...

And again, if you buy at $750,000 and sell at a deflated $500,000, then youre still walking away with more money than most have ever had in their bank at once anyway.

So you have no idea how mortgages work, basically.
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Er, that's not how they work?
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