u/External_Koala971

Good explainer on gentrification and displacement and how they impact marginalized communities.

On the ground, gentrification may look like:

Real estate speculation, with investors flipping properties for large profits, as well as high-end development, and landlords looking for higher-paying tenants.

Increased investment in neighborhood amenities, like transit and parks.

Changes in land use, for example from industrial land to restaurants and storefronts.

Changes in the character of the neighborhood as community run businesses are replaced by businesses catering to new residents’ needs.

Is this an accurate framing of Henry George on Bay Area?

Even full zoning liberalization without LVT would produce a round of construction that further enriches landowners whose parcels get upzoned, generates significant displacement pressure during the transition, and eventually equilibrates at a new higher density equilibrium, all the while without changing the underlying mechanism by which rising productivity capitalizes into land rents that are privately captured.

George would call that treating the symptom, not the problem?

These are rough numbers of free services we could provide for Californians for the cost of building $150B CAHSR

View Poll

Other factors (home prices, commute distance, jobs) off the table, what’s the single best town in the Bay Area to live in that supports a very serious gravel bike habit?

This town would have immediate access to many long trails with a variety of conditions.

A new study by urban planning and public policy researchers from UC Berkeley, UCLA, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Toronto suggests that reforming entitlement and zoning laws will do little to address housing affordability. In fact, the study says, even if the city were to build market-rate housing at a much higher clip, it could take decades to make a meaningful dent in rent prices. 

The authors suggest that wage disparity, rather than a short supply of housing, is responsible for high costs. The global labor market has drawn high-earning college graduates to dense urban areas, where they compete with lower-wage workers for housing. Rents have kept pace with the high earners’ salaries, pricing out those without degrees.
The authors estimate that if the Bay Area were to increase its stock of market-rate housing by 1.5% per year — more than triple San Francisco’s rate in 2024 - it would take at least 18 years and as many as 124 years for the median one-bedroom apartment to become affordable to someone earning the median wage for non-college graduates.

Where LVT or split roll tax has been implemented globally, is it generally implemented via voter referendum (51%+ voter approval), or generally implemented by councils or legislative mandate?

Daryl Fairweather: No, I do not anticipate that prices will crash. They have come down in certain specific markets in the Sun Belt, where there was a lot of new construction during the pandemic that has resulted in more supply. And those builders of new construction were quick to correct their price expectations and mark those new builds down or offer incentives like cash at closing or lower mortgage rates to get those units sold. 

But even so, it wasn’t like anything compared to what happened during the Great Recession. And more broadly, home prices are up from last year. They’re up about 2% nationally, which is slower than the pace of overall inflation. So in real terms, they’ve come down ever so slightly. 

The reason why prices haven’t come down more in the face of these high mortgage rates is because existing homeowners don’t have a reason to sell. They’re not in distress. They have lots of equity. They have record-low mortgage rates that they got during the pandemic, or maybe they paid off their mortgage altogether. For them, there’s nothing to motivate them to accept a lower price than what they feel like they should get.

Huge win for affordable housing.

Among U.S. cities with at least 100,000 residents, Oakland was tied with Cape Coral, Fla. — which last year was dubbed the country’s worst housing market — for the starkest home value drop.
But Cape Coral’s home values were still about 10% higher than they were in March 2019. Oakland’s are down by 28%.

Oakland home values have been in freefall since mortgage rates spiked in 2022, when the typical value in the city peaked at about $1.1 million in 2026 dollars. The last time the city’s homes were valued this low was in 2015 (or 2017, if not adjusting for inflation)

I’m looking to replace a 4Runner with an R2. Rear cargo is important (with rear seats up).

Anyone know the R2 rear cargo dimensions?

Americans on both sides of the aisle desire single-family housing.

Our survey found a broad-spectrum rejection of apartment living across every single demographic group.

When Americans envision their family life, the difference between 2 to 3 bedrooms is more important than: extra commute time, the difference between a townhouse and detached single-family home, and any size yard.

What suspension system is the R2 using?

I know it won’t have height adjustable, will it use double wishbone? How will articulation and ground clearance be for light off-roading?