Comments on: Housing Affordability Problem? Great!

By: Why I’m voting for Sean Sullivan for Oakland City Council District 3 | A Better Oakland

Thu, 29 May 2008 18:25:26 +0000

[…] That couldn’t be further from the truth (and I’m glad that at least one person who gets that). I oppose inclusionary zoning precisely because it will stymie our efforts to create affordable […]

By: mark ross

mark ross — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:12:57 +0000

All housing IS affordable… or else it would be vacant. The complainers just don’t like doing what needs to be done in order to afford what they want.

By: Maui

Maui — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:41:35 +0000

I agree with you that affordable housing destroys the community. Here in Oakland, much of what our government does destroys the community. I’m starting to think the problem is less with the idea of affordable housing, and more with the inept goverment we have.

Perhaps affordable housing should be part of a safety net we offer, so that someone who finds themselves in a horrible situation, has some time to make other plans. Is it unreasonable to help someone who is dealing with a crisis? Perhaps counseling should be a part of this so that the person could get emotional support to do what has to be done to get back on track.

A strictly enforced limit on the length of time anyone could live in affordable housing would help focus people on taking responsibility for solving their own problems, as best they can.

Affordable housing is subsidized by someone. A limit on how long anyone could stay in subsidized housing would also limit the demand for the subsidized housing. There would not be as much of this needed, and its impact on the community would be lessened.

There’s too much of the subsidized housing focused on too few areas. The latest joke being played is that the Oak Knoll re-development area was allowed to pay the City to locate the required affordable housing in some other area.

The area below 580 is used as a dumping ground for affordable housing, because as one council member explained “land is too expensive elsewhere”. In other words, the City likes having a depressed area because it can then afford to build more housing which it can dole out to citizens for more votes. Shocking as this may be, our government does not want our neighborhoods to improve because that drives up the price of the services it seeks to deliver.

By: below580

below580 — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:42:08 +0000

I could not agree with you more, the last thing Oakland needs is any more affordable housing. Oakland currently has 55% of all the affordable housing in Alameda County, but is home to only 28% of the total residents of the county. These numbers are way off and did not occur randomly, they are the product of Oakland government who just keeps taking taxes from the middle class and feeding it to low income projects. The Oakland City Council never does anything for the homeowners here who foot all the bills and when I tried to get a movement going in my below 580 neighborhood to oppose more affordable housing you would have thought I had suggested we roast small children and eat them for dinner. If we could change just this one policy Oakland would change for the better and quickly too.

By: Deckin

Deckin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:54:54 +0000

Before you post the last post, I found a video link for the sketch. Here it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM

By: Deckin

Deckin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:45:04 +0000

Here’s the link to the Monty Python skit I remembered–I can’t find video, but here’s the script. I’m not sure I can link with html so I’ll just copy and past the URL

http://arago4.tnw.utwente.nl/stonedead/crosslinks/albums-cds/sketches/monty-pythons-previous-record/how-to-do-it.html

You have to hear it to get the full pathetic earnestness only those guys can do.

By: TheBoss

TheBoss — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:56:18 +0000

Definitely do post the Monty Python skit. I’d love to see it.

By: Deckin

Deckin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:47:03 +0000

Oh, and one more thing. There really is no affordability problem in Oakland or the rest of the Bay Area. Right now you can find houses for under 200K in Oakland. That’s under 1200$ a month in mortgage, a huge chunk of which comes back in a tax deduction. What there’s a shortage of is affordable housing where the streets are clean, the other houses nice, the neighbors well educated, etc., etc. So again, I guess the answer to that is to give money away and that money can either come from others or it can be just printed up. Of course there’s also a shorage of 5000K sq. ft. homes with pools and tennis courts overlooking the Bay for what I can afford. As usual, it’s called economics and would that more people understood it.

By: Deckin

Deckin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:31:30 +0000

Include me in your list of opponents to inclusionary housing (in any form). As with all of these ’social justice’ policies, when you get to the bottom of them, they all boil down to one thing: Handing out money for nothing. What do opponents of gentrification (the bete noir of all that’s good and great in the Marxist world we live in) want? Why, silly, it’s just this. They want the neighborhoods cleaned up; they want crime reduced (though, not by putting anyone in jail of course); they want shops and businesses to move in (but only if they’re ‘locally owned’ and sufficiently green); AND, they want the prices of houses not to go up! My my, how is that miracle to be performed? Simple, stupid, we just print money and spread it around and then everyone will make nice. There’s a great Monty Python skit about this kind of attitude, I’ll try to find it and link it.

By: Steve R

Steve R — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:22:54 +0000

Right on! Prop 13, rent control, inclusionary zoning are all examples of well-meaning policy (although I question more and more how well-meaning advocates of these policies really are)causing disastrous unintended consequences. Do we really want government engaging in this level of social engineering by attempting to maintain particular racial and income demographics?