🚀 go-pugleaf

Matt Ackeret <mattack@vax.area.com> wrote:

: We need some 20 story apartment buildings...

	Well, land use is more a political decision than an economic one.
	And, in most of the cities in the area, land use is being managed
	to maintain single-family house suburbia and maximize the house
	real estate values. Real-estate is not really a free market until 
	things crunch. It's a good guess that typical homeowners on the
	peninsula couldn't afford the house they are living in now. When
	renters realize their clout at the ballot box, and a large enough 
	percentage of renters is eligible to vote, more apartments will
	materialize fairly quickly.

	It's fun listening to people who have suddenly got the preserve
	the ecology bug when they are just trying to manage their real-
	estate values.... Of course, they are in a bind. The houses have
	cost them so much that they often have nearly no other savings
	which is like putting all your money into one stock. One suspects 
	that the peninsula will become relatively urbanized very quickly
	at some point which is what the economics wants to do. 
	
	It's reality that the Federal Government has chosen to double the 
	population of the US within the working lifetime of a grade-school
	kid today. Just as it as it has doubled within my working lifetime
	already. The US assumption of a home for every family dates in
	modern times from the end of WWII and was subsidized. Home prices in
	Europe and Japan are higher as are their population densities. One
	reason Gen-Xer's are usually so quietly embittered here is that they
	realize they are in for a revolution of lowered expectations.