Comments by "Nunya Bidness" (@nunyabidness3075) on "City Beautiful"
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Everywhere I see public housing, I see the problem getting worse, not better. The first thing we need to do is stop warping the market by phasing out ALL housing support and subsidies. ALL. All of them raise prices! We need to phase them out because just stopping them would tank the market and really hurt a lot of owners. Then, show me where there’s still problems, and I will most likely show you the cause with very little problem. Likely, it’s land use restrictions. Might be subsidized or government favored sectors (tech, finance). Often it’s not really a problem for the government. If your maid cannot afford to live near your mansion, then pay more, provide housing, or go without. Don’t ask me to pay taxes to subsidize your services while you create housing shortages with land use restrictions and crazy regulatory environments (looking at you big blue states!).
Finally, if there’s really, really a need for government housing support, then buy it off the market at market rates. Period.
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@daniel-wood Houston is a new city, even by North American standards. I’m a native. My parents moved here in the early sixties. Parts of town that are now considered inner city were still gravel roads or even farmland then. The trains your city has, or got rid of, were not originally built in Houston, just like they were not built much anywhere in the country between the 60’s and late 80’s.
Attempts to add light rail have been ridiculously expensive, and deadly. Bad projects, overly influenced by bad politicians, generally have a way of getting voters to just say no to future projects. Unlike most areas of the country, people coming here are generally welcomed by tradition (large waves of people sometimes create some issues, but it gets sorted). We are building more bike lanes, but probably over doing it given the weather. We are building denser in the city, but still building out.
If you want a dense urban area with bike lanes and light rail, it’s here, but the school district is dirt and the price is high along with the property taxes. So people move out to newer school districts and commute. There’s nothing wrong with Houston that isn’t political even though our present and previous mayors weren’t all that bad. Well, and the weather. Lol.
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Overall a good video, but very misleading for a few reasons.
1. Houston does almost nothing to enforce deed restrictions. The only regular activity they do is to force HOA sign off before issuing a permit. If there is not an active HOA, the owner can almost always move ahead with no problem. There are many deed restricted communities with no active HOA. My friend built his store in one despite the restrictions. The city/county/state treated him as if he wasn’t violating any deed restrictions. They harassed him all sorts of stupid, bureaucratic ways, but ignored the covenants on file.
2. HOA’s vary greatly in what they allow. Only members have input. Changes are VERY, VERY hard to make. Many HOAs have almost no actual power to enforce restrictions or even collect dues. They have no license for violence. Almost all these HOAs have for leverage is the ability to stop the permitting process and collect liens at closings. That’s it.
3. Lack of a zoning ordnance means the owner, and thus the market, decides most land use. Zoning commissions can, and do, make even bigger mistakes than the market. They steal millions from land owners all the time. They are often corrupt. They favor developers unless and until citizens organize, and then mob tyranny takes over. If you are not trying to build a sky scraper or dangerous industrial site in Houston, you are pretty good to go. If you are doing something really obnoxious, you will need lawyers, but otherwise, you are fine. Good neighbors have only to fear bad neighbors, not the government.
4. Housing prices are affected by zoning, or lack of it. What’s different about Austin versus other Texas cities is that only they ever really tried to control growth of their city using land use restrictions. It’s a danger putting all your government types in one city along with your biggest university, they think they can run things even though they are the two types of people least able to run anything without creating more problems than they solve.
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This is a great example of why our country is sick of experts. Instead of giving a clean, objective education on the subject, the gentleman mixes in a lot of opinion and policy before the audience (voter) is ready. No one seems to be an actual scientist or educator anymore. They are all like teenagers who want to control the facts on which the decision should be made as to whether to buy them a fancy SUV. Seems to me, much of his description of the problem is contradicted by traveling through Europe which is certainly dense like he seems to think we should be, but which is built in areas he seems to think result in problems. I guess some of those thousand year old structures just got lucky?
Seems to me, much of the conclusions are also based on policy decisions and are decidedly statist. Planners should decide who builds what where, and of course, they will, and should, do so based on his proscription. The reality is they haven’t and never will. Even if a perfect and omniscient planner makes recommendations, it’s likely a corrupt and imperfect politician, an ambitious developer, and other people with career incentives will interfere. This country was built on a different plan, and maybe that ought to be reconsidered as new policy. If people want to build or buy in fire prone areas, let them. Perhaps we spend money on informing people, and then let fear of the consequences do the regulating?
After all, those California wildfires are also fueled by poor land management in public lands and on private property where fire prevention is poorly regulated. The virtually state run power companies are prevented from properly cutting around their lines. Leap frog development is enforced by allowing home owners and even renters to prevent anyone around them from developing and ruining their view, neighborhood character, or environment. They’d likely be better off with a quarter or less of their regulation.
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@infantebenji They might be emotional, but they are usually being clear. They have valid concerns. I’d be interested in reading this study, though I doubt it proves anything or is at all correct. Most modern studies are the opposite of correct.
At any rate, there’s ways to add density, and commercial, while being sensitive to the situation. Of course, that requires understanding the situation, which most of the SFH haters seem incapable of doing. Remember, not every SFH owner is a grumpy old white racist who bought his house for $50,000, did nothing to care for it or his neighborhood, and is now waiting to sell it for $1 million. It could be a minority widow who bought her dream house yesterday for $1 million and strangely doesn’t want to spend the next year having a zero lot line, 4 story apartment block built 8’ from her craftsman bungalow which was supposed to be in a cute little neighborhood full of same with build lines and other restrictions. The fact that it’s going to be a halfway house for the mentally challenged built with taxpayer money is not adding to her comfort.
Or, maybe she isn’t interested in sharing her morning coffee with the drive through customers for the new coffee shop.
Do you have any compassion for our historic home buyer?
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@infantebenji Okay, first, you changed sides. You are claiming the R1 is being used to maximize home values but also it’s ineffective because you said allowing apartments would raise values more. (Btw, if you cannot cite a study, it’s not fair to claim the results. You might be wrong, and likely are because the press very often gets studies wrong. Read for yourself). We could agree on dislike of zoning, but we don’t. You are confused. You either want zoning or you do not. I don’t, but I also don’t like government breaking promises and abruptly changing the rules. It’s rarely the best solution, and can create lots of victims. It’s happened to me before, and I’m fighting a change right now that could cost me a LOT.
Now, there’s another way to protect neighborhoods, and you don’t seem to like it either, but you are about to contradict yourself again. The people in their neighborhood can form an HOA and agree to how they will all limit their own property usage for mutual benefit. Why shouldn’t they be able to do that?
Finally, moving is very stressful and expensive. People should only be expected to move for their own reasons, and ought to be compensated for the trouble if forced to do so. Have you never owned a home?
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@bobafett1280 I’m in a deed restricted development right now. It’s an inactive HOA. Zero fees. Also, zero services and not much protection if a builder or owner or government causes trouble. If there’s an issue, we vote to activate, elect officers, and go to work. The highest fees I’ve paid an HOA were $180 a month which got us excellent security services and garage trash service and some protection against bad construction. We looked at a home in a “bad HOA”. The homes were not that well kept, there was way too much security and there was a huge fee to pay for landscaping common areas. Clearly, there were issues. I didn’t even have to look at the covenants.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for developers to write covenants that allow them to pay themselves for maintenance and hard for the buyers to end that arrangement. Club houses, pools, and golf courses can be sources of trouble.
An HOA where my mom lived banded with others to reduce a big freeway expansion, and got the city to put the road below grade to reduce noise.
The press loves a bad HOA story, but often there are bad residents or other actors that an HOA is your only real protection against. It just takes some diligence to watch out for bad deals just like watching out when dealing with companies and even government offices. Stories about HOA’s taking homes are always reported. Every HOA I was in simply waited for the home to sell and collected at closing, even if it took years. You never read about that.
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@Ben-jq5oo Great idea, Ben. So your solution is to bankrupt millions of people whose big mistake was doing EXACTLY what their government, parents, friends, and financial advisors told them to do so that a bunch of whiny twenty somethings can afford what they think boomers all magically got at a cheaper price? (Which will not be the result, by the way).
I’ve had this convo dozens of times. No, Boomers did NOT all get a 3 bedroom, 2,000 sq foot home with all the modern goodies and qualities in the most desirable, established neighborhoods when they had the same knowledge base, skill base, and work experience of today’s infantile under 30 crowd. Also, they were married with 2 incomes and much less debt. Most of them left high school better ready to work than kids today leave college, too.
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@kaitlyn__L First, I had a Civic 1500 GX that often left the ground completely and was commonly seen sliding sideways on wet pavement. 😁 I was jealous of my buddy’s Golf GTI, but needed a truck as my next vehicle. Then I got a Miata, and found out how to enjoy driving at more moderate speeds.
Yes, I know there was corruption with Senate seats, but would have preferred different solutions. I think the 17th led to too much federal power among other things.
The train example may be a bad one because passenger trains can lead to higher values in some areas. Not so much in Texas. There are almost always losers though. I own a “corner case” cottage that is getting devalued right now by public housing, road widening, commercial rezoning, and draconian changes to a three year old STR regulation. They want to “protect neighborhood character” (and reduce values though they’ve smartly shut up about that” by taking away all the STR permits from non residents in the more traditional, middle and lower class neighborhoods. At the same time they’ve added two large subsidized housing projects on my street and are adding stop lights that will increase traffic even more. My house is next to a home that got a commercial rezone.
Basically, so that young families can afford the area and will be attracted to it, they are getting rid of the “business like” STR’s which by state law they cannot treat as businesses. Only my home is next to a business that gets hundreds of visitors a day and on a road they are turning into a Boulevard overwhelmed with high density housing. No train, they took that out. No bike lane either.
We asked about a redone to commercial, but we cannot legally call our home a business if it’s an STR. Catch 22. We are losing 100k value as soon as the new regulation passes and about 20k per year in income. We’ve owned it a little more than a year.
They are also threatening to actually enforce these rules since non enforcement of the last set meant the “problems” did not get fixed.
Anyhoo. Not everyone cares about the values as much as they do neighborhood character. Ive known people who were victims before. I doubt most people on your side of these arguments know people who lost homes.
My buddy’s mom ended up handing the keys to her home to the banker and leaving the state. City of Houston overwhelmed her brand new neighborhood with subsidized housing certificates. That was three decades ago. The area is still deadly, and development ceased. Whether the area was targeted for the treatment due to anti semitism is still debated.
I think the law must protect the individual. Collective actions should be voluntary and influenced through culture and religion. Legal collectivism gets oppressive and evil too easily.
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@goldenstarmusic1689 Whoa. Let’s get a couple things straight. Let’s stop subsidies for any of it. I’m in agreement. I’m all good with that. YOU’RE the one wanting government action to create high speed rail. If you think subsidies are bad, don’t ask for one.
Next, we are talking about commuting. There’s no need for commuting by high speed rail if you don’t want the luxury of living a long way from your work. Why should the tax payers pay for that? I suppose it’s so you can get a beach house with flood insurance from the Feds? Or, do you want your kids in a lily white school while you work downtown in a corrupt city you escape every night?
Nope, nope, nope. You are NOT going anywhere with me with that strategy. I’m perfectly happy to stop the subsidies. Especially at the national level. I pay taxes, taxes, and more taxes. I’m not now, nor since I’ve been an adult, been a commuter who helps clog the freeways. I’m not the traffic.
If someone wants to commute, I see no need to make the train high speed.
If you, or someone else is willing to make a high speed train with private money, that’s great.
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@goldenstarmusic1689 No, I completely understand. You missed the point. Living far from your job is a luxury, period, full stop. I’m not going to count the one super hard case in a thousand which you want to use to justify wasting money on government buying trains. If the market will not support the train, no train.
And, while we are stopping things, let’s stop talking about freeway subsidies. I’m against those as well. I want the fuel taxes raised to cover all the costs. The highway trust fund ran a surplus for a long time, but I no longer think it does.
The whole point of a market economy is that people pay for their choices. Living far from work is usually an arbitrage of sorts to get the value of working in one place (likely undesirable to live in due to cost or conditions) and living in another where a similar job opportunity is not available. I cannot see why the government should pay for the cost of people grabbing that value. I can see the environmental, social, political, and informational value in making them pay for their own choices.
Besides that, having the government choose where the trains go is fraught with all sorts of problems and inefficiencies. In our current political environment, I don’t see it going well at all.
Also, as a veteran, there are all sorts of ways trying to use veterans to get your trains built is offensive. If you are really concerned with veteran’s issues we can have a whole other story about the “bad gubmint” of the VA and how it would be much cheaper and better for veterans to get reform it by getting rid of half of it. Let’s start with living up to our promises to service members and veterans and work from there before we go building trains if we really care.
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@goldenstarmusic1689 I can guarantee you that every veteran in my weekly group, disabled and not, opposes spending federal funds for your train. Your small town destruction hyperbole is ridiculous. The small town community where I go each summer recently ripped up its tracks because, after a public and private investment, the train project that used the pre existing tracks and was still much faster than the highway, went bust for lack of ridership in just 3 years. Passengers will now have to use alternate means. I can guarantee you that had all the people working on your project been doing so with the goal of making a sustainable train project instead of competing for government funds, there would be, and will be, less wasted and valuable effort. The wasted and even counter productive effort put into getting other people to pay for things in this country is easily enough to save every small town you are worried about. It’s a true tragedy because we know better, yet keep getting misdirected by romantic and antiquated notions kept alive by Marxist academics.
At any rate, small towns will fade away either because they are not truly sustainable or because government policy tips the scales against them. There are few other reasons. Throwing multi billion dollar train projects at the problem may save a few on the tracks, but likely at the expense of ones not chosen among other things that will be drained of resources. So who chooses the lucky winners? Will it be the most sustainable towns, or the ones with the most support among elites? You do realize every dollar spent on a government funded train was sucked from it’s likely best use to be thrown at your best guess of its best use?
And finally, you do realize that turning a small town into a suburb of the big city down the line has all sorts of other problems it creates? If people really do use the train, your small town could get destroyed by tract homes, big box stores, and auto traffic. Coulda just let the people move to suburbia and saved the effort.
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