Comments by "kansasthunderman1" (@kansasthunderman1) on "City Beautiful" channel.

  1.  @anthonydelfino6171  Here's a simple plan to stop people from moving to San Francisco that doesn't require any draconian measures. Just cut off all the government money being pumped into the economy. In 2017, San Francisco received at least $25 Billion in federal and state funding and most of it went to obscure uses that have absolutely no benefit to the public and it just created more hyper inflation For example, UCSF got a $25 Million federal grant to study the effect of smoking e-cigarettes and the city's transit agency got $12 Billion to build a bus rapid transit lanes on Van Ness Avenue and a subway that most people can't use. Then there are 100s of tax breaks and corporate welfare goodies going to big companies like Google, Facebook, and other politically connected interests. With the government handing out big $$$ right and left, it's like tossing bread crumbs on the sidewalk and watching the pigeons flock in. Stop handing out government $$$ and the so called housing crisis will solve itself.
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  2. If low income neighborhoods aren't feasible in large cities, where are you going to get cheap labor for restaurants, grocery stores, hotel maids, janitors, receptionists, taxi drivers, and other basic services? Unless you're willing to make your own hotel bed, vacuum your carpets, and clean your toilet, there have to be low income personnel.
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  3. You're an exception and most people who are not disabled don;t want to live in cramped urban conditions.
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  4. The U.S. is based on a democracy where the government does what the majority of the voters want and not what some quasi-dictatorial government agency believes is in their "best interest". The majority of the people want to travel by private auto instead of using mass transit and the government has done nothing to provide a workable alternative to this. Therefore, we should be building more roads and freeways instead of spending big $$$ on more worthless transit projects.
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  5.  @dynamicworlds1  Big cities are always growing and population growth and development will always outrun any attempt to reduce congestion. Therefore, the U.S. can no longer have an economy based on continued growth. Expecting a workable solution is like finding a sustainable cancer cell. Furthermore, "Change" means a lower standard of living and lower quality of life and people rightly don't want it.
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  6. Most people don't want to use mass transit and building next to transit hubs won't attract anyone who wants to get where they are going in a minimum amount of time and without the hassle of dealing with public transportation.
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  7. Corporate welfare is the main problem that's driving population growth in the Bay Area. No corporate welfare means a lot fewer businesses and a lot fewer jobs. If people can't get a job, they can't afford to live here and they won;t come in the firs place..
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  8. It's just like the T-Third Street light rail line here in S.F. Most of the building along a 5 mile section of Third Street was funded by a redevelopment program (under the guise of "transit oriented development") and that required literally billions of dollars in government money. In fact, one large condo complex along the T-Third line has virtually gone belly up. There are dozens of other transit oriented development projects that are in the red and they will require huge taxpayer bailouts. The whole economy of the Bay Area is a house of cards waiting to fall and anyone who doesn't want to get taxed to death should get out ASAP.
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  9. Yes - Let's do it like China does and abolish private property rights all together. While we're at it, let's have government mandated euthanasia so low income or elderly can be exterminated to make way for more young spoiled brat rich kids who have tons of $$$ from corporate welfare.
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  10. Baby Boomers have not voted down transit and density and it has no effect on building. In fact, high rises are being approved with the moral equivalent of a rubber stamp with little, if any, environmental (or engineering) review. That's how the Millennium Tower mess happened. Actually, the government is planning the moral equivalent of martial law by charging exorbitant tolls and "entrance fees" to drive into the downtown and jacking up parking rates. They call it "Market Pricing", but it's just a thinly veiled scheme to force people out of their cars and onto some nonexistent mass transit or some "shovel with a rope handle" solution like biking, carpooling, or skateboarding. It's been tried in the past, it's being tried now, and it's still not working now. So just forget about it.
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  11. If the rent on an apartment goes through the roof and the tenant can't pay, they will be evicted. In some cases, the entire building is demolished and replaced with an expensive high rise. It's quite obvious that the middle class is leaving San Francisco to get away from the skyrocketing cost of living and most of the homeless are just the "Canary in the coal mine" .
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  12. Standards of living go down when you're forced to use mass transit instead of driving and forced into high density housing instead of a private home. By the way, all those new industries don't do a damn thing for reducing oil consumption. Where do those electric cars get the power to charge their batteries? It's mostly from natural gas and alternative energy can't meet basic demand.
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  13. Public transport cannot carry anywhere near the amount of people as private cars. Try getting anywhere by public transportation VS driving and you will see it takes 3 to 4 time longer. People have better things to do than waste their time on transit.
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  14. Tokyo is full of termite mound housing projects. Let's live in 30 square foot cubicles so housing is more affordable.
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  15.  @Roma_eterna  You got that right. No one in their right mind would stay on a sinking ship when they can get on dry land and have more $$$ in their pocket.
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  16. Americans don't need to change and it's none of your business to twist their arm into living in high density stack and pack rats nests. People want homes and cars, not cubicles in a concrete termite mound and crammed into cattle car mass transit. High density housing has been built in San Francisco over the past 7 years and most people don;t want to live in it. In fact, the trend toward densification has made traffic even worse as people move out of the city in search for better living in the suburbs.
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  17. The San Francisco Bay Area is building high rise housing right and left, however people are voting with their feet and moving out to the suburbs. That show you that people don;t want to live in crowded hyper-expensive cities.
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  18. The homeless aren't getting any government benefits. You cannot be living on the street and get any government assistance. As for claim that homelessness is the result of closing mental hospitals, that's a crock of crap. Most homeless were middle class workers and living productive lives until the government flooded the economy with billions and created the hyper inflated housing costs.
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  19. I can factually tell you that the majority of the so called "mentally ill and drug addicted" got that way because of a second or third party (a government agency) set them up that way. Do a search for "safe injection site" and you will see how the department of public health in many cities is actually distributing drugs and syringes so addicts can stay addicted. They are also distributing meth and other psychoactives and that's the cause of the so called mentally ill behavior. Furthermore, these people are being dumped on the street in plain view of the public in order to frighten and manipulate people into accepting a Nazi Germany style extermination of the homeless - most of which were evicted because of skyrocketing housing costs. It also serves as a propaganda tool to cover up the fact that the tech boom and housing crisis is actually caused by huge amounts government money being dumped into the economy.
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  20. If you do any research on so called "mentally ill" on the streets, you will find they have been taken to a particular area of the city and dumped out of a van. They have also been heavily sedated with powerful drugs like Haldol or Thorazine so they have no cognitive ability and they just drift around or simply sleep endlessly on the sidewalk. Furthermore, some of these so called "psychotics" have been drugged by a second or third party and dumped out in plain view of the public who are being tricked into believing the city is being overrun with criminally insane people. There are also well known hypnotics like Ambion which can cause bizarre behavior and people can behave almost like they are a robot. The strategy behind all these druggings is to frighten and manipulate the public into accepting suspension of the "Writ Of Habeas Corpus" (the right of due process) and allow the government to lock people up under involuntary "civil commitment" statutes. The same damn thing's being done with gun control laws and the public is being tricked into suspension of the Second Amendment. If you think this is just a bunch of conspiracy theory, I've done a lot of research on this and everything I've said can be verified.by public records.
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  21. Oil prices have been going up and people have been using transit less. Most people would rather drive than ride a slow cattle car train.
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  22. Yeah right - Let's pave over more and more land for more crowded cities. People will not accept being crammed into concrete termite mounds and riding cattle car trains.
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  23. I don't believe that building more high rise, medium rise, or low rise is a workable solution to reducing the cost of housing. The real solution is to cut demand by cutting off the huge amount of government money flowing into the economy. Obama and Clinton visited San Francisco 27 times to fund raise and they sent an enormous amount of corporate welfare back to in the Bay Area. In fact, Google is the biggest lobbying group in the U.S. and Silicon Valley is getting billions in federal funding. It doesn't make any sense to try to deal with the skyrocketing cost of housing when an endless flow of government money is creating double digit inflation.
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  24. The whole idea of endless population growth and development is doomed to failure. It's like saying that the problems associated with cancer can be solved if more of the cells used mass transit.
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  25. Foreigners aren't keeping buildings empty, they're staying empty because the cost of rent is too high to attract tenants. San Francisco already has 1000s of vacant storefronts even in medium to high density areas.
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  26. How in the Hell are people going to walk from one end of a city 10 miles across?
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  27. The real estate market has always been a Ponzie Scheme with people investing on sheer speculation. The real estate market is rigged game and building more housing to reduce prices is like like building more casinos in Vegas to increase the odds of winning.
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  28. Most people don't want to live like Europe does. Low density living is a form of freedom and societies don't easily change from having more freedom to less. In fact, the trend around the world is to more freedom to live where they want and having more autonomy in their mode of transportation.
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  29. Have you ever lived in a big city? They have 24/7 traffic congestion and black hole high taxes.
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  30.  @insaaanestuff  Two freeways (the Embarcadero and the Central) have already been removed and now there's a $hyt Load of traffic on the surface streets. King Street (4Th street to the Ferry Building) is now just a one mile stretch of a freeway off ramp and crammed with traffic.
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  31.  @rfldss89  Public transportation is cheaper, but it's also poor quality and it usually takes 3 or 4 times longer than driving. people would rather spend more $$$ and have a better experience than use the lowest cost option.
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  32. Yeah and watch the traffic get backed up for miles. I'll take freeways over being stuck in traffic on a fancy parkway.
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  33.  @mobilityproject3485  Are you nuts? You are proposing to replace freeways with surface streets? There's an intersection every block and cars will have to stop to let cross traffic through.
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  34. Your preaching the failed religion of mass transit. People want to go where they want, when they want, and in the shortest time and they don't want to rely on some broken down transit system
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  35. Most people don;t want to live in high density (crowded stack and pack) housing and ride crowded mass transit. Furthermore, the so called "housing Crisis" is a huge fraud perpetrated by the real estate and construction industry. In fact, most of the so called "tech workers" are not skilled in science, engineering, or any other profession that justifies make such huge salaries. Facebook is a prime example of a multi-billion dollar corporation that is almost worthless. Never the less, people keep buying stock in these Ponzie Schemes. A lot (if most of the tech (companies) are getting huge government subsidies and many would not even be in business if it were not for corporate welfare. Get rid of all the government subsidies and the housing market will crash and burn like in 2008.
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  36. High rise public housing projects were promoted by the construction trades who saw them as a huge jobs program. The big elevator companies like Otis and Westinghouse had 1000s of installations in public high rise projects and they contributed big $$$ to congress and HUD in return for funding these multistory slums.
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  37. I replied to your comment before and here is again: If low income neighborhoods aren't feasible in large cities, where are you going to get cheap labor for restaurants, grocery stores, hotel maids, janitors, receptionists, taxi drivers, and other basic services? Unless you're willing to make your own hotel bed, vacuum your own carpets, and clean your own toilet, there have to be a lot low income workers living in expensive cities. Furthermore, the high cost of housing is mainly due to the government pumping $Billions into the economy and most (if not all) of that money is going to politically connected spoiled brats who don;t produce a damn thing. Tesla, Twitter, facebook, etc. are just a few examples of hogs slopping at the public trough and getting corporate welfare. Cut out the government money and let the economy fix itself.
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  38. People can't afford to live where they work and they can't afford to live somewhere else and commute to where they work. So what kind of "Comfortable Choice" is that?
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  39. Existing mass transit is a complete failure so let's cram even more and more people into overcrowded cities and overcrowded buses and trains. That will definitely improve things a lot.
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  40. How can a freeway turn into a regular road? If you want to funnel 10 lbs into a 5 Lbs bag, where do all the cars go?
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  41. NYC is a hell hole and anyone who has the money to live outside the city will do it.
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  42. They like not living in the moral equivalent of a trash compactor housing project with the maximum density allowed by hydraulic pressure.
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  43. Most people don't want to live in high density cities and commute by mass transit. If sprawl is what people want, then let them have it and stop trying to twist their arm into accepting something they deem inferior. By the way, a lot of the housing development in the major cities around the Bay Area is being funded by gas taxes, bridge tolls, and other auto related fees. People who own cars and drive are paying the freight on mass transit which is inferior to using a private auto or Uber or Lyft.
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  44. The Big Dig had huge cost over runs and the ceiling fell on top of several cars.
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  45. Pruitt-Igoe was turned into a high density dump and it was demolished in 15 seconds. let's not make the same mistake twice.
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  46. Most people cannot afford to live in a high rise and they don;t like riding mass transit either. People will move to where they can get the most bang for the buck and that's usually in a low density city or the suburbs. They're voting with their pocketbook and saying to Hell with the so called "compact city" concept like Hong Kong.
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  47. What exactly do those highly paid "tech workers" do that merits a salary of over $150,000 a year? A tech worker is someone with a degree in STEM or a degree from a community college in some skilled vocation. Is Facebook really a tech company or is it just a bunch of politically connected spoiled brats who develop spyware on behalf of the government? Google/Waymo is funded by DARPA and it just got another contract from the Pentagon. The real problem with the housing crisis is too damn much government $$$ flowing into the economy and that's what is creating all the hyperinflation in the real estate market.
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  48. I'm a single person with no family and I am able to live in a small apartment and use mass transit. But, for people with families, there is no real alternative to private cars. Furthermore, commercial trucks are a large part of traffic and you can't have a large city without commercial vehicles to bring stuff to stores.
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  49. Same thing with the BART and Muni system here in the S.F. Bay Area.
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  50. CalTrain is a worthless venture and people aren't going to use more "Lipstick On A Pig" mass transit. All the high rise construction is due to government $$$ being pumped into the economy. get government out of the venture capital business and the cost of housing will drop like a rock.
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