America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.

[Dashinka 24,593]

By Farhad Manjoo

Opinion Columnist

May 22, 2019

To live in California at this time is to experience every day the cryptic phrase that George W. Bush once used to describe the invasion of Iraq: “Catastrophic success.” The economy here is booming, but no one feels especially good about it. When the cost of living is taken into account, billionaire-brimming California ranks as the most poverty-stricken state, with a fifth of the population struggling to get by. Since 2010, migration out of California has surged.

The basic problem is the steady collapse of livability. Across my home state, traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality.

Just look at San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi’s city. One of every 11,600 residents is a billionaire, and the annual household income necessary to buy a median-priced home now tops $320,000. Yet the streets there are a plague of garbage and needles and feces, and every morning brings fresh horror stories from a “Black Mirror” hellscape: Homeless veterans are surviving on an economy of trash from billionaires’ mansions. Wealthy homeowners are crowdfunding a legal effort arguing that a proposed homeless shelter is an environmental hazard. A public-school teacher suffering from cancer is forced to pay for her own substitute.

And there is no end in sight to such crushing success. At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing.

 

It was another chapter in a dismal saga of Nimbyist urban mismanagement that is crushing American cities. Not-in-my-backyardism is a bipartisan sentiment, but because the largest American cities are populated and run by Democrats — many in states under complete Democratic control — this sort of nakedly exclusionary urban restrictionism is a particular shame of the left.

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Reading opposition to SB 50 and other efforts at increasing density, I’m struck by an unsettling thought: What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and Nimbyism. Preserving “local character,” maintaining “local control,” keeping housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the same: to keep people out.

“We’re saying we welcome immigration, we welcome refugees, we welcome outsiders — but you’ve got to have a $2 million entrance fee to live here, otherwise you can use this part of a sidewalk for a tent,” said Brian Hanlon, president of the pro-density group California Yimby. “That to me is not being very welcoming. It’s not being very neighborly.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html

 

[TBoneTX 45,522]

This is one of several recent articles on this valid topic.

One fundamental factor is that the referenced majority wants rules that apply to everyone but themselves.

[Sonea 138]

Its calmed down a bit here in the last 12 months but still not great. NIMBYism is still prevalent though.

[Boiler 45,662]

I read an article about Berkeley, seems it has turned very nasty there, I have not been there in 15 years.

 

Losing Police, disbanding things like Traffic and can not find anybody who wants to work there, wonder why.

[Dashinka 24,593]

I thought everyone wanted to live in cities?  Or do they want instead to be homeless in cities?

[TBoneTX 45,522]

I read this just today:

https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2019/05/20/open-letter-gavin-newsom-policies-tearing-family-apart/

 

[Dashinka 24,593]

16 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

I read this just today:

https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2019/05/20/open-letter-gavin-newsom-policies-tearing-family-apart/

 

If I were that letter writer, I would be moving out as well.  It is interesting that the party that touts economic equality promotes policies that create a bigger economic divide eliminating the middle class and leaving themselves with the poor masses and a few super-rich elite.

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

18 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

I read this just today:

https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2019/05/20/open-letter-gavin-newsom-policies-tearing-family-apart/

 

The guys I listen to our of LA had the author on the other day and explained this story, this was a day after they read it on the air.

[TBoneTX 45,522]

7 hours ago, Cyberfx1024 said:

The guys I listen to our of LA had the author on the other day and explained this story, this was a day after they read it on the air.

What was the angle or the conclusion -- support of the author, or ridicule?

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

19 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

What was the angle or the conclusion -- support of the author, or ridicule?

No, they adamantly support the author because they see how the state has gone to the porta johns quite literally. They specialize in Los Angeles, California, and SoCal news with a splash of National mixed in. They have successfully been able to help recall politicians like Josh Newman and Gray Davis.They have repeatedly brought up how CA goes from 1st to 2nd in the highest gas prices in the country with nothing to show for it. Not to mention the road diets. Their big issue right now is how certain cities and counties like LA, Ventura, and Santa Ana coddle vagrants all the while they steal and kill without abandon. Don't even get them started on the Crazy Train. 

What's funny is that they have had contests where the charity winners get to watch a Dodgers game with them. The people that won last year between winning and actually going to game ended up moving their company and themselves to Texas. They have repeatedly said that get people calling and emailing them from across the company due to moving outside California like myself. 

 

I strongly suggest listening to this episode:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/john-and-ken-on-demand-20635765/episode/gavin-newsoms-taskforce-of-nothingness-43014788/