FYI: Existing train (Amtrak) service in the Central Valley is being expanded currently and they are looking to expand it further. The expansion, from 6 trips to 7, went into effect June 20th. Fresno is the same city where ground is being broken on the nation's first high speed rail.
This sort of contradicts this editorial claiming high speed rail makes no sense and will not fly.
The officials who have to make the budget tradeoffs that weren’t on the ballot in 2008 are finally pushing back. The question now is when they’ll have the guts to pull the plug.
We can do "The Innuendo"
We can dance and sing
When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing
It is an editorial -- in other words, opinion not news -- and the strongly worded title really does not fit with the content. This should not be getting taken so seriously here.
But if we raise the price of helium to prevent depletion of resources, helium will be expensive too.
Although artificially raising the price of diamonds seems to have been an effective strategy for the diamond industry, that is in part because they found a marketing angle where the high price of a diamond engagement ring is a strong emotional signal between a prospective couple. In most markets, people simply are not going to pay more for something than it benefits them. Raising the price can have the consequence of pushing people to go look for other alternatives.
Price has to be reflective to some degree of underlying value or benefit. Further, if creating helium comes at the cost of destroying more real value than it creates, this is simply a lose-lose prospect across the board, regardless of the price tag you can attach to helium.
The world would be better served if you studied how to tweak existing cities to make them more pedestrian-friendly and people focused. They are too car focused.
You should start by reading "How buildings learn." Old buildings that work extremely well typically did not start off as superior. They typically gained value over time as residents added improvements that worked well because they lived there and understood the problem space.
Perhaps you should read some history. IIRC, at some point, car companies bought up public transit infrastructure and shut it down because less public transit was good for sales.
Friend, I am aware of the "streetcar conspiracy". I am also aware that streetcars died out for reasons well beyond conspiracy. I am further aware of many areas where cars are very useful that never had streetcar systems to be destroyed by GM.
Sorry to have made assumptions. My understanding is that there was no pre-existing infrastructure suitable to cars. The dirt and cobblestone roads that existed were inadequate, to put it nicely. I have read up a good bit on such things and drawn a very different conclusion from you.
In the US, personally owned vehicles are critical for sprawling suburbs and rural life. It is a big country with low density. Cars should not be necessary in the big city. Those that are designed well make it possible to live without a car. In much of America, it is quite challenging to live without a car. This is partly due to choices we have made, not because it had to be that way.
No. As is often the case, they think that because they do one thing dramatically better than anyone else, they must be fundamentally wiser and smarter in all things.
For now. Presumably, that could change at some point should they get traction. You have to start somewhere. ("The faith of a mustard seed" and all that.)
Yeah, they even have a state called California which gets quite a few people from Mexico coming in across the border. Many of them speak little or no English. I hear it is doing okay.
If we do too good of a job of keeping out Mexicans, we will have serious food shortages. There will also be other areas that suffer -- like upscale landscaping that seems to be mostly maintained by Mexican workers -- but the whole food shortage thing worries me lots more.
A wall all along the US/Mexico border is a fantasy. It's the grown up equivalent of promising to put soda in the drinking fountains when running for class president.
Not only that, but I think there is reason to believe that AirBnB further stresses the housing market and adds additional fuel to the existing divide between the Haves and Have Nots by putting more rent monies into the hands of the Haves and creating more scarcity of housing for those looking for a long-term rental, not an alternative to a hotel.
They are, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. However, that the Hotel Lobby makes a statement about affordability is a little much, it has such a rhetorical, trendy ring to it (these days a speech has to use the words community, affordable housing, 'your homes', etc.)
Out of a housing stock of about 2.2M or so units, AirBNB takes something like 30K off the market, apparently, in this particular instance (short term rentals).
People will always skirt the system, though. It's unclear what impact this will have.
I am a bit fed up with hearing this kind of thing. We are all human beings.
If you are rich, you get accused of being in it for the money. If you are poor, you are accused of being in it for the money. If you have a vested interest, you are accused of bias. If you have no vested interest, you are told go away and STFU.
Poor people do not have the time, energy and money to advocate for changes that would potentially free up a MERE 30k rental units. They are too busy trying to survive. People with money are generally too busy trying to get richer or keep what they have to put time into trying to make the world an actually better place.
Who is allowed to say "This is bad for affordable housing" and be taken seriously? It seems like there is no one on the planet who is allowed to advocate for affordable housing. We are all guilty of something. Meanwhile, affordable housing simply is not happening.
Affordable housing is tough in a market where only 1M apartments are market rate -- and don't misread me as saying that the other 1M shouldn't be stabilized, I'm just pointing out the elastic part of the housing market -- in one of the most dynamic cities financially and culturally in the world. NYC is half the geographical size of London, has 500K more residents within it in 2010 than 2000, and has a strong economy right now. Stronger than places like the rust belt. It has finance, media and tech, it has international allure.
I'm not actually advocating for or against affordable housing, but I do want to say that it is incredibly not surprising that with such a small supply of land and housing, that things aren't affordable when so many people want to be here.
There are lots of hot cities in the world where things aren't affordable. And when people say NYC isn't affordable, it's misleading: what's not affordable are the desirable neighborhoods. Across the river in places like Jersey City, within NYC south Bronx, Staten Island, many parts of Queens, while increasing in demand are also relatively affordable. If people to live in an area that becomes very hot and popular (eg. Williamsburg), you only manage to live there if you're lucky, bought before things got expensive, or relatively affluent.
This is not specific to New York per se. I guess you have every right to argue that this is just a New York issue because this this a New York law under discussion, but lack of affordable housing is hardly specific to New York and AirBnB is also hardly specific to New York.
So, while you no doubt have some valid points, the fact is that affordable housing is simply not happening nationwide. And when people do what you are currently doing -- and most people do -- of saying "yes, BUT..." and acting like somehow this specific instance is not relevant or doesn't count, well, again, affordable housing is simply not happening and there is always an excuse and it is always not the thing we are talking about THIS time.
So, do you have any pointers as to how and when it would be okay to make any points about it without them being dismissed out of hand as irrelevant, not on topic and so on?
It's true that homelessness is on the rise. But in New York, half of our rental housing is rent regulated, that's 1M apartments. Even if 100% of them were rent regulated, there likely would be homeless people, since lower rent does not mean cheap rent (an $800 studio will still be out of reach to someone from the street). Then we have projects, but those have severe funding problems and a long line to get in.
Many homeless people you see have mental health and addiction issues. The bigger issue is funding clinics and mental facilities so their only occasional beds aren't public hospitals and jails.
This is not specific to New York per se. I guess you have every right to argue that this is just a New York issue because this this a New York law under discussion, but lack of affordable housing is hardly specific to New York and AirBnB is also hardly specific to New York.
I have every right to be New York specific? That's an interesting way to put it, to say the least. Listen, and I'm assuming you're in the U.S.: we live in a big country, one that's run as a Federation. State laws and city laws differ enormously. It's hard to talk about housing policy in the abstract without reference to specific cities and states. Where we can talk more generally are trends, like the growth of cities.
So, do you have any pointers as to how and when it would be okay to make any points about it without them being dismissed out of hand as irrelevant, not on topic and so on?
Thanks
My sarcasm detection seems unable to parse this sentence, but I'll be naive and assume you're asking a serious question. How do we avoid making points dismissed out of hand as irrelevant? Well, when we have political entities make doublespeak or insincere commentary to bolster something different entirely in their own interest, I say it's fair to dismiss as insincere. In this case the hotel lobby of NYC came out making commentary about communities and affordable housing, when in fact the law was for the most part protecting the hotel lobby. That's insincere. I feel that as a nation we're so accustomed to our political figures and advertising entities make insincere comments that it barely registers morally.
I generally try to not be sarcastic. Thank you for making an effort to answer in good faith.
The point I was trying to make is that the subject of affordable housing seems to have fallen into the same pattern that discrimination against women or people of color has fallen into. There is always, without fail, some reason (aka excuse) as to why this specific woman or this specific person of color does not deserve the promotion or should not be listened to, etc. It isn't their gender or skin color, it is that they aren't saying it right, being too emotional, etc ad nauseum -- standards that white males don't get held to. Affordable housing seems to be a topic where there is always some excuse as to why it is relevant this time, why it isn't a valid argument in this case and so on.
I do know something about these topics. I don't agree with you that homelessness is mostly about mental health issues and addiction. It is far more complicated than that. That piece of it gets far too much press. It becomes just another excuse to dismiss the fact that many people on the street have some income, just not enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, and affordable housing is in incredibly short supply in this country.
When you dismiss homeless people as merely insane addicts who cannot function in society any way, it is a convenient way to wash all of society clean of the responsibility of providing adequate amounts of affordable housing because we don't really know how to reliably cure mental health issues or addiction. So, it absolves the world of really doing anything about the problem because, hey, it isn't really fixable, so you can't reasonably expect "me"/the world to really try and you can't reasonably hold us responsible.
I fear I am wasting my breathe, so to speak. So, in the interest of not pointlessly beating a dead horse, I plan to stop here.
I like the idea that you realize you're potentially beating a dead horse. It must really feel this way when (you may not realize) your entire comment is full of assumptions about 'people who hold views like this' and straw man arguments as a result.
I never dismissed homeless people as insane addicts who can't function in society, and I didn't imply they couldn't be helped (I implied that funding was being cut to institutions that could help, and that's a fact in New York that started under previous mayors).
That's what politics is often reduced to, straw men, and the idea that the argument-maker has 'heard it all before' and therefore is tired of making an effort to make an argument that has facts in it. The truth is, if you think you've heard it all before, that's probably a sign you need to listen more carefully.
In that sense you would have been wasting your breath.
Yet, you continue to simply dismiss me, a point that I covered. I must not be listening carefully enough. It couldn't possibly be that I have a point and it simply has no hope of getting through to you, no matter what I do.
This sort of contradicts this editorial claiming high speed rail makes no sense and will not fly.
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article84917817.html