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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I don’t understand why Trump isn’t more popular

It's pretty commonly accepted that the housing issue is caused by restrictions on building new housing. It's been Democratic leaders like Scott Weiner and Gavin Newsom that have been pushing hard to remove these restrictions. Trump's party on the other hand has been actively fighting against this, calling it some kind of war on the suburbs.

It used to be almost all white and now it’s just insanely wealthy tech workers who are probably majority Indian and Asian

However, I get the impression that being priced out isn't what you (or the original poster) are mainly focused on here, rather this demographic change. Well, that's easy to address---contrary to what you might think if you spend a lot of time in places like this forum, most Americans and definitely most Californians care that people have similar values and ideals as them rather than that they look superficially similar. "Why aren't more people being radicalized because my personal and unpopular aesthetic preference isn't being satisfied?"---that question answers itself.

Houston, TX is about 25% foreign born and has way cheaper housing than any major city in CA. There's plenty of space in CA to house everyone even if the population doubled or tripled. The problem is regulations that restrict supply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Forever

https://protectcoyotevalley.org/

In east Alameda countythere's enormous amounts of empty space. Much of the prime real estate in Santa Clara county is warehouses or other industrial areas, and much of the bay area is really shitty SFHes built on shoestring budgets in the sixties.

That's off the top of my head.

If California Forever alone (lol) was developed to Barcelona's density (note we are not even talking high rises here) it could fit 3.4M people.

And it wouldn’t be enough.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Look at the NYC and Jersey area.

We're talking about adding one-third of an NYC worth of housing in a single development to the Bay area, increasing housing stock by 40%.

I simply don't believe you. Bring a model that doesn't rely on eternal population growth which has already reversed in the bay area for years now and show your work.