At a certain point you can't blame Californians. Blame the overall out of control overpopulation of this planet, the concentration of knowledge and wealth in certain corners of the country and world, and not enough arable/desirable land to house the 8 billion miracles.
54
I live in Reno in a beautiful studio with an unobstructed view of Mt. Rose. Across the street is a park and the Truckee River. The sun and moon roll over my home. It's wild. As I am disabled and on a fixed income, when my ex-husband and I were planning how my help would be distributed, I said, "Put it all on the rent." I arranged a rent freeze for myself at $545. He pays the increases. When I came, my rent was $641. Now, it is over $1000. Nevada has many libertarians, so any kind of rent control to take care of people like me would not even enter their minds. I see the homeless along the Riverwalk when I go to the post office, and there but for the Grace of God go I.
34
I'm glad that Reno is faring better in the popular estimation, and I am increasingly thinking of relocating, both in and out of the state. But not, ever, to Reno.
I visited relatives last summer and found the place utterly without charm or basic attractions. Downtown is a shadow of its former gambling self, with many homeless and almost as many pawn shops. The bigger casinos are at the periphery; I suppose if that's your idea of a good time, you need only go 5-6 miles to be in your element. The rest is sprawl. The thrust of this article, that Reno is becoming a nice place to live, is preposterous.
Reno has nothing. And even if I moved over the state line, my professional life is based in California, and the Franchise Tax Board surely would hound me for its fair share of my income as derived from California sources.
Now, San Antonio, or El Paso, on the other hand.....
20
Now, if only they could develop intelligently. If they're growing so rapidly, better start on the street-cars/ light-rail right now, absolutely no delay. Otherwise, you end up like the East Bay in California or Southern California - a car-centric absolutely frustrating sprawl of endless highways. The East Bay was slow to adopt BART and still, 40 years later, can't get it's rail or transit system together. And that's why the exodus from California in part. The average commute is about 1.5 hours per 15 miles. Meanwhile, every other country in the world has bullet trains.
19
California is crowded because people want to live in California. So many in fact that the price of housing has gone through the roof. People are then forced to move, but their first preference is to then be close to California.
Everyone wants to slam California it seems. It's just envy. 76 million feet can't be wrong.
19
I've lived in Reno for six years now. If you love of outdoors this is the place for you. 250+ days of pure sunshine a year, 2.5 hours to Yosemite, 3 hours to Napa, head due East to quickly get to the middle of nowhere (if the crowds are getting to you). Drive 15 minutes to ski Mt Rose (avg snowfall 400 inches per year) and you can get to Lake Tahoe (kind of a pretty place) in 25 minutes (sixth highest volume of water after the 5 great lakes). More people are starting to discover this place and that can pose certain difficulties - which the area is certainly experiencing. But then every place has its issues - and this area has a lot to offer that is 100% free if you want to take advantage.
8
I agree with everything that Denny says, even from my California home. Reno and Nevada are wonderful places. While Reno will crowd and change in character, the beautiful and wild outback in Nevada will persevere. I know, I'll drive 6 hours to experience it.
5
From a long-suffering California-to-Reno expat: Oh pleeze! I originally moved from the Bay Area because the taxes admittedly were killing my consulting businesses. But the move came at a price and there hasn't been one day when I haven't missed the culture and intellect of my old home town. The ridiculous mantra that Reno was a Paradise-on-Earth until those rapacious Californians came is fantasy. The cultural improvement in Reno over the last few decades has happened because of young outsiders bringing their entrepreneurial skills to new restaurants, theaters and clubs. The high tech industry -- mostly gaming -- is full of skilled "outsiders" anxious to raise their new families less expensively, not the mythical City-folk out to bilk the locals and run away laughing. On the other hand, the highway billboards are full of car dealerships, law firms, banks and furniture stores owned by, yes, locals. The housing boom, on the other hand has brought poorly constructed buildings with landscaping sure to fail a year after completion. And my understanding is that the blame can be shared by "good ol' boys"trying to make a buck as well as outsiders. While it's politically correct to blame all of Reno's problems on those bad Californians, it's a mixed bag. The locals might examine their own greed which has led to a town, desperately wanting to become a grown-up city without the willingness to control its own worst money-grubbing instincts. Be fair.
48
The article suggests that Phoenix is comparable to Reno. That isn't even close to true. Net California transplants to Phoenix number about 20,000, many of whom are too poor to buy homes anywhere. The housing market is unaffected by the small in-migration. Phoenix, on the whole, is unaffected, too. I would question all the other places listed that supposedly have housing markets profoundly affected by California transplants. The percentage of Californians leaving the state is small and the transplants tend to be poor and unlikely homeowners.
Except that the new "affordable" housing units that are opening up down the street from where I live are renting for $3,800 to $5,300 a month. And we were all told that more housing would bring the prices down. Yeah, right!
Housing prices will never go down in California, no matter how many units are built. They will only go up. City councils will happily pack in as many units as they possible so they can generate more revenue to pay for their pet projects and campaign costs.
Despite thousands of units being built within two square miles in the last few years, not one new school or grocery store or road was added. Current residents are left pay the price with higher rents, more impacted schools, and gridlocked freeways.
9
I moved to Colorado some time ago to buy a business. I prefer Marin county and it is on return goals. CA has its issues but at at least in the Marin area is home to some of the most beautiful sites in the country. Now here in Colorado they dislike folks from CA. They moan and groan and post nasty comments in the local paper or go on about the good old days. When there was little to the local economy. Change and grow or end up like some of the empty towns scattered across the country. One wonders how they will feel when one of those outsiders leaves and takes all those nice jobs away...Oh wait.
13
Same thing is happening in Southern Nevada. The Las Vegas valley and surrounding communities are overrun with Californians with plenty of money driving the real estate market up, causing a housing shortage and sending apartment costs through the ceiling. LV and surrounding areas are 50th in affordable housing in the US. Homelessness, beggars and the poor are very visible outside the LV Strip and tourist areas. Californians who fled to Nevada are like locus that strip the land and its resources and then move on to another state.
11
Those "Californians" you are complaining about most likely passed through California from some other place. Native Californians are a rare species here.
10
Poor Reno! I lived in Austin for many years before I suddenly looked around and realized every other person around me was a new arrival from California. All of my favorite restaurants suddenly were too full to seat me; popular recreation spots were clogged with people; it took three times longer to drive anywhere in town. My husband and I gave up, packed up, and moved to Chicago. We own heavier winter coats now, but there's room to grow and room to breathe!
32
We used to make fun of Reno not too long ago, calling it 'Drano'. Descending from lofty gorgeous Tahoe, it was an eyesore from another era. Now however, Reno is almost totally transformed. Last summer I took my family down to Reno for a semi pro soccer game. We were surrounded by Tesla and Panasonic and Switch engineers, all hipsters, smartie-pants every one of them. I like the change. Reno is cool now.
10
Yep. Remember staying in Reno several times from the 70s to around 15 years ago. My only thought at that time was what drab and dull eyesore.
2
Aside from problems stemming from state-to-state immigration, the underlying cause of California (and U.S.) housing difficulties is immigration from other countries. We should limit immigration so U.S. population declines. Only then will can stop and reverse stresses on human and non-human living spaces.
22
If US population declines, the economy will decline with it. Are you prepared for that? Look at the economic struggles Japan has had with its declining population if you need an example.
The real housing problem in California is the concentration of wealth from high tech companies all sitting in Silicon Valley, where there is no room (thanks to the SF Bay and surrounding mountains) to build more and earthquakes limit how high you can build as well, yet companies keep throwing more and more money at their employees. Meanwhile, everyone outside of tech is priced out of the market!
What needs to happen is companies need to branch out more to other areas to share the wealth and, also, reduce the pressure in Silicon Valley. This is already happening in areas like Austin, Denver, Phoenix and other places, but those cities need to improve their infrastructure to handle the increased traffic.
These rich tech companies ought to be footing the bill for infrastructure, but likely they are not due to tax incentives too many places hand out to "win" new employers.
14
There is no evidence that immigrants working in the fields around Fresno are causing the prices in San Francisco to hit the stratosphere
17
Or make birth control cheap and readily available for all.
27
I visited Reno & the Carson Valley many times in the past 30 years, when my in-laws were still alive (they were natives of Nevada, as is my husband). What I would like to know is where is the water going to come from to support all this development? This part of the state gets about 12 inches of rainfall a year. It’s the desert! I can’t imagine that the Planning Commissions of Washoe County have figured out how to provide water to sustain this kind of development.
54
I think the people who will be staying longterm in California are the ones that bought their houses before the housing costs skyrocketed, so their mortgage payments are low. The other group is the wealthy, who can afford to blow away their money on overpriced housing and on helicopter rides since the expressways are overcrowded. I'm not sure why more California politicians are not making center-stage in their policy platforms these housing and commuting crises, but California politicians seem to be more concerned about environmental preservation and about helping illegal immigrants. Maybe those political groups are low-hanging fruit, and the politicians are not up for a challenge. This question mystifies me.
27
What you say... they want to protect the environment. One of the things that has made CA a jewel....awful and self centered of them.
6
Short term rentals are adding enormously to the housing shortage and price inflation.
18
I've lived in California all my adult life. I'm getting *really* tired of the current media meme that Californians are always a huge housing problem whether they stay in California or move elsewhere. First, no one seems to consider that California is a very large state, most of which is geographically neither the San Francisco nor the Los Angeles area. I am currently living in a Californua city that is very eager to get new tech investment and crowing about how many San Franciscans they hope to attract. Second, many people don't seem to consider that Reno and many other cities bend over backwards to attract tech and other large companies. And the influx of employees that follows (and not just from California!), getting more revenue into the area, and enabling many more businesses such as retail and restaurants to prosper. Yes, there are some adjustment problems when a community changes rapidly, but planning, not NIMBY, is the solution. This is just the anti-immigrant narrative directed at US citizens. Seriously, does anyone think US citizens don't move around for better jobs and/or a better lifestyle--or that there is any way to prevent them from doing it?
48
I am moving to Texas next year where housing is better and a third cheaper than California. California has only one advantage, it’s weather and nothing else.
7
I lived in Austin/Dallas for 15 years. The weather is challenging, the people are usually lovely. The property taxes are high and it is not as cheap as it used to be. Good luck.
18
I have been to Reno and frankly, keep it!
13
So much hostility against Californians moving to other states. Let's all just stop and think how 100k Californians are leaving the Golden state and still a housing crisis remains. Want to know how California's population is expanding despite this migration? It's because people from all over the U.S. are coming to California.
That aspiring actress daughter or screenwriter son of yours there in the South? Yup moved to California! That computer science classmate of yours from your midwest college? Yup moved to California. That closeted gay or lesbian neighbor that was bullied throughout your small town high school? Yup moved to California.
If Californians were hostile to every out-of state person who moved in, we would get pilloried for being rude and selfish. But apparently when the reverse happens and Californians end up in other parts of the country, it's perfectly fine to make them feel unwelcome. Hello double standard!
89
"...immigration has made up an average of 58% of the yearly increase in state (California) population for the last 25 years." This is referring to legal and illegal immigration. I would wager that much of the remaining growth due to births occurs among immigrant families. "Last year California had 142,932 more residents exit to live in other states than arrived according to an analysis of a new report from the US Census..."
In short, if you want to explain how more people are moving out of California than in from the USA, look no further than immigration from other countries, much of it illegal.
20
You do not have data to back up your wager about who is giving birth to the next generation of citizens
2
I know that not all of the 39.54 million people who live there have a choice, but the many who do are there for the same reasons I hope to live there one day - California is heaven. You get what you pay for, right?
9
You know what's not helping us here in CA? The freaking fires. Up here in Santa Rosa, the Tubbs Fire took out 2800+ homes, including many from the wealthiest neighborhoods. The result is a mass exodus of relatively wealthy people to other parts of Sonoma county, buying the already limited housing like crazy, and driving up housing costs even faster than in the East and South bay areas.
25
Just goes to show that when you want to expand beyond a gambling/brothel-based economy, trouble follows.
22
And 20 years from now the crying out of overpopulation will continue to happen.
14
We need to build a wall around California instead of Mexico. They can try whatever social experiments they want, BUT they have to reap what they sow in return.
9
People must be darned desperate to live in Nevada in lieu of California.
Yeah, things are tough here.
12
Vertical is the only solution, because the geographic location of Reno is so prime. Towers of concrete, steel, and glass surrounded by meadows and parks, beneath which would be the transit and parking hubs for auto and electric Vans, accessed by elevator. They have the space in which to develop a very attractive life style, which would include the urban core as well. Most important - keep the California gestalt of lawsuits and regulations as far from power as possible, and seek world class development, Nevada style.
3
From what I read here, Reno still seems like a gamble. Appropriately enough.
17
I recently moved to West Texas after a lifetime in the East Bay after years of saying “someday”. My expenses have gone down by 60%, the weather is similar, and I’m able to be part of a community rather than feeling disconnected. BTW El Paso is BLUE: see Beto ORourke.
What surprised me is how many people are shocked that I would ever leave such a paradise. They don’t realize what an effort it takes to visit the ocean or the mountains, to spend 75% if you monthly income on rent, and to live your life thinking about parking and BART crowds. They loved visiting San Francisco, but didn’t see the horrific homeless situation, or the criminal disparity between cities like Danville and Richmond.
Grass is greener....
37
"The weather is similar".........in El Paso. I've been in El Paso and the weather isn't anything like the bay area. More like west Texas desert.
8
You cannot eat your cake and have it too. If you want high paying jobs like Silicon Valley, then the housing prices are likely to go up to. They may be initially cheaper than California, but it is a matter of time before the high wage earners would want houses with more amenities and builders will gravitate towards high priced houses that have high profit margins. They will build fewer low priced houses and the native population has to struggle to find houses in a competitive housing market. Builders would want subsidies for building low price houses. The new migrant industry will want better local services such as reliable power, transportation, airports amenities adding pressure on local municipalities; which in turn require higher local taxes. Very few cities can have a really right formula to have best of both the worlds. I thought Nevada likes gamble with a high wager, so why shrink away from a high staked game now?
5
Five years ago we bought a house in the hills above Reno, although we still live in the bay area. I love Reno, the fact that it has a very different 'vibe' than the bay area, lower key, less pretentious, etc..They also value open space and letting people have more personal freedoms. Real estate has really taken off in the past couple of years. I am a believer, this growth is not because of real estate speculation but because of job growth. The big issue is going to be how to maintain the small town character of the place in the face of all this growth and higher prices/incomes that come along. I know some of the people most involved in the city's development and they are generally thinking the right way about this, but the pressures to just build everywhere are extreme. We will see...
6
Just remember capitalism's biggest lie:
Growth pays for itself.
25
We have a real problem. We've added a lot more people to our population without considering how having lots more people would affect our future lives in real and practical terms.
Well, in real and practical terms, more people looking for housing pushes up demand and prices. New construction is not helping our new and growing nationwide housing crises because so many people can't afford the price of new construction. We have never been good at having our government build anywhere near a sufficient supply of housing for those with low and moderate incomes.
It is past time for us to all be looking at the numbers of people we're expected to have and how we will accommodate them.
One thing is certain. The millions of empty places in big cities that were available in the 1970-1990s due to suburbanization are now taken up and filled.
What's going to happen to New York City when it has a extra million or two in population, which I would suppose will happen pretty quickly when we consider current immigration levels? What will be the cheapest apartment in the worst neighborhood, what affect will gentrification have on housing throughout the Tri-State area?
No one who is anywhere average in income can afford rents to go up 30% in a five year period. That's what happened in Reno and will start happening in more and more places throughout our country.
27
Well think of it like this. When I was 17 there were 3 billion people on the planet. Today at 59 there are around 7.2 billion. When I die, if I live the general age of male relatives with no catastrophe, around 2050 there will be 9 billion. So I wonder how a finite world will support all those people, a consumption based economy....well...
13
Replace "California" with "New York" and "Reno" with "Atlanta" and the article would still hold.
Housing is dirt cheap, over large swathes of the country - the catch is that these houses are not located near cities where today's jobs are.
There are only three overarching ways to solve the housing crisis in American cities - build denser, build high speed transit to move people quickly and efficiently from far away, or enable telecommuting as much as possible.
13
And start considering that the planet has too many people and that we must do something about it.
22
And how do we "do something" about the planet having too many people? What is your suggested solution?
9
The most promising ways of reducing population growth internationally seems to be raising the level of education generally, and opportunities for women to work. Birthrate declines as prosperity increases, prosperity increases as the workforce becomes more educated, and includes women.
20
I hope more Californians move to Texas, Arizona, and other states and turn them blue.
81
Removed from the rarefied, stifling atmosphere of the Bay Area, they might just find themselves turning red. It happens when people tire of preening self-righteousness.
15
Yeah, let's have Californians move to other states and double down on the same policies that failed them in California. I've lived all over the world and am originally from the Bay Area. Since moving back two years ago, it's become clear the the California model is failing, and badly. And what is funny is how so many are acknowledging that it fails them but then moving to other (always red) states and then voting for the same policies that created the problems they left. Inane, if not outright insane.
12
Nope. Been in CO for some time. The issue is values not where you are. Progressives value equal opportunity, personal freedom, investment in the country, not spending half of every tax dollar on war and... well you know things that will advance us. Although on your last sentence I think you are looking in the wrong direction.
5
I hope they don't overlook preservation in this growth frenzy. Those mid-century motel signs are the ONLY thing I see there that seem interesting.
13
It does seem like all the millions of refugees streaming into California from Mexico and El Salvador over the last three decades have reached a new tipping point and are driving Californians out of the state.
27
Restricting growth is a boon for realtors, mtg lenders, developers and the taxing authorities. Eventually all the poor people will either move or die which is also good news for the aforementioned entities. There is too much money in this problem for businesses to seriously consider any solution. Teacher salaries and other needed service people should be adjusted for local economic conditions. Surely the wealth that is being created can easily afford it. Places like Aspen CO and other billionaire magnets can afford it and if not they should sell the 3rd home and squeeze their life into a two home lifestyle. Lets see which community will be the first to advocate a $250,000 salary for teachers and people in the public service sector.
7
The article speaks to present day people being prices off the land.
The same problem was addressed by the political economist Henry George who analyzed the problem, found its cause, and devised a solution.
George believed that the increase in the market value of a parcel of land results from proximity to increasing number of people and amounts of economic activity. He advocated a land tax to siphon of the increase in the land value and put the funds to use to fund the government.
In 1886 George he ran as a candidate for mayor of New York City in which post he hoped to implement his plan. Unfortunately he lost to the corrupt Tammany Hall candidate. However, he received more votes than Theodore Roosevelt, the future president, who came in third.
It is not too late. We can still enact George's program and thereby provide for public needs while lowering or eliminating taxation on non-land owners.
2
I have been to Reno about 5 times. It's a fun place but it is bone dry. Where is the water to support this growth coming from? I doubt they will be allowed to drain Lake Tahoe!
17
It comes from Lake Tahoe. (I have lived in Reno for the past 35 years BTW.)
12
I think it actually comes from snow in the mountains--perhaps some of that flows into Tahoe, but it is our annual snowpack that determines whether we have water every year.
4
Good thought. I have often thought of present day South Africa with their water shortages. Once all the ground water is gone, Lake Tahoe is the only source of water. A very sobering future may be in store for Western Nevada.
7
I was raised in California and left 8 years ago, with no regrets. Love the weather and the geography, hate the cost of living and the politics.
18
I live in California. Love the weather and geography, hate the cost of living and love the politics.
12
When a friend married a man from Houston and moved there, I visited after she had been there for a while. She still couldn't figure out all the overpasses, detours etc. We got lost quite a bit. However; Houston was a lot of fun. The people I met were so hospitable; good-bye was always Y'all come back. As a San Franciscan, it was novel to hear that; we had reached the point where we weren't sure if we wanted all the transplants. Of course, San Franciscans have always had a sort of open port hospitality, and an insular neighborhood culture. My grandmother's people arrived from Ireland and Boston in 1852; she was SF to the core with hat, gloves and a fur coat. I adored her.
5
I've lived in the Bay Area for 27 years. I love the weather and geography, increasingly hate the cost of living, and detest the preening self-righteousness that passes for politics.
16
Sounds to me like Reno is experiencing a boom that they encouraged and are welcoming with open arms.
7
Lance Gilman is welcoming it with open arms--as he sells off land to Tesla and other corporations and makes a tidy profit (no doubt). Renoites are not so thrilled. For Mr. Quon from San Jose, $400,000 is 1/3 of what his California home was worth; for many Reno residents trying to buy a first home, $400,000 is mostly unaffordable. But at this juncture, a $300,000 home in Reno is typically under 1500 square feet, in a sketchy part of town, and in bad shape. A $200,000 home is probably pretty awful, and/or way out of town in some of the cookie-cutter tract developments springing up. So the "boom" is not being felt by most in Reno--this article really underlines just how abstract such vocabulary is to those "on the ground." (I know, my profile says California, but I grew up in Reno and moved back here several years ago.)
16
The same problems are happening in California itself. There are just too many people moving here from out-of-state. It's causing a huge housing crunch that builders and public policy can't keep up with. And it's not just white-collar college grads or creative folks who want to work in Hollywood. Homeless people come from all over the country to live here too. If you were to visit the Union Rescue Mission in downtown LA, you would invariably meet newly-arrived people/families from across the country, any time of the year.
30
Can we stop with the "overpopulation" and "immigration" nonsense that are in many of these comments. US has the some of the lowest population densities anywhere in the world. US takes in some of the lowest immigration (as a % of population) compared to other developed nations. Vast swaths of land from California desert to Utah to Colorado to the East Coast are empty. Population densities in certain regions is due to the clustering effect of industries, where industries try to co-locate to try to attract local talent, vendors, investors, suppliers etc. If you don't want density, don't invite industries
42
"Vast swaths of land from California desert to Utah to Colorado ..."
-------
With no water to sustain any population.
29
Those lands in Utah are worthless. Ask the Donner Party.
5
Hey dip. Places at crowded because that's where people want/need to live. It's why mountain tops and most deserts are largely empty. You obviously know nothing about what it takes to support people and their lives. The u.s. year in and out takes in more refugees and immigrants than the rest of the world combined. If you want to move to an empty part of the country that cannot support you to make room in the crowded liveable parts feel free to do so, but no one else will and that's why the u.s. is more crowded every day and will continue to be so until we address OVER POPULATION.
13
This represents the failure of the county planning commission to limit growth through adequate zoning: regulating the size of residential lots (nothing under a 1/4 acre) and making developers pay significant impact fees that fund adjacent state-of-the-art highways, and schools with well paid teachers and up-to-date facilities.
Anything less signifies that greed and the developers have gained control of local government. California’s former pattern of reckless growth is being repeated throughout much of the mountain west.
14
This article doesn't address why California's housing problem is so bad. State, county, & municipal legislators have made it impossible for new housing to be built.This is a Democratic controlled state from top to bottom. Affordable housing has always been one of the cornerstones of our party. This state should be a showcase on how well we can execute this policy. Instead, it's yet another example of our complete intellectually bankruptcy. It's symptomatic of a much bigger problem. The growing divide between some Democrats who want to practice what they preach & fanatical progressives who want to strangle everything. Environmentalists will go to the barricades to stop any housing projects from being built here. Mind you we are talking about affordable housing for working class families. Thanks to their efforts the gateway to middle-class security, has been pushed beyond their reach. The ease with which environmentalists can stop housing developments is a direct result of the numerous local & state laws that favor environmental concerns over affordable homes. The result: millions of people are without access to high-quality low cost homes. Do we really need people in the party who are subverting core American values? If we can't fix affordable housing here then we are a joke. All of us have a stake in solving California’s (and soon, the nation’s) housing-affordability crisis. Nevada should be pressuring California to fix the problem that is spilling over into their state.
25
Its bad due to the explosive eruption in the amount of tech jobs in the state. Housing development cannot come close to matching the growth of the tech jobs. The jobs are very high paying too. That on top of historically low interest rates, gives you historically high housing prices. Regional zoning limiting office development would have prevented this from happening.
8
And just like the old timers in Californian, those of us who have lived in Reno forever will retire, sell our homes for twice what we paid for it, and move on to a place that doesn't want us. The circle of life...
36
In the 70's we had bumper stickers in California that said, "Welcome to California Now Go Home" because of the expanding population and housing crunch.
People leaving California after cashing in on the money they made here or to escape the high cost of living has been happening since at least the 80's. I tried to leave in the 90's because of the expense. States throughout the West have been complaining about us moving in for years now. Happens every time the economy get good.
23
Sometimes they're complaining about Californians moving in because they don't want to be challenged on their mediocrity. I have no sympathy for them.
2
"A growing homelessness crisis. Complaints about traffic congestion. Worries that the economy is becoming dominated by a wealthy elite." Sounds like Austin, Texas to me.
9
Sounds like just about everywhere in the US today.
8
CA has a housing shortage due to zoning. Nothing more, nothing less. It isn't due to illegal immigration (which impacts the central valley more than the areas of the state that have a significant housing problem). And it isn't due to taxes (property taxes are not that high, and significantly lower than some red states such as Texas).
If cities in CA allowed more multi-family units to be built, this wouldn't be an issue. Instead, many NIMBYs and local politicians defend the single family home as if it were an endangered animal needing all the protection it can get. Consequently, housing construction in major metro areas is fairly stagnant and prices continue to rise up like crazy. If the housing supply were able to increase, prices might not go down, but they'd at least not rise nearly as much. That would help alleviate the population booms and housing problems that cities like Reno are now experiencing.
28
The charge of "nimbyism" is a rhetorical tactic that often unfairly seeks to make an end run around the rational reasons people who are opposed to over-development and neighborhood destruction have. Residents who have worked and saved for years in order to own a few detached walls on a patch of yard aren't the villains, and they certainly aren't stealing anything from anyone else. In fact, those most loudly clamoring for "density" often sound like people who would resort to eminent domain in a heart beat in order to raze existing single-family neighborhoods.
9
Nonsense. There's not one bit of talk about razing single-family neighborhoods, NONE. This is density that would be planned for under-utilized land: parking lots, underused factory sites and outdated shopping malls. The charge of NIMBYism is correct, because it's coming from people who object to OTHERS using their own property in ways that the market will bear, and using specious environmental concerns when the real concern is about not having a modest apartment building across the street instead of empty space.
6
In real ways it's a distinction without a difference. Even if we stipulate that eminent domain isn't currently at the fore (although I think it's going to happen, sooner or later), imposing mixed use on older, established single-family zones by filling in any available gaps undeniably changes the bargain that existing home owners made. Good grief, their concerns are rational, and dismissing it with the argot "nimbyism" is most certainly a rhetorical manipulation.
10
My bet is many of those moving from California originated elsewhere. Many come here to start their career in Tech, gain skills and then move on to where the cost of living is lower. I have eleven nieces and nephews ranging from their late-twenties to early-forties who were born and raised in California as were their parents. They were all brought up in middle class households —not wealthy by any measure— and all are still here in California. Could they have homes with more square footage in other states? Sure but that isn’t as important to them as being close to family. Those without family in California are much more willing to move to other locales for standard of living issues. Lots of trade offs.
17
As a fifth generation Californian, I can attest to the truth of DAS' statement. It is exceedingly rare to encounter anyone born in the state now. When I was born (1955) the population was 11 million - today, nearly 36 million But then California has been a major destination for migrants since 1849. And who can blame anyone - there's no place like it on earth. Is it worth the current cost of living? Depends on who you ask? Obviously, those settling in Reno see the advantages to being just 13 miles from the California state line. After 40 years in the Bay Area, which has become a quagmire, I will be retiring to the family homestead just 40 miles west of Reno - but in California.
10
It’s easy to understand why people are fleeing California.
11
The US adds 1 MILLION legal immigrants EVERY YEAR. Yes, there will be overcrowding from Nevada to Virginia to Maine.
23
1 million is less than 0.5% of US population. And US has some of the lowest population densities in the world. I know in Trump's world, everything is the immigrants fault. But density in certain regions has nothing to do with immigration
2
Please cite your sources for that statistic. I hadn't heard it before. Thank you!
Wow! That's less than 3% of the total population. That is surely going to put the squeeze on our economy from every direction!!
1
New York Times - thank you for including all points of view. I may need to resubscribe to the Times. Thanks!
3
I live in Las Vegas during the the 2002-2006. This article could have been written in 2005, swapping the word Reno with the words Las Vegas. New construction as far as the eye could see, with a never ending stream of Californians moving to town. Had you asked anyone in LV at the time about the dangers of a bubble, you would have been laughed out of town. Everyone wanted to live in Las Vegas. Housing values never go down. They're not making any new land, you know? Buy now before you're priced out forever!!!! And it all worked great until it didn't. One day it all stopped and it took nearly a decade to recover from the collapse.
History may not be quite repeating itself, but it is sure is rhyming a lot these days. When Housing Bubble 2.0 crashes - and it's not a matter of if but when - there will be umpteen experts wondering how in the world could this have happened. It will be a real mystery indeed......
19
How long until Reno and the rest of Nevada run out of water?
And in the meanwhile, Nevada should enact a state income tax. At least that might send the tax dodgers to Texas instead.
26
Reno is skirting disaster with each year of drought. The Truckee River that flows out of Lake Tahoe and other watersheds is reduced to a trickle east of Reno where is flows weakly into shrinking Pyramid Lake. We've been fortunate with two respectable winter snows lately but there is a reason that the forests disappear once you cross into Nevada. Very little precipitation makes it past the Sierra ridge.
Meanwhile, developers get fabulously wealthy building up family homes in the desert. Families fleeing California bring acres of big box stores and a service industry economy and as the young Nevadan in the article points out, you have the makings of a boom and bust cycle. Wonderful!
15
Actually most of the water flowing down the Truckee in to Nevada is used for agriculture. Yes, watering a desert to grow alfalfa.
"In a normal year, Reno and Sparks diverts and uses only about six percent of the Truckee River’s
total volume and, of that, about half is returned to the River through the sewage treatment plant
for other water users downstream."
https://tmwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Truckee-River-Users-2017.pdf
6
Local reservoirs are so full now, even before the runoff from over 10 feet of fresh snow in the nearby Sierra Nevada. For a second straight year, Lake Lahontan is essentially opening up the valves and pouring water straight out into the desert. No capacity is the bigger problem, water is plentiful.
3
Dear nyts, lefties, open border types, etc. do you STILL not see the connection between the most generous, liberal, near open borders immigration policies in the world and the crowding that is going on in this country?? Sorry, but common sense tells us, that to continue to pack ever more people into a finite space is going to lead to exactly what is happening pretty much everywhere in this country that is anywhere desirable to live. Btw, Idaho is now the fastest growing state in the country. The u.s. is the third most populous country on earth. Most of the people coming here are from rediculously over populated countries. Anybody care to make any obvious connections and see where this is leading us? Please feel free to enlighten the more dense of us (and as usual call us "xenophobic racists") for not seeing how any of the problems we face as a nation (and planet for that matter) are not ALL made worse by this booming, unsustainable, population growth. Continuing to ignore the numbers until we look like China (which is about the same size and latitude as us) will not be something the children of the future will thank us for. It's not PC, but ignoring the number one problem facing us and the planet won't make it go away.
52
Immigration, especially that of the illegal variety vs. the H1-B variety, contributes to California's crowding problem, but not for the reason you think.
What this immigration does is provide a supply of cheap low skill labor that is willing to live in conditions that native Americans would not. That labor is what makes it possible for the wealthy techies to have restaurants, nannies, handymen, etc. If only the wealthy lived in Silicon Valley, it would be a lot more appealing for those techies to be living elsewhere where normal Americans could afford to live and fill those background jobs that make urban life livable.
12
It doesn't matter. More people means more resource use, more crowding, more pollution, more infrastructure stress, more GW emmissions, more social stress and on and on. No one would ever keep putting more and more animals into an existing finite environment the way we are with humans in California and indeed the world and expect things to just work out, yet that's what we're doing. It doesn't matter if they're engineers from India or waiters from Honduras or white South African farmers, in the end it's still just numbers and they don't work.
9
Let me enlighten you then, Al ?
1. US has the lowest immigration as a % of population compared to most developed nations. Canada and Germany takes in a lot more immigrants as a % of population
2. US has some of the lowest population densities of any nation on earth. Vast swaths of land are empty
3. There are more towns and cities in the US that are declining and have no growth that there are dense cities.
4. Density is caused by industry clustering
12
The most worrying about this story is that the problems are not that complex, the city had years to see them coming and act on them, that solutions exist and that they are perfectly actionable.
Problem 1: newcomers compete with older locals on the housing market and are able to outprice them. Limited housing means not everyone can win this competition, so some end up in the streets (and I imagine, in substandard places).
Solution 1: build new housing IN LINE with new demand. Reno is not exactly Manhattan and there is plenty of land that is either empty or underused and could be used to build housing.
Problem 2: newcomers put a strain on public infrastructures and public services.
Solution 2: newcomers bring taxable income, therefore the resource exists to finance new public services. The problem is that we have a fiscal system where the tax base (based on population AND companies) does not reflect the cost structure (mostly based on population, since companies do not have children going to school for example). Because of this disconnect not only are some places unfairly disadvantaged, but there is a strong incentive for municipalities to let housing prices inflate (to collect more property taxes) and make life as difficult as possible for newcomers so they stop coming: preventing the building of housing, reserving new housing to long-term locals, waiting lists for public services, even slowing the development of transport infrastructures can be a winning strategy.
4
Hey Bob, the numbers go against what you're saying. California has 12% of the nations population and 34% of its welfare recipients. California has a built in and growing, non-productive, non-taxpaying, resource consuming underclass that isn't going anywhere. Everything you suggest takes money. As they say, you can't get blood from an avocado.
22
Al, you're still going on about the immigrants. Check some numbers before plotting to evict them all. The percentage of California welfare recipients you claim (which certainly you got from Googling a few conservative websites, yes?) may or may not be right. But one thing the California Budget Office shows every year is that the taxes received from immigrants are substantially more than the state's welfare outlay. Problem is (See UC Davis study) the Fed takes the largest portion of those taxes and distributes them - where? To red states with a much higher welfare costs and far lower taxes.
I think we'll keep the migrants who come here, papers or no papers, who work and contribute to what's good about California.
16
I'm sick of reading articles from baby boomers about how if we stopped building new homes for people that all of the millenials would either disappear into thin air or live in their parents' basements forever. One of the largest mistakes this country made in the 20th century was not investing in our cities and planning for growth. Now that we've joined the rest of the developed world in the belief that cities are dynamic, cost-efficient and culturally rewarding places to live, the older generations want them all for themselves. There are a lot of solutions to this problem but it needs help at the Federal Level. Excluding weather, as a country we should be investing in all of our cities and trying to find ways to make Detroit and Cleveland as desirable as San Francisco and Seattle. We should be doing things like offering incentives for U of Michigan graduates to stay in the Mid-west after graduation or offering subsidized housing for newcomers to move to cities with declining populations. We should take a lesson from our friends in Germany that have no shortage of desirable, affordable, culturally rich and dense cities all over the country for its citizens. The middle of the country is clueless if they think the housing crisis on both the Coasts will never affect them.
127
Remarkable comment for the diagnostic of the problem. Selfishness of people in place who don’t want to make space for the newcomers is what is key here. I also agree that as long as decision is made at a local level (rather than federal level, or even state level or smaller) selfishness and NIMBYism will prevail.
However regarding the solutions I think you are wrong. It would be nice if our economy worked differently and if jobs were more spread across the country; however I am sure that companies deciding to move to places where commercial rents are expensive and where you have to pay your employees more to compensate for high cost of living do it for very good reasons. Pushing them to move out (at the cost of the financial incentives you’re offering) is an uphill battle.
So why do that when it is actually much easier to build housing where the needs currently are? There is actually plenty of land that is underused with low-density housing even in San Francisco or in New York City. There is plenty of economic incentives for developers to build spontaneously there, the problem is mostly political (as you mentioned many people are more concerned about the sun their house is getting than about newcomers living in decent places), because we do not let them build.
1
I agree with you but I think it needs to be a little bit of both. I don't think Silicon Valley is going to pack up shop and move to Detroit or Akron anytime soon. The Coastal cities need to build significantly more. Additionally, I think there needs to be policies to encourage more growth in the cities in the middle of the country and to do them in a sustainable way.
1
Pittsburgh, for example, is already "as desirable" as, say, Seattle. With it's sunnier summers, attractive housing, venerable education, medical, and tech industries, and proximity to New York and relative nearness to Europe, there's much to like. But many people have convinced themselves that snow is a deal breaker. That's their right.
But as for "dynamism" and "cultural rewards," those aren't rights enumerated in the Constitution, and they generally grow out of, not precede, economic growth. They aren't the result of top-down tinkering. Detroit for example is the victim of multi-generational miscalculations and bad bets by its industry leaders, as well as larger trends beyond its control. Cities rise, thrive, and decline. The entire nation was settled by transplants who found limited opportunities at home and were forced to move west. Maybe we are now facing a new process of infilling into rural pockets; who knows? But I do know that current residents of cities have a right to resist the bright ideas of urban planing departments when they tell us that our settled neighborhoods need to be razed or crowded out of existence.
10
I am at a loss to understand how California can have such huge net out-migration and still have housing problems. If there are 100,000 folks per year leaving here, doesn't that mean that there should be maybe 50,000 homes per year vacated and available for use? And unless the laws of supply and demand have been repealed, that increase of available homes should drive prices down. But since the price of housing continues to rise, that means demand continues to outpace supply, res ipsa loquitor. And please don't try to tell me that undocumented migrants are driving up the price of $1,000,000+++ houses. The fact is that, with a year round benign climate, plentiful job and other unlimited amenities, California remains the most attractive place to live. Otherwise our population would be on the wane, which is clearly isn't.
51
Calis popultion has NEVER gone down. It may look stagnant for a short time, but immigration keeps it going up and the over flow just spills out everywhere else. Who can honestly look at what is going on and sanely say, "this can go on forever"?
9
Jobs, people immigrate from other states because California has good paying jobs for people with the required degrees or skills. People with limited to no skills are leaving in droves, they do not own homes.
7
What's the % of CA's homes owned as second homes by those who live outside the state or outside the country compared to that % before the housing shortage developed?
4
Good luck to California trying to control growth and housing costs when its witless politicians are consumed with turning it into a "sanctuary state".
Just yesterday, I read an article about an illegal immigrant in Georgia who is concerned about being deported and is therefore moving herself and her 4 children to another state where "it's warm and it's safe". Guess where she is headed? And there are many, many more of them on their way to California as well.
48
Those issues are unrelated, and we are capable of focusing on more than one issue at a time.
3
As the nyts itself has said, the democrats are counting on immigrants legal and illegal (who they hope to make legal ASAP) to become the democratic voters of the future. They sure aren't doing anything to persuade regular citizens to join them.
17
blah blah blah
Go pick the produce in the Central Valley and tell us all how many aging baby boomers from rust belt states will come do that if the immigrants you revile leave the area.
9
Residents leaving CA is not new. At least 10 years ago, everyone who was a new resident (I met) in VA was from CA. Most were families looking for a small town to raise their kids.
They can sell their houses in CA and buy one here for 1/3-1/2 the price they paid in CA. We've got good schools where I live both public and private.
Migration is a fact of life for humans.
22
The same is true for Tucson and Phoenix.
1
Pssst...Don't tell them about Western Pennsylvania.
1
California, the world's 13th largest economy, is a mecca for immigration both from abroad and within the U.S. It is competing with economies around the world, and the housing pressure on regions like the Bay Area is extreme. Just one subway (BART) stop from downtown San Francisco, in West Oakland, there's not a single high-rise apartment building, but parking lots, empty lots, abandoned industrial lots, low-quality/old low-rise housing, and a handful of 5-story townhouse-style condo complexes. Anywhere else in the world, with this kind of transit access to a job center, would have dozens of 50-story apartment complexes. Heck, I'd bet BART or the Oakland government owns half the land here, so they could make a huge profit developing housing to its maximum market potential there. What holds this back? Misplaced sensitivity to the handful of existing, lower-income residents - a kind of politically-correct NIMBYism, and a naive denial of how massive this housing crisis is. As if those people wouldn't jump at the opportunities all the new service-jobs which could be created with such development.
67
agreed - most of the problems are of our own making, and don't get me started about the dated infra-structure. Oh, but we'll have a high-speed train to LA ...one day. Massive inefficiency in a land of engineers.
6
1. It is the 6th largest, not the 13th.
2. There are a couple high rise apartment buildings in West Oakland. They're public/affordable housing that have been around since at least the 1980s.
3. There are currently development plans for that area:
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/11/30/projects-rising...
4. Zoning allows there to be more building in both that area and around Fruitvale (and the Coliseum), but developers are not so interested in the latter right now.
5. There is a massive building going up across the street from MacArthur BART and an affordable housing complex of 90+ units being built adjacent to Fruitvale BART.
There is plenty of NIMBYism that is causing the housing shortage in the Bay Area, but Oakland has quite a bit of construction going on and is one of the few "bright spots" for housing development here.
12
Where will the water come from for all of those new residents? There isn't enough for the current population.
It makes no sense to build in a region with insufficient water resources.
21
They should be so lucky. There's a reason nuclear testing was performed in Nevada - there's absolutely nothing there.
If not for legalized gambling and prostitution, the state would still be nothing.
Many states would beg to have an injection of people, construction, investment, and jobs like they are enjoying. They need to focus their energy on intelligent growth rather than pouting.
17
Ah yes, "intelligent growth", another PC term that simply means more of the same with a nod towards at least acting like something approaching rational thought is guiding the insanity that is driving the country forward. Give us examples of places where "intelligent growth" has been implemented.
19
NIMBYs exist everywhere, not just in Reno. Having lived through a few boom and bust cycles, residents are wise to ask questions about new developments (which I prefer to think of as “civic engagement” rather than “pouting.”) Reno has actually spent the last two years thoughtfully engaging thousands of residents in a conversation on the future of our city (http://www.reimaginereno.us/) But yes, if Nevada is so horrible to you, we thank you for staying away. We prefer to enjoy our “nothing” without naysayers who spout stereotypes as fact, while we welcome everyone who recognizes the charm of our state and adds value. And unless you are from Austin, Nevada rather than Austin, Texas, you probably know less about this state than you presume.
5
You are joking, right? You do know that Lake Tahoe, one of the great natural beauties of the USA, is a 45 minute drive from Reno.
Wait, wait am I saying? Of course you’re right. Nothing to see here in northern Nevada. Move along folks...
1
My family moved to Reno from the Bay in the early 1990s, when I was young. A great many of the people I went to school with in Reno were also from California. This is not a new phenomenon.
54
This is new? Oregon's urban growth boundary laws were a direct response to creeping "californication" 50 years ago. I remember the bumperstickers and my parents canvassing for comprehensive land use planning, which was promoted by Republican Governor Tom McCall. Put simply, the core problem of California housing is sprawl, still is sprawl, and will continue to be sprawl. Unless neighboring states contain that sprawl, they too will become infected.
40
Yes; I remember the sign at the border said, "Welcome to Oregon, now go home."
5
I'm surprised at all the immigrant bashing going on here. I recently moved to southern Oregon and am watching the housing crisis evolve first-hand here. What I have seen in the new development I live in is that many wealthy Californians, mostly tech employees, are buying second and third homes. They either let them sit empty most of the year and use them as vacation homes or they rent them out at exorbitant rates. In our development of 24 new homes, 2 were bought by investors from Callfornia who rent them out, 4 are used as vacation homes and sit empty most of the time. Meanwhile, high rents and lack of housing are driving the working people further and further out or onto the streets. The real problem is not immigrants, but the income inequality that prevails in the US today.
204
We have seen exactly the same problems in California for many years. In the subdivision where my parents live, fully 25% of the houses have never been occupied full time, and that's since 2003. People are looking for places to park their cash and it's hurting everyone else.
28
The problem is the number of people in the country. If that number is influenced by immigrants, tax policy, or whatever, that isn't "bashing", it's dealing with the facts and the truth. Calling it anything else is nothing but deceit.
14
Population is driven by immigration policy. Increased population need more roads, more schools, and more houses.
I don't think it is immigrant bashing to say, instead of 1 million legal immigrants a year, let's make it 500,000 legal immigrants per year.
15
California is hemorrhaging middle class families as the Socialist policies in California make life unsustainable for many. This is another manifestation of the collapsing California and will not be fixed until the illegals are shipped home, the income tax, property taxes and sales taxes are rolled back, and the multibillion dollar projects stop like the train to/from nowhere. I have to agree with Johnny Carson who said " Clinton said he never inhaled, but Brown has never exhaled".
43
Way off base. The issue hurting California is that housing is so expensive both for renting or buying. Actions are finally being taken to try and ease that crisis.
Your screed against illegals and socialism is the mark of an uninformed ideologue. The policies of states like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Kansas are the disastrous ones. As far as taxes, California has been hurt by PROP 13 starving it of tax revenues from both private homes and businesses. We are losing more tax money by not having an oil extraction tax like other oil producing sties like Texas and Alaska do.
7
"Socialist" policies make life unsustainable for many? I would love to hear your rationale for the current gentrification of San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general. Seems like a lot of money is pouring in from somewhere and driving the middle class out, and that is not the definition of "socialism". "Hypercapitalism" is more like it....
8
This is the most ignorant comment in this comments section. I won't refute every incorrect point, but it's especially ironic that you live in Houston which has property taxes that are double what they are in California. And your state sales tax is only 2 points less than ours. You can't fix stupid; it just moves to Houston.
8
It is called overpopulation. How this escapes our national political conversation is beyond me, and urgently needs to be discussed.
144
US Pop. has grown by a full third since 1985
10
"Overpopulation" the term that must NEVER be mentioned. It has to always, be something else.
14
Alex, you got it - Overpopulation is THE problem.
One reason it escapes the public discourse is because the US population is driven by legal and illegal immigration. God forbid that we might reduce our legal immigration from 1 million to 500,000 per year? That still makes us a nation of immigrants.
15
This is not a new complaint. Around 1990 the term was "Californication" as Californians sold their homes at the peak of the housing market and looked out of state, especially in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and it happened again in the mid-2000s with another housing price peak. Phoenix and Las Vegas, especially Henderson and Summerlin, were popular then. Now it's Reno's and St. George's and Boise's turn. Yes, it's tough on those who like their cities small, but most of the destination cities seem to be quite happy to take Californians' money and accept the transplants.
36
Try 1970. Way older than that. I was barely able to read when I asked my parents what "Californicate" meant.
11
No, we are not happy Californians swarmed Washington State. We used to have a moderate democrat electorate. Sometimes we voted in Republican governors sometimes democrat. We were very practical back then. With so many people swarming up to Washington State we are now outvoted by the left. The funny thing is they fled California and other places because they were fed up with high taxes for and expensive homes. Then they immediately vote for more of the same once they get here.
12
California, like New York, is kept afloat by international migration. The two states are deflating like a balloon due to people fleeing high taxes and costs, but international migration, both legal and international are keeping them positive.
America’s immigration laws are distorted because of California and New York’s declining populations and the need to keep the state’s propped up with as many immigrants as possible. Other states are prosperous with the naturally born populations or with people leaving other states, but California and New York would collapse without unconstrained legal and illegal immigration.
45
The international migration is primarily "Chinese" (from China) investors. (not Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, etc.)
Along the west coast (LA, San Fran, Portland, Seattle), these Chinese investors are buying houses in $1 - $2 mil range, for all cash deals. The source of the wealth of these Chinese investors is primarily due to the corruption in China and the "grants" (supposed to be loans) issued by the Chinese govt to spur their slowing economy to invest in real estate. (There could be another news article on this issue alone).
These Chinese investors then park their money in US real estate and also send their children here to attend colleges and thanks to Obama, in 2014, Chinese now get 5 year visas (previously limited to 1 year visa). These Chinese investors do not contribute an iota to building neighborhoods or adapting or integrating to their US neighborhoods. (It's all about how much wealth they can accumulate for the Chinese).
Even as home building and zoning laws are relaxed to spur new affordable housing development, these new developments will be snapped up yet again by these Chinese investors.
The only solution is to put a hefty ongoing tax surcharge (30%) to real estate property owned by non-residents and use that money to fund education for our communities.
104
The US accepts 1 MILLION legal immigrants EVERY YEAR. That's just legal immigration. People are leaving California because it is TOO CROWDED.
Why? Because California basically has unlimited immigration. Come one, come all. So if you live in another part of the country, YOU need to be concerned about California's laws related to immigration. You can run but you can't hide!
14
The idea that California and New York would deflate if it wasn't for immigrants coming in is one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a while. Property prices are high because so many people want to live here, and there are an excess of high paying jobs. This also pushes out people on the lower pay scales who can't afford it, so they decide to move elsewhere. If these factors didn't exist, housing prices wouldn't be high, so these people wouldn't have a reason to leave. I can assure you that 90% of the people who leave California don't do it because of taxes, otherwise they wouldn't be piling into states like Oregon and Washington.
3
Affordable housing is in short supply just about everywhere. Especially any place desirable. And whatever goes in California as goes eventually in the rest of the nation. Millions of people are at risk of becoming homeless on a daily basis due to a myriad of reasons. There must be greater protections. Plus home sharing or rental websites are killing the rental market everywhere.
We must consider immigration, both illegal and legal, as having an impact.
Where do we keep putting the millions of people who come into our country annually? We're most certainly not building enough new housing anywhere.
Another huge issue is water. Not an endless resource.
71
It’s what you get with capitalism. Rent and you lose money then more money and eventually lose it all together.
2
Four hour drive? More like 6-7 hours from Mtn. View.
41
I commuted many weekends to my childhood home in Reno from the University of San Francisco in under four hours, door to door.
9
I have done the Reno-SF drive in three hours. Okay, maybe speeding a little, but with no stops it's fast.
2
Everybody wants the money, but not the problems.
48
California would not be so terribly overcrowded, and housing cost would not be nearly as high, if we did not have many millions of illegal immigrants in our sanctuary state.
67
Riiiiiight, all those undocumented aliens working in the agriculture industry in the Central Valley are taking up all the housing where you live. The issue is a lack of construction of both housing and rental properties.
91
Evidently the "illegal" immigrants can afford the high prices better than some natives can. Maybe that's because the intrepid immigrants are outworking them and out-earning them.
11
Yes all those illegal immigrants buying million dollar townhomes in San Fran and then working at Google! You really have it all figured out!
12
California has been driving its middle class out of state for decades now....Taxes, land use restrictions and permitting fees have destroyed the housing market and much, much else. Let us hope the save tired "sustainability" arguments do not prevail in NV and elsewhere. Supply, demand and economic vigor will do much to improve any society--this article notwithstanding.
12
California could pave over every last acre in its entire state and there wouldn't be enough room for the entire world's population. THAT is why we have immigration laws. We come up with a number that we think is best for the country. But when you have UNLIMITED immigration, they you will have crowded roads, crowded schools, crowded everything. So, maybe it is OK to have an immigration policy instead of UNLIMITED immigration ...? Maybe?
24
If you're a strict free-market advocate, then you must also be in favor of free flow of labor, i.e., "open borders". You can't have it both ways.
3
Phoenix has California license plates everywhere. You can be on the roadway and have Cal plates on both sides of you and in front of you. These are not visitors. They have moved and have not obtained their Arizona license plates yet. This is a phenomenon that began maybe two or three years ago. Now we have congested traffic, no parking places, and rising home prices. We are almost California. It is not a good thing.
31
Hey man I grew up in AZ. Trust me, that state is far away from being as progressive as CA.
14
Oh please, I was just in Phoenix. There's such an excess of cheap housing in that city, it makes me wonder when they are going to start to simply give them away. And lack of parking? Are you kidding me. There's more parking spaces than people in that city.
10