patrick.net

Completely off topic, but related to this housing boycott story on KRON. I haven't watched the local news in a while - does anyone else think that Gary Radnich has gone off the deep end into some nonsensical ranting version of his former self? Entertaining, but odd.

Dream Home:

http://www.boycotthousing.com/houseoftheday.aspx

Oh yeah!

New thread: "Wells Fargo considers entering the option-ARM business"

I’d like a 2000sqft house on an acre. Pool/spa all for 200k.

Construction alone costs more than 200K for a 2000sqft house in CA.

Jimbo Says:
Car usage is subsidized much more than transit in this country Robert.

This is pure idiot talk. I don’t neven have an answer for insane people that think these things.

What percentage of the land in San Francisco is set aside for automobiles? 25% 50% 75% How much is that land worth? At a pretty conservative value of $5M/acre at 25% of the total land set aside for roads and parking, that comes out to a whopping $44B worth of land set aside mostly for parking. At a discount rate of 5%, that is a susidy of $2B/yr just in San Francisco alone.

Here is a good analysis of some of the other costs to society of car ownership that everyone has to pay, not just care owners:

http://afo.sandelman.ca/cc3.html

"This subsidy has been estimated to amount to
about $2,750 per vehicle per year in direct quantifiable
public subsidy (CRD Task Group on Atmospheric Change,
Victoria, B.C., 1992), not counting long term effects and
indirect costs like environmental and social costs."

The cost today would have to be at least double that. And we aren't even starting to talk about some of the true cost of automobiles, which is the amazing number of people injured and killed on the roads every year. That alone is estimated to cost America $200B/yr.

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/EconomicBurden/pages/WhatDoTCCost.html

Transit is much, much cheaper. For example, MUNI's budget last year was $380M. 1/2M people use Muni every day. That comes out to $760 per person per year, a laughably small amount compared to just the subsidized cost of automobile usage.

Then the owners spend an average of about $5000/yr on their car to boot. So the total cost, direct and indirect to transport someone by autmobile, including the indirect cost of all the land set aside and all the injuries caused by car crashes, is well over $10,000 per person per year.

No transit system in the country comes anywhere near costing that and I challange you to demonstrate otherwise.

The reason you have no answer for "insane people" like me is because there is no answer. Transit is so obviously, overwhelmingly cheaper, that your only hope to "win" an argument on the topic is to not argue at all.

And since this is the housing bubble blog afterall, I will tie into the overall cost of housing.

The main reason housing is so expensive in the Bay Area is because land is scarce. Land is scarce for many reasons, but the primary one is that so much it has been tied up in the inefficient and archiac method of transportation we use, namely automobiles. How much cheaper would housing be in the Bay Area if we did not dedicate so much land to parking, roads, freeways and the like dedicated to automobile users?

Worse yet, our slavish devotion to the automobile causes our cities to be spread out more than they need to be, aggravating the effect. A spread out city not only requires more land dedicated to the automobile, the effect feeds on itself because spread out cities lead to people taking longer trips, which lead to more congestion, which leads to more freeway building, which leads to being spread out more.

Hey, if you hate planning and you love long trips by automobile, just move to one of the cities that have decided to go that path like Houston or Atlanta and enjoy your time in traffic.

Of course, deep in my heart I really want other people to join the boycott - when it is time to buy… less competition.

this would become like game theory... all the 'boycotters' would be sneaking out to buy property, and it would be game on again... not to mention the specuvestors harvesting the windfall of slightly cheaper properties and 'keeping the dream alive'... aka the tragedy of the commons... whatever... where's randy?

this would become like game theory…

Exactly. Either that or I am evil. :twisted: