patrick.net

The “new” guy across the street is a nice enough guy and everything, but he just about clear-cut his whole lot. This is a rather forested hillside by the way. He said he moved to this town to “enjoy the good life”, which is great. He loves the “ambience” he says, opening his arms in reference to the surrounding beauty on the hillside, (Then he eliminates almost every tree on his property, thereby gaining a great view of the three-story broadside of his neighbor’s house and roof, and a stunning telephone pole as well. But he “has a better view now”)

Egad! The rest of the neighborhood must hate this guy unless, heaven forbid, they are cut from the same cloth. What was it Prat said? Oh yeah, Tool, complete and utter.

Any law preventing you from cutting down every flipping tree in a heavily forested area is not a NIMBY law --it's an anti-idiot law. And I'm all in favor of that.

Margie

You ROCK for not following the herd and using something not often seen these days...common sense. :)

My home is almost paid off. I’m so happy to have my equity all tied up! I have peace of mind… The economy can go south in October but I can still find a job paying $7.50 hr if needed to pay the bills.

I'm with Jack --that's my definition of "rich".

You know, I really have to be careful how I put this, but I think what are seeing in micro here (young families leaving, more and more priced out) is a direct result of population pressure. Which in California, is caused by immigration.

I have lived here, on and off, my whole life and I can tell you that the quality of life statewide has steadily gone down. More crowding, longer commutes, less natural beauty, more expensive home prices, yadda, yadda, yadda. All obviously caused by a combination of increased population and poor planning. Sure, some of my vision of the past is tainted by the inevitable nostalgia and it is certainly true that the air in Riverside is better than it was when I was a child, but I remember when there were orange groves and swimming pools and kids used to walk around alone or with other kids and everyone was okay with that. Okay, maybe a lot of nostalgia, looking back at that phrase, but I still maintain that population pressure is making our lives more difficult here.

And I am of two minds about this: one mind says that is great that people want to move here and great that we are attracting the best and most ambitious from around the world and great that we can share our bounty with others but the other mind is pissed that Native Californians are being priced out of our own damn state and pissed that even with relatively high taxes we cannot seem to maintain our infrastructure and schools adequately and pissed that the crowding and congestion is making what used to be a laid back California into a permanently grumpy one. And it is not even our own fault: native birth rates here are barely adequate to even replace the population, much less cause this massive population boom that is now into its sixth decade. Why should we have to pay for other nations unwillingness to deal with their population problem?

I am sure there must have been an entry dedicated to immigration but I could not find one. Perhaps that is an idea worth of discussion.

I can certainly understand the Marin NIMBY model of saying "the castle is full" and pulling up the drawbridge to further development, but that inevitably leads to extremely expensive housing as supply and demand have to meet up somehow. And the Southern California model of paving everything in sight leads to traffic jam hell. So what is the solution? Closing the borders? Probably not, not at least without some sort of modification to the existing immigration laws, so that we can attract the labor we need. Actually, that is what I would prefer to see: greater enforcement of the existing immigration laws plus an expanded way to both make legal the people already here and legalize the ones that we allow to come in the future. This current exploitation of the millions of illegal workers here is just not right, as well as screwy economically.

Would this help solve Californias overpopulation problem? Absolutely. Which would lead to cheaper housing as well as innumerable other benefits.