Episode 10: Bike Rides around Golden (and a story about housing)
I've noticed lots of email "newsletter" things I see start with an apology for why it's been so long since they've last emailed. The idea is that there's a cadence they're supposed to follow, and to stay top-of-mind for "their audience". This infects regular email communication too. Stop apologizing for the delayed response, and I won't apologize for the regularity/lack-there-of of my written communication.
You might have gotten on this list via josh.works, intermediateruby.com, or some other resources. As always, smash unsubscribe if you want off:
Hi! It's been a while! I've got a ton I wish I could catch you up on. Here's the highlights:
- I've started a GitHub sponsors account, on a whim and an experiment, and it's suspiciously close to providing "full-time-software-developer income". Currently providing almost $1,400/mo which is really quite exciting, and I've been more excited by this amount than pretty much any salary I've ever been paid. There's a ton of interesting things in the works for further growth of that figure.
- I have been biking all around Golden, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends! I log almost all of my rides in Strava, often with pictures. Here's my profile - follow me there for random photos of urban mobility issues. I could do "guided tours/picture essays".
- I stumbled into some cool software dev consulting work. I'm helping 3 companies get their tests to run faster. So far, seeing 80% and 50% improvement on test run times. (5 min => 1:10, 20 min => 11:00)
- I spent a month in the Red River Gorge, climbing. I managed to get most of the way back into climbing shape and a training routine. It was deeply valuable time for my wife and I.
- My wife is pregnant! We're having a baby in September!
This (and lots more) has all been tons of fun, and has consumed lots of time/energy. There's a lot more I wish I could share, but... time is short.
I've been doing a lot of "bike tours" with friends. I'd like to take you on a bike tour of Golden!
By you taking a bike tour of Golden with me, you'll be slowly helping undo the effects of structural racism, even if you think you don't care about structural racism at all. And you'll have a blast doing it.
And if you can't yet take a bike tour with me, how about you pre-order a bike tour?
I'd like you to buy a bike tour in advance, and then next time you come through Colorado, I'll take you on a bike tour. (This offer is good for decades.)
Here's where you can "buy" a bike tour, for $15 or $30, currently. (Prices might go up, or down, as time goes on.)
Here's the ride (including some pictures) of my last bike tour.
Once you buy and join for the bike tour, you might find it to be the best $15/$30 you've spent in the last few months.
"Why are you charging for a bike tour Josh?"
Because people value that which they pay for, and I want you to derive as much value from this tour as possible. Also, because I'm going to try my darnedst to buy you a beer or a coffee while we peddle about, even if you don't think I am, and you'll be more likely to let me if you've paid me for the experience.
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I bike around Golden, a lot. Strava says I rode ~35 miles in Golden last week. (Here's all the rides I tracked)
Yes, to you athletes, 35 miles isn't anything, but I don't bike seriously, I bike for errands, or to visit the creek, go to the library, read a book while watching the sun go down, etc.
Golden has some problems. The "price of housing" is through the roof, which really means "the price of land" is through the roof, or at least "the price of the minimum obtainable habitable space" is through the roof.
Here's an example. The house across from mine is for sale, for $1.2 million dollars. (Zillow)
Go read the listing, especially the description. Notice the first word listed:
Zoned R-2
When you read this listing, is it really obvious to you what's going to happen, or what the current status of the property is?
I'll explain, because you might not see it the same I way I do. I'm sitting in my garage, I can look at the house for sale in that listing across the street, and I saw two kids playing in the front yard a few minutes ago.
The house has been rented for many years by some tenants that some people would label "poor" or "low class". I'm not sure of the precise numbers, but there's at least 5 adults and 3 kids living there.
All of them are delightful. One of them bought me a bottle of mulled wine for Christmas, and is a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Another one helped me shovel out my driveway after a huge snowfall, when my back was messed up. I've helped some of them shovel, we wander across the street and chat regularly, we know each other's names, etc.
One of them has amazing taste in music, and I enjoy listening to it when he has it playing while working on his car. They've lived here for at least a decade.
One of them works at an Amazon facility, packing boxes. Minimum wage. One might be a pizza delivery person.
They are poor. Their living situation is obviously unstable.
Some of you reading this are intimately familiar with how it feels to be poor, for a short time or many years.
Some of you are like me, and have never even come close to being truly poor. I'd encourage all of you to read On The Experience of Being Poor-ish, For People Who Aren't
... I'll wait why you read the above article...
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I met my "poor" neighbors before even moving in - when Kristi saw this house on Zillow, I rode my bike past a few times, on the street in front, and the alley behind (and many adjacent streets and allys, to get a feel for the neighborhood.)
I met them, chatted with them for a few minutes. Even then, I thought "I wonder how long before 'rising housing prices' will cause them to get thrown out of their house?"
And the answer was: about 8 months
Is it really obvious to you that if their property sells, the buyer is going to vacate them from the property as quickly as possible and replace it with an extremely expensive duplex or triplex?
I called the listing agent, and he specifically mentioned the property across the street, two doors down from mine, as "the ideal outcome" for land redevelopment here. Here's a listing for one of those four units.
The land is being sold at an effective square-footage price of $130/sqft.
This price is very interesting to me, for a few different reasons. I happen to think it's not wildly unfair - I think the land could be worth that, if we had less explicitely racist laws on the books.
Anyway...
Kingsman Construction "redeveloped" the fancy new housing across the street. They took a $250k investment from four investors, bought two lots, built two duplexes, and sold them for a combined $1,600,000. The investors doubled their money in a few months, and Kingsman made their standard 10% general contracting fee (it actually surprised me they made so little. I wanted to chat with them about making way more money by building more beautiful, affordable units, but the one executive I chatted with wasn't interested.)
Here's the math a developer is doing right now on if they can buy this whole lot:
This general phenomena I'm describing is happening right now all over Golden. Cheap housing is being replaced by insanely expensive "luxury" housing. The displaced people are going to be written off, forgotten about, dropped from the record.
It's happening, all of this is happening, because of some terrible laws most of you are committed to abiding by. A surprisingly small number of people could fix this problem.
I think I could convince you of what the fix is, if you rode around Golden with me. What do you say?
That's it for today. I wanted to tell the story of this property across the street. It's hard to summarize into a small/easily-intelligible story.
-Josh
PS: The reason "Zoned R-2" is interesting is because R-2 zoning was originally intended to be where the Colored people were allowed to live. R-1 was for White people. I am not kidding, and if you're about to dismiss what I said as 'hyperbolic', please click this link, then read the whole document: https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan#race-zoning
Our modern system of zoning was created by white racists, with racist intent and racist outcomes. This thing happening in my neighborhood, and the general crisis of "unaffordable housing" in nearly every metro area? This is a legacy of racist laws which hurt marginalized people, and are so damaging they're now hurting non-marginalized people too!
PPS: Folks have been asking, "How can I help?", more or less. Even as at the same time they throw their hands up, saying "looks like nothing can be done, it's too big of a problem."
The good news is two-fold:
- There are things you can do that help a lot, if you'd like, even if you don't think this is a solvable problem or care that much about what this entire email is about.
- Any meaningful next step starts with a bike ride around Golden together. I'd so much rather talk about this while peddling about.
- Actual meaningful solutions are ludicrously attainable. A smidge difficult, but people routinely do more difficult things all the time.