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The problem is that when you stop building housing, the old, crappy housing increases in value. The investors then start purchasing these units and, if they wan

The problem is that when you stop building housing, the old, crappy housing increases in value. The investors then start purchasing these units and, if they want, gut them and make the interiors modern. Everyone else is priced out. Look at New York. People are paying thousands a month to live in crappy 19th century tenements that used to be in dangerous and poor neighborhoods. Really, you can't win by not building housing. "Them Chinese are buying our housing! Let's stop building housing! That'll show them! Now instead of owning 0.1% of housing, they'll own 10%!" How does that make sense? The foreign investors aren't going to buy 100% of a city. They can't afford it; the total property value of NYC alone is over $800 billion. As they buy, value goes up. If we let builders respond to this demand, they will keep producing new units to make up for foreign investors. They don't have infinite money, so stop pretending they do.

mtviewdave 11y ago
I wasn't advocating not building. I was just giving an example of how housing markets are more complicated than a simple supply/demand formulation. In these discussions here on housing in San Francisco a pretty strict dichotomy seems to taken hold. A lot of people believe that either you're a fan of The Rent is Too Damn High, and believe that the problem is just zoning and if you just get rid of zoning then all the housing problem in San Francisco will be solved by the power of the free market. Or if you don't believe that, then you're a NIMBY who wants to see zero construction and either doesn't believe in free-market economics, or who wants to restrict construction so as to increase the value of their own property. It's a tiresome bit of groupthink not worthy of the intelligence of the folks here. Just because I think the situation is more complicated than a simple supply/demand equation doesn't mean I'm anti-growth. And for the record, I'm a home owner in Mountain View, and in the last city council election I voted for the pro-housing-construction slate of candidates. I also think The Rent Is Too Damn High is a rather stupid book.

mtviewdave 11y ago

I wasn't advocating not building. I was just giving an example of how housing markets are more complicated than a simple supply/demand formulation. In these discussions here on housing in San Francisco a pretty strict dichotomy seems to taken hold. A lot of people believe that either you're a fan of The Rent is Too Damn High, and believe that the problem is just zoning and if you just get rid of zoning then all the housing problem in San Francisco will be solved by the power of the free market. Or if you don't believe that, then you're a NIMBY who wants to see zero construction and either doesn't believe in free-market economics, or who wants to restrict construction so as to increase the value of their own property. It's a tiresome bit of groupthink not worthy of the intelligence of the folks here. Just because I think the situation is more complicated than a simple supply/demand equation doesn't mean I'm anti-growth. And for the record, I'm a home owner in Mountain View, and in the last city council election I voted for the pro-housing-construction slate of candidates. I also think The Rent Is Too Damn High is a rather stupid book.