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This same pattern plays out in most places that're desirable to live. People want to move somewhere, demand for housing goes up, and prices rise because those p

This same pattern plays out in most places that're desirable to live. People want to move somewhere, demand for housing goes up, and prices rise because those people compete against each other for the existing housing stock. Ordinarily, this would be addressed by new construction: build enough housing units to meet the demand, and prices will be reasonable. But construction is controlled by local governments through zoning law, and local governments are controlled by incumbent landlords who want the prices to skyrocket to unreasonable levels. So young people end up paying huge amounts of money to established landlords, while landlords distort the narrative to blame the problem on anything and everything except the lack of construction.

zdkl 11y ago
You could do similarly vague postulations about the effect of foreign buy-in of your local real-estate, or the relation between attractiveness/cost per unit of places where replacing existing buildings with denser housing is not desirable for many reasons (historical city centers spring to mind). (EDIT: Speaking as someone who appreciates european-style preserved city centers, even though they do come with their own bag of problems)
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  High prices mean there is a shortage. The solution to shortages is to create more, until there is no longer a shortage. Anything else is lame excuses and class warfare, and it has gotten old.
  - iheartmemcache 11y ago
    It's a chicken-egg problem. Desirable places tend have an ecosystem that offers a high quality of life (as agreed upon by the demand-side of the market at the time). Local coffee-shops, a decent arts and music scene, acceptable public transportation and proximity to work (sociologists have conducted studies which find duration of commute is a direct function of quality of life) are pre-existing features which exist within the those high-demand/low-supply areas. You can gentrify and build out (i.e. Williamsburg, Oakland) gradually building those ecosystems out with it, but in high-demand places like NYC and SF which have a fixed area of land, you can only build up a certain amount in certain regions, and only build out a certain radial length before your commute becomes 90 minutes. Zoning laws controlled (as you mentioned) by incumbent lessors/landlords and NIMBY's who currently own property (and don't want a new co-op or apt complex housing to go up because they'll lose their scenic view) contribute to this problem. "Create more" in those spatially limited/legally restricted regions is difficult. You can region shift and build out there (ie. there are tons of homes available in Kansas one could buy for 3 months of an average SV engineer's salary) but it lacks the ecosystem that, say, SF offers. In places like greater London it's an even bigger problem due to even higher density (you can't really build out into the English Channel).

zdkl 11y ago

You could do similarly vague postulations about the effect of foreign buy-in of your local real-estate, or the relation between attractiveness/cost per unit of places where replacing existing buildings with denser housing is not desirable for many reasons (historical city centers spring to mind). (EDIT: Speaking as someone who appreciates european-style preserved city centers, even though they do come with their own bag of problems)

jimrandomh 11y ago
High prices mean there is a shortage. The solution to shortages is to create more, until there is no longer a shortage. Anything else is lame excuses and class warfare, and it has gotten old.
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  It's a chicken-egg problem. Desirable places tend have an ecosystem that offers a high quality of life (as agreed upon by the demand-side of the market at the time). Local coffee-shops, a decent arts and music scene, acceptable public transportation and proximity to work (sociologists have conducted studies which find duration of commute is a direct function of quality of life) are pre-existing features which exist within the those high-demand/low-supply areas. You can gentrify and build out (i.e. Williamsburg, Oakland) gradually building those ecosystems out with it, but in high-demand places like NYC and SF which have a fixed area of land, you can only build up a certain amount in certain regions, and only build out a certain radial length before your commute becomes 90 minutes. Zoning laws controlled (as you mentioned) by incumbent lessors/landlords and NIMBY's who currently own property (and don't want a new co-op or apt complex housing to go up because they'll lose their scenic view) contribute to this problem. "Create more" in those spatially limited/legally restricted regions is difficult. You can region shift and build out there (ie. there are tons of homes available in Kansas one could buy for 3 months of an average SV engineer's salary) but it lacks the ecosystem that, say, SF offers. In places like greater London it's an even bigger problem due to even higher density (you can't really build out into the English Channel).