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Because the actual building they live in gets demolished to build another building. Or because the new building next door is filled with 'luxury' $5000/mo rents

by bagels 10y ago

Because the actual building they live in gets demolished to build another building. Or because the new building next door is filled with 'luxury' $5000/mo rents, which might drive the rent up in their building.

gorkemyurt 10y ago
If someone is living in the mission there are only 3 options; 1) They own their house 2) They are renting but their unit is rent controlled 3) They are rich or have high paying jobs (and building more actually helps them) "Because the actual building they live in gets demolished to build another building" This happens very rarely, people will literally revolt before a rent controlled unit gets demolished in the mission So someone opposing more building in the mission falls into the first two categories and they are extremely selfish
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  This happens all the time (#2), it's literally happening to me right now. Look at the map of Ellis and Owner Move-In evictions in SF. Thousands of people are being displaced.
  - gorkemyurt 10y ago
    154 Ellis Act evictions last year. I know its sucks but I wouldn't say it happens all the time http://sfist.com/2016/03/29/report_evictions_continue_to_increa.php http://sfist.com/2016/03/29/report_evictions_continue_to_inc...
    - mikeyouse 10y ago
      And combined with owner-move in evictions you get to 2 evictions every day. Which some would qualify as 'all the time'.
BurningFrog 10y ago
> because the new building next door is filled with 'luxury' $5000/mo rents, which might drive the rent up in their building. This is such a stupid myth. On par with "vaccinations cause autism" or Bigfoot. Science has studied how price depends on supply and demand very thoroughly. Increased supply always leads to lower prices.
- timr 10y ago
  "Increased supply always leads to lower prices" Not in real estate economics. Housing isn't a commodity market. There are firm price tiers, different methods of construction, different fixed costs for those methods, and drastically different markets for individual neighborhoods. Real estate isn't fungible and it's isn't particularly liquid. Basically none of the requirements of Econ-101-style supply and demand are met in the world of real estate. Building skyscrapers is nothing like creating an assembly line for widgets. So yes, "construction" has some small aggregate effect on the price of a rental in the city, but that effect is meaningless to you if your affordable building was knocked down to make room for a luxury skyscraper. Moreover, if you do happen to overbuild housing in a market, the price sags. Developers then almost immediately stop building, because the costs of new construction don't decline with scale. Thus, price controls enabled by construction happen on the order of decades, not years. Neighborhoods gentrify much more quickly. In practice, a low-density neighborhood gentrifies, land values go up, and developers start to replace cheaper, low-density construction with expensive, high-density construction that can only be justified because of the higher land values. Existing residents are displaced. Ideally, those residents then move to a cheaper neighborhood. If no such neighborhood exists (because, say, you're in a small land-locked city with more millionaires per capita than anywhere on earth, and no remaining "undesirable" land), then those residents are, indeed, completely displaced. The fact that luxury apartments are theoretically $30 a month cheaper in some other neighborhood is thin gruel.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    > Not in real estate economics. Increased supply leading to higher prices would be something that Economist would crawl over each other to study, if true. So where are these studies? Who are the professional economists who support this view?

by bagels 10y ago

gorkemyurt 10y ago

If someone is living in the mission there are only 3 options; 1) They own their house 2) They are renting but their unit is rent controlled 3) They are rich or have high paying jobs (and building more actually helps them) "Because the actual building they live in gets demolished to build another building" This happens very rarely, people will literally revolt before a rent controlled unit gets demolished in the mission So someone opposing more building in the mission falls into the first two categories and they are extremely selfish

mikeyouse 10y ago
This happens all the time (#2), it's literally happening to me right now. Look at the map of Ellis and Owner Move-In evictions in SF. Thousands of people are being displaced.
- gorkemyurt 10y ago
  154 Ellis Act evictions last year. I know its sucks but I wouldn't say it happens all the time http://sfist.com/2016/03/29/report_evictions_continue_to_increa.php http://sfist.com/2016/03/29/report_evictions_continue_to_inc...
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    And combined with owner-move in evictions you get to 2 evictions every day. Which some would qualify as 'all the time'.

BurningFrog 10y ago

> because the new building next door is filled with 'luxury' $5000/mo rents, which might drive the rent up in their building. This is such a stupid myth. On par with "vaccinations cause autism" or Bigfoot. Science has studied how price depends on supply and demand very thoroughly. Increased supply always leads to lower prices.

timr 10y ago
"Increased supply always leads to lower prices" Not in real estate economics. Housing isn't a commodity market. There are firm price tiers, different methods of construction, different fixed costs for those methods, and drastically different markets for individual neighborhoods. Real estate isn't fungible and it's isn't particularly liquid. Basically none of the requirements of Econ-101-style supply and demand are met in the world of real estate. Building skyscrapers is nothing like creating an assembly line for widgets. So yes, "construction" has some small aggregate effect on the price of a rental in the city, but that effect is meaningless to you if your affordable building was knocked down to make room for a luxury skyscraper. Moreover, if you do happen to overbuild housing in a market, the price sags. Developers then almost immediately stop building, because the costs of new construction don't decline with scale. Thus, price controls enabled by construction happen on the order of decades, not years. Neighborhoods gentrify much more quickly. In practice, a low-density neighborhood gentrifies, land values go up, and developers start to replace cheaper, low-density construction with expensive, high-density construction that can only be justified because of the higher land values. Existing residents are displaced. Ideally, those residents then move to a cheaper neighborhood. If no such neighborhood exists (because, say, you're in a small land-locked city with more millionaires per capita than anywhere on earth, and no remaining "undesirable" land), then those residents are, indeed, completely displaced. The fact that luxury apartments are theoretically $30 a month cheaper in some other neighborhood is thin gruel.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  > Not in real estate economics. Increased supply leading to higher prices would be something that Economist would crawl over each other to study, if true. So where are these studies? Who are the professional economists who support this view?