4 ms·

The reason why there are homeless in SF and other US cities is because of rent-seeking: a market failure which creates artificial scarcity in housing through zo

The reason why there are homeless in SF and other US cities is because of rent-seeking: a market failure which creates artificial scarcity in housing through zoning density restrictions, overuse of historic landmark status, and overregulation. It is emotionally convenient (esp. for main-stream media) to blame President Trump for everything, but it is typically local city councils, usually Democratic and not Republican, that is responsible for the rent-seeking. The results are housing scarcity, the high costs of housing, renters paying much more they would in an efficient market, and landlords getting far more money than they would get in an efficient market. Japan fixed this problem by having federal laws that overrode local laws that supported rent-seeking to disallow zoning density restrictions. The results: in 2014, 140,000 housing units built in Tokyo vs 20,000 in NYC and less than 90,000 in all of California. The lesson: don't blame President Trump. Seek out and destroy rent-seeking market inefficiencies. Let the market do its thing and you'll see far more affordable housing. Japan has already demonstrated this fact.

maxerickson 9y ago
I'm curious why you've framed your comment so. The link barely mentions Trump (just in the context of the Republican tax plan impacting government antipoverty spending) and is not written by a journalist, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston .
- jsemrau 9y ago
  What would a president who is barely in office for a year have to do with decades of poverty development and increases in income inequality ?
  - davidf18 9y ago
    The Trump tax cuts are reducing transfer payments from wealthy to the poor. As mentioned, poverty in America has been around for a long time. Obama was in office for 8 years, yet no report or article. This article is (effectively) about reducing the transfer payments to the poor. The structural problems in the economy are caused by market failures such as rent-seeking and rent-seeking applied to property is a huge issue. My point is that there are enormous transfer payments to the wealthy from poor, working class, middle- and upper-middle class - a regressive tax. Regressive taxes such as the rent-seeking should be reversed before worrying about the transfer payments from wealthy to poor.
watwut 9y ago
The article explicitly thanks Trump administration for cooperation. The rest of article has no mention of Trump. Problems described in article sound to be long term and unlikely to be related to Trump. Edit: there is second mention of Trump - in relation to plan of tax cuts that make it worst. Still, it hardly counts and blaming the Trump for current situation since it is just a plan.
- joshuaheard 9y ago
  "The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by Donald Trump and speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes. It is against this background that my report is presented."
  - watwut 9y ago
    That would be "the plan". Not a cause of current state. They claim that Trumps plan will make it worst. Not that Trump caused current situation.
dizzystar 9y ago
The reason there are homeless is far more complex than high rent. Anyone working a reasonable job can afford to rent a room relatively cheaply, although there are working homeless. Unfortunately, the orgs that help the homeless are focused on self-survival by strictly focusing on the impossible cases. Having a job, being sober, and no mental illness gets no support. A lot of this is via earmarking, but there are so many elements that it's impossible to pinpoint a single reason that encompasses all things.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  > The reason there are homeless is far more complex than high rent. Anyone working a reasonable job can afford to rent a room relatively cheaply, Yeah, this is not true.
- akoncius 9y ago
  I don’t think OP meant literally rent, it’s a term “rent seeking”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
adamnemecek 9y ago
Another problem is the fact that all new housing tends to be semi-luxurious. No developer wants to develop affordable housing.
- armenarmen 9y ago
  Which you’d think would have a downward pressure on non luxury housing
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    It's not that simple.
    - selectodude 9y ago
      It is literally that simple.
      - adamnemecek 9y ago
        It's not a "free" market.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  You would think that there is a market for small houses on small lots that people can actually afford.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    Profit margins are lower.
    - ghthor 9y ago
      It's also riskier, due to how insecure low incomes are to maintain. It's a death spiral.
joe_the_user 9y ago
The reason why there are homeless in SF and other US cities is because of rent-seeking: a market failure which creates artificial scarcity in housing through zoning density restrictions, overuse of historic landmark status, and overregulation. This is an explanation of homelessness in particular in the midst of plenty. The report was not simply a report on homelessness but on poverty. Poverty in the US has increased massively in the last twenty or thirty years. With less mass homelessness, that poverty would be harder to see but certainly be present - for examples, you could actually read the OP.
Joeri 9y ago
I think solving the poverty crisis in the U.S. requires a few insights to become broadly accepted: - There are many causes of this systemic poverty and no specific regulation or deregulation can fix it. Only broad systemic change can lead to genuine improvement. - The causes and fixes of the poverty crisis are not partisan. Placing either blame or solution with one political party is uninformed and counterproductive. - America must fix its income inequality to fix its poverty. Tax hikes for the rich are unavoidable. There are no free lunches or quick fixes. Everything has been tried before somewhere in the world and the only proven anti-poverty strategy is wealth redistribution. - Things can always get worse, passively waiting until they do is actively contributing to the problem.
- davidf18 9y ago
  These kinds of articles, especially in the context of the Republican tax changes are veiled attacks on Trump. The taxes have much to do with transfer payments from wealthy to poor and reversing those transfer payments. Rent-seeking -- the use of politics to create politically induced scarcity (in this particular case, housing) causes higher prices which in effect is a reverse regressive tax on the poorer populations to the very wealthy. The proper fix is to remove the market failure of rent-seeking and let the markets do their work.
- curun1r 9y ago
  I'm curious how you can reconcile your second and third bullet points. If tax hikes on the rich are an unavoidable part of the solution, one party just rammed through a huge tax cut for the rich and the other party did everything they could to stop it. It can be argued that the Democrats don't really care about fixing income inequality and that they like to use it as a talking point more so than they like to actually make progress, but to pretend that the Republicans are anything less than a roadblock to fixing this issue seems disingenuous if you believe what you said in the third bullet point.

maxerickson 9y ago

I'm curious why you've framed your comment so. The link barely mentions Trump (just in the context of the Republican tax plan impacting government antipoverty spending) and is not written by a journalist, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston .

jsemrau 9y ago
What would a president who is barely in office for a year have to do with decades of poverty development and increases in income inequality ?
- davidf18 9y ago
  The Trump tax cuts are reducing transfer payments from wealthy to the poor. As mentioned, poverty in America has been around for a long time. Obama was in office for 8 years, yet no report or article. This article is (effectively) about reducing the transfer payments to the poor. The structural problems in the economy are caused by market failures such as rent-seeking and rent-seeking applied to property is a huge issue. My point is that there are enormous transfer payments to the wealthy from poor, working class, middle- and upper-middle class - a regressive tax. Regressive taxes such as the rent-seeking should be reversed before worrying about the transfer payments from wealthy to poor.

watwut 9y ago

The article explicitly thanks Trump administration for cooperation. The rest of article has no mention of Trump. Problems described in article sound to be long term and unlikely to be related to Trump. Edit: there is second mention of Trump - in relation to plan of tax cuts that make it worst. Still, it hardly counts and blaming the Trump for current situation since it is just a plan.

joshuaheard 9y ago
"The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by Donald Trump and speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes. It is against this background that my report is presented."
- watwut 9y ago
  That would be "the plan". Not a cause of current state. They claim that Trumps plan will make it worst. Not that Trump caused current situation.

dizzystar 9y ago

The reason there are homeless is far more complex than high rent. Anyone working a reasonable job can afford to rent a room relatively cheaply, although there are working homeless. Unfortunately, the orgs that help the homeless are focused on self-survival by strictly focusing on the impossible cases. Having a job, being sober, and no mental illness gets no support. A lot of this is via earmarking, but there are so many elements that it's impossible to pinpoint a single reason that encompasses all things.

adamnemecek 9y ago
> The reason there are homeless is far more complex than high rent. Anyone working a reasonable job can afford to rent a room relatively cheaply, Yeah, this is not true.
akoncius 9y ago
I don’t think OP meant literally rent, it’s a term “rent seeking”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

adamnemecek 9y ago

Another problem is the fact that all new housing tends to be semi-luxurious. No developer wants to develop affordable housing.

armenarmen 9y ago
Which you’d think would have a downward pressure on non luxury housing
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  It's not that simple.
  - selectodude 9y ago
    It is literally that simple.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      It's not a "free" market.
maxxxxx 9y ago
You would think that there is a market for small houses on small lots that people can actually afford.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  Profit margins are lower.
  - ghthor 9y ago
    It's also riskier, due to how insecure low incomes are to maintain. It's a death spiral.

joe_the_user 9y ago

The reason why there are homeless in SF and other US cities is because of rent-seeking: a market failure which creates artificial scarcity in housing through zoning density restrictions, overuse of historic landmark status, and overregulation. This is an explanation of homelessness in particular in the midst of plenty. The report was not simply a report on homelessness but on poverty. Poverty in the US has increased massively in the last twenty or thirty years. With less mass homelessness, that poverty would be harder to see but certainly be present - for examples, you could actually read the OP.

Joeri 9y ago

I think solving the poverty crisis in the U.S. requires a few insights to become broadly accepted: - There are many causes of this systemic poverty and no specific regulation or deregulation can fix it. Only broad systemic change can lead to genuine improvement. - The causes and fixes of the poverty crisis are not partisan. Placing either blame or solution with one political party is uninformed and counterproductive. - America must fix its income inequality to fix its poverty. Tax hikes for the rich are unavoidable. There are no free lunches or quick fixes. Everything has been tried before somewhere in the world and the only proven anti-poverty strategy is wealth redistribution. - Things can always get worse, passively waiting until they do is actively contributing to the problem.

davidf18 9y ago
These kinds of articles, especially in the context of the Republican tax changes are veiled attacks on Trump. The taxes have much to do with transfer payments from wealthy to poor and reversing those transfer payments. Rent-seeking -- the use of politics to create politically induced scarcity (in this particular case, housing) causes higher prices which in effect is a reverse regressive tax on the poorer populations to the very wealthy. The proper fix is to remove the market failure of rent-seeking and let the markets do their work.
curun1r 9y ago
I'm curious how you can reconcile your second and third bullet points. If tax hikes on the rich are an unavoidable part of the solution, one party just rammed through a huge tax cut for the rich and the other party did everything they could to stop it. It can be argued that the Democrats don't really care about fixing income inequality and that they like to use it as a talking point more so than they like to actually make progress, but to pretend that the Republicans are anything less than a roadblock to fixing this issue seems disingenuous if you believe what you said in the third bullet point.