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Nobody should ever use words like "large" in reference to housing construction where absolute numbers are meaningless. "Large" and "small" are useless without s

by Kalium 8y ago

Nobody should ever use words like "large" in reference to housing construction where absolute numbers are meaningless. "Large" and "small" are useless without some agreed-upon baseline. What you're describing is a city where a large-in-absolute-numbers-by-some-arbitrary-standard amount of housing is being built while also not being enough. As sufficiency for demand is the operative question, I submit that a better set of words is "sufficient" and "insufficient". Given that it's less than the amount of population growth, I would characterize it as an insufficient amount of housing supply being built.

andrewla 8y ago
> Given that it's less than the amount of population growth, I would characterize it as an insufficient amount of housing supply being built. Yes, demand far exceeds supply, even with growth. The statement that I was disagreeing with was that some outgrowth of NIMBYism or zoning restrictions were to blame for the lack of growth of supply. I feel like the developments that are in progress are indicative of the fact that those are not the problem. I don't know what the problem is or have good ideas on how to fix it. Possibly the problem is, as I outlined above, that real estate is just getting very expensive, and developers who would very much like to build large-scale housing are simply priced out by the capital expenditure to even acquire the real estate itself. Maybe the affordable housing initiatives have backfired to a greater extent than anyone realizes. Or it's possible that new supply is in fact outstripping demand, but the lead times are such that once the units come online the market will experience a pull-back as they have trouble renting or selling the new units.
- Kalium 8y ago
  One of the things I've learned, watching real estate in the Bay, is that it's rarely one factor in particular that's to blame for everything. Instead it's the cumulative force of many factors shaping what does get built, where, and when. For instance, NIMBYs requiring near-infinite shadow studies in SF. It doesn't prevent building, but by raising the costs and extending the timelines it helps reduce the amount that gets built. What does get built costs more. The result is fewer and pricier units, and what maybe could have been a 25% subsidized building is now 10% in order to make the numbers work. Or maybe a building goes from five stories to three and no longer has any affordable housing at all. At scale, lower-margin proposals go from further down the list while still being in the black to being in the red and never being built. Which is to say that developments in progress should not be taken as proof that there are no problems with zoning or NIMBYs. Just that it's possible to overcome them if there's enough money to be made.

by Kalium 8y ago

andrewla 8y ago

> Given that it's less than the amount of population growth, I would characterize it as an insufficient amount of housing supply being built. Yes, demand far exceeds supply, even with growth. The statement that I was disagreeing with was that some outgrowth of NIMBYism or zoning restrictions were to blame for the lack of growth of supply. I feel like the developments that are in progress are indicative of the fact that those are not the problem. I don't know what the problem is or have good ideas on how to fix it. Possibly the problem is, as I outlined above, that real estate is just getting very expensive, and developers who would very much like to build large-scale housing are simply priced out by the capital expenditure to even acquire the real estate itself. Maybe the affordable housing initiatives have backfired to a greater extent than anyone realizes. Or it's possible that new supply is in fact outstripping demand, but the lead times are such that once the units come online the market will experience a pull-back as they have trouble renting or selling the new units.

Kalium 8y ago
One of the things I've learned, watching real estate in the Bay, is that it's rarely one factor in particular that's to blame for everything. Instead it's the cumulative force of many factors shaping what does get built, where, and when. For instance, NIMBYs requiring near-infinite shadow studies in SF. It doesn't prevent building, but by raising the costs and extending the timelines it helps reduce the amount that gets built. What does get built costs more. The result is fewer and pricier units, and what maybe could have been a 25% subsidized building is now 10% in order to make the numbers work. Or maybe a building goes from five stories to three and no longer has any affordable housing at all. At scale, lower-margin proposals go from further down the list while still being in the black to being in the red and never being built. Which is to say that developments in progress should not be taken as proof that there are no problems with zoning or NIMBYs. Just that it's possible to overcome them if there's enough money to be made.