5 ms·

You don't have to mandate construction of housing. You just have to get rid of the INSANE barriers to housing construction that exist today in places like SF an

by harryh 8y ago

You don't have to mandate construction of housing. You just have to get rid of the INSANE barriers to housing construction that exist today in places like SF and the wider Bay Area.

zjaffee 8y ago
This will sound counterintuitive but you absolutely have to mandate housing. Compare this to parking requirements, if we want an abundant housing supply we need to distort the market price of housing the same way we did for parking. Require that new offices build an equal square footage of housing on top of themselves, and you've immediately build enough housing for at least the initial stage of population growth that comes with that new office.
- C4stor 8y ago
  I think you should hope to live in more than the handful of square meters than a classic tech worker occupies in an office. Housing people on the same ground area than the offices would probably prove to be a huge technical challenge since it would effectively need probably 8 to 10 times the square footage, not to mention I'm not quite sure people really all want to have their colleagues as neighbours.
  - zjaffee 8y ago
    I'm not saying that the housing would need to go to those who work in the office, if anything it should be a part of the broader open market. I'm also not saying that the office needs to match the housing supply of it's office workers in full, as a lot of new office development is hiring from people locally as well. But say, if you looked at the Seattle area, where Microsoft and Amazon have built over 10 million square feet of office space in recent years, an extra 10,000 apartments would go a long way in relieving the pressure on housing prices.
    - photojosh 8y ago
      Hmm, maybe we could have a "housing credit" market system. For every office building with n workers, require housing for some % of n within the local area. Then the credits would be priced according to the imbalance between residential and commercial construction. Excess housing around? (Hah.) Well the residential builders will have to pay the commercial builders!
lovich 8y ago
The mandate the post you are replying to speaks of wouldn't be to create housing but tie it to the rate at which other types of buildings are created. I believe the poster is referencing the situation in California where a town will let office space be built for 10k workers but then not allow any housing to be built for those workers. My belief for that issue is that zoning powers need to be removed from towns and done at a state level as travel technology has made it too easy for towns to push off their negative externalities to other towns. Towns have no incentive to add new housing stock as that leads to more people needing to be serviced and new voters who might push to change the way of life that the current citizens enjoy. Businesses on the other hand, don't get to vote and usually pay much more in taxes than they cost in services. Every city appears to have towns that have realized this an effectively become polluters by letting new business come in but making it other towns problems to pay for. If the state controls zoning, and likely the burden of providing services, then that kind of fucking over of your neighbor won't occur at the level of cities other than ones on interstate borders like NYC and the two Kansas Cities.
- zjaffee 8y ago
  I believe we need explicit housing mandates in the way we have parking mandates. Except this time, we'll be creating a more universal public good. Just as how parking requirements make it much easier to find parking in high density and otherwise crowded areas, housing requirements will do the same for housing. A lot of folks on the public housing side of the debate want to decomodify housing through public ownership, but it would be far more effective if we just mandated housing be a part of every commercial development project nation wide. This would be good for so many reasons ranging from better land use to much more abundant housing. Additionally, zoning codes should be a state or federal system, as this would make it much easier to build economies of scale around housing development. But the placement of those zones/codes should still remain in the hands of local muncipalities, as no municipality should be able to protect their right to certain types of euclidian zoning.
- harryh 8y ago
  I definitely agree with you about zoning needing to be done at the state level. I'm somewhat optimistic that some of the state level zoning initiatives in CA will take hold and we'll see some progress in this area. Fingers crossed!

by harryh 8y ago

You don't have to mandate construction of housing. You just have to get rid of the INSANE barriers to housing construction that exist today in places like SF and the wider Bay Area.

zjaffee 8y ago

This will sound counterintuitive but you absolutely have to mandate housing. Compare this to parking requirements, if we want an abundant housing supply we need to distort the market price of housing the same way we did for parking. Require that new offices build an equal square footage of housing on top of themselves, and you've immediately build enough housing for at least the initial stage of population growth that comes with that new office.

C4stor 8y ago
I think you should hope to live in more than the handful of square meters than a classic tech worker occupies in an office. Housing people on the same ground area than the offices would probably prove to be a huge technical challenge since it would effectively need probably 8 to 10 times the square footage, not to mention I'm not quite sure people really all want to have their colleagues as neighbours.
- zjaffee 8y ago
  I'm not saying that the housing would need to go to those who work in the office, if anything it should be a part of the broader open market. I'm also not saying that the office needs to match the housing supply of it's office workers in full, as a lot of new office development is hiring from people locally as well. But say, if you looked at the Seattle area, where Microsoft and Amazon have built over 10 million square feet of office space in recent years, an extra 10,000 apartments would go a long way in relieving the pressure on housing prices.
  - photojosh 8y ago
    Hmm, maybe we could have a "housing credit" market system. For every office building with n workers, require housing for some % of n within the local area. Then the credits would be priced according to the imbalance between residential and commercial construction. Excess housing around? (Hah.) Well the residential builders will have to pay the commercial builders!

lovich 8y ago

The mandate the post you are replying to speaks of wouldn't be to create housing but tie it to the rate at which other types of buildings are created. I believe the poster is referencing the situation in California where a town will let office space be built for 10k workers but then not allow any housing to be built for those workers. My belief for that issue is that zoning powers need to be removed from towns and done at a state level as travel technology has made it too easy for towns to push off their negative externalities to other towns. Towns have no incentive to add new housing stock as that leads to more people needing to be serviced and new voters who might push to change the way of life that the current citizens enjoy. Businesses on the other hand, don't get to vote and usually pay much more in taxes than they cost in services. Every city appears to have towns that have realized this an effectively become polluters by letting new business come in but making it other towns problems to pay for. If the state controls zoning, and likely the burden of providing services, then that kind of fucking over of your neighbor won't occur at the level of cities other than ones on interstate borders like NYC and the two Kansas Cities.

zjaffee 8y ago
I believe we need explicit housing mandates in the way we have parking mandates. Except this time, we'll be creating a more universal public good. Just as how parking requirements make it much easier to find parking in high density and otherwise crowded areas, housing requirements will do the same for housing. A lot of folks on the public housing side of the debate want to decomodify housing through public ownership, but it would be far more effective if we just mandated housing be a part of every commercial development project nation wide. This would be good for so many reasons ranging from better land use to much more abundant housing. Additionally, zoning codes should be a state or federal system, as this would make it much easier to build economies of scale around housing development. But the placement of those zones/codes should still remain in the hands of local muncipalities, as no municipality should be able to protect their right to certain types of euclidian zoning.
harryh 8y ago
I definitely agree with you about zoning needing to be done at the state level. I'm somewhat optimistic that some of the state level zoning initiatives in CA will take hold and we'll see some progress in this area. Fingers crossed!