4 ms·

I agree with the problem (“wanting to freeze the city in amber”), but not the solution, at least as the author wants to implement it. The solution would be to d

by vgetr 7y ago

I agree with the problem (“wanting to freeze the city in amber”), but not the solution, at least as the author wants to implement it. The solution would be to deregulate housing (rent control, etc) and let scarcity take over. Yes it’ll be painful for a couple of years, but when all the people who can’t afford to work at the Starbucks leave the city, people are going to start to notice. Wages and home building would shoot up to meet the demand, and things would ultimately level off. This will never happen in SF (the quasi-regulated NIMBYism the author describes seems par for the course), but we’d see some fast results if it did.

ryanong 7y ago
Capitalist dystopian dreams. Nyc has mostly unregulated real estate and it is still horrible. Large development corporations create artificial scarcity that rise the price of rent. Everything just rises in cost including minimum wage and just tracks whatever the developers can extract out of the economy. If the solution doesn’t including bringing everyone along I don’t want it.
- shuckles 7y ago
  NYC real estate is far from unregulated. In fact, it faces arguably even stronger NIMBY pressures than San Francisco and indeed SF has authorized more building permits per capita than NYC for many years in the last decade. Its rental market also had many new controls added this past summer.
  - buss 7y ago
    Yup, this is correct. NYC is very far from anything resembling a "deregulated" market.
    - stjohnswarts 7y ago
      Yeah not sure what that poster was basing his incorrect point on.
aaomidi 7y ago
We literally have hundreds of examples of "take away regulations" not working. We have hundreds of examples of "come down on landlords like hawks and make them suffer" working. Stop it. Do some research.
- bhupy 7y ago
  https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/laissez-faire-in-tokyo.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la... > Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, has a growing population of over 13 million people but house prices have hardly increased in twenty years. Why? Tokyo has a laissez-faire approach to land use that allows lots of building subject to only a few general regulations set nationally.
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  I don't get this argument. Right now, we literally have thousands of examples of "add regulations" not working.
  - memmcgee 7y ago
    That's not the same thing as coming down on landlords. We could criminalize slumlording and use civil forfeiture to turn slumlord's properties into public housing. We could put a hefty property tax on all rental properties. We could create a vacancy tax on all unoccupied units that would force prices down. The problem is landlords and land owners and their rent-seeking and speculative behavior. The solution is to stop enabling them by protecting their property rights over the well-being of the population.
grawprog 7y ago
>Yes it’ll be painful for a couple of years, but when all the people who can’t afford to work at the Starbucks leave the city But, that's not how reality works. Instead those people end up working two, maybe three jobs, cohabitating with multiple people and just end up having their quality of life continue to deteriorate. Leaving the city's not necessarily an option.
etjossem 7y ago
"Let it get really bad so people notice" isn't even close to a solution. We all know there's a housing crisis; the solution depends on who you ask. Some folks are going to say "let's have high affordable housing requirements in new projects." They may genuinely want lots of affordable units, or they may want to freeze housing supply and thus preserve the value of their single-family homes. Pro-tenant renter groups may not care about a "neighborhood character" argument, but they may care quite a bit about a "gentrification" argument, which is almost the same thing. Depending on what kind of YIMBY you ask, you could get someone who cares deeply about affordability, or someone who believes the market will fix everything. All of this to say: this is a political problem about getting enough different groups with distinct interests to work together. Nobody gets a magic wand to deregulate everything, nor would it help. If creating that coalition is something you care about, join the group the author recommended: https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/
memmcgee 7y ago
Except the supply here is necessarily constrained by the amount of land available to build on. You're treating this like microeconomics 101, which is a fundamentally flawed way to look at the problem.
- bhupy 7y ago
  That's not true at all. Nearly 75% of land in San Francisco alone is zoned for low density single-family or duplex homes. 37% of it is just for single-family homes alone. [1] Nearly 98%(!!) of land in San Jose is zoned for single-family homes. [2] Replacing every ~10 single family homes with even a 6-7 story apartment building can easily increase the supply necessary to reach equilibrium, and that's ignoring the fact that you can build affordable apartments that are >20 stories (see: Long Island City, New York). [1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-single-family-zoning-changes-senate-bill-50-legislation-20190513-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-single-family-zon... [2] https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-francisco-bay-area https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-...
  - memmcgee 7y ago
    This is true, but zoning laws are ultimately determined by who owns land. Landlords and landowners are incentivized to increase the value of their property at the expense of everyone else. They use zoning laws to do this, which they indirectly control by being active in political lobbying.
    - bhupy 7y ago
      No disagreements there. Per the parent comment, the prescribed solution is to eliminate (or heavily curtail) such zoning laws. In other words: “deregulate housing”.
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    Now all you've got to do is to convince those ten families who enjoy having a backyard for their kids and dog to give it up for a vague "better good"
buss 7y ago
This isn't a solution. You're misattributing the effect with the cause. Developers aren't building more _now_ because it's illegal in the majority of the city, and where it _is_ legal, your permits take about four years to get. By the time you're approved to build, the market has moved out from under you. We have to change the laws that make building illegal, and to do that we have to change the politicians.

by vgetr 7y ago

ryanong 7y ago

Capitalist dystopian dreams. Nyc has mostly unregulated real estate and it is still horrible. Large development corporations create artificial scarcity that rise the price of rent. Everything just rises in cost including minimum wage and just tracks whatever the developers can extract out of the economy. If the solution doesn’t including bringing everyone along I don’t want it.

shuckles 7y ago
NYC real estate is far from unregulated. In fact, it faces arguably even stronger NIMBY pressures than San Francisco and indeed SF has authorized more building permits per capita than NYC for many years in the last decade. Its rental market also had many new controls added this past summer.
- buss 7y ago
  Yup, this is correct. NYC is very far from anything resembling a "deregulated" market.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Yeah not sure what that poster was basing his incorrect point on.

aaomidi 7y ago

We literally have hundreds of examples of "take away regulations" not working. We have hundreds of examples of "come down on landlords like hawks and make them suffer" working. Stop it. Do some research.

bhupy 7y ago
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/laissez-faire-in-tokyo.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la... > Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, has a growing population of over 13 million people but house prices have hardly increased in twenty years. Why? Tokyo has a laissez-faire approach to land use that allows lots of building subject to only a few general regulations set nationally.
CamperBob2 7y ago
I don't get this argument. Right now, we literally have thousands of examples of "add regulations" not working.
- memmcgee 7y ago
  That's not the same thing as coming down on landlords. We could criminalize slumlording and use civil forfeiture to turn slumlord's properties into public housing. We could put a hefty property tax on all rental properties. We could create a vacancy tax on all unoccupied units that would force prices down. The problem is landlords and land owners and their rent-seeking and speculative behavior. The solution is to stop enabling them by protecting their property rights over the well-being of the population.

grawprog 7y ago

>Yes it’ll be painful for a couple of years, but when all the people who can’t afford to work at the Starbucks leave the city But, that's not how reality works. Instead those people end up working two, maybe three jobs, cohabitating with multiple people and just end up having their quality of life continue to deteriorate. Leaving the city's not necessarily an option.

etjossem 7y ago

"Let it get really bad so people notice" isn't even close to a solution. We all know there's a housing crisis; the solution depends on who you ask. Some folks are going to say "let's have high affordable housing requirements in new projects." They may genuinely want lots of affordable units, or they may want to freeze housing supply and thus preserve the value of their single-family homes. Pro-tenant renter groups may not care about a "neighborhood character" argument, but they may care quite a bit about a "gentrification" argument, which is almost the same thing. Depending on what kind of YIMBY you ask, you could get someone who cares deeply about affordability, or someone who believes the market will fix everything. All of this to say: this is a political problem about getting enough different groups with distinct interests to work together. Nobody gets a magic wand to deregulate everything, nor would it help. If creating that coalition is something you care about, join the group the author recommended: https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/

memmcgee 7y ago

Except the supply here is necessarily constrained by the amount of land available to build on. You're treating this like microeconomics 101, which is a fundamentally flawed way to look at the problem.

bhupy 7y ago
That's not true at all. Nearly 75% of land in San Francisco alone is zoned for low density single-family or duplex homes. 37% of it is just for single-family homes alone. [1] Nearly 98%(!!) of land in San Jose is zoned for single-family homes. [2] Replacing every ~10 single family homes with even a 6-7 story apartment building can easily increase the supply necessary to reach equilibrium, and that's ignoring the fact that you can build affordable apartments that are >20 stories (see: Long Island City, New York). [1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-single-family-zoning-changes-senate-bill-50-legislation-20190513-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-single-family-zon... [2] https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-francisco-bay-area https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-...
- memmcgee 7y ago
  This is true, but zoning laws are ultimately determined by who owns land. Landlords and landowners are incentivized to increase the value of their property at the expense of everyone else. They use zoning laws to do this, which they indirectly control by being active in political lobbying.
  - bhupy 7y ago
    No disagreements there. Per the parent comment, the prescribed solution is to eliminate (or heavily curtail) such zoning laws. In other words: “deregulate housing”.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  Now all you've got to do is to convince those ten families who enjoy having a backyard for their kids and dog to give it up for a vague "better good"

buss 7y ago

This isn't a solution. You're misattributing the effect with the cause. Developers aren't building more _now_ because it's illegal in the majority of the city, and where it _is_ legal, your permits take about four years to get. By the time you're approved to build, the market has moved out from under you. We have to change the laws that make building illegal, and to do that we have to change the politicians.