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Parking minimums are a big problem. But, it's just a part of a much bigger problem: Regulation is strangling the life out of us. Regulation like zoning and co
by thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
Parking minimums are a big problem. But, it's just a part of a much bigger problem: Regulation is strangling the life out of us. Regulation like zoning and countless other regs prevents market forces from working the way they should.
Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis or a jeans shortage crisis in the US? No you haven't. The reason is because market forces are able to adjust to changes in market demand. In housing, those market forces are bottled up and stifled, preventing investments, preventing innovation, preventing progress, preventing better solutions. We really really need to start looking at regulations and find ways to get rid of the ones causing all these problems.
ADDED:
We've seen very little actual VC money or Research and development go into improving the cost of creating Shelter (In fact, we haven't made any improvements in this in the last 50 to 100 years adjusted for inflation). Much of this is due to regulations. Other industries can find ways to reduce cost but the mountain of housing regulations prevent any and all progress in these areas. I'd argue Housing is one of the most critical areas that human should be trying to progress in, as it's most important for human survival.
- phil248 7y ago"Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis or a jeans shortage crisis in the US?" No, but I've heard of gruesome conditions for child laborers in sweatshops and I've heard of banana monoculture that has resulted in disease and threatens extinction of the crop. We should all push for better and more adaptable regulations that aim to minimize the damages caused by capitalism and enhance its benefits. But regulations as a concept is not the problem, only the implementations.
- swiley 7y agoWhile I agree with what you’re saying I’m not sure jeans and bananas are in the same category as housing because they’re much cheaper to produce (granted, simple concrete structures are also very cheap to produce, not quite so cheap though.)
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agoThe point is, they wouldn't be cheap, if we created regulations around them. For instance, let's say, for environmental reasons you decided that all jeans must use the wool of a canadian sheep that's hard to grow. Now the price of jeans triples needlessly. This sort of thing happens all the time in housing and nobody ever realizes it.
- thfuran 7y agoHold on. Is the price tripling needlessly or for environmental reasons?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- doubleunplussed 7y agoThere was a banana shortage in Australia. All the banana plantations were too geographically concentrated and were damaged by a cyclone. I remember a peak of AU$16 per kg bananas, circa 2006.
- simonsarris 7y agoAmusingly you experienced those high prices only because of... regulation! AU gov banned fresh banana imports, so the market couldn't easily sort the problem. Other countries had stock and were ready to step in but were not allowed to do so. https://www.theage.com.au/national/government-confirms-ban-on-fresh-banana-imports-20060904-ge327z.html https://www.theage.com.au/national/government-confirms-ban-o... > Mr Howard told banana growers in north Queensland after the cyclone that he would not allow imports of fresh bananas until the industry got back on its feet. > But he went further on the sensitive subject of importing fresh product, indicating the Philippines government's long push to export bananas to Australia may never succeed.
- eutropia 7y agoI mean, I guess the tradeoff is "keep bananas cheap" vs "keep banana industry alive in Australia". Unless all those growers had cyclone insurance, in which case, yeah, probably should have let in the foreign bananas, right?
- doubleunplussed 7y agoThe issue was not of propping up a domestic industry, I believe it was of keeping out disease. So no, I don't think foreign bananas were going to be allowed whatever shape the industry was in.
- mars4rp 7y agoYou have crisis in anything that people have to have, like housing, medicine, medical care, etc.
- BurningFrog 7y agoFood, clothing, water, air?
- criddell 7y agoThere are well known problems with poor food availability in some of the poorest neighborhoods. Thanks to Walmart, I think clothing at affordable prices is available everywhere in the US. That comes with some nasty externalities, but we are at least clothed. The US is mostly well supplied with air and water.
- rtkwe 7y agoWe have a looming crisis in air and in some places water.
- mattmcknight 7y ago>We've seen very little actual VC money or Research and development go into improving the cost of creating Shelter "Blokable Closes $23 Million in Series A Financing to Lower the Cost of Developing, Building, and Owning Multi-Family Housing in West Coast Communities" https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blokable-closes-23-million-in-series-a-financing-to-lower-the-cost-of-developing-building-and-owning-multi-family-housing-in-west-coast-communities-300903401.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blokable-closes-23-...
- cameronbrown 7y agoBlokable prefabs look horrible. We don't need cubes/boxes to shove humans into, we need real homes. The housing shortage isn't just about a lack of shelter but about a lack of human spaces.
- lazyasciiart 7y agoI will start caring about the second one when we have solved the first, and not before.
- nmeofthestate 7y agoThat's a great recipe for building soul-sapping places that people then have to suffer in for decades/generations.
- cameronbrown 7y agoI disagree. I think these concepts are fundamentally linked - the architecture around us has a significant impact on the human psyche. Make the place look shit (read: putting people into literal boxes) and the people inside/around the buildings will feel and act the same way. The atomisation of individuals and devaluing of the community is part of what's lead us to this point in the first place.
- bobthepanda 7y agoThe problem with legislating middle class comfort as the minimum is that it prices out poor people, since poor people can rarely afford new-build as it is. (Effectively) banning SROs in many localities did nothing to improve poor living standards, and probably made them worse since choice was now between being on the street or being in illegally subdivided SROs.
- iamalexm 7y agoDon't forget the homelessness, mental health and drug crises that are challenging everyone on the West Coast. It's not just about not having enough homes, it's about the culture we create for people to thrive.
- heymijo 7y agoBananas and jeans are inexpensive consumables. Homes comprise over a quarter of non-financial assets in the US while being responsible for 68% of household liabilities [0]. Regulations have undeniably caused harm in California. Yet, an elephant lurks. Housing is a massive system dependent upon the price of homes/land continuously rising. History has shown that when that doesn't happen, it is disastrous. Maybe the market disentangles that, but by god would it be destructive. [0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts...
- akmiller 7y agoBecause in the absence of regulation, companies will be driven by the market to do the "right" thing? This is not a problem in which the solution is likely to be highly profitable (or even profitable at all) so I'm not sure why you suggest that a free and unregulated market would lead to an improvement in this scenario. You mention zoning laws in particular. Those were designed for specific reasons so what about them would you change? Surely you aren't suggesting just to get rid of them all?
- jgust 7y agoNothing like buying a house and having a bus depot opened on the lot next door a year later. #freemarket
- alistairSH 7y agoI would never advocate for zero zoning. But, allowing easy transition from single-family to duplex/townhome. And allowing light commercial/retail to be mixed with residential.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agonothing like never being able to afford a house ever at all. And when you finally are able too, with a humungous mortgage and insane property taxes (due to the high price you paid for it). No-zoning means housing is much much cheaper, we're talking 100K - 800K difference or more. With all the money you saved, you'd be able to buy another house far away from that bus depot.
- bronson 7y ago> With all the money you saved, you'd be able to buy another house far away from that bus depot. > ... and have another bus depot opened on that lot next door a year later. and so on.
- jessaustin 7y agoIs this so common a thing, new bus depots? From "depot" rather than "station" I'm envisioning Greyhound buses. I was under the impression that long-distance bus ridership was stable if not declining... Besides which, does anyone really deserve to live a certain minimum distance from transportation options? Why would anyone dislike her neighbors that much?
- delinka 7y agoI’d prefer an argument that mentions the type of regulations you intend to relax/change. Construction? Nope, there’s safety involved. Zoning? Feasible, let’s talk.
- munificent 7y agoOut of all of the examples you could have picked for "market forces working the way they should", you chose bananas? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Banana_Exporting_Countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Banana_Exporting_Coun... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Reputation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Reputatio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoI love it when purely ideological comments run into the messiness of reality. Food production being completely contrary to a free market, they are one of the most heavily subsidized and regulated markets around. As a pragmatist, one of my favorite phrases I say quite often: "The difference between theory and reality is that in theory there is no difference." The article is excellent expose of an issue and a solution. I hope they would include specific things we can do to help improve the situation. I'm part of California YIMBY, which promotes legislation that helps ease these issues.
- ignoramous 7y agoor as Linus says, "Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time."
- dragontamer 7y ago> As a pragmatist, one of my favorite phrases I say quite often: "The difference between theory and reality is that in theory there is no difference." Hmm, I prefer the phrasing: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is a difference.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoYours is far more straight forward. Which can be great. Mine is intentionally convoluted. It works for two things: 1- Easy to spot people who really aren't paying attention to what you say. 2- It takes a second to understand the point, people remember better when they have to 'figure it out' so to speak. 3- I get a smile from some people if they pause, think it, then understand. I might be wrong in my assumptions though.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Regulation like zoning and countless other regs prevents market forces from working the way they should. On the other hand, so do externalities in the absence of regulation to internalize them. Real markets quite often don't approximate the idealized way markets should work without lots of help. > Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis [...] in the US? “Yes, we have no bananas today” is actually a reference to such a crisis.
- Someone1234 7y agoI've been to part of the world without strong regulations and seen, first hand, what the unregulated capitalist housing market will deliver if you allow it. Dangerous dwellings, that are impractical, bread misery (particularly for families), and an endless race towards that bottom (since that's always the most "efficient" way to "store" people, and therefore most profitable for a developer). It is very easy to make these glib "just remove regulation and let the problem solve itself" comments, without really addressing what that reality actually looks like. We aren't talking about a city of single family homes, we're talking about family homes largely no longer existing since lawns, property separation, "extra" rooms, "extra" walls, etc are all inefficiencies that will be eliminated by the market sooner or later. So, sure, run housing like bananas or jeans but don't be surprised when dwellings start to look less like homes and more like a efficient storage medium for human creatures.
- officialchicken 7y agoTotally agree. We continue to view housing as a physical product when we should consider it to be a financial service instead. Because that's what developers are building - a way for us to consume a financial product called a morgage.
- slg 7y agoThe market response to the California housing crisis has generally been to build new housing at the top of the market. A large reason for that is that construction costs are a smaller percentage of housing in California due to high cost of land. We also need to recognize that trickle down economics doesn't work when it comes to housing just like it doesn't work when it comes other areas of economics. A 1500 square foot high rise 1 bedroom condo with an in-unit washer and dryer is so different from a 200 square foot unit that doesn't even have an in-unit shower that they function as completely separate markets. Those two things mean we likely need more regulation not less. Although that doesn't mean the regulation we have currently is necessarily good. Removing regulation regarding parking might still be a smart move.
- novok 7y agoThe argument is not trickle down economics although, it's wealthy demand traps. Ex: "If rich people can't buy ferraris, and there is a limit to 100 BMWs and 100 civics, then rich people will boost the price of all the BMWs and Civics and all you can buy is really old broken down chevrolets, if you can buy one at all." "But I bought my civic when it was an affordable price, and I have a special old person subsidized gas price, why do we need build more civics, ferraris and BMWs for all of these new immigrants?! Why can't they just stay in their own country?"
- slg 7y agoMy point is that housing isn't all easily substitutable Ferraris, BMWs, and Civics. There are also private jets and mopeds. Jets and mopeds might both be forms of transportation, but a drop in the price of jets isn't going to impact moped prices.
- novok 7y agoMopeds are illegal to build although (SRO) and the minimum legal house is a civic, and nobody protests the building of local large single family jet mansions. And you haven't seen the used market price of a porsche in a market with a lot of them ;) Berlin 15 years ago is one example of that. And what people call 'luxury jet housing' is usually really sad 600sqft housing that would be called honda fit housing elsewhere.
- jandrese 7y agoWe do have examples of cities with loose regulation. Houston is famously lax with building permits. Sure it means people build in flood plains and the entire thing is a giant sprawl that where you have to drive everywhere, but it does grow fast and attract a lot of people.
- peterwwillis 7y ago> We really really need to start looking at regulations and find ways to get rid of the ones causing all these problems. Yes, I agree, totally. Except where this is impossible. You can't "free market" the cars out of cities. Nobody wants them gone, and everyone has vested interests in them staying: real estate, construction, parking+traffic violation revenue, car owners, car manufacturers, insurance companies, lawyers... Massive amounts of money flow through the co-existence of cars with cities. The market's trend is to exacerbate the car problem. How will gutting regulation reverse it all?
- tootie 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand Econ 101. If bananas are too expensive, eat apples. If houses are too expensive, die on the streets. They're not equivalent at all.
- wwweston 7y ago> Regulation is strangling the life out of us. Specific regulations may have problematic impacts (or positive ones, or some mix). Statements about "regulation" in abstract are meaningless, except to subtract from the idea that specific insight matters, and add to the idea all one needs to approach any given problem is a general ideological approach.
- zjaffee 7y agoThis is an absolutely horrible argument, housing (namely multifamily housing) doesn't apply the same rules of economies of scale that other consumer durables do both due to natural capital costs and the inability to prefabricate huge parts of the building process (You cannot prefab the giant ditch you need to fill with concrete down to the bedrock that takes 100s of thousands of man hours to build). The only viable solution to reduce the cost of housing is prefabricated, but moderately sized apartments/multi-family homes. The way you get this is not by unilaterally removing regulation, but by getting rid of local regulation in favor of national regulation.
- Aeolun 7y ago> I'd argue Housing is one of the most critical areas that human should be trying to progress in, as it's most important for human survival. I’d argue that that is exactly why we need regulation for housing. It’s just the form of regulation that has to change.