5 ms·

High housing costs are always, without fail, a regulatory problem. If the rents are high because of a lack of available units, you build more units or make mor

by zanny 7y ago

High housing costs are always, without fail, a regulatory problem. If the rents are high because of a lack of available units, you build more units or make more units available. If you are at peak carrying capacity in a given city you need to expand infrastructure (vertically or horizontally) to support more & denser development. The trick is both can require public spending to make work. You can't just rezone and let a city go and expect magic in the first case scenario. You often need government subsidized building of cheap apartments to spur the economy to build up and attract investment / higher paying residents to build generalized housing. Most developers are looking for the highest margin building they can do, and while in theory any potential profit from building should eventually be met there are only so many construction companies, especially urban highrise class builders, and they prioritize the best deal.

sethammons 7y ago
> If you are at peak carrying capacity in a given city you need to expand infrastructure... Why not say, "sorry, we are full"?
- selectodude 7y ago
  Because here in the United States that isn’t something that you can say.
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    Not taking a side but it seems like that's what a lot of people were trying to say with the idea of the wall and everything.
    - harambaebae69 7y ago
      Legal residents of a country choosing to relocate to a new city is a different issue than the enforcement of national borders.
- Retric 7y ago
  Because full depends on infrastructure. Tokyo sits at ~37.5 million people demonstrating few cities are near any real limits. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Tokyo metro is 37 million, Tokyo city is 13 or so million. As always, City classifications are a bit weird in Asia (see Chongqing).
    - Retric 7y ago
      It’s not that different from New York City which is technically 8.6 million, but people over a much larger area commute to the city center which has real impact on housing costs. Thus the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.3 million) and other such approximations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area It really comes down to transit not where lines are drawn on a map.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        As long as we are comparing apples to apples. Actually Chongqing is worse since you can’t really commute daily from the hinterland into the city (same with Beijing and even Shanghai). Japan is quite unique with commuter oriented HSR (eg tokaido line for Tokyo, though it would be a horrible expensive life to commute daily from Yokohama).
- kradroy 7y ago
  Well, that does happen implicitly, except the full statement is "Sorry, we are full to our limit of low income residents." They eventually get replaced by richer residents.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  Cities in the United States have no mechanism to prevent nonresidents from moving in. If nonresidents want to move in and capacity is not expanding it will drive up prices and result in economic pressures on the poorest residents until they vacate enough space to reach an equilibrium. A city can control how many people get to live there, or it can work to ensure that all current residents can continue to live there, but the Takings Clause of the Constitution essentially prevents doing both. Saying "sorry, we are full" (like San Francisco) amounts to telling a large portion of your poorest residents to get out (like San Francisco). People are generally pretty bad at putting two and two together and realizing that their misfortune is the result of poor capacity planning by their city government, but they still tend to get angry and angry people tend to vote out whoever is currently running their city, so pissing off a large swath of residents is rarely a good strategy.
  - User23 7y ago
    Cities may not be able to control nonresidents moving in directly, but their taxing authority is more than sufficient to strongly discourage it. A municipality could massively raise property taxes and grandfather in current city residents for example. It could then use the new revenues to ensure the current residents can continue to live there.
    - ericd 7y ago
      Yep, prop 13 and insane property prices serve that function in the SF Bay Area. If you buy now, you pay $2M upfront and ~$20k/yr property tax for a small ranch house, while your neighbor who has lived in a similar house for 40 years pays <$2k/yr, less on an inflation adjusted basis than when they moved in, thanks to prop 13. The cherry on top is that after paying a small fortune for your house, your municipal (and school) budgets are stretched thin, despite some of the highest land values in the country, because so few of the long time residents are paying anywhere near the nominal 1.x% rate. And then the long time residents loudly complain that infrastructure is buckling, and we can't afford to improve it, so we can't expand housing. It's maddening.
      - 7y ago
Retric 7y ago
The need for massive investments in public transportation is a little more than just a regularly problem. The real solution is allowing but taxing new development and using that money to wisely pay for new infrastructure. This rarely happens because developers want to pocket that difference, nimby wants zero development, and everyone wants to spend that money on their own ‘critical’ projects.
mrep 7y ago
> High housing costs are always, without fail, a regulatory problem. True, I would have built a 10,000 square foot single famly home with a massive yard in manhattan facing central park but those damn regulations are making it too expensive /s
ChrisLomont 7y ago
>High housing costs are always, without fail, a regulatory problem. It's not possible that desirable places may have more demand than physical space?

by zanny 7y ago

sethammons 7y ago

> If you are at peak carrying capacity in a given city you need to expand infrastructure... Why not say, "sorry, we are full"?

selectodude 7y ago
Because here in the United States that isn’t something that you can say.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  Not taking a side but it seems like that's what a lot of people were trying to say with the idea of the wall and everything.
  - harambaebae69 7y ago
    Legal residents of a country choosing to relocate to a new city is a different issue than the enforcement of national borders.
Retric 7y ago
Because full depends on infrastructure. Tokyo sits at ~37.5 million people demonstrating few cities are near any real limits. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Tokyo metro is 37 million, Tokyo city is 13 or so million. As always, City classifications are a bit weird in Asia (see Chongqing).
  - Retric 7y ago
    It’s not that different from New York City which is technically 8.6 million, but people over a much larger area commute to the city center which has real impact on housing costs. Thus the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.3 million) and other such approximations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area It really comes down to transit not where lines are drawn on a map.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      As long as we are comparing apples to apples. Actually Chongqing is worse since you can’t really commute daily from the hinterland into the city (same with Beijing and even Shanghai). Japan is quite unique with commuter oriented HSR (eg tokaido line for Tokyo, though it would be a horrible expensive life to commute daily from Yokohama).
kradroy 7y ago
Well, that does happen implicitly, except the full statement is "Sorry, we are full to our limit of low income residents." They eventually get replaced by richer residents.
dodobirdlord 7y ago
Cities in the United States have no mechanism to prevent nonresidents from moving in. If nonresidents want to move in and capacity is not expanding it will drive up prices and result in economic pressures on the poorest residents until they vacate enough space to reach an equilibrium. A city can control how many people get to live there, or it can work to ensure that all current residents can continue to live there, but the Takings Clause of the Constitution essentially prevents doing both. Saying "sorry, we are full" (like San Francisco) amounts to telling a large portion of your poorest residents to get out (like San Francisco). People are generally pretty bad at putting two and two together and realizing that their misfortune is the result of poor capacity planning by their city government, but they still tend to get angry and angry people tend to vote out whoever is currently running their city, so pissing off a large swath of residents is rarely a good strategy.
- User23 7y ago
  Cities may not be able to control nonresidents moving in directly, but their taxing authority is more than sufficient to strongly discourage it. A municipality could massively raise property taxes and grandfather in current city residents for example. It could then use the new revenues to ensure the current residents can continue to live there.
  - ericd 7y ago
    Yep, prop 13 and insane property prices serve that function in the SF Bay Area. If you buy now, you pay $2M upfront and ~$20k/yr property tax for a small ranch house, while your neighbor who has lived in a similar house for 40 years pays <$2k/yr, less on an inflation adjusted basis than when they moved in, thanks to prop 13. The cherry on top is that after paying a small fortune for your house, your municipal (and school) budgets are stretched thin, despite some of the highest land values in the country, because so few of the long time residents are paying anywhere near the nominal 1.x% rate. And then the long time residents loudly complain that infrastructure is buckling, and we can't afford to improve it, so we can't expand housing. It's maddening.
    - 7y ago

Retric 7y ago

The need for massive investments in public transportation is a little more than just a regularly problem. The real solution is allowing but taxing new development and using that money to wisely pay for new infrastructure. This rarely happens because developers want to pocket that difference, nimby wants zero development, and everyone wants to spend that money on their own ‘critical’ projects.

mrep 7y ago

> High housing costs are always, without fail, a regulatory problem. True, I would have built a 10,000 square foot single famly home with a massive yard in manhattan facing central park but those damn regulations are making it too expensive /s

ChrisLomont 7y ago

>High housing costs are always, without fail, a regulatory problem. It's not possible that desirable places may have more demand than physical space?