4 ms·

Another attempt that doesn't address the real issues: rent is too high and/or wages are too low. In-demand locations are always going to be expensive. The minu

Another attempt that doesn't address the real issues: rent is too high and/or wages are too low. In-demand locations are always going to be expensive. The minute you start providing "special" apartments to a certain group of people you introduce tons of other (negative) issues. That person is basically locked into that apartment and can never move. Any issues with quality or landlord disagreements will be tilted towards the owner, because they know the renter will never leave. The whole thing is a mess.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
Well, in author's defense: > Of all the approaches, the one working the best is #7: Remote Work. Get good at it, and we won’t have the housing stresses of San Francisco. which makes perfect sense to me. Or just move out of SF altogether - et voila.
acomjean 6y ago
Housing is a society issue. income inequality and turning housing into business with rent seekers, seeking high returns. hard to fix piecemeal. One wonders if the current pandemic can cause a change.
- mc32 6y ago
  It is but there isn’t a good fix that satisfies everyone. Even the USSR had private apartments for people who didn’t want to live in multi-family per apartment arrangements (communal apartments). Obviously not everyone could afford private apartments —very few could, buy they existed because even with all the resources of a top down bureaucracy they could not meet the needs of the people.
  - vkou 6y ago
    The USSR always had a shortage of apartments, because of its inability to affordably hammer raw materials together into housing. It had no problems with parceling land into housing, though. The USA has no problem hammering raw materials into houses, but it has a shortage of apartments because of its inability to affordably parcel out land into housing. You need to be good at both, in order for housing to be affordable. However, it should be noted that affordable housing is not the goal of at least half the country - because that half of the country own houses (or mortgages for houses), and housing becoming affordable would financially destroy them. So, in that sense, everything is working by design, and things will never change, if the government can help it.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    An important thing about USSR, which people often forget about, is there was no free movement. Oversimplifying things a bit, you could only relocate when you're changing jobs and your new employer must have a special permission to hire workers from outside their region. Very similar to H1B quotas.
    - mc32 6y ago
      It’s the same in China today. They have the Hukou system. This is your family registration system and you need special permission to register somewhere new. Your benefits as a citizen are tied to this. If you move to a city without approval, you work illegally and are not entitled to housing or educational facilities (which is why parents who’ve moved illegally need to send their kids to illegal schools). The local government also can go raid these places from time to time depending on what quotas they need to align with. So kind of sort of of like the four belt system in the USSR which limited internal movement and required internal passports.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  Greedy renters is not the reason here: in the original article the author considered building a house for workers on the company land. But that turned out to be too expensive. Building houses and maintaining them in livable condition is not that cheap.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - maxsilver 6y ago
    > Building houses and maintaining them in livable condition is not that cheap I don't really understand this. Building and maintaining houses (especially single-family houses) is really cheap. (We're talking like ~$600/month or so for a large 4-bedroom home). The expense in housing is primarily financial shenanigans and land monopolization, with some property taxes on top. Actually building and maintaining a house (construction + maintenance costs) is way less than 50% of the total cost.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      Please see the original article where the author explicitly complains that cost of building their own house is too high.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > I don't really understand this. Building and maintaining houses (especially single-family houses) is really cheap. (We're talking like ~$600/month or so for a large 4-bedroom home). Not in SF, that's the issue.
jseliger 6y ago
In-demand locations are always going to be expensive They need not be nearly so expensive as they are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago

Well, in author's defense: > Of all the approaches, the one working the best is #7: Remote Work. Get good at it, and we won’t have the housing stresses of San Francisco. which makes perfect sense to me. Or just move out of SF altogether - et voila.

acomjean 6y ago

Housing is a society issue. income inequality and turning housing into business with rent seekers, seeking high returns. hard to fix piecemeal. One wonders if the current pandemic can cause a change.

mc32 6y ago
It is but there isn’t a good fix that satisfies everyone. Even the USSR had private apartments for people who didn’t want to live in multi-family per apartment arrangements (communal apartments). Obviously not everyone could afford private apartments —very few could, buy they existed because even with all the resources of a top down bureaucracy they could not meet the needs of the people.
- vkou 6y ago
  The USSR always had a shortage of apartments, because of its inability to affordably hammer raw materials together into housing. It had no problems with parceling land into housing, though. The USA has no problem hammering raw materials into houses, but it has a shortage of apartments because of its inability to affordably parcel out land into housing. You need to be good at both, in order for housing to be affordable. However, it should be noted that affordable housing is not the goal of at least half the country - because that half of the country own houses (or mortgages for houses), and housing becoming affordable would financially destroy them. So, in that sense, everything is working by design, and things will never change, if the government can help it.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  An important thing about USSR, which people often forget about, is there was no free movement. Oversimplifying things a bit, you could only relocate when you're changing jobs and your new employer must have a special permission to hire workers from outside their region. Very similar to H1B quotas.
  - mc32 6y ago
    It’s the same in China today. They have the Hukou system. This is your family registration system and you need special permission to register somewhere new. Your benefits as a citizen are tied to this. If you move to a city without approval, you work illegally and are not entitled to housing or educational facilities (which is why parents who’ve moved illegally need to send their kids to illegal schools). The local government also can go raid these places from time to time depending on what quotas they need to align with. So kind of sort of of like the four belt system in the USSR which limited internal movement and required internal passports.
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
Greedy renters is not the reason here: in the original article the author considered building a house for workers on the company land. But that turned out to be too expensive. Building houses and maintaining them in livable condition is not that cheap.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- maxsilver 6y ago
  > Building houses and maintaining them in livable condition is not that cheap I don't really understand this. Building and maintaining houses (especially single-family houses) is really cheap. (We're talking like ~$600/month or so for a large 4-bedroom home). The expense in housing is primarily financial shenanigans and land monopolization, with some property taxes on top. Actually building and maintaining a house (construction + maintenance costs) is way less than 50% of the total cost.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    Please see the original article where the author explicitly complains that cost of building their own house is too high.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > I don't really understand this. Building and maintaining houses (especially single-family houses) is really cheap. (We're talking like ~$600/month or so for a large 4-bedroom home). Not in SF, that's the issue.

jseliger 6y ago

In-demand locations are always going to be expensive They need not be nearly so expensive as they are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501