7 ms·
The thing is affordable housing is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If a city creates a million new jobs, they need a proportional amount of new ho
by klipt 6y ago
The thing is affordable housing is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
If a city creates a million new jobs, they need a proportional amount of new housing to avoid a housing shortage.
But what happens is the NIMBYs clamp the amount of new housing to a fraction of what's needed. Obviously developers, if limited to building a fraction of what's needed, will go for the more profitable segment first. But that's not the underlying problem! The problem is that the total new units are too restricted. If we build a tiny, restricted amount of subsidized housing, there will still be hundreds of thousands of workers lacking housing, because the overall amount is too small.
What we need to do is first focus on the overall shortage and commit to building a huge amount of housing. Then it won't matter as much whether or not it's subsidized, because with an excess of housing, some will end up priced for every segment.
- souprock 6y agoThe end state of that logic is that 8 billion people are crammed into a single city. The rest of the world is a wasteland with no jobs. An alternative is that jobs could go elsewhere, for example in Arkansas or Mississippi.
- klipt 6y agoIt's fine for a city to limit jobs to fit housing, if they don't want to build housing. What's not fine is encouraging jobs while discouraging housing, which is common in California because Proposition 13 makes residents a net expense - cities have to get most of their revenue from businesses. Pretty obvious how that leads to a never-ending housing shortage.
- souprock 6y agoProposition 13 doesn't mean that cities have to get most of their revenue from businesses. They could trim the budget. I think that was the intent of Proposition 13. Obviously, a direct prohibition on city budget increases would have worked better. With residents not feeling the sting of increased costs, they will of course vote for local politicians who spend money without hesitation.