6 ms·

Your quote chopped off an important qualifier present in the original comment.

by kwk1 6y ago

jeffbee 6y ago
Explain? The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth. They've got a city the size of Berkeley that didn't even exist 50 years ago.
- fossuser 6y ago
  > The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth. This isn't enough to support the idea unless prices have also not climbed. The Bay Area population has dramatically increased and prices have too because building to support this growth has been fought by NIMBYs via bad policy.[0] As a result houses on the peninsula have reached insane prices and there is little available for new people, see: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/home/1149731 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom... Myself and many of my friends (~30yrs old) rent with multiple roommates. The only people that can buy experienced some sort of exit event or have a lot of FAANG equity with two FAANG incomes. Even then they have to pay property tax on that insane value that the NIMBYs don't pay. Maybe Houston has done a better job, but population increase itself isn't much evidence. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage Bad incentives for existing owners to restrict growth exist everywhere, but they're particularly bad in California because of Prop 13. The most frustrating bit to me, is that the NIMBYs that won the housing lottery and leverage their political power to screw everyone else also play victim. I hope one day we can pass something that corrects a lot of these bad incentives. The new RHNA housing policy and things like Sacramento's elimination of single family zoning are the way. SB50 and related policy would help too.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    I mean, population _is_ pretty good evidence of growth. 20 years ago Houston MSA was 15% larger than SF MSA and today it's 50% larger. What other evidence of "building for growth" can you demand?
    - fossuser 6y ago
      A ratio of new housing vs. new population. You can expand sprawl via single family homes and still not build nearly enough housing to meet population growth requirements. You can have a lot more population and still build little. It just forces people to live in shared housing with roommates at very expensive rents. I'm not arguing that you're wrong about Houston - maybe they did build enough. I'm just saying that population growth itself doesn't tell you too much.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        Here you go: new housing units per 1000s of new population for Houston MSA, 2000-present. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Yd https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Yd I exist to serve.
        fossuser 6y ago
        That's a cool site, I made a graph that I think illustrates my point more clearly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6ZP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6ZP It's the change in population vs. the change in new housing with a separate line for each. It's not super easy to understand because the population change is in thousands of people and housing is just in individual units, but I think it's clear from the graph (if I'm reading it correctly) that Houston is not building enough to meet demand. When you mouse over you can see the amount of new people and compare it to the amount of new housing. There's a lot more new people than new housing. [Edit]: I found an even cooler dataset which I added to the above graph, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B72x https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B72x - it doesn't go back as far, but it shows available housing inventory which is a more relevant metric (and it's going down). I tried adding median price too, but it made the graph hard to read. Basically, in a city not meeting demand I'd expect to see the following: - Prices increasing faster than inflation - Population increasing faster than new housing - Availability of housing going down (supply constraints which cause prices to go up) How bad the situation is depends on the above variables, but generally if you don't build enough to meet demand things get worse. That is true in a worst-in-the-world way in the bay area, but also appears to be true most places due to bad incentives - people who already bought in benefit (or at least think they benefit) from restricting supply.
  - Thaxll 6y ago
    2M for an ugly house from 1940...
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      It’s $2M for the land, not the house.
      - Thaxll 6y ago
        Are you actually able to demolish the house?
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        The only reason one wouldn't be able to demolish the house in the US is if it was designated a historical landmark, that I know of. Otherwise, if it's still zoned for a single family home, then the owner of the land has the right to deconstruct and construct a single family home, per the updated building codes and whatnot.
        jeffbee 6y ago
        It doesn't sound like you've ever been to California at all.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I would like to be educated if there's something I'm missing. Is there a legal maneuver in CA that can prevent people from using their real estate for whatever it's zoned for, excluding frivolous lawsuits?
        jeffbee 6y ago
        Yes, many jurisdictions in California require city permits for demolition and the process for getting those permits is by no means guaranteed. In my city after you apply for a permit you have to post public notice for 90 days so your nosy neighbors have a chance to go to the "landmarks preservation commission" to argue that your dilapidated shack in which nobody has lived for 50 years is, in fact, a priceless treasure and an irreplaceable piece of the city's identity, an event for which you'll need to hire an expensive land use attorney, a historian, and a forensic architect. Assuming you miraculously get through that part of the process, it certainly is by no means assured that you'd get a permit to build another home because the development standards are written in such a way that "by right" permits don't exist. You need a use permit from the city for everything, and for that you'll need to go through more public hearings at the zoning adjustments board and the design review committee. Meanwhile, you and your lawyers and architects will probably have to appear again before the full city council multiple times because each of the LPC, ZAB, and DRC decisions can be appealed to the full council by anyone, even if they don't live in the city.
- asdff 6y ago
  That's not the case, unless you consider tenement conditions acceptable. The working class in these cities aren't suddenly affording $2000 in rent, they are simply cramming more people and more incomes into smaller apartments (1). In Houston over the last 10 years alone, some neighborhoods rate of overcrowding has gone up well over 100% (2). No, Houston is not building enough either, and paying for the population increase by sacrificing the quality of life of the overcrowded working poor, and pushing the middle class out of the city and elsewhere. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/los-angeles-crowded-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/los-angeles-crowded-co... 2. https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/documents/KI%20Research%20Report%E2%80%93State%20of%20Housing%205.pdf https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/documents/KI%20R...

Your quote chopped off an important qualifier present in the original comment.

by kwk1 6y ago

Your quote chopped off an important qualifier present in the original comment.

Explain? The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth. They've got a city the size of Berkeley that didn't even exist 50 years ago.

fossuser 6y ago
> The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth. This isn't enough to support the idea unless prices have also not climbed. The Bay Area population has dramatically increased and prices have too because building to support this growth has been fought by NIMBYs via bad policy.[0] As a result houses on the peninsula have reached insane prices and there is little available for new people, see: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/home/1149731 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom... Myself and many of my friends (~30yrs old) rent with multiple roommates. The only people that can buy experienced some sort of exit event or have a lot of FAANG equity with two FAANG incomes. Even then they have to pay property tax on that insane value that the NIMBYs don't pay. Maybe Houston has done a better job, but population increase itself isn't much evidence. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage Bad incentives for existing owners to restrict growth exist everywhere, but they're particularly bad in California because of Prop 13. The most frustrating bit to me, is that the NIMBYs that won the housing lottery and leverage their political power to screw everyone else also play victim. I hope one day we can pass something that corrects a lot of these bad incentives. The new RHNA housing policy and things like Sacramento's elimination of single family zoning are the way. SB50 and related policy would help too.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  I mean, population _is_ pretty good evidence of growth. 20 years ago Houston MSA was 15% larger than SF MSA and today it's 50% larger. What other evidence of "building for growth" can you demand?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    A ratio of new housing vs. new population. You can expand sprawl via single family homes and still not build nearly enough housing to meet population growth requirements. You can have a lot more population and still build little. It just forces people to live in shared housing with roommates at very expensive rents. I'm not arguing that you're wrong about Houston - maybe they did build enough. I'm just saying that population growth itself doesn't tell you too much.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Here you go: new housing units per 1000s of new population for Houston MSA, 2000-present. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Yd https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Yd I exist to serve.
      - fossuser 6y ago
        That's a cool site, I made a graph that I think illustrates my point more clearly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6ZP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6ZP It's the change in population vs. the change in new housing with a separate line for each. It's not super easy to understand because the population change is in thousands of people and housing is just in individual units, but I think it's clear from the graph (if I'm reading it correctly) that Houston is not building enough to meet demand. When you mouse over you can see the amount of new people and compare it to the amount of new housing. There's a lot more new people than new housing. [Edit]: I found an even cooler dataset which I added to the above graph, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B72x https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B72x - it doesn't go back as far, but it shows available housing inventory which is a more relevant metric (and it's going down). I tried adding median price too, but it made the graph hard to read. Basically, in a city not meeting demand I'd expect to see the following: - Prices increasing faster than inflation - Population increasing faster than new housing - Availability of housing going down (supply constraints which cause prices to go up) How bad the situation is depends on the above variables, but generally if you don't build enough to meet demand things get worse. That is true in a worst-in-the-world way in the bay area, but also appears to be true most places due to bad incentives - people who already bought in benefit (or at least think they benefit) from restricting supply.
- Thaxll 6y ago
  2M for an ugly house from 1940...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    It’s $2M for the land, not the house.
    - Thaxll 6y ago
      Are you actually able to demolish the house?
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        The only reason one wouldn't be able to demolish the house in the US is if it was designated a historical landmark, that I know of. Otherwise, if it's still zoned for a single family home, then the owner of the land has the right to deconstruct and construct a single family home, per the updated building codes and whatnot.
        jeffbee 6y ago
        It doesn't sound like you've ever been to California at all.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I would like to be educated if there's something I'm missing. Is there a legal maneuver in CA that can prevent people from using their real estate for whatever it's zoned for, excluding frivolous lawsuits?
        jeffbee 6y ago
        Yes, many jurisdictions in California require city permits for demolition and the process for getting those permits is by no means guaranteed. In my city after you apply for a permit you have to post public notice for 90 days so your nosy neighbors have a chance to go to the "landmarks preservation commission" to argue that your dilapidated shack in which nobody has lived for 50 years is, in fact, a priceless treasure and an irreplaceable piece of the city's identity, an event for which you'll need to hire an expensive land use attorney, a historian, and a forensic architect. Assuming you miraculously get through that part of the process, it certainly is by no means assured that you'd get a permit to build another home because the development standards are written in such a way that "by right" permits don't exist. You need a use permit from the city for everything, and for that you'll need to go through more public hearings at the zoning adjustments board and the design review committee. Meanwhile, you and your lawyers and architects will probably have to appear again before the full city council multiple times because each of the LPC, ZAB, and DRC decisions can be appealed to the full council by anyone, even if they don't live in the city.
asdff 6y ago
That's not the case, unless you consider tenement conditions acceptable. The working class in these cities aren't suddenly affording $2000 in rent, they are simply cramming more people and more incomes into smaller apartments (1). In Houston over the last 10 years alone, some neighborhoods rate of overcrowding has gone up well over 100% (2). No, Houston is not building enough either, and paying for the population increase by sacrificing the quality of life of the overcrowded working poor, and pushing the middle class out of the city and elsewhere. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/los-angeles-crowded-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/los-angeles-crowded-co... 2. https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/documents/KI%20Research%20Report%E2%80%93State%20of%20Housing%205.pdf https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/documents/KI%20R...