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Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to

Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to all those jobs. [1] 2523.4/1798.7 = 1.4 from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN

arcticbull 6y ago
Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.
- Retric 6y ago
  Alternatively, just limit office space and thus local jobs. Except that’s not what local residents want. SF is doing everything it can to maximize home prices while minimizing rent and property tax increase for current residents. Which is arguably exactly what’s in current local voters best interest. Democracy working as intended?
  - vmception 6y ago
    > Democracy working as intended? 0-day: San Francisco real estate prices vulnerable to 51% attack.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Sure, though you have to get people to vote opposite their personal interests, granted that’s fairly common behavior. Anyway, this seems to be something you can’t actually say as people strongly object without articulating why.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance. That doesn't work either, though it may slow the rate of price growth. If you want to reduce the price of housing, tank the local economy. It's the only thing that works. Supply side policy is neutralized by its own effect on accelerating/decelerating economic growth, e.g., the attack you suggest doesn't work because reducing the growth of the cost of housing in the short-term accelerates local economic growth which creates upward demand-side pressure on housing, and eventually there are limits to supply in any geographical region (and even moreso in any commute time radius, since density shrinks the radius for any given time.) If you want to reduce the ratio between median wages and the cost of housing (which is probably more important than nominal or even real housing prices), attack the distribution of income.
  - cheriot 6y ago
    Building new housing doesn’t bring more people to the area. Nobody will stay long without a job and increasing the total number of jobs requires more office and commercial space.
- tw_hn_3_14_2021 6y ago
  Somehow, no one in SF has realized this: that they can institute rent control... and increase housing supply... at the same time.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    These are not contradictory ideas. The pro forms that will finance any construction loan/mortgage is not going to let the builder assume big increases in rents beyond inflation. In fact, if the only way to increase rents is to build a larger building and collect from more units, rent control could actually incentivize building. Where rent control gets into trouble is where it encourages "got mine, forget allowing anybody new here" sort of NIMBYism that accompanies home ownership. But that's a cultural problem, not a rent control or home ownership problem. And it's only a problem when the ability to build is gated by letting a tiny number of people veto new buildings. This veto power of tiny minorities is the true problem with building more in SF and other supply constrained places. A more democratic process that took into account the broader views of the people would fix it.
    - candiodari 6y ago
      Maybe not, but obviously the institution of rent control is an attempt to get out from under the house price problem without construction. That's why it's not working. The policy doesn't make half as much sense if you also increase construction.
  - worik 6y ago
    If the state is willing to be activist and damage the (paper) wealth of very influential people, like senior bureaucrats and policy wonks - who decide the states policy... I do not know what it is really like in SF, but here in Aotearoa that is where we find ourselves. House prices and rents double what they ought to be and no state actor willing to take the hit of doing anything about it
    - cheriot 6y ago
      It's more about neighborhood level obstruction in SF. People will elect pro-housing candidates as Mayor and State Senator/Rep, but the local Board of Supervisors (the city council) is controlled by people that will say, "you should build that anywhere, but here." People are _very_ anti-change and especially don't want people different from themselves moving in.
- manicdee 6y ago
  You can also work on reducing demand. Reducing population growth to negative numbers will bring benefits across the economy and ecology of the planet.
  - refurb 6y ago
    This is why we can’t have nice things.
    - manicdee 6y ago
      No. Why we can’t have nice things is the selfishness of the people who worship “the economy” at the cost of human lives. Why we can’t have nice things is the fascination with enabling rich people to get richer directly at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Thing is we already have this. The birth rate in the US is 1.73 children per woman, and the equilibrium rate is 2.1. As development increases, the birth rate drops further. Generally speaking if you want to reduce population, push for development. Schools, healthcare, economic empowerment, the works. It's the best contraceptive. That's fine in the macro, but the micro problem remains people will still want to live more in nice places than crap places. The Bay Area happens to be really, really nice - from a climate perspective that is.
  - worik 6y ago
    Not necessarily benefit the economy. People are a resource. It is all about balance, in a turbulent world
    - manicdee 6y ago
      The economy exists as a side effect of getting people the things they need to live fulfilling lives. Serving the economy is literally putting the cart before the horse. I need to eat and poop. I don’t measure my value as a person by how much I poop. When people value the metric of pooping over the quality of life of the pooper, you create a broken society. So too, valuing the movement of money over what the money is used for distorts our society. More people inflates GDP. GDP is not a measure of anything worthwhile. The economy is not the thing we need to be nurturing — it is a side effect.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance. Though if you want to reduce the prices of housing quickly, I don't think anything could beat rent control plus an aggressive use of eminent domain to build lots of public housing quickly. Even though public housing was done extremely poorly in the US and earned a very bad reputation, other countries have done it much more successfully. A market solution would naturally take far more time (at a minimum, there'd be no reduction in prices until new development project finish and their supply hits the market), and the equilibrium price may still end up being lower but still unaffordable to too many people.

arcticbull 6y ago

Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

Retric 6y ago
Alternatively, just limit office space and thus local jobs. Except that’s not what local residents want. SF is doing everything it can to maximize home prices while minimizing rent and property tax increase for current residents. Which is arguably exactly what’s in current local voters best interest. Democracy working as intended?
- vmception 6y ago
  > Democracy working as intended? 0-day: San Francisco real estate prices vulnerable to 51% attack.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Sure, though you have to get people to vote opposite their personal interests, granted that’s fairly common behavior. Anyway, this seems to be something you can’t actually say as people strongly object without articulating why.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance. That doesn't work either, though it may slow the rate of price growth. If you want to reduce the price of housing, tank the local economy. It's the only thing that works. Supply side policy is neutralized by its own effect on accelerating/decelerating economic growth, e.g., the attack you suggest doesn't work because reducing the growth of the cost of housing in the short-term accelerates local economic growth which creates upward demand-side pressure on housing, and eventually there are limits to supply in any geographical region (and even moreso in any commute time radius, since density shrinks the radius for any given time.) If you want to reduce the ratio between median wages and the cost of housing (which is probably more important than nominal or even real housing prices), attack the distribution of income.
- cheriot 6y ago
  Building new housing doesn’t bring more people to the area. Nobody will stay long without a job and increasing the total number of jobs requires more office and commercial space.
tw_hn_3_14_2021 6y ago
Somehow, no one in SF has realized this: that they can institute rent control... and increase housing supply... at the same time.
- epistasis 6y ago
  These are not contradictory ideas. The pro forms that will finance any construction loan/mortgage is not going to let the builder assume big increases in rents beyond inflation. In fact, if the only way to increase rents is to build a larger building and collect from more units, rent control could actually incentivize building. Where rent control gets into trouble is where it encourages "got mine, forget allowing anybody new here" sort of NIMBYism that accompanies home ownership. But that's a cultural problem, not a rent control or home ownership problem. And it's only a problem when the ability to build is gated by letting a tiny number of people veto new buildings. This veto power of tiny minorities is the true problem with building more in SF and other supply constrained places. A more democratic process that took into account the broader views of the people would fix it.
  - candiodari 6y ago
    Maybe not, but obviously the institution of rent control is an attempt to get out from under the house price problem without construction. That's why it's not working. The policy doesn't make half as much sense if you also increase construction.
- worik 6y ago
  If the state is willing to be activist and damage the (paper) wealth of very influential people, like senior bureaucrats and policy wonks - who decide the states policy... I do not know what it is really like in SF, but here in Aotearoa that is where we find ourselves. House prices and rents double what they ought to be and no state actor willing to take the hit of doing anything about it
  - cheriot 6y ago
    It's more about neighborhood level obstruction in SF. People will elect pro-housing candidates as Mayor and State Senator/Rep, but the local Board of Supervisors (the city council) is controlled by people that will say, "you should build that anywhere, but here." People are _very_ anti-change and especially don't want people different from themselves moving in.
manicdee 6y ago
You can also work on reducing demand. Reducing population growth to negative numbers will bring benefits across the economy and ecology of the planet.
- refurb 6y ago
  This is why we can’t have nice things.
  - manicdee 6y ago
    No. Why we can’t have nice things is the selfishness of the people who worship “the economy” at the cost of human lives. Why we can’t have nice things is the fascination with enabling rich people to get richer directly at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Thing is we already have this. The birth rate in the US is 1.73 children per woman, and the equilibrium rate is 2.1. As development increases, the birth rate drops further. Generally speaking if you want to reduce population, push for development. Schools, healthcare, economic empowerment, the works. It's the best contraceptive. That's fine in the macro, but the micro problem remains people will still want to live more in nice places than crap places. The Bay Area happens to be really, really nice - from a climate perspective that is.
- worik 6y ago
  Not necessarily benefit the economy. People are a resource. It is all about balance, in a turbulent world
  - manicdee 6y ago
    The economy exists as a side effect of getting people the things they need to live fulfilling lives. Serving the economy is literally putting the cart before the horse. I need to eat and poop. I don’t measure my value as a person by how much I poop. When people value the metric of pooping over the quality of life of the pooper, you create a broken society. So too, valuing the movement of money over what the money is used for distorts our society. More people inflates GDP. GDP is not a measure of anything worthwhile. The economy is not the thing we need to be nurturing — it is a side effect.
tablespoon 6y ago
> Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance. Though if you want to reduce the prices of housing quickly, I don't think anything could beat rent control plus an aggressive use of eminent domain to build lots of public housing quickly. Even though public housing was done extremely poorly in the US and earned a very bad reputation, other countries have done it much more successfully. A market solution would naturally take far more time (at a minimum, there'd be no reduction in prices until new development project finish and their supply hits the market), and the equilibrium price may still end up being lower but still unaffordable to too many people.