4 ms·

How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places? Make them less desirable? Prevent people from moving there? Build more housing?

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems, not without some sort of government intervention (like Singapore as mentioned before).
- creddit 6y ago
  Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples. Obviously government is required for the planning and zoning reform aspects but the idea that any solution to housing price issues isn't building more is non-sensical. Singapore's solution is just building HBDs!
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Houston is definitely a great example of how you can’t just build blindly and not expect your traffic and quality of life to suck. But to its credit, Houston creates an equilibrium of being just pleasant and unpleasant enough to not be great but not horrible place to live. Tokyo housing is expensive for its size. You can just get small apartments there that are affordable. Also, Japanese housing depreciates, which takes away a lot of speculative pressure.
    - creddit 6y ago
      Dublinben: "How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places?" You: "You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems" Me: "Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples." You: Does a combination of moving the goal posts on Houston to being about Houston's lack of livability and not prices as well as decides that somehow Tokyo's housing prices declining is a counterargument to building being a solution to high prices? Tokyo is quite affordable in terms of rent and prices haven't been increasing anywhere as dramatically in other similarly classed world cities. If this source is to be believed, it's 48% cheaper than SF: https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000494405.pdf?undefined&realload=rQaAQtq5o7br1PD4Ncda1gP9AxI9UAwU/tJijavXkxD7v~/tHj9kFvpGiAGH5Sld26WOvnPo6GvBFNioAE8bUQ== https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049... I'll again point here, but there are plenty of other resources that will Tokyo's success at combating high housing prices: https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-housing-strategy-build-build-build https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-hous... Or here: https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60?siteedition=intl https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...
dragonwriter 6y ago
> How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable place If there is fixed and relatively small unmet demand, you can build to accommodate it. Otherwise, you can just make it less desirable. If you mistake a case where the earlier condition doesn’t apply for one where it does and start chasing it with runaway density, you’ll probably achieve this accidentally, so, one way or another, “build more” works

seanmcdirmid 6y ago

You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems, not without some sort of government intervention (like Singapore as mentioned before).

creddit 6y ago
Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples. Obviously government is required for the planning and zoning reform aspects but the idea that any solution to housing price issues isn't building more is non-sensical. Singapore's solution is just building HBDs!
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Houston is definitely a great example of how you can’t just build blindly and not expect your traffic and quality of life to suck. But to its credit, Houston creates an equilibrium of being just pleasant and unpleasant enough to not be great but not horrible place to live. Tokyo housing is expensive for its size. You can just get small apartments there that are affordable. Also, Japanese housing depreciates, which takes away a lot of speculative pressure.
  - creddit 6y ago
    Dublinben: "How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places?" You: "You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems" Me: "Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples." You: Does a combination of moving the goal posts on Houston to being about Houston's lack of livability and not prices as well as decides that somehow Tokyo's housing prices declining is a counterargument to building being a solution to high prices? Tokyo is quite affordable in terms of rent and prices haven't been increasing anywhere as dramatically in other similarly classed world cities. If this source is to be believed, it's 48% cheaper than SF: https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000494405.pdf?undefined&realload=rQaAQtq5o7br1PD4Ncda1gP9AxI9UAwU/tJijavXkxD7v~/tHj9kFvpGiAGH5Sld26WOvnPo6GvBFNioAE8bUQ== https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049... I'll again point here, but there are plenty of other resources that will Tokyo's success at combating high housing prices: https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-housing-strategy-build-build-build https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-hous... Or here: https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60?siteedition=intl https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...

dragonwriter 6y ago

> How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable place If there is fixed and relatively small unmet demand, you can build to accommodate it. Otherwise, you can just make it less desirable. If you mistake a case where the earlier condition doesn’t apply for one where it does and start chasing it with runaway density, you’ll probably achieve this accidentally, so, one way or another, “build more” works