6 ms·

Yeah, I don’t know about getting rid of those regulations for cars, but it is worthwhile to think about what happens when you get rid of a bunch of regulation f

Yeah, I don’t know about getting rid of those regulations for cars, but it is worthwhile to think about what happens when you get rid of a bunch of regulation for housing “safety.” A lot of housing regulation we have today is mostly to get rid of tenement housing. If cities got rid of minimum apartment sizes and we allowed dorms/flop houses where you get a tiny single room, or a slightly less tiny room for groups, more people could at least cram indoors in much safer spaces than they get out on the streets. Laws in Californian cities go much further than just blocking tenements though. Just eliminating the cost of litigation and allowing constructions as-of-right would make a pretty big impact. But it politicians really do need to consider whether a law that is intended to help poorer people will actually put more of them out on the street.

baron816 5y ago
Just imagine the guards’ rooms from Squid Game. How expensive would it be to build 10,000 of those for SF’s homeless? They get a desk, chair, bed, shared bathroom, and a door that locks. How can you argue that is worse than what they have now? We agree that the best route to solve the homeless problem is to find homes for them, but liberals believe those homes have to be 600sf+ with a full kitchen and bathroom, laundry in unit, and free gym onsite. Let’s just get them inside with the bare minimum and figure out amenities once they’re stable.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  > liberals believe those homes have to be 600sf+ with a full kitchen and bathroom, laundry in unit, and free gym onsite That's hilarious, because you can look up Gabrunas Hall on Joint Base Pearl Harbor - Hickam on Google Maps and look at the 3 photos some sailor took of those barracks rooms. And what's hilarious, is that Gabrunas was widely considered the nicest Naval barracks at Pearl Harbor outside of the bachelor officer barracks. The room probably isn't even 250 sq. ft. I spent the better part of a year living in that barracks, for the three years I was stationed at Pearl Harbor, and when I wasn't there, I was onboard the USS Honolulu (SSN-718), in which one has no room, period. In Gabrunas, you shared a kitchen and a bathroom with a roommate who had their own private room as well. Laundry facilities were at the end of each hallway and were shared by everyone on that floor. If that's a good enough environment for senior enlisted personnel - that is, people who've spent quite a few years in the military, or have advanced quickly (generally E-6 and above), it should damn well be good enough for homeless people.
- dTal 5y ago
  >liberals believe <hyperbole> This is neither accurate nor a useful way to frame the debate. Keep partisan potshots off HN please.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  "They get a desk, chair, bed, shared bathroom, and a door that locks" Yeah and you have to pay €700 a month for that.
Aloha 5y ago
I'm not suggesting getting rid of regulation, I'm just suggesting less. I'm suggesting (for cars anyway) that there is a point where the marginal systemic cost to save a life isn't worth the dollar amount for the safety technology used to save them. Backup cameras are the best example of this, I'd have to dig thru my comment history, but the mandate of backup cameras adds some huge amount of cost to cars (when totaled), something like 300k or 500k (or more) per life saved, mostly because people are too lazy/busy/distracted to approach their vehicle from the rear and very few lives are saved in real numbers by backup cameras. These regulatory burdens have hidden costs, and those costs are shouldered disproportionately by the poor. The same argument applies to housing, the reason only 'luxury' housing gets built, instead of middle income housing, is because only 'luxury' housing has the profit margins to support the protracted development process you have to go thru to build anything. While yes, it's true that no one builds low income housing, once you have a good supply of new moderate income housing, yesterdays moderate income housing becomes todays lower income housing. But because we stopped building moderate income housing, the progression downmarket just stopped. Another thing we missed, is the government ripped out a huge amount of low income housing when it closed down the large housing projects in most urban areas in the early 90's, the focus on "affordable" units by private builders, is a wrong-headed approach to get that capacity back.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Backup cameras save lives, but also prevent property damage. And not just to the driver's car, but also to the parked cars they might have otherwise hit. The value of property damage avoided should also be factored into the 'pro' side of the pro/con evaluation.
  - wahern 5y ago
    Safety mandates also help drive obsolescence, which helps car manufacturers sell more cars, which in turn keeps the used car market well supplied. (It's basically a very progressive tax that mostly falls upon the wealthier.) Most safety mandates seem to be largely voluntary, AFAICT--literally, or with deadlines that go unchallenged by the industry--as the regulatory agencies hash out timelines with manufacturers so they can maximize return and minimize cost inflation by letting the features trickle down from luxury models over the course of 5-10 years. IIRC, backup cameras are a great example of this, with companies like Toyota preemptively committing to adding them to all cars across their lineup before (or at least very early during) the industry and regulatory agency negotiations. I think the most costly safety "taxes" (e.g. impact resistance) effectively just translate to heavier cars. Fuel mileage requirements also had the perverse second order effect of increasing car sizes. These are the closest analog for housing. There was recently a lot of noise about California requiring sprinkler systems in new single-family homes, but that just ends up increasing costs by like 1% or less. It's de minimis to begin with, and should drop as builders adjust their processes. (I realize these things add up, and I'm not trying to defend the sprinkler mandate, but there are also counterveiling forces--like standardization--which push back in the other direction.) But minimum square footage requirements for units, maximum height requirements for buildings, etc... those go straight to the bottom line of primary costs (property, raw material, and labor) similar to car size and weight. But unlike cars, the health & safety benefit of modern unit size requirements (i.e. the marginal increase over, say, mid-century requirements) is basically non-existent and were in many cases quite literally crafted in the first instance to limit housing supply.

baron816 5y ago

Just imagine the guards’ rooms from Squid Game. How expensive would it be to build 10,000 of those for SF’s homeless? They get a desk, chair, bed, shared bathroom, and a door that locks. How can you argue that is worse than what they have now? We agree that the best route to solve the homeless problem is to find homes for them, but liberals believe those homes have to be 600sf+ with a full kitchen and bathroom, laundry in unit, and free gym onsite. Let’s just get them inside with the bare minimum and figure out amenities once they’re stable.

cbozeman 5y ago
> liberals believe those homes have to be 600sf+ with a full kitchen and bathroom, laundry in unit, and free gym onsite That's hilarious, because you can look up Gabrunas Hall on Joint Base Pearl Harbor - Hickam on Google Maps and look at the 3 photos some sailor took of those barracks rooms. And what's hilarious, is that Gabrunas was widely considered the nicest Naval barracks at Pearl Harbor outside of the bachelor officer barracks. The room probably isn't even 250 sq. ft. I spent the better part of a year living in that barracks, for the three years I was stationed at Pearl Harbor, and when I wasn't there, I was onboard the USS Honolulu (SSN-718), in which one has no room, period. In Gabrunas, you shared a kitchen and a bathroom with a roommate who had their own private room as well. Laundry facilities were at the end of each hallway and were shared by everyone on that floor. If that's a good enough environment for senior enlisted personnel - that is, people who've spent quite a few years in the military, or have advanced quickly (generally E-6 and above), it should damn well be good enough for homeless people.
dTal 5y ago
>liberals believe <hyperbole> This is neither accurate nor a useful way to frame the debate. Keep partisan potshots off HN please.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
"They get a desk, chair, bed, shared bathroom, and a door that locks" Yeah and you have to pay €700 a month for that.

Aloha 5y ago

I'm not suggesting getting rid of regulation, I'm just suggesting less. I'm suggesting (for cars anyway) that there is a point where the marginal systemic cost to save a life isn't worth the dollar amount for the safety technology used to save them. Backup cameras are the best example of this, I'd have to dig thru my comment history, but the mandate of backup cameras adds some huge amount of cost to cars (when totaled), something like 300k or 500k (or more) per life saved, mostly because people are too lazy/busy/distracted to approach their vehicle from the rear and very few lives are saved in real numbers by backup cameras. These regulatory burdens have hidden costs, and those costs are shouldered disproportionately by the poor. The same argument applies to housing, the reason only 'luxury' housing gets built, instead of middle income housing, is because only 'luxury' housing has the profit margins to support the protracted development process you have to go thru to build anything. While yes, it's true that no one builds low income housing, once you have a good supply of new moderate income housing, yesterdays moderate income housing becomes todays lower income housing. But because we stopped building moderate income housing, the progression downmarket just stopped. Another thing we missed, is the government ripped out a huge amount of low income housing when it closed down the large housing projects in most urban areas in the early 90's, the focus on "affordable" units by private builders, is a wrong-headed approach to get that capacity back.

gnicholas 5y ago
Backup cameras save lives, but also prevent property damage. And not just to the driver's car, but also to the parked cars they might have otherwise hit. The value of property damage avoided should also be factored into the 'pro' side of the pro/con evaluation.
- wahern 5y ago
  Safety mandates also help drive obsolescence, which helps car manufacturers sell more cars, which in turn keeps the used car market well supplied. (It's basically a very progressive tax that mostly falls upon the wealthier.) Most safety mandates seem to be largely voluntary, AFAICT--literally, or with deadlines that go unchallenged by the industry--as the regulatory agencies hash out timelines with manufacturers so they can maximize return and minimize cost inflation by letting the features trickle down from luxury models over the course of 5-10 years. IIRC, backup cameras are a great example of this, with companies like Toyota preemptively committing to adding them to all cars across their lineup before (or at least very early during) the industry and regulatory agency negotiations. I think the most costly safety "taxes" (e.g. impact resistance) effectively just translate to heavier cars. Fuel mileage requirements also had the perverse second order effect of increasing car sizes. These are the closest analog for housing. There was recently a lot of noise about California requiring sprinkler systems in new single-family homes, but that just ends up increasing costs by like 1% or less. It's de minimis to begin with, and should drop as builders adjust their processes. (I realize these things add up, and I'm not trying to defend the sprinkler mandate, but there are also counterveiling forces--like standardization--which push back in the other direction.) But minimum square footage requirements for units, maximum height requirements for buildings, etc... those go straight to the bottom line of primary costs (property, raw material, and labor) similar to car size and weight. But unlike cars, the health & safety benefit of modern unit size requirements (i.e. the marginal increase over, say, mid-century requirements) is basically non-existent and were in many cases quite literally crafted in the first instance to limit housing supply.