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>Unchained from their desks, the hordes of newly remote white-collar workers descended upon all the magical mountain towns, and in just one year, the median lis

by scythe 5y ago

>Unchained from their desks, the hordes of newly remote white-collar workers descended upon all the magical mountain towns, and in just one year, the median list price for a home in Crested Butte jumped 40 percent, to $895,000. Rents soared, too—20 to 40 percent in Colorado ski towns like Crested Butte, according to one June 2021 report. The market adjusts if it is correct to adjust, at least probably, according to the probably efficient market hypothesis. The question is whether it's correct for the market to adjust. Is it a durable trend for computer-based work to be performed from the comfort of far-flung locales? Because this would probably change the demand for, and therefore the construction and presence of, housing all over the place. Crested Butte happens to be first on the list; just wait until they discover Ocracoke. But housing can't just appear and disappear willy-nilly. It's heavy, for one thing. So yes, the solution to a durable increase in housing demand is to build more housing. What about a transient increase in demand? Suppose a bunch of people want housing but won't in five years. Suppose we know this, just for the sake of a simpler analysis (cf. for the sake of argument). What then? The most common suggestion I've heard, in the second scenario, says you probably want some way to ensure that the people who are likely to stick around don't all get driven out. This is where you start to look at policies like rent control and property tax abatements for long-term owners. This also includes affordable housing incentives of various kinds. But these policies conflict with construction and therefore long-term planning in municipal policymaking. Over the long-term, concealing a durable increase in demand with stringent tenant protections creates a double standard and a new kind of inequality. This is one case where a political debate turns into a prognostication contest. Unfortunately, fortune-tellers have a poor track record regardless of political leanings. Optimistically, we can plan for both eventualities at once, as long as we're clear about what we're doing. A major barrier to the compromise option is the tendency for political polarization to poison the well. Advocates of tenant protection raise spurious "positive-feedback" objections to upzoning, citing effects that disappear in well-controlled studies. Advocates of housing deregulation overestimate the impact of modernized affordability incentives, and underestimate or ignore the possibilities for innovation and general social benefits thereof. I'm arguing for uncertainty. I generally support housing construction wherever it's fiscally sound. But we can't expect that construction to materialize where the market isn't convinced it's necessary, simply because it would meet our social objectives. And we can't ignore the future to meet social objectives right now.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> I generally support housing construction wherever it's fiscally sound. TFA describes a town where (a) construction is limited by forces beyond the town's control (geography, federal land ownership) and (b) construction (at least of certain kinds of housing) is prevented by existing residents who vote against it. The state of housing construction in Crested Butte does not sound as if it is governed by any sort of notion of "fiscal soundness" at all.
- scythe 5y ago
  So this is a pretty good example of a non-constructive response created by polarization. Obviously we are only interested in the returns to modifying (b) under the constraints of (a). Obviously markets can price this kind of thing. But no, let's obsess over any technicality in a critique of our ideology (in your case, the deregulation position) until the Sun explodes.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > Obviously markets can price this kind of thing. The markets have priced this kind of thing. TFA is about the result. You could argue that the situation described in TFA is contigent or temporary or something like that, and to the extent that everything about any town fits that description, sure, you're right. But it's no help to anyone to say "oh, this situation will be different in 50 years anyway". You could (and probably would) argue that the problems described in TFA arise from the political control exerted by local voters to limit housing styles and availability, and not "the market". That's certainly true to some extent, but there's no way out of that unless you propose to strip towns of political systems entirely - perhaps some libertarian scenario in which ownership is everything and no political process can prevent an owner from using something unless it causes harm to others, harm defined, of course, by the owner or the owner's political and economic allies. That's a debate I no longer get into.
    - scythe 5y ago
      >But it's no help to anyone to say "oh, this situation will be different in 50 years anyway". Yes, that's why I covered mitigations in the paragraphs you ignored. >You could (and probably would) argue that the problems described in TFA arise from the political control [...] No, I explicitly rejected that argument in my original post. In fact, the very next sentence after the one you quoted says this: >But we can't expect that construction to materialize where the market isn't convinced it's necessary, simply because it would meet our social objectives. This is why I don't bother arguing. People don't even read what you said.

by scythe 5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> I generally support housing construction wherever it's fiscally sound. TFA describes a town where (a) construction is limited by forces beyond the town's control (geography, federal land ownership) and (b) construction (at least of certain kinds of housing) is prevented by existing residents who vote against it. The state of housing construction in Crested Butte does not sound as if it is governed by any sort of notion of "fiscal soundness" at all.

scythe 5y ago
So this is a pretty good example of a non-constructive response created by polarization. Obviously we are only interested in the returns to modifying (b) under the constraints of (a). Obviously markets can price this kind of thing. But no, let's obsess over any technicality in a critique of our ideology (in your case, the deregulation position) until the Sun explodes.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Obviously markets can price this kind of thing. The markets have priced this kind of thing. TFA is about the result. You could argue that the situation described in TFA is contigent or temporary or something like that, and to the extent that everything about any town fits that description, sure, you're right. But it's no help to anyone to say "oh, this situation will be different in 50 years anyway". You could (and probably would) argue that the problems described in TFA arise from the political control exerted by local voters to limit housing styles and availability, and not "the market". That's certainly true to some extent, but there's no way out of that unless you propose to strip towns of political systems entirely - perhaps some libertarian scenario in which ownership is everything and no political process can prevent an owner from using something unless it causes harm to others, harm defined, of course, by the owner or the owner's political and economic allies. That's a debate I no longer get into.
  - scythe 5y ago
    >But it's no help to anyone to say "oh, this situation will be different in 50 years anyway". Yes, that's why I covered mitigations in the paragraphs you ignored. >You could (and probably would) argue that the problems described in TFA arise from the political control [...] No, I explicitly rejected that argument in my original post. In fact, the very next sentence after the one you quoted says this: >But we can't expect that construction to materialize where the market isn't convinced it's necessary, simply because it would meet our social objectives. This is why I don't bother arguing. People don't even read what you said.