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As soon as you look at the zoning of LA, the housing problem there becomes clear as day, even for someone who doesn't visit very often. I don't know what you w

As soon as you look at the zoning of LA, the housing problem there becomes clear as day, even for someone who doesn't visit very often. I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet, once you purchase a house, all the issues with housing there all of a sudden become benefits. This is a small step in the right direction but California has really dug themselves into a hole here. California needs whole apartment blocks, not just duplexes, but apartments is something that is likely to never happen because of the above issue where no one will vote against their self interest. One could say the State should step in but that would be un-democratic. In fact this whole situation is weirdly democratic but un-democratic. Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. You guys and gals have an interesting problem on your hands.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. And the voices of those who own land?
- notJim 5y ago
  In the US, you typically own the land your house is on.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    In what sense? Say I buy a bunch of land in San Francisco so I can put a skyscraper on it. This is a form of "ownership" in which you don't control the property and you have to pay rent on it every year. What's left?
this15testing 5y ago
Prop 13 needs to be repealed
baby 5y ago
I’m convinced that this is the reason behind SF housing problems as well. There’s just too much value for landlords.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Not just landlords, but everyday home owners too. People who got a $X00k mortgage on a house by-and-large are not going to actively support policies which may reduce the asset backing that loan. There would absolutely be long-term benefits to lowering housing costs in parts of the country, but some people are going to have to feel the short-term pain to make that happen.
  - ladyattis 5y ago
    It all comes down to the belief that someone has a guaranteed rate of return on a purchase they deem an investment whether it's a house or a corporate bond there's a baked-in sense of entitlement that sometimes flourishes as absurd laws and regulations.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    > which may reduce the asset backing that loan. IMO its worse than that.. no asset has been "reduced" yet the tempers and decision making get worse and worse.. This is a fundementally divisive issue that brings out the worst in people. Community is nowhere to be seen when it comes to private property and the dollars that come with it. It is a bitter end-game of an explosive and wealthy 100 years of growth in this part of the world.
    - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
      Tempers and radicalism are going up for one good reason: As the size of the loans go up, the stakes go up.
- Causality1 5y ago
  I think anti-profiteering laws could be helpful. If you bought land and built a house and want to live in a quiet neighborhood until you die, fine. But maybe if you vote against expanded housing you don't get to sell your house for more than you paid for it, or maybe don't get to sell it at all while you're alive. Separating the homesteaders from the investors would do a lot of good.
ethanbond 5y ago
That system is called feudalism! Just the lords don’t even have to take care of security anymore - peasants also pay for that.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > system is called feudalism Peasants didn't vote for their lords. Somehow California's poor and renters have been convinced that building less housing is in their interests. (For example, see [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29419007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29419007
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    There are no poor people in America, merely temporarily embarrassed millionaires. A sufficient number of poor voters (the young likely) think they will hit the lottery and don't want the system closed to them. By the time you realize the racket, the next generation comes along to be sold the big lie.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    Landlords (look at the word!) are not elected. Building more loosens their grip, and yes it’s counterproductive to go against that, but also land is de facto finite. Today’s landlords are descended from a long line of landlords, lords, warlords, and eventually just assholes who said, “get off this piece of earth or I will murder you, it’s mine now.” Of course this lineage is no longer exclusively hereditary, but it often is in practice and the economic externalities and ethical considerations are minimally different.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      > Today’s landlords are descended from a long line of landlords, lords, warlords, and eventually just assholes who said, “get off this piece of earth or I will murder you, it’s mine now.” What prevents anyone from being a landlord? If it's capital, what prevents someone from seeking capital?
  - 5y ago
londons_explore 5y ago
I feel like there is a solution that everyone would be happy with. It is to allow many new homes to be built, but to compensate existing homeowners for the fact their property will go down in value due to the influx of new homes. For example, the law could say "Property taxes on all properties built before 2021 will be reduced to zero, while all properties built after 2021 will have to pay property tax at 5% of the property value for 30 years, before dropping for to 0%".
- codekansas 5y ago
  Isn't this effectively what Prop 13 did in 1978? If anything it has greatly reduced the incentive to upzone, because homeowners in highly desirable areas don't pay taxes commensurate to the increasing desirability of the area they live in, while having the additional negative effect of burdening renters and newcomers with higher property taxes
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    But you have to combine it with "and we're going to remove all zoning restrictions and allow people to build any types of housing, however tall or dense the market will support, anywhere". They only did one half...
ordinaryradical 5y ago
> I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. If they upzone my single family home lot I will make out like a bandit. Developers will be all over this neighborhood, building townhouses galore. The last townhouse to sell in my neighborhood went for 2.1MM+. Upzoning does not magically make housing affordable. Housing pricing is more complicated than a simple supply and demand curve, although that tells a story at the macro level. And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value. This shotgun approach to upzoning will alleviate issues in some neighborhoods—in others it will make developers and homeowners a lot of money. These oversimplified narratives on HN are so tiring. Local conditions are much more complex and multifaceted than these "upzone everything" posts would have you believe.
- mlindner 5y ago
  > And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value. That will only happen if the state guarantees to pay those "greedy developers" that they've been lambasting all over the media a bunch of money to build those units. A developer will simply refuse to build any housing at all if they're forced to sell the units at below rate when they can instead make more money building housing in some other market. > These oversimplified narratives on HN are so tiring. I agree and you're making another one of them.
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
  > Upzoning does not magically make housing affordable. Housing pricing is more complicated than a simple supply and demand curve, although that tells a story at the macro level. And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value. Can you elaborate? "Affordable" housing only works as a hack within an artificially constrained market, how is building more housing not the ultimate fix?
  - ordinaryradical 5y ago
    Of course it's building more. But the question is what kind of more. Is artificially changing the density of every Single Family Home neighborhood going to create a more that depresses pricing? No. Because the housing will not all be built magically overnight. Units will come onto the market after: 1) The developer buys. 2) Tears down the SFH. 3) Builds a new multiplex. The capex in each of these steps guarantees that this will happen gradually (also as people are willing to sell) and since everything will be truly new construction (if you want to double density, say) it will come out on the highest end of the market. This can make housing more dense and it can gradually lead to more units on the market. Potentially you could eventually reach competition dynamics that depress pricing. But in reality pricing is also dictated by: location, style, build quality, schools, and a hundred other factors. This is why trumpeting upzoning as though it will somehow depress pricing is dishonest or foolish. Since you can't double the density of LA overnight (even if you can double its theoretical denisty), it's naïve to pretend that this is a silver bullet. My greater point was that the conversation around "housing affordability" has less to do with zoning than developer incentives. Developers need to be given the mandate (and the incentives) to build sub-market rate housing as part of much larger developments if you want affordability and a middle class in California cities.
mlindner 5y ago
Almost like Democracy is not a panacea for all problems...
nimbius 5y ago
housing reform has been a political third-rail for a while now and follows the same aggravating pattern. - Home owners delight in 100k of equity per year on what amounts to bungalow property held together by stucco, as they have since the late seventies when neoliberal tax reforms at a republican behest elevated them to an untouchable landed gentry. - Residents in the state bemoan "Reagans army," the indelible population of more than 70,000 homeless that shuffle through their suburban streets rifling through trash, defecating on sidewalks and stealing from unlocked vehicles. - politicians promise relief and begin amassing considerable tax funds to house the homeless with various community initiatives resources. politicians secure boisterous agreement that this homeless issue must end in $timeline. - the landed gentry respond in kind, refusing any and all housing relief or homeless shelter construction in their fiefdom as it may in turn pose a threat to their profiteering. lawsuits are filed and reformists hamstrung in court. - The city directs their considerable housing funds to cleanup funds, periodically evacuating and sanitizing the overwhelming and seemingly endless number of encampments across freeway overpasses and abandoned investment properties. Homelessness is bad, but another outbreak of cholera or bubonic plague is worse. - young men and women who cannot find affordable housing in the state simply leave after a decade, taking with them talent experience and acumen honed in the city of angels to cities that can better serve them. its also worth mentioning that California is very friendly when it comes to investment property. there are hundreds of derelict, abandoned malls, clubs, bars, parking structures, and other edifices of commerce including giant grass and trash lots that just seem to exist. Theyre all owned by property management cabals or millionaires who refuse to do anything with the land because surprise, they dont need to. The landed gentry of homeowners will always go to bat, defending their right to chew up property and deliver nothing in return.
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  This is so frustrating. I live in a relatively low-income neighborhood in a west-coast city and I hear on social media all the time about how the local government doesn't prioritize us because of our relatively low average household income, but at the same time a lot of those folks are resistant to zoning for more apartment buildings in our neighborhood because of all the nimby classics (crime, diversity, etc.). Maybe I'm wrong (and if someone wants to enlighten me, I'm all ears, because this is definitely not my area of expertise) but it seems to me that an influx of residents into the area might give our neighborhood more pull in local elections as we'd form a voting-block with some aligned interests (services & infrastructure in our neighborhood) even if we differ in other interests. It just seems like we're already in a losing position (w/r/t local politics), why not at least try to make ourselves more formidable. To be honest, I think it would improve a lot of other things. In the past I've mentioned that my neighborhood acts more as a pass-through between the outlying suburbs & the metropolitan city-center, but I think more residents in the area would attract local businesses (can you believe there's not a sit-down cafe in my area other than maybe a starbucks? They're all drive-through kiosks!) because there'd be more of a local population. Once the businesses open up, fewer folks would have to commute to another neighborhood for work (we'll probably, unfortunately, never be rid of that) and we become less of a pass-through neighborhood. But, again, not my expertise. It's also a long-term plan, which seems to be off-putting in today's financial atmosphere.
klyrs 5y ago
It's even worse than that. Because LA is so spread out, merely living in apartment buildings doesn't solve the problem: the apartment-dwellers still need cars to live in LA. When you need 1-3 parking spots for every apartment, the economic efficiency of apartment buildings drops precipitously. With rose-colored glasses, I can see a path forward; building free-standing parking garages that will eventually be demolished / repurposed when car ownership in a neighborhood goes below a certain level. But that's expensive, clunky, and ugly -- and folks aren't going to want to walk across a wide, busy street just to get to their cars. Probably not politically viable.
- politician 5y ago
  Dream: Build light rail and cluster high density mixed-use housing and commercial around the stops. Reality: LA runs out of water as climate change intensifies in the Rockies.
  - ariwilson 5y ago
    LA will never run out of water; it's not the major water user in CA state and it has a huge body of potentially drinkable water next to it and the cash to use it.
    - sydbarrett74 5y ago
      Yep. I'd point to crops like almonds (one of the thirstiest crops imaginable) being grown in the Central Valley. 10% of CA's water goes to this one crop. Unfortunately, farmers are doubling down on this lucrative product while they still can. Whatever happens when most of CA goes dry isn't their concern. I guess they'll retire to Florida.
    - politician 5y ago
      Californians will never approve the energy generation projects required to unlock high volume desalination. They'll be drinking water pumped overland from Colorado until the Hoover Dam is dry.
  - 5y ago
nouveaux 5y ago
Why is this a LA/California problem? New York City and all major cities have had high price housing that benefits owners for decades. What steps have Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, etc done to take their housing prices down to their national average?
- jedberg 5y ago
  In most of those places, zoning rules come from a state/national level. In California, the city has enormous power in zoning rules and the city council is beholden primarily to homeowners.
  - likpok 5y ago
    To add on, California has CEQA that allows for any person to demand long environmental reviews. This has been abused by neighbors (along with historic preservation) to prevent development. The "historic" Mission laundromat is a classic example, as was the lawsuit against the tech shuttle system.
- likpok 5y ago
  Tokyo is a notable exception to that list as housing prices have stayed steady even as population grew. It did this by building an enormous number homes over the years. It's true that many cities face the same problem: by making it difficult to add new supply they make existing homes expensive. Even US cities that aren't famous for being expensive have the same problem (if at a lower scale). They lack the flood of new wealthy population but have the same lack of development.
- bluGill 5y ago
  NYC has high prices, but they are not nearly as high. NYC is not perfect, but it is a lot easier to build there, and thus housing is much cheaper. Housing in the middle of dense cities will always be expensive because it is a desirable place to live, but as you get out NYC starts to get affordable faster than in CA.
- foofoo4u 5y ago
  This article gives some insights on how other countries have addressed their housing shortages. [How to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/how-to-turn-nimbys-into-yimbys https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/h...). This is likely just one of many other explanations as to how.
danans 5y ago
> This is a small step in the right direction but California has really dug themselves into a hole here. California needs whole apartment blocks, not just duplexes, but apartments is something that is likely to never happen because of the above issue where no one will vote against their self interest Incremental upzoning is what will get us there. So changing single family zoning to duplex zoning like what this does, and current multifamily zoning to much higher density zoning. Going from single family to high-density apartments zoning overnight will cause a great deal of chaos, both in land valuation and also in political distrust. California has actually built a huge number of apartment blocks in areas already zoned for that type of housing, and those have been providing most of the new housing supply in the state. Such places have picked up the slack for lower density places where exclusionary zoning has prevented higher density. But housing has to be built in a wider array of formats because not everyone wants to live in a large apartment block. Today, even in urban California huge areas have single homes on large lots that should have the option of being converted to townhouses or multifamily dwellings. A lot of people (even families) would enjoy and even prefer townhouse style living.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Incremental upzoning is what will get us there. This. It's been relatively successful (in terms of units built) in Northern VA. All along the Metro rail through Arlington and Fairfax Counties, we've changed zoning to allow dense multi-use development. Courthouse, Clarendon, and Ballston in Arlington were heavily redeveloped in the 90s and 00s. And Reston and Herndon's Transit Oriented Development Zones have been underway for 5-10 years and will continue for another decade. Definitely not a cure-all, but a step in the right direction. At least there's office, retail, dining, and residential all on the same plot, which beats the previous massive parking lots and mid-rise office space.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    With better zoning, has Northern VA become more affordable? Or has it just become more popular?
    - 5y ago
api 5y ago
> I don't know what you would call this system It's called a cartel to artificially inflate housing for the benefit of existing owners.
marto1 5y ago
> Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet So what if you want to have a family and need to move to a bigger place ? Is it not a problem then ?
- nluken 5y ago
  Not to the same extent because the rise in your own home's value mirrors the rise in value of the bigger place.
  - marto1 5y ago
    I've seen this argument in many places yet I'm not sure the math holds up. For example a house that costs 1000$ goes up in value by 20% = 1200$. Over the same period a 2000$ bigger house goes up by the same amount = 2400$. If you wanted to buy the bigger house before the increase you would have loaned 1000$, but now since the increase you'll have to pay 1200$. Is there a catch I'm missing somewhere or what ?
    - ghaff 5y ago
      No. Assuming prices increase by the same percentage in all price bands, appreciation makes buying up more expensive.
    - ProfessorLayton 5y ago
      Prices do not increase by the same amount in all price bands, for several reasons, but a major one being the cap on federally backed jumbo loans. Secondly, some states like CA tax properties on the purchase price, so the more expensive the property, the higher the tax bill will be, which again is factored into the financing along with interest rates etc. At least in CA, home prices for typical working class folks have risen much faster than homes that were already expensive. This makes it possible to jump into the next price band once enough equity has been built up on a "starter" home.
- codekansas 5y ago
  Not after Prop 19
kodah 5y ago
Speaking as someone who doesn't own a house in California, apartments are not enough and never will be. Housing is an investment, and if I am put in a position to perpetually rent then I am excluded from a very stable and viable long term investment that is not easily replaced. What complicates this more, is if you shove all the affordable houses to the outskirts of the city where most companies are not then you create an entirely new class-based issue. Edit: I don't care what kind of housing it is, but it needs to be for sale as opposed to for rent.
- SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
  I suspect there was a language barrier here. For the whole world "apartments" means what the US refer as "condos". So, in short, L.A. needs a lot of "apartments"(world)/"condos"(USA). And you are right, "apartments"(USA) don't help.
- chestertn 5y ago
  I think you can buy apartments?
  - kodah 5y ago
    The vast majority of apartments I've seen are for rent, not for purchase. So, at the least I'm putting emphasis on the idea that they need to be apartments for sale.
    - JamesBarney 5y ago
      They just don't call them apartments, they call them condos. But they're essentially apartments for sale, and I see them all the time.
      - kodah 5y ago
        The post I was replying to used the word "apartment". I wanted to be specific in case there's anyone out there that thinks that more rental properties will fix the issue.
seneca 5y ago
> In fact this whole situation is weirdly democratic but un-democratic. Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. This isn't undemocratic at all. I know people hate this generally, but just to make a point: Democracy literally means "rule by the demos". The demos is (definitions from wiktionary because it was the first search result): "ordinary citizens, common people from a district, in a city-state” or "(political science) The common populace of a state or district, the people". So, the citizens or the populace. Meaning the people who live there. That is to say, the will of "folks that don't live there" has nothing to do with Democracy. The citizens of an area voting for their self interest is completely democratic. It just doesn't end up with the results some people want.
- rfrey 5y ago
  Yes, but the conflict comes from what "here" means. If you draw the boundary around a neighbourhood, sure - it's democratic. But it's just as rational to consider L.A. itself and suddenly it's undemocratic because decisions aren't being made by the "demos" but by a small subset of them - with implications for the whole city. Similarly one could expand the boundary to the entire state. On the other extreme the residents of a single block could decide it's in their interest to build a skyscraper on their one block. Democracy, right? The residents of an area (that block) are doing what's in their own interest.
  - chongli 5y ago
    You have to draw the boundary somewhere. Once you do, the people inside that boundary will vote for their self-interests and the people outside the boundary will be at a disadvantage. This happens at the level of cities with zoning laws but it also happens at the level of countries with immigration laws.
cageface 5y ago
After living in Asia for the last several years where cities combine high density housing and good mass transit with door to door access to great shopping centers the US just looks comically dysfunctional to me. Who wants to spend hours every day stuck in traffic and looking for parking and then pay outrageous rents for the privilege?
- jiveturkey 5y ago
  Well obviously, the people that want low density housing. It's still the American dream to have a house with a yard and fence.
  - cageface 5y ago
    I grew up in such a house and honestly now if you gave me the choice of that vs living in a nice condo in Tokyo, Bangkok or Singapore it wouldn't even be close.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      Same, I live in a small house by American standards and would willingly live in 1/4 the space if it meant I could easily move to somewhere like Tokyo.
  - acdha 5y ago
    There's certainly a lot of iconography around that but I think that statement is dramatically overselling the strength and universality of that image. Millions of people have chosen suburbs since that was so heavily subsidized in the post-WWII era and limited supply meant there weren't good alternatives in many cases, but I would be careful assuming that this a deep preference rather than picking the default option. In particular, I think you'd see very different responses when people were asked to choose realistic options: it's easy to say you like the idyllic image realtors promote with luxurious houses, perfect landscaping, happy kids at great schools, etc. but quite another to say you want to spend a couple hours a day stuck in an expensive car because there's almost nothing to do within walking distance, take on additional expenses (landscaping, lower density requires higher taxes for infrastructure, etc.), and otherwise live the actual suburban lifestyle for most people rather than the postcard version.
arrosenberg 5y ago
We are building a ton of apartment buildings, but most of it is replacing light commercial, industrial or virgin lots. Adding duplex, triplex, and quadplex housing allows further density in established residential neighborhoods where you have no political chance of putting a 6 story apartment building. Additionally, duplex units can be sold, making a greater number of residents into invested homeowners.
ihaveajob 5y ago
The thing I don't get is why many SFH owners don't see the benefit of upzoning their lot: Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. And if they choose to keep their house as is, nobody is going to force them. In the end, it boils down to cars, though. Many people see the free parking space in front of their house as an extension of their property, and more people on their street often means they have to compete for it. Make cars optional, and everything else falls into place.
- pxeboot 5y ago
  > Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. This only works due to scarcity. If everybody could do this, the values would stop increasing and could potentially drop.
  - ihaveajob 5y ago
    And I would argue that's a good thing, save for those who overbought housing with the expectation of it continuing to rise in value. But it's not responsible to shape the housing market to favor those following the greater fool scheme.
- SmellTheGlove 5y ago
  I can tell you that when we were moving from SF to Seattle this past year, we were getting _crushed_ on any house that was sitting on an upzoned lot. Seattle's done a decent job of upzoning parts of neighborhoods around transit corridors, and we were looking at houses on those lots because I believe in the upside as you do. Well, so do others, and they have _cash_ to buy it - we did not! We're now in a SFH in a mostly SFH neighborhood, but a block or so from an upzoned area that has townhouses and some apartments. The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car. I don't care if people park in front of my house or anything - we're all neighbors - but at some point we're going to run out of street parking. And a lot of people think that's a fake concern, and all I can say to that is, they've never visited Philadelphia.
IIAOPSW 5y ago
>LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet, once you purchase a house, all the issues with housing there all of a sudden become benefits. I have an expression for this. "Solving the problem is only half the problem." Everyone knows how to fix the housing problem (build some f'ing houses). But solving that problem is only half the problem.
- foofoo4u 5y ago
  I have never heard this quote before, but I like it. It's a good point. So how about this to help lead the discussion. We, the HackerNews community, seem to have a general consensus that increasing supply is the best way to lower prices. Rather straight forward, really. But the reason why housing is currently limited is due to a conflict of interests; existing property owners want to stifle supply. And they have more political power than non-property owners in the state. So perhaps we can discuss ingenious policy ideas that would help feed their own self interests, but result in increased supply? The following article references how other countries were able to accomplish such a feat [How to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/how-to-turn-nimbys-into-yimbys https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/h...)
  - greedo 5y ago
    Is more housing really the answer? I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads, and I wonder whether California would just have more people consume the additional housing. Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out.
    - foofoo4u 5y ago
      > Is more housing really the answer? > Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out. Prices are a reflection of supply and demand. There are only two ways to lower prices. Either increase supply or lower demand. One of them is a solvable issue, which is to increase supply. The other option, which is to lower demand, is either unrealistic or unfair. How, do you suppose, we lower demand? The only way you can lower demand is by getting people to change their mind. But how can you realistically expect people to change their mind? Everyone wants to move to L.A., the Bay Area, and other expensive cities because of the good jobs, universities, and career opportunities exist there. > I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads Induced demand is an interesting topic, but do not conflate it with the housing crisis. These are two fundamentally different economic situations. Induced demand is theoretically "induced" because the public good or service is free and utilizing the resource comes at no additional cost to the consumer. Homes on the other hand are not free. They come at a price. And therefore, there is nothing inducing its demand like you would theoretically see with widening a freeway.
jonny_eh 5y ago
> Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. The debate around legal immigration is very much the same. The people that want to immigrate have no voice.
deleted 5y ago
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wayoutthere 5y ago
> I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. This is generally referred to as NIMBYism. And yeah, it’s a problem, but particularly in California where property values have skyrocketed to the point homeowners can’t afford to give up their nest egg because then they’d have nowhere to live.
r0m4n0 5y ago
Agree with you and I think of this problem similar to that of slavery (not nearly the same ethically though). It does concern me however what it took to make people give up their advantages, the grossly more obvious inequities in that case (and solution), and how long it took.
wanderingmoose 5y ago
My understanding is you are already allowed to build an ADU (additional dwelling unit) due to state laws. What I've seen in my city (LA adjacent) is the city can find really creative ways of making adding an ADU very expensive. On my block the same contractor built 2 different ~500 sq ft units on two different lots. They both were a garage tear down replaced by a 1 bedroom unit above a garage. The first unit was done right after the law change allowing ADUs, and cost ~140k. The second, started 18 months later was ~270k and the owner had to pay for things like repaving the ally and upgrading the sewers. So even the small steps are being impeded.
- itake 5y ago
  1/ who actually wants to live in a ADU? 2/ adding 1 more unit to a plot is hardly going to make dent in the crisis. We need to look at Asia to see how they offer affordable house: giant high density housing complexes with ground floor grocery stores and shopping malls for convenient access.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Case in point: my son and his music/business partner have just moved to Santa Fe, where housing for young/lower income people is almost impossible to find. Because of the "tradition" of building casitas here for centuries, we effectively have ADUs, and the only thing our son's friend could find that was affordable was essentially a very small ADU/casita. Is it a dream home? No. Is it an acceptable living space while someone gets their feet on the ground, starts figuring out a new job/life? Absolutely.
    - itake 5y ago
      I think we are both agreeing that ADUs are the lesser of two evils (ADU vs homelessness), but why settle when we have the resources to do better?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Well, in part because agreement about what is better is hard to come by. More single family housing? Townhouses? Small apartment complexes? Large apartment complexes? You could say "well, how about all of the above?" but that just elides the tension between sprawl-based development and increasing urban density, which is also not a matter of widespread agreement. Many people don't like sprawl, but they also don't want dramatically increased urban density (or at least, not near them).
sjg007 5y ago
The State govt could take back development authority from local governments. Otherwise the only hope is that the railroads eminent domain some land and building giant housing complexes with a train station attached.
yt-sdb 5y ago
Put differently, "affordable housing" and "housing as investment" are at odds. People don't acknowledge this tension enough, I suspect because many people want to switch to the housing-as-investment team.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  It’s exactly this. Imagine if we restricted how many cars could be made a year, with the predictable result of new and used car prices steadily increasing every year. And then when anyone suggested what maybe we should let car makers make more cars, you got a bunch of people complaining about the property values of the cars they already owned, or that this would ruin car culture.
  - burmer 5y ago
    Ironically, people do kind of do this, with discussions about traffic, except that nobody benefits. Everyone wants to drive, and no one wants to be stuck in traffic. Restrictions on driving like tolls or special driving zones, bus lanes, etc. all seem to meet the same kinds of headwinds in the US. Maybe this is too far of a stretch for a connection, but your comment got me thinking.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      Well, yes. Americans have sort of a brain block when it comes to driving vs any other mode of transportation. It’s at least partially rational, though: usually non-car transportation is hilariously impractical wherever they currently live, and also wherever they’ve lived in the past. The struggle is to get people to see what could be possible when they have minimal to no experience with it.
foofoo4u 5y ago
> Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. California’s housing crisis has given me a clear perspective on the debate between centralized and distributed powers, a topic I have long struggled to resolve. It harkens back to debates as old as federalism vs anti-federalism. States rights versus federal rights. Similarly, in this case, it’s about county rights versus the state’s right. Debates on this topic usually resolves around one or the other, leading to rather binary positions. But really, the discussion should be about the appropriate balance between the two. I find we are well informed about the tyranny of centralized power by the state. As a specific example, there is a narrative that the Robert Moses era of the mid-20th century lead to massive civil projects, such as freeways, that put the interests of the state ahead of individual neighborhoods, leading to destroyed and fractured communities. It appears there has been a political whiplash against this era which has lead us to the predicament we find ourselves with today, which is that powers are now heavily distributed. What can and cannot be built is now dictated by the counties and the neighborhoods within it. This is wonderful in the sense that you, as an individual property owner, have much greater control on what goes on in your community. But this also has a systemic effect of acting as a problem that the federalists originally warned about in their own debates, which is the tyranny of the majority. Because powers are so heavily distributed, it has lead to an artificially constructed zero-sum game, as you point out in your post, where everyone who owns a home is content and will do whatever they can to limit supply as doing so feeds their natural own self-interests. In this regard, I think it is clear that we have an improper balance between distributed and centralized power. I believe it weighs too heavily on the distributed side. This results in the trampling of interests of both developers, who wish to produce supply, and individuals themselves who wish to participate in the society, but cannot due to unaffordability. This is a shift in position that I would say is rather unique for me. I tend to advocate for the inverse, a reduction in centralized power. But in this particular case, I think centralization is an appropriate step. I also want to make one additional disclaimer. By centralization of power, I don’t mean the state should be involved in housing construction itself. This is a position often proposed by progressive advocates. Instead what I mean is that the state should have the power to override local interests so that the market can do its job, which is its interest to increase supply. In other words, the state should do what it can to remove the local bureaucracy that stifles development.
gamblor956 5y ago
but apartments is something that is likely to never happen because of the above issue where no one will vote against their self interest. Several dozen massive apartment complexes have been constructed in L.A. in the past 4 years, and more are being constructed as we speak. It turns out the problem was never actually zoning; it's simply that it's extremely expensive to build in L.A. when taking into account cost of land (limited supply), cost of materials (excess demand), cost of labor (excess demand), and the extra architectural and structural demands resulting from the dozens of fault lines criss-crossing the L.A. basin.
14 5y ago
I wonder what would happen to the market if suddenly the population was quartered or halved? We have omincron now, I’m just waiting for a variant do mutate and become something ugly like Ebola. I’m also thinking of places like Japan where thousands of houses are abandoned. Surely there are things that could crush the market aren’t there?
wumpus 5y ago
California did step in, when the elected legislature passed legislation that overrode local zoning decisions.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. And the voices of those who own land?

notJim 5y ago
In the US, you typically own the land your house is on.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  In what sense? Say I buy a bunch of land in San Francisco so I can put a skyscraper on it. This is a form of "ownership" in which you don't control the property and you have to pay rent on it every year. What's left?

this15testing 5y ago

Prop 13 needs to be repealed

baby 5y ago

I’m convinced that this is the reason behind SF housing problems as well. There’s just too much value for landlords.

mywittyname 5y ago
Not just landlords, but everyday home owners too. People who got a $X00k mortgage on a house by-and-large are not going to actively support policies which may reduce the asset backing that loan. There would absolutely be long-term benefits to lowering housing costs in parts of the country, but some people are going to have to feel the short-term pain to make that happen.
- ladyattis 5y ago
  It all comes down to the belief that someone has a guaranteed rate of return on a purchase they deem an investment whether it's a house or a corporate bond there's a baked-in sense of entitlement that sometimes flourishes as absurd laws and regulations.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  > which may reduce the asset backing that loan. IMO its worse than that.. no asset has been "reduced" yet the tempers and decision making get worse and worse.. This is a fundementally divisive issue that brings out the worst in people. Community is nowhere to be seen when it comes to private property and the dollars that come with it. It is a bitter end-game of an explosive and wealthy 100 years of growth in this part of the world.
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    Tempers and radicalism are going up for one good reason: As the size of the loans go up, the stakes go up.
Causality1 5y ago
I think anti-profiteering laws could be helpful. If you bought land and built a house and want to live in a quiet neighborhood until you die, fine. But maybe if you vote against expanded housing you don't get to sell your house for more than you paid for it, or maybe don't get to sell it at all while you're alive. Separating the homesteaders from the investors would do a lot of good.

ethanbond 5y ago

That system is called feudalism! Just the lords don’t even have to take care of security anymore - peasants also pay for that.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> system is called feudalism Peasants didn't vote for their lords. Somehow California's poor and renters have been convinced that building less housing is in their interests. (For example, see [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29419007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29419007
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  There are no poor people in America, merely temporarily embarrassed millionaires. A sufficient number of poor voters (the young likely) think they will hit the lottery and don't want the system closed to them. By the time you realize the racket, the next generation comes along to be sold the big lie.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Landlords (look at the word!) are not elected. Building more loosens their grip, and yes it’s counterproductive to go against that, but also land is de facto finite. Today’s landlords are descended from a long line of landlords, lords, warlords, and eventually just assholes who said, “get off this piece of earth or I will murder you, it’s mine now.” Of course this lineage is no longer exclusively hereditary, but it often is in practice and the economic externalities and ethical considerations are minimally different.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    > Today’s landlords are descended from a long line of landlords, lords, warlords, and eventually just assholes who said, “get off this piece of earth or I will murder you, it’s mine now.” What prevents anyone from being a landlord? If it's capital, what prevents someone from seeking capital?
- 5y ago

londons_explore 5y ago

I feel like there is a solution that everyone would be happy with. It is to allow many new homes to be built, but to compensate existing homeowners for the fact their property will go down in value due to the influx of new homes. For example, the law could say "Property taxes on all properties built before 2021 will be reduced to zero, while all properties built after 2021 will have to pay property tax at 5% of the property value for 30 years, before dropping for to 0%".

codekansas 5y ago
Isn't this effectively what Prop 13 did in 1978? If anything it has greatly reduced the incentive to upzone, because homeowners in highly desirable areas don't pay taxes commensurate to the increasing desirability of the area they live in, while having the additional negative effect of burdening renters and newcomers with higher property taxes
- londons_explore 5y ago
  But you have to combine it with "and we're going to remove all zoning restrictions and allow people to build any types of housing, however tall or dense the market will support, anywhere". They only did one half...

ordinaryradical 5y ago

> I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. If they upzone my single family home lot I will make out like a bandit. Developers will be all over this neighborhood, building townhouses galore. The last townhouse to sell in my neighborhood went for 2.1MM+. Upzoning does not magically make housing affordable. Housing pricing is more complicated than a simple supply and demand curve, although that tells a story at the macro level. And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value. This shotgun approach to upzoning will alleviate issues in some neighborhoods—in others it will make developers and homeowners a lot of money. These oversimplified narratives on HN are so tiring. Local conditions are much more complex and multifaceted than these "upzone everything" posts would have you believe.

mlindner 5y ago
> And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value. That will only happen if the state guarantees to pay those "greedy developers" that they've been lambasting all over the media a bunch of money to build those units. A developer will simply refuse to build any housing at all if they're forced to sell the units at below rate when they can instead make more money building housing in some other market. > These oversimplified narratives on HN are so tiring. I agree and you're making another one of them.
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
> Upzoning does not magically make housing affordable. Housing pricing is more complicated than a simple supply and demand curve, although that tells a story at the macro level. And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value. Can you elaborate? "Affordable" housing only works as a hack within an artificially constrained market, how is building more housing not the ultimate fix?
- ordinaryradical 5y ago
  Of course it's building more. But the question is what kind of more. Is artificially changing the density of every Single Family Home neighborhood going to create a more that depresses pricing? No. Because the housing will not all be built magically overnight. Units will come onto the market after: 1) The developer buys. 2) Tears down the SFH. 3) Builds a new multiplex. The capex in each of these steps guarantees that this will happen gradually (also as people are willing to sell) and since everything will be truly new construction (if you want to double density, say) it will come out on the highest end of the market. This can make housing more dense and it can gradually lead to more units on the market. Potentially you could eventually reach competition dynamics that depress pricing. But in reality pricing is also dictated by: location, style, build quality, schools, and a hundred other factors. This is why trumpeting upzoning as though it will somehow depress pricing is dishonest or foolish. Since you can't double the density of LA overnight (even if you can double its theoretical denisty), it's naïve to pretend that this is a silver bullet. My greater point was that the conversation around "housing affordability" has less to do with zoning than developer incentives. Developers need to be given the mandate (and the incentives) to build sub-market rate housing as part of much larger developments if you want affordability and a middle class in California cities.

mlindner 5y ago

Almost like Democracy is not a panacea for all problems...

nimbius 5y ago

housing reform has been a political third-rail for a while now and follows the same aggravating pattern. - Home owners delight in 100k of equity per year on what amounts to bungalow property held together by stucco, as they have since the late seventies when neoliberal tax reforms at a republican behest elevated them to an untouchable landed gentry. - Residents in the state bemoan "Reagans army," the indelible population of more than 70,000 homeless that shuffle through their suburban streets rifling through trash, defecating on sidewalks and stealing from unlocked vehicles. - politicians promise relief and begin amassing considerable tax funds to house the homeless with various community initiatives resources. politicians secure boisterous agreement that this homeless issue must end in $timeline. - the landed gentry respond in kind, refusing any and all housing relief or homeless shelter construction in their fiefdom as it may in turn pose a threat to their profiteering. lawsuits are filed and reformists hamstrung in court. - The city directs their considerable housing funds to cleanup funds, periodically evacuating and sanitizing the overwhelming and seemingly endless number of encampments across freeway overpasses and abandoned investment properties. Homelessness is bad, but another outbreak of cholera or bubonic plague is worse. - young men and women who cannot find affordable housing in the state simply leave after a decade, taking with them talent experience and acumen honed in the city of angels to cities that can better serve them. its also worth mentioning that California is very friendly when it comes to investment property. there are hundreds of derelict, abandoned malls, clubs, bars, parking structures, and other edifices of commerce including giant grass and trash lots that just seem to exist. Theyre all owned by property management cabals or millionaires who refuse to do anything with the land because surprise, they dont need to. The landed gentry of homeowners will always go to bat, defending their right to chew up property and deliver nothing in return.

what_is_orcas 5y ago
This is so frustrating. I live in a relatively low-income neighborhood in a west-coast city and I hear on social media all the time about how the local government doesn't prioritize us because of our relatively low average household income, but at the same time a lot of those folks are resistant to zoning for more apartment buildings in our neighborhood because of all the nimby classics (crime, diversity, etc.). Maybe I'm wrong (and if someone wants to enlighten me, I'm all ears, because this is definitely not my area of expertise) but it seems to me that an influx of residents into the area might give our neighborhood more pull in local elections as we'd form a voting-block with some aligned interests (services & infrastructure in our neighborhood) even if we differ in other interests. It just seems like we're already in a losing position (w/r/t local politics), why not at least try to make ourselves more formidable. To be honest, I think it would improve a lot of other things. In the past I've mentioned that my neighborhood acts more as a pass-through between the outlying suburbs & the metropolitan city-center, but I think more residents in the area would attract local businesses (can you believe there's not a sit-down cafe in my area other than maybe a starbucks? They're all drive-through kiosks!) because there'd be more of a local population. Once the businesses open up, fewer folks would have to commute to another neighborhood for work (we'll probably, unfortunately, never be rid of that) and we become less of a pass-through neighborhood. But, again, not my expertise. It's also a long-term plan, which seems to be off-putting in today's financial atmosphere.

klyrs 5y ago

It's even worse than that. Because LA is so spread out, merely living in apartment buildings doesn't solve the problem: the apartment-dwellers still need cars to live in LA. When you need 1-3 parking spots for every apartment, the economic efficiency of apartment buildings drops precipitously. With rose-colored glasses, I can see a path forward; building free-standing parking garages that will eventually be demolished / repurposed when car ownership in a neighborhood goes below a certain level. But that's expensive, clunky, and ugly -- and folks aren't going to want to walk across a wide, busy street just to get to their cars. Probably not politically viable.

politician 5y ago
Dream: Build light rail and cluster high density mixed-use housing and commercial around the stops. Reality: LA runs out of water as climate change intensifies in the Rockies.
- ariwilson 5y ago
  LA will never run out of water; it's not the major water user in CA state and it has a huge body of potentially drinkable water next to it and the cash to use it.
  - sydbarrett74 5y ago
    Yep. I'd point to crops like almonds (one of the thirstiest crops imaginable) being grown in the Central Valley. 10% of CA's water goes to this one crop. Unfortunately, farmers are doubling down on this lucrative product while they still can. Whatever happens when most of CA goes dry isn't their concern. I guess they'll retire to Florida.
  - politician 5y ago
    Californians will never approve the energy generation projects required to unlock high volume desalination. They'll be drinking water pumped overland from Colorado until the Hoover Dam is dry.
- 5y ago

nouveaux 5y ago

Why is this a LA/California problem? New York City and all major cities have had high price housing that benefits owners for decades. What steps have Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, etc done to take their housing prices down to their national average?

jedberg 5y ago
In most of those places, zoning rules come from a state/national level. In California, the city has enormous power in zoning rules and the city council is beholden primarily to homeowners.
- likpok 5y ago
  To add on, California has CEQA that allows for any person to demand long environmental reviews. This has been abused by neighbors (along with historic preservation) to prevent development. The "historic" Mission laundromat is a classic example, as was the lawsuit against the tech shuttle system.
likpok 5y ago
Tokyo is a notable exception to that list as housing prices have stayed steady even as population grew. It did this by building an enormous number homes over the years. It's true that many cities face the same problem: by making it difficult to add new supply they make existing homes expensive. Even US cities that aren't famous for being expensive have the same problem (if at a lower scale). They lack the flood of new wealthy population but have the same lack of development.
bluGill 5y ago
NYC has high prices, but they are not nearly as high. NYC is not perfect, but it is a lot easier to build there, and thus housing is much cheaper. Housing in the middle of dense cities will always be expensive because it is a desirable place to live, but as you get out NYC starts to get affordable faster than in CA.
foofoo4u 5y ago
This article gives some insights on how other countries have addressed their housing shortages. [How to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/how-to-turn-nimbys-into-yimbys https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/h...). This is likely just one of many other explanations as to how.

danans 5y ago

> This is a small step in the right direction but California has really dug themselves into a hole here. California needs whole apartment blocks, not just duplexes, but apartments is something that is likely to never happen because of the above issue where no one will vote against their self interest Incremental upzoning is what will get us there. So changing single family zoning to duplex zoning like what this does, and current multifamily zoning to much higher density zoning. Going from single family to high-density apartments zoning overnight will cause a great deal of chaos, both in land valuation and also in political distrust. California has actually built a huge number of apartment blocks in areas already zoned for that type of housing, and those have been providing most of the new housing supply in the state. Such places have picked up the slack for lower density places where exclusionary zoning has prevented higher density. But housing has to be built in a wider array of formats because not everyone wants to live in a large apartment block. Today, even in urban California huge areas have single homes on large lots that should have the option of being converted to townhouses or multifamily dwellings. A lot of people (even families) would enjoy and even prefer townhouse style living.

alistairSH 5y ago
Incremental upzoning is what will get us there. This. It's been relatively successful (in terms of units built) in Northern VA. All along the Metro rail through Arlington and Fairfax Counties, we've changed zoning to allow dense multi-use development. Courthouse, Clarendon, and Ballston in Arlington were heavily redeveloped in the 90s and 00s. And Reston and Herndon's Transit Oriented Development Zones have been underway for 5-10 years and will continue for another decade. Definitely not a cure-all, but a step in the right direction. At least there's office, retail, dining, and residential all on the same plot, which beats the previous massive parking lots and mid-rise office space.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  With better zoning, has Northern VA become more affordable? Or has it just become more popular?
  - 5y ago

api 5y ago

> I don't know what you would call this system It's called a cartel to artificially inflate housing for the benefit of existing owners.

marto1 5y ago

> Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet So what if you want to have a family and need to move to a bigger place ? Is it not a problem then ?

nluken 5y ago
Not to the same extent because the rise in your own home's value mirrors the rise in value of the bigger place.
- marto1 5y ago
  I've seen this argument in many places yet I'm not sure the math holds up. For example a house that costs 1000$ goes up in value by 20% = 1200$. Over the same period a 2000$ bigger house goes up by the same amount = 2400$. If you wanted to buy the bigger house before the increase you would have loaned 1000$, but now since the increase you'll have to pay 1200$. Is there a catch I'm missing somewhere or what ?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    No. Assuming prices increase by the same percentage in all price bands, appreciation makes buying up more expensive.
  - ProfessorLayton 5y ago
    Prices do not increase by the same amount in all price bands, for several reasons, but a major one being the cap on federally backed jumbo loans. Secondly, some states like CA tax properties on the purchase price, so the more expensive the property, the higher the tax bill will be, which again is factored into the financing along with interest rates etc. At least in CA, home prices for typical working class folks have risen much faster than homes that were already expensive. This makes it possible to jump into the next price band once enough equity has been built up on a "starter" home.
codekansas 5y ago
Not after Prop 19

kodah 5y ago

Speaking as someone who doesn't own a house in California, apartments are not enough and never will be. Housing is an investment, and if I am put in a position to perpetually rent then I am excluded from a very stable and viable long term investment that is not easily replaced. What complicates this more, is if you shove all the affordable houses to the outskirts of the city where most companies are not then you create an entirely new class-based issue. Edit: I don't care what kind of housing it is, but it needs to be for sale as opposed to for rent.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
I suspect there was a language barrier here. For the whole world "apartments" means what the US refer as "condos". So, in short, L.A. needs a lot of "apartments"(world)/"condos"(USA). And you are right, "apartments"(USA) don't help.
chestertn 5y ago
I think you can buy apartments?
- kodah 5y ago
  The vast majority of apartments I've seen are for rent, not for purchase. So, at the least I'm putting emphasis on the idea that they need to be apartments for sale.
  - JamesBarney 5y ago
    They just don't call them apartments, they call them condos. But they're essentially apartments for sale, and I see them all the time.
    - kodah 5y ago
      The post I was replying to used the word "apartment". I wanted to be specific in case there's anyone out there that thinks that more rental properties will fix the issue.

seneca 5y ago

> In fact this whole situation is weirdly democratic but un-democratic. Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. This isn't undemocratic at all. I know people hate this generally, but just to make a point: Democracy literally means "rule by the demos". The demos is (definitions from wiktionary because it was the first search result): "ordinary citizens, common people from a district, in a city-state” or "(political science) The common populace of a state or district, the people". So, the citizens or the populace. Meaning the people who live there. That is to say, the will of "folks that don't live there" has nothing to do with Democracy. The citizens of an area voting for their self interest is completely democratic. It just doesn't end up with the results some people want.

rfrey 5y ago
Yes, but the conflict comes from what "here" means. If you draw the boundary around a neighbourhood, sure - it's democratic. But it's just as rational to consider L.A. itself and suddenly it's undemocratic because decisions aren't being made by the "demos" but by a small subset of them - with implications for the whole city. Similarly one could expand the boundary to the entire state. On the other extreme the residents of a single block could decide it's in their interest to build a skyscraper on their one block. Democracy, right? The residents of an area (that block) are doing what's in their own interest.
- chongli 5y ago
  You have to draw the boundary somewhere. Once you do, the people inside that boundary will vote for their self-interests and the people outside the boundary will be at a disadvantage. This happens at the level of cities with zoning laws but it also happens at the level of countries with immigration laws.

cageface 5y ago

After living in Asia for the last several years where cities combine high density housing and good mass transit with door to door access to great shopping centers the US just looks comically dysfunctional to me. Who wants to spend hours every day stuck in traffic and looking for parking and then pay outrageous rents for the privilege?

jiveturkey 5y ago
Well obviously, the people that want low density housing. It's still the American dream to have a house with a yard and fence.
- cageface 5y ago
  I grew up in such a house and honestly now if you gave me the choice of that vs living in a nice condo in Tokyo, Bangkok or Singapore it wouldn't even be close.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    Same, I live in a small house by American standards and would willingly live in 1/4 the space if it meant I could easily move to somewhere like Tokyo.
- acdha 5y ago
  There's certainly a lot of iconography around that but I think that statement is dramatically overselling the strength and universality of that image. Millions of people have chosen suburbs since that was so heavily subsidized in the post-WWII era and limited supply meant there weren't good alternatives in many cases, but I would be careful assuming that this a deep preference rather than picking the default option. In particular, I think you'd see very different responses when people were asked to choose realistic options: it's easy to say you like the idyllic image realtors promote with luxurious houses, perfect landscaping, happy kids at great schools, etc. but quite another to say you want to spend a couple hours a day stuck in an expensive car because there's almost nothing to do within walking distance, take on additional expenses (landscaping, lower density requires higher taxes for infrastructure, etc.), and otherwise live the actual suburban lifestyle for most people rather than the postcard version.

arrosenberg 5y ago

We are building a ton of apartment buildings, but most of it is replacing light commercial, industrial or virgin lots. Adding duplex, triplex, and quadplex housing allows further density in established residential neighborhoods where you have no political chance of putting a 6 story apartment building. Additionally, duplex units can be sold, making a greater number of residents into invested homeowners.

ihaveajob 5y ago

The thing I don't get is why many SFH owners don't see the benefit of upzoning their lot: Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. And if they choose to keep their house as is, nobody is going to force them. In the end, it boils down to cars, though. Many people see the free parking space in front of their house as an extension of their property, and more people on their street often means they have to compete for it. Make cars optional, and everything else falls into place.

pxeboot 5y ago
> Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. This only works due to scarcity. If everybody could do this, the values would stop increasing and could potentially drop.
- ihaveajob 5y ago
  And I would argue that's a good thing, save for those who overbought housing with the expectation of it continuing to rise in value. But it's not responsible to shape the housing market to favor those following the greater fool scheme.
SmellTheGlove 5y ago
I can tell you that when we were moving from SF to Seattle this past year, we were getting _crushed_ on any house that was sitting on an upzoned lot. Seattle's done a decent job of upzoning parts of neighborhoods around transit corridors, and we were looking at houses on those lots because I believe in the upside as you do. Well, so do others, and they have _cash_ to buy it - we did not! We're now in a SFH in a mostly SFH neighborhood, but a block or so from an upzoned area that has townhouses and some apartments. The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car. I don't care if people park in front of my house or anything - we're all neighbors - but at some point we're going to run out of street parking. And a lot of people think that's a fake concern, and all I can say to that is, they've never visited Philadelphia.

IIAOPSW 5y ago

>LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet, once you purchase a house, all the issues with housing there all of a sudden become benefits. I have an expression for this. "Solving the problem is only half the problem." Everyone knows how to fix the housing problem (build some f'ing houses). But solving that problem is only half the problem.

foofoo4u 5y ago
I have never heard this quote before, but I like it. It's a good point. So how about this to help lead the discussion. We, the HackerNews community, seem to have a general consensus that increasing supply is the best way to lower prices. Rather straight forward, really. But the reason why housing is currently limited is due to a conflict of interests; existing property owners want to stifle supply. And they have more political power than non-property owners in the state. So perhaps we can discuss ingenious policy ideas that would help feed their own self interests, but result in increased supply? The following article references how other countries were able to accomplish such a feat [How to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/how-to-turn-nimbys-into-yimbys https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/09/11/h...)
- greedo 5y ago
  Is more housing really the answer? I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads, and I wonder whether California would just have more people consume the additional housing. Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out.
  - foofoo4u 5y ago
    > Is more housing really the answer? > Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out. Prices are a reflection of supply and demand. There are only two ways to lower prices. Either increase supply or lower demand. One of them is a solvable issue, which is to increase supply. The other option, which is to lower demand, is either unrealistic or unfair. How, do you suppose, we lower demand? The only way you can lower demand is by getting people to change their mind. But how can you realistically expect people to change their mind? Everyone wants to move to L.A., the Bay Area, and other expensive cities because of the good jobs, universities, and career opportunities exist there. > I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads Induced demand is an interesting topic, but do not conflate it with the housing crisis. These are two fundamentally different economic situations. Induced demand is theoretically "induced" because the public good or service is free and utilizing the resource comes at no additional cost to the consumer. Homes on the other hand are not free. They come at a price. And therefore, there is nothing inducing its demand like you would theoretically see with widening a freeway.

jonny_eh 5y ago

> Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. The debate around legal immigration is very much the same. The people that want to immigrate have no voice.

deleted 5y ago

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wayoutthere 5y ago

> I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. This is generally referred to as NIMBYism. And yeah, it’s a problem, but particularly in California where property values have skyrocketed to the point homeowners can’t afford to give up their nest egg because then they’d have nowhere to live.

r0m4n0 5y ago

Agree with you and I think of this problem similar to that of slavery (not nearly the same ethically though). It does concern me however what it took to make people give up their advantages, the grossly more obvious inequities in that case (and solution), and how long it took.

wanderingmoose 5y ago

My understanding is you are already allowed to build an ADU (additional dwelling unit) due to state laws. What I've seen in my city (LA adjacent) is the city can find really creative ways of making adding an ADU very expensive. On my block the same contractor built 2 different ~500 sq ft units on two different lots. They both were a garage tear down replaced by a 1 bedroom unit above a garage. The first unit was done right after the law change allowing ADUs, and cost ~140k. The second, started 18 months later was ~270k and the owner had to pay for things like repaving the ally and upgrading the sewers. So even the small steps are being impeded.

itake 5y ago
1/ who actually wants to live in a ADU? 2/ adding 1 more unit to a plot is hardly going to make dent in the crisis. We need to look at Asia to see how they offer affordable house: giant high density housing complexes with ground floor grocery stores and shopping malls for convenient access.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Case in point: my son and his music/business partner have just moved to Santa Fe, where housing for young/lower income people is almost impossible to find. Because of the "tradition" of building casitas here for centuries, we effectively have ADUs, and the only thing our son's friend could find that was affordable was essentially a very small ADU/casita. Is it a dream home? No. Is it an acceptable living space while someone gets their feet on the ground, starts figuring out a new job/life? Absolutely.
  - itake 5y ago
    I think we are both agreeing that ADUs are the lesser of two evils (ADU vs homelessness), but why settle when we have the resources to do better?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Well, in part because agreement about what is better is hard to come by. More single family housing? Townhouses? Small apartment complexes? Large apartment complexes? You could say "well, how about all of the above?" but that just elides the tension between sprawl-based development and increasing urban density, which is also not a matter of widespread agreement. Many people don't like sprawl, but they also don't want dramatically increased urban density (or at least, not near them).

sjg007 5y ago

The State govt could take back development authority from local governments. Otherwise the only hope is that the railroads eminent domain some land and building giant housing complexes with a train station attached.

yt-sdb 5y ago

Put differently, "affordable housing" and "housing as investment" are at odds. People don't acknowledge this tension enough, I suspect because many people want to switch to the housing-as-investment team.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
It’s exactly this. Imagine if we restricted how many cars could be made a year, with the predictable result of new and used car prices steadily increasing every year. And then when anyone suggested what maybe we should let car makers make more cars, you got a bunch of people complaining about the property values of the cars they already owned, or that this would ruin car culture.
- burmer 5y ago
  Ironically, people do kind of do this, with discussions about traffic, except that nobody benefits. Everyone wants to drive, and no one wants to be stuck in traffic. Restrictions on driving like tolls or special driving zones, bus lanes, etc. all seem to meet the same kinds of headwinds in the US. Maybe this is too far of a stretch for a connection, but your comment got me thinking.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Well, yes. Americans have sort of a brain block when it comes to driving vs any other mode of transportation. It’s at least partially rational, though: usually non-car transportation is hilariously impractical wherever they currently live, and also wherever they’ve lived in the past. The struggle is to get people to see what could be possible when they have minimal to no experience with it.

foofoo4u 5y ago

> Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard. California’s housing crisis has given me a clear perspective on the debate between centralized and distributed powers, a topic I have long struggled to resolve. It harkens back to debates as old as federalism vs anti-federalism. States rights versus federal rights. Similarly, in this case, it’s about county rights versus the state’s right. Debates on this topic usually resolves around one or the other, leading to rather binary positions. But really, the discussion should be about the appropriate balance between the two. I find we are well informed about the tyranny of centralized power by the state. As a specific example, there is a narrative that the Robert Moses era of the mid-20th century lead to massive civil projects, such as freeways, that put the interests of the state ahead of individual neighborhoods, leading to destroyed and fractured communities. It appears there has been a political whiplash against this era which has lead us to the predicament we find ourselves with today, which is that powers are now heavily distributed. What can and cannot be built is now dictated by the counties and the neighborhoods within it. This is wonderful in the sense that you, as an individual property owner, have much greater control on what goes on in your community. But this also has a systemic effect of acting as a problem that the federalists originally warned about in their own debates, which is the tyranny of the majority. Because powers are so heavily distributed, it has lead to an artificially constructed zero-sum game, as you point out in your post, where everyone who owns a home is content and will do whatever they can to limit supply as doing so feeds their natural own self-interests. In this regard, I think it is clear that we have an improper balance between distributed and centralized power. I believe it weighs too heavily on the distributed side. This results in the trampling of interests of both developers, who wish to produce supply, and individuals themselves who wish to participate in the society, but cannot due to unaffordability. This is a shift in position that I would say is rather unique for me. I tend to advocate for the inverse, a reduction in centralized power. But in this particular case, I think centralization is an appropriate step. I also want to make one additional disclaimer. By centralization of power, I don’t mean the state should be involved in housing construction itself. This is a position often proposed by progressive advocates. Instead what I mean is that the state should have the power to override local interests so that the market can do its job, which is its interest to increase supply. In other words, the state should do what it can to remove the local bureaucracy that stifles development.

gamblor956 5y ago

but apartments is something that is likely to never happen because of the above issue where no one will vote against their self interest. Several dozen massive apartment complexes have been constructed in L.A. in the past 4 years, and more are being constructed as we speak. It turns out the problem was never actually zoning; it's simply that it's extremely expensive to build in L.A. when taking into account cost of land (limited supply), cost of materials (excess demand), cost of labor (excess demand), and the extra architectural and structural demands resulting from the dozens of fault lines criss-crossing the L.A. basin.

14 5y ago

I wonder what would happen to the market if suddenly the population was quartered or halved? We have omincron now, I’m just waiting for a variant do mutate and become something ugly like Ebola. I’m also thinking of places like Japan where thousands of houses are abandoned. Surely there are things that could crush the market aren’t there?

wumpus 5y ago

California did step in, when the elected legislature passed legislation that overrode local zoning decisions.