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The housing market example is bizarre, because if you go look at San Francisco, the entire area of SOMA is dominated by skyscrapers and luxury condos that are 9

The housing market example is bizarre, because if you go look at San Francisco, the entire area of SOMA is dominated by skyscrapers and luxury condos that are 90% vacant. Office buildings are going vacant at an accelerated rate. Salesforce Tower has never managed to fill up on tenants. We don't need to build new housing, we just need to actually price the ones we do have so people can afford them. Stop bulldozing stuff built less than 20 years ago to replace it with even more shoddily built stuff you can sell for even higher margins. We already have the homes, just let people live in them. "Bulldoze or not" is not a helpful axis, because it implies that the new stuff will be better. But that's not a given, and I'm very suspicious to trust the people who built apartments which are 90% empty. The analogy also helpfully applies to blockchain technology.

kurthr 5y ago
I learned something early this year from a friend in the finance industry. Part of the reason you find so many empty overpriced new apartments/condos/commercial is that they are written into the loan... and if even a single unit is rented/sold below the rate that was contracted the entire loan has to be renegotiated/paid within the year. If you're speculating on price increases, there's no reason to rent any of them. Frankly, when there is so much empty space the desire for increased building, higher density, and reduced code requirements just looks like what builder/speculators want... not what will increase actual affordable housing for people with jobs (who need to get there somehow). The whole 22 bus line as a "Transit Corridor" is a joke that lets developers use public space for private profit... the Safeway parking lot is already half full at 3am and apparently they're planning to start charging for it! Why not just do what Vancouver did and put an annual fee on empty (no renter on taxes, resident owner on taxes, or going concern on rolls) residential/commercial to curb speculation? Because the developers who fund local politicians would lose money. Further, they would threaten the politicians with "no one will ever build here again because of these fees!".
- Jasper_ 5y ago
  i do not give a shit if the developers who make houses people do not live in do not build here again. neither should the politicians. our lives will improve if they go away forever. we already have all the houses we need, we just need to stop bulldozing them and instead start handing them out. if they actually do not want to build here, maybe they should have thought of that before building houses nobody lives in. people should live in the houses.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    It could be worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g Billionaires Row is half empty.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Source on 90% vacancy? I find that completely implausible.

kurthr 5y ago

I learned something early this year from a friend in the finance industry. Part of the reason you find so many empty overpriced new apartments/condos/commercial is that they are written into the loan... and if even a single unit is rented/sold below the rate that was contracted the entire loan has to be renegotiated/paid within the year. If you're speculating on price increases, there's no reason to rent any of them. Frankly, when there is so much empty space the desire for increased building, higher density, and reduced code requirements just looks like what builder/speculators want... not what will increase actual affordable housing for people with jobs (who need to get there somehow). The whole 22 bus line as a "Transit Corridor" is a joke that lets developers use public space for private profit... the Safeway parking lot is already half full at 3am and apparently they're planning to start charging for it! Why not just do what Vancouver did and put an annual fee on empty (no renter on taxes, resident owner on taxes, or going concern on rolls) residential/commercial to curb speculation? Because the developers who fund local politicians would lose money. Further, they would threaten the politicians with "no one will ever build here again because of these fees!".

Jasper_ 5y ago
i do not give a shit if the developers who make houses people do not live in do not build here again. neither should the politicians. our lives will improve if they go away forever. we already have all the houses we need, we just need to stop bulldozing them and instead start handing them out. if they actually do not want to build here, maybe they should have thought of that before building houses nobody lives in. people should live in the houses.
- kurthr 5y ago
  It could be worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g Billionaires Row is half empty.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

Source on 90% vacancy? I find that completely implausible.