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Homelessness also decreases when cities simply let more housing be built, even if luxury housing. https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apartment-building

Homelessness also decreases when cities simply let more housing be built, even if luxury housing. https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apartment-buildings-help-low-income-renters/ https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apartment-building... For some reason liberal policymakers (or their constituents) either can't seem to get that in their head, or can't act on it. And instead cling to things like rent control, which "feel good" in the short run but end up doing the opposite of what was intended. Sometimes I think that every policy (that isn't a "duh, of course" policy) should come with an expiration date. So that the people you wanted to help are specifically identified, and given a finite time to be helped -- and people who come after know that it's a one-time intervention and the system is what it is from now on. Then when the people you thought it would serve / benefit are gone, you are required to assess whether it worked as you thought, and it doesn't just go on autopilot forever. Now, whether the policymakers would respect that, or simply keep on extending it on public opinion, who knows. It's just too easy for well-intentioned people to put in place rules they think will work, and go away for 10 years and discover it didn't, and then still do nothing to fix it.

salmonfamine 5y ago
Why would they allow more housing to be built? That would reduce the value of their real estate assets in places like SF and LA. Discard any notion that all but a very small minority of policymakers are truly motivated by ideology.
- nostromo 5y ago
  I live in a deep blue city (Seattle) and have interacted with some local policy makers. In truth, they just aren't very smart. And worse, they are quite confident they are indeed very smart. This isn't some grand conspiracy to increase homelessness and increase the cost of housing. The problem is that we elect idiots to local government.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Completely agree. We should be aiming to elect doctors and engineers (i.e. people who understand Systems Theory) for political positions, not people who have prescriptive solutions.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      There are plenty of stupid doctors and engineers.
      - beebmam 5y ago
        Well, duh. There's plenty of stupid people of ANY classification. But at least most doctors and engineers have proven that they can understand systems analysis and think critically, or they wouldn't have their licenses. Software engineering is barely regulated/licensed, so I certainly wouldn't apply this to most software engineers.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        What does understanding systems analysis have to do with being a good politician?
    - coding123 5y ago
      What would a doctor or engineer do differently?
      - sitkack 5y ago
        Make a decision based on emotion and then retroactively use math to justify that decision.
        idiotsecant 5y ago
        I am so glad that this response is here. HN in general has this disease, but it's pretty prevalent in STEM fields in general- The "I know how to solve a differential equation so that means I am a rational decision maker" disease. It's important to acknowledge that the more education a person has the more likely they are to reverse-engineer a reason to think something that they want to think, especially when it comes to emotionally charged issues like those that politicians encounter every day. Having technical skills does not automagically make you a good leader or policymaker. It just means you have good technical skills. I would go so far as to say there are probably more people with good technical skills that should not be making policy than the opposite.
- ditonal 5y ago
  The narrative that housing is blocked by rich NIMBYs protecting their land value is true BUT The less popular narrative that’s just as true, at least in California if you pay attention to the politics, is that PHIMBYs who are mostly renters and insist on 100% affordable or nothing, play just as big a role. If you look at who blocked SB50 or who pitched the “Mission moratorium , it was PHIMBY renters. It’s easy to rally people up against greedy rich people. But the elephant in the room is that so much resistance comes from poor people who think “luxury housing” (aka anything market rate) will lead to more gentrification. You can agree or disagree with the PHIMBY position but most people find it complex enough they just pretend that faction doesn’t exist despite the huge role it plays.
  - cheriot 5y ago
    That's only true in relatively small areas. Most places resisting home construction are full of homeowners. The political impact is larger in SF/LA because they give left cover to homeowners, but even that's not a thing in most states and cities.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rdw 5y ago
    Acronym stands for Public Housing In My Backyard. (I had to look this up)
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > PHIMBYs Basically don't exist. AHIMBYs do, but even people who demand affordable units don't want public units anywhere close to where they live. > But the elephant in the room is that so much resistance comes from poor people who think “luxury housing” (aka anything market rate) will lead to more gentrification. In any place without open space, the only way to build new housing is redevelopement; if you target the top of the market (which is what “market rate” housing means), you cannot have any hyperlocal (and wider, on a short-term scale) effect besides more gentrification. The intermediate term, wider area (but still somewhat local) effect may be more affordable housing as existing housing becomes more down-market through competitive forces, but that also could be offset by further increasing nonhousing costs and reduction in nonhousing services targeting the lower income segment as the gentrifiers reshape local markets.
- wallacoloo 5y ago
  > That would reduce the value of their real estate assets in places like SF and LA. does it actually work that way? a large part of land value seems to come from network effects: the more densely populated a region, the more valuable each sqft. upzoning a plot often seems to be an immediate profit, too. SFH worth $1M, gets upzoned, suddenly a developer can pay $2M for the plot and tear down the house + build high-density units that are very valuable. maybe values fall once you overbuild, but i have yet to see that in my lifetime.
  - xondono 5y ago
    Long term vs short term. Long term they’ll be worth more, but short term prices will go down. No one sees prices really go down because that could trigger another ‘08 style collapse. Banks are less leveraged, but there’s a lot of people with mortgages too big for their sake.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > does it actually work that way? Yes, density drives up the price of land, but much of the value of a home isn't land value; poorer people in the neighborhood drives down the value per square foot of existing dwelling because people with money don't want to live near people without money by and large, both directly and indirectly. (E.g., better off people want to, and will pay a premium to, live near “good schools”, but there is pretty solid evidence that almost none of the difference in the things which people look to to assess that is due to the school itself, it is almost entirely incidental consequences of the demographics of the students attending the school: “good schools” aren't ones that make better students, they are made by better students.) Until the potential realizable by dense redevelopment drives up the land value so much that the added land value exceeds the lost value of the existing improvements, it's a loss, and even then it's a gain that can only be realized by abandoning the home, which becomes a liability that needs to be dealt with to unlock the value. Homeowners want the value of their home to increase, but often what they more specifically want is to continue living in the home while leveraging greater equity to enhance their lifestyle. This is not served by land value increases (even if they reach the level of net property value increases after decrease in value of existing improvements) that are only accessible by redevelopment. People who live in homes they own are not like absentee owners and tend to ascribe significant value to existing community character and significant negative value to moving, on top of theit investment interests in the property.
- cheriot 5y ago
  Owners of SFHs tend to be the most stiff resistance despite the fact that upzoning increases the value of their land. This is a culture war first and foremost. It's racism, classism, and fear of the unknown.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  I honestly believe my friends aren't motivated by keeping their house price up, they just don't understand simple supply and demand. I tried explaining rent controls don't work, they even agreed but said "something must be done". Rent control is the easiest solution to justify and implement. I really wish supply and demand was taught in schools.
  - coding123 5y ago
    Rent control also has the opposite negative effect of causing a lot of people to stay still forever, causing the only AVAILABLE rentals (that all smell like cat pee, laundry detergent/freshner and next door to basketball hoops) to be $3500 a month. If the rent wasn't controlled then the nice apartments would be available at $3500 and the pee/laundry baskebetball ones would be available at least at $700/mo for those that need housing.
    - phillypham 5y ago
      Serious question. What's wrong with living next to basketball hoops? I live across the street from one in NYC and consider it a big positive to have a park nearby.
      - simplestats 5y ago
        Presumably the noise. It's a pretty common source of friction between neighbors.
      - coding123 5y ago
        They can be noisy when there's a kid just shooting for half the day. If you're outside of the noise shot and you have good insulation, then it's probably fine.
      - pgwhalen 5y ago
        My guess would be noise. A basketball hoop across the street is an amenity, but one right outside the window might be an annoyance.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  Here's the weird part, policies to encourage density to go higher would almost certainly dramatically increase the value of the real estate homeowners already own. I suspect it's the desire to limit change more than really some asset value calculation.
- dionidium 5y ago
  No, it wouldn't. The land is what's valuable and the land in those extremely high-demand areas would be worth more money if the zoning allowed more uses on it.
new_realist 5y ago
More housing decreases homelessness in the short term, but not in the long term. Humans breed and will always reproduce to fill all available habitat, like any animal. Building more housing reduces homelessness like building more highways reduces traffic.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  There are empty cities in China and cheap empty houses all over the Midwest.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  This is wrong. In the west, and much of the developing world now, reproduction is below replacement rate. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fert... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/business/china-birth-rate-2019.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/business/china-birth-rate...
- cheriot 5y ago
  People living in urban areas have fewer kids than rural families. Malthusianism has long since been debunked.
varelse 5y ago
There are plenty of liberal YIMBYs out there getting c___blocked by bipartisan NIMBYs who don't want anything to happen to the monotonically increasing value of their real estate. But also, we have plenty of land if we could do something about all that ridiculous eminent domain that keeps us from building a high speed rail system. Ironically though, even in California's heartland, a lot of that land is in the hands of disinterested speculators as part of their enormous portfolios built during the Great depression and handed down generation to generation. I doubt we do any of these things though. Until there's some sort of phase transition in our political system, everything is gridlock all the way down with occasional spurts of disruptive innovation with calls for regulation shortly thereafter.
jimbob45 5y ago
Building luxury housing is emblematic of the short-term thinking of the 90's and 00's that has resulted in the long-term issues we're seeing today. You can build single-family housing on vast swaths of land for landlord sharks to snap up and rent out. However, that results in a city of short-term inhabitants who aren't invested in taking care of the city and eventually the city is less desirable and the rentals dry up. Or you can ban single-family housing rentals, build high-density housing for rentals, and reserve the single-family units for long-term residents who will upkeep the desirability of the city. It has nothing to do with liberal or conservative policymakers and more to do with the sort of short-term thinking that "build more housing - there are no consequences" represents.
paxys 5y ago
There is no such thing as luxury housing. If someone builds a fancy new apartment building with amenities, units in the 60 year old building next door automatically fall in value and become more affordable. We need to build housing, period.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > If someone builds a fancy new apartment building with amenities, units in the 60 year old building next door automatically fall in value and become more affordable. We need to build housing, period. More than likely (at least here in Seattle), the 60 year old building next door has already been bought by a developer and is just waiting its turn to be redeveloped into more fancy new luxury housing.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    Because >80% in single-family zoning. Let them build denser there and they will tear down single homes instead.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      But those maps aren’t equally distributed. Yes, Seattle has alot of SFH zoning in…lake city, greenwood, rainier. But the place where they are building luxury town homes aren’t it, as soon as the zoning allows for it, developers buy out the old small craftsman homes built in the 1920s and replace them with multiple 3-4 story luxury townhomes.
spamizbad 5y ago
It’s actually important to understand the American liberal is quite conservative when it comes to economic concerns. The problem with fixing housing is that it requires change, and the tolerance for economic change for your typical liberal voter is very limited. There’s a reason why they routinely reject their left flank in favor of economic moderates and it’s not just pragmatism or electability: they tolerate the status quo and are only open to minor tweaks and adjustments.
- cheriot 5y ago
  This. The people with influence in both parties benefit from the status quo, enjoy their privilege, and only want things to change from a distance.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's even necessary to blame politicians with influence. Over the last few decades, we made home ownership a goal for the vast majority of the US populace. Now we expect those homeowners to vote against their own self-interest (to approve additional housing units/zoning).
    - cheriot 5y ago
      Agree that voting blocks with influence are a big part of it. I don't think it's rational self-interest, though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784347
      - aeternum 5y ago
        Upzoning might increase land value but often decreases property value. In general supply and demand still functions, by increasing supply the price should decrease. What evidence is there that it is due to racism, classism and fear rather than rational self-interest?
        5y ago
stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
Your URL cites two studies, one was in the US, which states: > I combine the address histories with a simulation model to estimate that building 100 new market-rate units leads 45-70 and 17-39 people to move out of below-median and bottom-quintile income tracts The people represented in your vague "liberal policymakers" are almost universally in support of "market-rate units," contrary to your claims. Did you read any of the articles or studies you linked to? The Trump Administration suspended part of a 2016 rule designed to reduce segregation and expand opportunity for low-income families with Housing Choice Vouchers. Is he a "liberal policymaker" as well?
gameswithgo 5y ago
Liberal policymakers in my town push heavily for homes to be built, thought they push for "affordable" housing specifically, which maybe is a mistake.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jdavis703 5y ago
It takes time to build housing: from permits to financing to actual construction, multi-family infill projects can take years to build. Rent control is a good interim solution to liberalized housing rules… But certainly it’s only a short term fix. There is no free lunch.
jdavis703 5y ago
It takes time to build housing: from permits to financing to actual construction, multi-family infill projects can take years to build. Rent control is a good interim solution to letting the effects of liberalized housing rules take hold… But certainly it’s only a short term fix. There is no free lunch.
dheera 5y ago
I mean, also, if we know homelessness rises if rent exceeds a third of income, can't we just set laws that say rent cannot legally be more than a third of median income? When the most luxurious homes drop to that rent price, the standard places will drop even further. And those landowners that can't afford to maintain it anymore will be forced to sell, increasing supply, and reducing the number of real estate tycoons that squat land without living on it or using it, in turn making ownership cheaper for middle class residents, and reducing the number of people that need to rent. As ownership gets cheaper, property taxes will then crash, which is also good for even cheaper rents.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  And investment in creating more homes will also drop. You will have attacked a symptom, price, in pursuit of attacking the problem: lack of supply.
- djbebs 5y ago
  Congratulations you've now created a death spiral where housing supply will decrease over the long term and your city will no longer have the cash to fullfil its obligations. That's how you kill a city.
devwastaken 5y ago
Depends on how you measure it. Are we measuring based on days not homeless, homeless status, or number of evictions? The core problem of poverty living is having to jump from one rent situation to another. Landlords openly discriminate against women, women with children, and race continuously. But yes, a number of liberal policies keep people on the streets. As documented multiple times in "evicted", the building inspector is sometimes responsible for more evictions than the landlord. However there's more to it than that as we see with the homeless camps. Many of these people have little to no reason to care about anything. Often addicted to hard drugs (including alcohol) with no want to sober, no reason to. There's enough money in theft, prostitution, and odd jobs to keep homeless living sustainable. We cannot convince these people that there's more to life, and therefore we cannot convince them into free education for skilled work. The education system on this is also broken, especially high school and universities. Therefore the problem were seeing is not simply housing, work, education, it's all symptoms of government rot. Systems that were created a long time ago of which their purpose has been lost. The solution to all this is to wipe the slate clean and start again with people that actually care and aren't sitting on a government paycheck.
- false-mirror 5y ago
  This is on its face absurd, and makes it clear you've never actually spoken with an unhoused person.
  - devwastaken 5y ago
    I have helped multiple friends into government housing. Housing didn't suddenly cure their addictions or absolve them of mental health problems. It doesn't remove the victim mindset. Resources such as education and work can only be done if the individual is prepared to do it. But we don't have good resources, therefore the problems are cyclical. Trusting the word of people is not representative of what they actually do. All of these people claimed to want X but make no effort towards it. People lie, especially to themselves.
- kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  I appreciate your breakdown of the situation, but it does make me wonder - are the people who become temporarily homeless consistently able to get back on their feet into into new jobs/homes with the resources governments currently provide? Making sure that the people who want help/relief from the situation seems important even if others choose to reject it
bennysomething 5y ago
I wish it was obvious to everyone that simple supply and demand means that luxary builds still drive prices down. I was surprised to find nearly everyone I know does not understand this.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I think one of the most underappreciated facts in politics is that distinct groups with similar incomes don't necessarily have similar interests. In the case of housing policy the interests of people rich enough to lend money are actually much more closely aligned with those of people poor enough to have bad credit than the upper middle class who can afford to use leverage in a speculative housing market.
jarjoura 5y ago
Can we stop the name calling, it's really not productive to the conversation. How many *IMBY's did you just throw out there?! There's a couple really good books that delve into this complex issue [1], [2]. The TLDR is that early 20th century American cities were quick to level entire neighborhoods to bring in modern infrastructure. It was swift and brutal, wiping out 50 to 100 years of history without much thought. All replaced with boring concrete roads and bland architecture. So in the 60s and 70s, activists changed city laws to empower local residents with the ability to delay or out-right block housing projects. What you're seeing now is the result of 40-50 years of cities stuck going through very tedious processes to get anything moved forward. The problem with empowering any local resident is that you see only the people who want to stop something at the hearings and all it really takes are a hand-full. The rest of the residents are impartial or just too busy to care. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-Politics-Americas/dp/1108477275 https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America/dp/0525560211 https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It was swift and brutal, wiping out 50 to 100 years of history without much thought. “Without much thought” is whitewashing. There was usually very careful thought about who was targeted for harm, and who for gains (race, ethnicity, and class were central focuses of this thought.)
  - jarjoura 5y ago
    I'm not whitewashing anything, I used that expression to dramatize the reckless way in which neighborhoods were torn down in the name of progress. Obviously, there was a lot of very careful thought that went into every project. Public opinion has always mattered in government and it'd always get faster approval if you tackle infrastructure projects in certain areas over others. It'd also become a much more affordable effort if you did it in areas with cheaper land value and used cheaper building materials. Still, my mistake for using that expression, as it's distracting you from my main point.
Symmetry 5y ago
Also, most voters in a given municipality own homes in that municipality (if they just wanted to move in they couldn't vote there) and so have a financial interest in restricting supply. And when most of your net worth is in one highly leveraged asset that's at least an understandable atttude. And if housing prices go down that might allow the wrong sort of person into their communities. Some people conceive this in racial terms but for others its that they think of poor people as lazy or impulsive and so not good neighbors. And I've certainly heard coworkers complaining that if poor people could move into their communities they wouldn't be paying their "fair share" of the school's running cost and so spending per pupil would drop. And, least concretely, I think, developers would profit and they align with our mental images of greedy capitalists more than landlords do. At least for non-renters who do most of the voting about these things.
rich_sasha 5y ago
The UK has an awkward cycle: housing is expensive, people who want to buy houses want to find something cheap. But once they find a house, they want no more houses be built, as they would depreciate the value of their own house. Incidentally, home owners tend to vote Conservative, whereas renters tend to vote Labour. Labour’s housing policy tends to revolve around cheap rentals (social housing) rather than cheap houses for sale.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  Last statistic could just be due to age difference.
- mFixman 5y ago
  I think a lot of negative issues regarding housing in the UK come from the government charging a stamp duty when buying a property instead of property taxes like almost every other country on Earth. Paying 5% of an entire property price is a steep price in an already expensive market. This is even worse when compared to paying nothing when not selling, which just forces people to stay where they are (specially if the market is more expensive from the last time you moved) and further constrains supply and raises house prices.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    On a 500k house, stamp duty is 2%, and that’s already an expensive house (stamp duty is progressive). So it’s not that big, certainly for a first time buyer away from London (no stamp duty at all on first 125k). Council taxes are effectively based on property price, in a weird kind of way.
    - mFixman 5y ago
      If you already bought a home then selling it and moving to a new one with the same price is extremely expensive, specially if the housing market increased its prices faster than your salary (which is true for almost all UK homes since the 2008 crisis). Making it expensive for home owners to move constrains supply and raises house prices even more.
givemeethekeys 5y ago
Property owners will always be conservative when it comes to increasing supply.
Aunche 5y ago
>And instead cling to things like rent control, which "feel good" in the short run but end up doing the opposite of what was intended. I'm not sure if there is a better term for it but people are highly susceptible for falling for a "it's your fault because you touched it last" bias. Luxury apartments are "bad" because their rents are high, even though they alleviate demand for regular housing. Evictions are "bad", even though the alternative is for landlords to factor that risk into the price or require very good credit and a stable income. It's not just with housing either. Everyone loved student loans until they enabled colleges to raise their tuition prices. Now people are demanding the government to throw even more money at the problem with student loan forgiveness, which increases people's willingness to pay and would enable colleges to raise tuition even more.
- mastax 5y ago
  "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics" is a term that someone coined for that idea.
HumanReadable 5y ago
When a luxury house is built and a family moves there, they have to move from their old home which is presumably worse. So will the slightly less wealthy family that buy their old home, and so fourth. That said, preventing gentrification requires an active effort from policy makers.
vanusa 5y ago
Homelessness also decreases when cities simply let more housing be built, even if luxury housing. Eh? The paper you are citing doesn't mention homelessnessness at all. You might want to believe that a decrease in homelessness will follow from the kind of value-chain effects it describes -- but if so, that's your own speculation. Not something that the paper makes any claims about. Yet you're waving it about as if it does exactly that. Meanwhile, it's a complex subject (due to secondary effects), and other papers (easily findable) have described either negative rent-lowering effects, or extremely limited rent-lowering effects (or effects that reach the mid-range but not low-range). And the paper you cited not only does not make any statement against the social housing policies that you vilify -- in the conclusion it tacitly supports them. And it explicitly says that adjustments to market-rate housing "are not a panacea for all housing-market problems."

salmonfamine 5y ago

Why would they allow more housing to be built? That would reduce the value of their real estate assets in places like SF and LA. Discard any notion that all but a very small minority of policymakers are truly motivated by ideology.

nostromo 5y ago
I live in a deep blue city (Seattle) and have interacted with some local policy makers. In truth, they just aren't very smart. And worse, they are quite confident they are indeed very smart. This isn't some grand conspiracy to increase homelessness and increase the cost of housing. The problem is that we elect idiots to local government.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Completely agree. We should be aiming to elect doctors and engineers (i.e. people who understand Systems Theory) for political positions, not people who have prescriptive solutions.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    There are plenty of stupid doctors and engineers.
    - beebmam 5y ago
      Well, duh. There's plenty of stupid people of ANY classification. But at least most doctors and engineers have proven that they can understand systems analysis and think critically, or they wouldn't have their licenses. Software engineering is barely regulated/licensed, so I certainly wouldn't apply this to most software engineers.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        What does understanding systems analysis have to do with being a good politician?
  - coding123 5y ago
    What would a doctor or engineer do differently?
    - sitkack 5y ago
      Make a decision based on emotion and then retroactively use math to justify that decision.
      - idiotsecant 5y ago
        I am so glad that this response is here. HN in general has this disease, but it's pretty prevalent in STEM fields in general- The "I know how to solve a differential equation so that means I am a rational decision maker" disease. It's important to acknowledge that the more education a person has the more likely they are to reverse-engineer a reason to think something that they want to think, especially when it comes to emotionally charged issues like those that politicians encounter every day. Having technical skills does not automagically make you a good leader or policymaker. It just means you have good technical skills. I would go so far as to say there are probably more people with good technical skills that should not be making policy than the opposite.
ditonal 5y ago
The narrative that housing is blocked by rich NIMBYs protecting their land value is true BUT The less popular narrative that’s just as true, at least in California if you pay attention to the politics, is that PHIMBYs who are mostly renters and insist on 100% affordable or nothing, play just as big a role. If you look at who blocked SB50 or who pitched the “Mission moratorium , it was PHIMBY renters. It’s easy to rally people up against greedy rich people. But the elephant in the room is that so much resistance comes from poor people who think “luxury housing” (aka anything market rate) will lead to more gentrification. You can agree or disagree with the PHIMBY position but most people find it complex enough they just pretend that faction doesn’t exist despite the huge role it plays.
- cheriot 5y ago
  That's only true in relatively small areas. Most places resisting home construction are full of homeowners. The political impact is larger in SF/LA because they give left cover to homeowners, but even that's not a thing in most states and cities.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rdw 5y ago
  Acronym stands for Public Housing In My Backyard. (I had to look this up)
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > PHIMBYs Basically don't exist. AHIMBYs do, but even people who demand affordable units don't want public units anywhere close to where they live. > But the elephant in the room is that so much resistance comes from poor people who think “luxury housing” (aka anything market rate) will lead to more gentrification. In any place without open space, the only way to build new housing is redevelopement; if you target the top of the market (which is what “market rate” housing means), you cannot have any hyperlocal (and wider, on a short-term scale) effect besides more gentrification. The intermediate term, wider area (but still somewhat local) effect may be more affordable housing as existing housing becomes more down-market through competitive forces, but that also could be offset by further increasing nonhousing costs and reduction in nonhousing services targeting the lower income segment as the gentrifiers reshape local markets.
wallacoloo 5y ago
> That would reduce the value of their real estate assets in places like SF and LA. does it actually work that way? a large part of land value seems to come from network effects: the more densely populated a region, the more valuable each sqft. upzoning a plot often seems to be an immediate profit, too. SFH worth $1M, gets upzoned, suddenly a developer can pay $2M for the plot and tear down the house + build high-density units that are very valuable. maybe values fall once you overbuild, but i have yet to see that in my lifetime.
- xondono 5y ago
  Long term vs short term. Long term they’ll be worth more, but short term prices will go down. No one sees prices really go down because that could trigger another ‘08 style collapse. Banks are less leveraged, but there’s a lot of people with mortgages too big for their sake.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > does it actually work that way? Yes, density drives up the price of land, but much of the value of a home isn't land value; poorer people in the neighborhood drives down the value per square foot of existing dwelling because people with money don't want to live near people without money by and large, both directly and indirectly. (E.g., better off people want to, and will pay a premium to, live near “good schools”, but there is pretty solid evidence that almost none of the difference in the things which people look to to assess that is due to the school itself, it is almost entirely incidental consequences of the demographics of the students attending the school: “good schools” aren't ones that make better students, they are made by better students.) Until the potential realizable by dense redevelopment drives up the land value so much that the added land value exceeds the lost value of the existing improvements, it's a loss, and even then it's a gain that can only be realized by abandoning the home, which becomes a liability that needs to be dealt with to unlock the value. Homeowners want the value of their home to increase, but often what they more specifically want is to continue living in the home while leveraging greater equity to enhance their lifestyle. This is not served by land value increases (even if they reach the level of net property value increases after decrease in value of existing improvements) that are only accessible by redevelopment. People who live in homes they own are not like absentee owners and tend to ascribe significant value to existing community character and significant negative value to moving, on top of theit investment interests in the property.
cheriot 5y ago
Owners of SFHs tend to be the most stiff resistance despite the fact that upzoning increases the value of their land. This is a culture war first and foremost. It's racism, classism, and fear of the unknown.
bennysomething 5y ago
I honestly believe my friends aren't motivated by keeping their house price up, they just don't understand simple supply and demand. I tried explaining rent controls don't work, they even agreed but said "something must be done". Rent control is the easiest solution to justify and implement. I really wish supply and demand was taught in schools.
- coding123 5y ago
  Rent control also has the opposite negative effect of causing a lot of people to stay still forever, causing the only AVAILABLE rentals (that all smell like cat pee, laundry detergent/freshner and next door to basketball hoops) to be $3500 a month. If the rent wasn't controlled then the nice apartments would be available at $3500 and the pee/laundry baskebetball ones would be available at least at $700/mo for those that need housing.
  - phillypham 5y ago
    Serious question. What's wrong with living next to basketball hoops? I live across the street from one in NYC and consider it a big positive to have a park nearby.
    - simplestats 5y ago
      Presumably the noise. It's a pretty common source of friction between neighbors.
    - coding123 5y ago
      They can be noisy when there's a kid just shooting for half the day. If you're outside of the noise shot and you have good insulation, then it's probably fine.
    - pgwhalen 5y ago
      My guess would be noise. A basketball hoop across the street is an amenity, but one right outside the window might be an annoyance.
dv_dt 5y ago
Here's the weird part, policies to encourage density to go higher would almost certainly dramatically increase the value of the real estate homeowners already own. I suspect it's the desire to limit change more than really some asset value calculation.
dionidium 5y ago
No, it wouldn't. The land is what's valuable and the land in those extremely high-demand areas would be worth more money if the zoning allowed more uses on it.

new_realist 5y ago

More housing decreases homelessness in the short term, but not in the long term. Humans breed and will always reproduce to fill all available habitat, like any animal. Building more housing reduces homelessness like building more highways reduces traffic.

thehappypm 5y ago
There are empty cities in China and cheap empty houses all over the Midwest.
n8cpdx 5y ago
This is wrong. In the west, and much of the developing world now, reproduction is below replacement rate. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fert... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/business/china-birth-rate-2019.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/business/china-birth-rate...
cheriot 5y ago
People living in urban areas have fewer kids than rural families. Malthusianism has long since been debunked.

varelse 5y ago

There are plenty of liberal YIMBYs out there getting c___blocked by bipartisan NIMBYs who don't want anything to happen to the monotonically increasing value of their real estate. But also, we have plenty of land if we could do something about all that ridiculous eminent domain that keeps us from building a high speed rail system. Ironically though, even in California's heartland, a lot of that land is in the hands of disinterested speculators as part of their enormous portfolios built during the Great depression and handed down generation to generation. I doubt we do any of these things though. Until there's some sort of phase transition in our political system, everything is gridlock all the way down with occasional spurts of disruptive innovation with calls for regulation shortly thereafter.

jimbob45 5y ago

Building luxury housing is emblematic of the short-term thinking of the 90's and 00's that has resulted in the long-term issues we're seeing today. You can build single-family housing on vast swaths of land for landlord sharks to snap up and rent out. However, that results in a city of short-term inhabitants who aren't invested in taking care of the city and eventually the city is less desirable and the rentals dry up. Or you can ban single-family housing rentals, build high-density housing for rentals, and reserve the single-family units for long-term residents who will upkeep the desirability of the city. It has nothing to do with liberal or conservative policymakers and more to do with the sort of short-term thinking that "build more housing - there are no consequences" represents.

paxys 5y ago

There is no such thing as luxury housing. If someone builds a fancy new apartment building with amenities, units in the 60 year old building next door automatically fall in value and become more affordable. We need to build housing, period.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> If someone builds a fancy new apartment building with amenities, units in the 60 year old building next door automatically fall in value and become more affordable. We need to build housing, period. More than likely (at least here in Seattle), the 60 year old building next door has already been bought by a developer and is just waiting its turn to be redeveloped into more fancy new luxury housing.
- coryrc 5y ago
  Because >80% in single-family zoning. Let them build denser there and they will tear down single homes instead.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    But those maps aren’t equally distributed. Yes, Seattle has alot of SFH zoning in…lake city, greenwood, rainier. But the place where they are building luxury town homes aren’t it, as soon as the zoning allows for it, developers buy out the old small craftsman homes built in the 1920s and replace them with multiple 3-4 story luxury townhomes.

spamizbad 5y ago

It’s actually important to understand the American liberal is quite conservative when it comes to economic concerns. The problem with fixing housing is that it requires change, and the tolerance for economic change for your typical liberal voter is very limited. There’s a reason why they routinely reject their left flank in favor of economic moderates and it’s not just pragmatism or electability: they tolerate the status quo and are only open to minor tweaks and adjustments.

cheriot 5y ago
This. The people with influence in both parties benefit from the status quo, enjoy their privilege, and only want things to change from a distance.
- aeternum 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's even necessary to blame politicians with influence. Over the last few decades, we made home ownership a goal for the vast majority of the US populace. Now we expect those homeowners to vote against their own self-interest (to approve additional housing units/zoning).
  - cheriot 5y ago
    Agree that voting blocks with influence are a big part of it. I don't think it's rational self-interest, though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784347
    - aeternum 5y ago
      Upzoning might increase land value but often decreases property value. In general supply and demand still functions, by increasing supply the price should decrease. What evidence is there that it is due to racism, classism and fear rather than rational self-interest?
      - 5y ago

stimpson_j_cat 5y ago

Your URL cites two studies, one was in the US, which states: > I combine the address histories with a simulation model to estimate that building 100 new market-rate units leads 45-70 and 17-39 people to move out of below-median and bottom-quintile income tracts The people represented in your vague "liberal policymakers" are almost universally in support of "market-rate units," contrary to your claims. Did you read any of the articles or studies you linked to? The Trump Administration suspended part of a 2016 rule designed to reduce segregation and expand opportunity for low-income families with Housing Choice Vouchers. Is he a "liberal policymaker" as well?

gameswithgo 5y ago

Liberal policymakers in my town push heavily for homes to be built, thought they push for "affordable" housing specifically, which maybe is a mistake.

deleted 5y ago

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jdavis703 5y ago

It takes time to build housing: from permits to financing to actual construction, multi-family infill projects can take years to build. Rent control is a good interim solution to liberalized housing rules… But certainly it’s only a short term fix. There is no free lunch.

jdavis703 5y ago

It takes time to build housing: from permits to financing to actual construction, multi-family infill projects can take years to build. Rent control is a good interim solution to letting the effects of liberalized housing rules take hold… But certainly it’s only a short term fix. There is no free lunch.

dheera 5y ago

I mean, also, if we know homelessness rises if rent exceeds a third of income, can't we just set laws that say rent cannot legally be more than a third of median income? When the most luxurious homes drop to that rent price, the standard places will drop even further. And those landowners that can't afford to maintain it anymore will be forced to sell, increasing supply, and reducing the number of real estate tycoons that squat land without living on it or using it, in turn making ownership cheaper for middle class residents, and reducing the number of people that need to rent. As ownership gets cheaper, property taxes will then crash, which is also good for even cheaper rents.

bennysomething 5y ago
And investment in creating more homes will also drop. You will have attacked a symptom, price, in pursuit of attacking the problem: lack of supply.
djbebs 5y ago
Congratulations you've now created a death spiral where housing supply will decrease over the long term and your city will no longer have the cash to fullfil its obligations. That's how you kill a city.

devwastaken 5y ago

Depends on how you measure it. Are we measuring based on days not homeless, homeless status, or number of evictions? The core problem of poverty living is having to jump from one rent situation to another. Landlords openly discriminate against women, women with children, and race continuously. But yes, a number of liberal policies keep people on the streets. As documented multiple times in "evicted", the building inspector is sometimes responsible for more evictions than the landlord. However there's more to it than that as we see with the homeless camps. Many of these people have little to no reason to care about anything. Often addicted to hard drugs (including alcohol) with no want to sober, no reason to. There's enough money in theft, prostitution, and odd jobs to keep homeless living sustainable. We cannot convince these people that there's more to life, and therefore we cannot convince them into free education for skilled work. The education system on this is also broken, especially high school and universities. Therefore the problem were seeing is not simply housing, work, education, it's all symptoms of government rot. Systems that were created a long time ago of which their purpose has been lost. The solution to all this is to wipe the slate clean and start again with people that actually care and aren't sitting on a government paycheck.

false-mirror 5y ago
This is on its face absurd, and makes it clear you've never actually spoken with an unhoused person.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  I have helped multiple friends into government housing. Housing didn't suddenly cure their addictions or absolve them of mental health problems. It doesn't remove the victim mindset. Resources such as education and work can only be done if the individual is prepared to do it. But we don't have good resources, therefore the problems are cyclical. Trusting the word of people is not representative of what they actually do. All of these people claimed to want X but make no effort towards it. People lie, especially to themselves.
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
I appreciate your breakdown of the situation, but it does make me wonder - are the people who become temporarily homeless consistently able to get back on their feet into into new jobs/homes with the resources governments currently provide? Making sure that the people who want help/relief from the situation seems important even if others choose to reject it

bennysomething 5y ago

I wish it was obvious to everyone that simple supply and demand means that luxary builds still drive prices down. I was surprised to find nearly everyone I know does not understand this.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

I think one of the most underappreciated facts in politics is that distinct groups with similar incomes don't necessarily have similar interests. In the case of housing policy the interests of people rich enough to lend money are actually much more closely aligned with those of people poor enough to have bad credit than the upper middle class who can afford to use leverage in a speculative housing market.

jarjoura 5y ago

Can we stop the name calling, it's really not productive to the conversation. How many *IMBY's did you just throw out there?! There's a couple really good books that delve into this complex issue [1], [2]. The TLDR is that early 20th century American cities were quick to level entire neighborhoods to bring in modern infrastructure. It was swift and brutal, wiping out 50 to 100 years of history without much thought. All replaced with boring concrete roads and bland architecture. So in the 60s and 70s, activists changed city laws to empower local residents with the ability to delay or out-right block housing projects. What you're seeing now is the result of 40-50 years of cities stuck going through very tedious processes to get anything moved forward. The problem with empowering any local resident is that you see only the people who want to stop something at the hearings and all it really takes are a hand-full. The rest of the residents are impartial or just too busy to care. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-Politics-Americas/dp/1108477275 https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America/dp/0525560211 https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America...

dragonwriter 5y ago
> It was swift and brutal, wiping out 50 to 100 years of history without much thought. “Without much thought” is whitewashing. There was usually very careful thought about who was targeted for harm, and who for gains (race, ethnicity, and class were central focuses of this thought.)
- jarjoura 5y ago
  I'm not whitewashing anything, I used that expression to dramatize the reckless way in which neighborhoods were torn down in the name of progress. Obviously, there was a lot of very careful thought that went into every project. Public opinion has always mattered in government and it'd always get faster approval if you tackle infrastructure projects in certain areas over others. It'd also become a much more affordable effort if you did it in areas with cheaper land value and used cheaper building materials. Still, my mistake for using that expression, as it's distracting you from my main point.

Symmetry 5y ago

Also, most voters in a given municipality own homes in that municipality (if they just wanted to move in they couldn't vote there) and so have a financial interest in restricting supply. And when most of your net worth is in one highly leveraged asset that's at least an understandable atttude. And if housing prices go down that might allow the wrong sort of person into their communities. Some people conceive this in racial terms but for others its that they think of poor people as lazy or impulsive and so not good neighbors. And I've certainly heard coworkers complaining that if poor people could move into their communities they wouldn't be paying their "fair share" of the school's running cost and so spending per pupil would drop. And, least concretely, I think, developers would profit and they align with our mental images of greedy capitalists more than landlords do. At least for non-renters who do most of the voting about these things.

rich_sasha 5y ago

The UK has an awkward cycle: housing is expensive, people who want to buy houses want to find something cheap. But once they find a house, they want no more houses be built, as they would depreciate the value of their own house. Incidentally, home owners tend to vote Conservative, whereas renters tend to vote Labour. Labour’s housing policy tends to revolve around cheap rentals (social housing) rather than cheap houses for sale.

radu_floricica 5y ago
Last statistic could just be due to age difference.
mFixman 5y ago
I think a lot of negative issues regarding housing in the UK come from the government charging a stamp duty when buying a property instead of property taxes like almost every other country on Earth. Paying 5% of an entire property price is a steep price in an already expensive market. This is even worse when compared to paying nothing when not selling, which just forces people to stay where they are (specially if the market is more expensive from the last time you moved) and further constrains supply and raises house prices.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  On a 500k house, stamp duty is 2%, and that’s already an expensive house (stamp duty is progressive). So it’s not that big, certainly for a first time buyer away from London (no stamp duty at all on first 125k). Council taxes are effectively based on property price, in a weird kind of way.
  - mFixman 5y ago
    If you already bought a home then selling it and moving to a new one with the same price is extremely expensive, specially if the housing market increased its prices faster than your salary (which is true for almost all UK homes since the 2008 crisis). Making it expensive for home owners to move constrains supply and raises house prices even more.

givemeethekeys 5y ago

Property owners will always be conservative when it comes to increasing supply.

Aunche 5y ago

>And instead cling to things like rent control, which "feel good" in the short run but end up doing the opposite of what was intended. I'm not sure if there is a better term for it but people are highly susceptible for falling for a "it's your fault because you touched it last" bias. Luxury apartments are "bad" because their rents are high, even though they alleviate demand for regular housing. Evictions are "bad", even though the alternative is for landlords to factor that risk into the price or require very good credit and a stable income. It's not just with housing either. Everyone loved student loans until they enabled colleges to raise their tuition prices. Now people are demanding the government to throw even more money at the problem with student loan forgiveness, which increases people's willingness to pay and would enable colleges to raise tuition even more.

mastax 5y ago
"The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics" is a term that someone coined for that idea.

HumanReadable 5y ago

When a luxury house is built and a family moves there, they have to move from their old home which is presumably worse. So will the slightly less wealthy family that buy their old home, and so fourth. That said, preventing gentrification requires an active effort from policy makers.

vanusa 5y ago

Homelessness also decreases when cities simply let more housing be built, even if luxury housing. Eh? The paper you are citing doesn't mention homelessnessness at all. You might want to believe that a decrease in homelessness will follow from the kind of value-chain effects it describes -- but if so, that's your own speculation. Not something that the paper makes any claims about. Yet you're waving it about as if it does exactly that. Meanwhile, it's a complex subject (due to secondary effects), and other papers (easily findable) have described either negative rent-lowering effects, or extremely limited rent-lowering effects (or effects that reach the mid-range but not low-range). And the paper you cited not only does not make any statement against the social housing policies that you vilify -- in the conclusion it tacitly supports them. And it explicitly says that adjustments to market-rate housing "are not a panacea for all housing-market problems."