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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

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?
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        Who says the two are exclusive? You can go to any US planning meeting and find at least one person who alludes to the wrong type of person moving in resulting in loss of "neighborhood character". Racist and classist concerns also influence property value. Blockbusting was a real estate practice that worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
      - cheriot 5y ago
        > Upzoning might increase land value but often decreases property value. Is there an example of where that happened? A developer building an apartment building can pay more than an owner occupant. The complaints from wealthy neighborhoods start with quality of life and degrade into questioning "what kind of people" will housing/transportation/amenities attract. I base this on listening to public meetings in SF / Bay Area so lots of local bias.
        aeternum 5y ago
        Those selling the land to the developer profit but there are lots of examples in which home values around the new building decrease due to blocked views/shade/decreased privacy. From a societal POV we should be building higher density and the drawbacks are worth it, but it is also in the rational self-interest of those building neighbors to vote against the new development. NY has alleviated this somewhat by granting all existing landowners some air-rights that they can choose to sell to nearby highrises. Something like this might be the right way to go so that the nearby owners receive some recompense.
        cheriot 5y ago
        The same laws that prevent mid size apartment buildings often prevent an existing home from being divided into a duplex or triplex. Why restrict the number of kitchens and exterior doors? For most single family exclusive neighborhoods, I don't think air rights are relevant. They don't want people with less money moving in. It's the same motivation as Marin County, CA and the Georgetown neighborhood of DC refusing train stops to "keep the riff raff out". The exclusion is the point.
  - ahoy 5y ago
    I see this notion a lot, that density decreases home values. Yet home prices are at their highest in our densest cities. I just don't buy it.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Walkable neighborhoods tend to be expensive and those where jobs are. If you just add apartment house to existing residential street, you achieve neither. Especially when zoning does not allows small shops to appear.
    - aeternum 5y ago
      Assuming you're right and increasing density somehow does not decrease home value/price in the densest cities, then how can up zoning/increasing density help alleviate the housing crisis? It's like saying 'We want to change the zoning to make housing more affordable but don't worry it won't make housing more affordable'.
      - cheriot 5y ago
        Because relaxed zoning increases the price of land and decreases the price of interior space. In the most expensive cities, it's the value of land that's going up. The houses themselves are often the same structures that housed the working class in the 50s.
- 2deep5me 5y ago
  > This. Everything's equivalent. This. This.
supernova87a 5y ago
I read a good article some time ago about how as long as we gravitate towards symbolic and emotional / headline-grabbing solutions, we will feel good and think that we've solved problems, but end up having made little progress. These problems have taken decades to mature (or even are an endemic part of how a system is), and it's a bit naive to think that some quick fix will undo them. Rent control, affirmative action, drug policy, wealth disparity -- all of these have headline-grabbing proposed solutions (often with heated protests) but when it comes down to it (and you observe after a few months), people vote with their $ and behavior according to deeper considerations on the choices they actually want. While people may say (or appear to) be in support of whatever cause-of-the-moment grabs the headlines, when it actually costs them (or their kids), they will not do what you hoped.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  > I read a good article some time ago about how as long as we gravitate towards symbolic and emotional / headline-grabbing solutions, we will feel good and think that we've solved problems, but end up having made little progress. Or, to say it another way, as long as we tolerate politics that are basically just performance art nothing changes.
  - CountSessine 5y ago
    I don’t think that I would say it that way at all. The parent comment simply makes the point that people vote with their own interests in mind, but say otherwise as long as it doesn’t cost them. We don’t just “tolerate” performance art politics - we actively encourage and vote for it because the alternatives are expensive and unpalatable. It’s much more comfortable to “blame profits” or “blame campaign financing” or blame Jeff Bezos or blame capitalism than to acknowledge that in a city that maximizes global utility and wellness, you might not have the right to keep poor people from living near you.
- pydry 5y ago
  It isnt voting that kills off these things. It's campaign financing. Profit friendly "solutions" tend to get given prominence (e.g. a new mental health clinic or two) over profit-unfriendly solutions that actually work (e.g. rent control, building competing housing that decreases the value of existing stock). It's not really about voter preferences, though. It's about $$$. If you genuinely believe that homelessness is primarily solved with obviously palliative solutions like mental health clinics then you're probably quite a credulous person. The people touting these ideas certainly know they dont work and if there were more money in actually building housing they'd guide you to believe that instead.
nightski 5y ago
This is why I live in a small city with tons of affordable housing. Quality of life here is a lot better than you'd expect. While I visit large cities, they often seem more dystopian then somewhere I'd actually want to live. Liberals can have them.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  The problem is that because, by their nature they are small, it doesn't take that many people fleeing blue-state large cities to also overheat a small city housing market. This is currently a massive problem in the Intermountain West in places like Boise.
  - nradov 5y ago
    There are a lot of small cities. They can't all overheat. Eventually the supply of blue-state refugees will run out.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      The migration has been ongoing since the 1980s, so the value of "eventually" may be worthless to the currently living.
rosndo 5y ago
It’s not that different in Europe, we still get the same silly virtue-bikeshedding. In my city the government requires developers to include “affordable” flats in luxury developments and then complains when the residents of the “affordable” flats have to enter through a separate “poor door” and don’t get to enjoy the swimming pool and wine cellar.
- pydry 5y ago
  Yet those are the apartments that sell out. In my city (London) that happens too. The ultra luxury flats are 50% unsold and have an occupancy rate that is lower still and they are STILL building more luxury housing with swimming pools and gyms nobody uses. The Soviet Union wasnt this bad at allocating resources. This is a free market that needs to be taken out and shot. It's culminated in the creation of assets, much like NFTs, whose existence is not predicated on them actually being used because all it needs to do is soak up capital, and actually useful economic activity had to be mandated into existence by local government (Ordinances to mandate % affordable housing). The worst part isnt even that. The worst part is that if developers cheap out and sell you a flammable flat they can charge you $100k++ after you've bought the flat to fix the flammability that was a result of their shoddy construction. And if you do die, it's not their problem. This is the culmination of decades of the UK mindlessly nodding along to the 1%'s "market knows best" propaganda. There's a reason the supposedly "free market" Singaporean government builds 90% of the housing stock in the country like they're fervent Stalinists. Coz that's the economically efficient way to house people.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    > Yet those are the apartments that sell out. Well yeah, they’re generally amazing deals for decent quality new built apartments. Yeah sure, the staircase looks just average and not like a luxury hotel and there’s no gym or infinity pool! Doesn’t really seem like such a disaster when you get to live in a nice heavily discounted apartment on some of the most desirable square feet of earth in the world.
    - pydry 5y ago
bandicoot8 5y ago
>The problem with fixing housing is that it requires change, and the tolerance for economic change for your typical liberal voter is very limited. This applies to most voters, not just liberals ones. But I agree, as someone living in the SF Bay Area, the NIMBYism is hypocritical and very annoying to see.
double_nan 5y ago
Sometime ago I came to a conclusion that there might be another reason why american (western) left is talking more than acting on the problems from their agenda: any action has 2 inherent risks: risk of failure and risk of success. While risk of failure is quite easy to understand, risk of success is a very different beast. Risk of success is when solved problem renders the entire movement pointless and puts people in power at risk of losing control.

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?
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Who says the two are exclusive? You can go to any US planning meeting and find at least one person who alludes to the wrong type of person moving in resulting in loss of "neighborhood character". Racist and classist concerns also influence property value. Blockbusting was a real estate practice that worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
    - cheriot 5y ago
      > Upzoning might increase land value but often decreases property value. Is there an example of where that happened? A developer building an apartment building can pay more than an owner occupant. The complaints from wealthy neighborhoods start with quality of life and degrade into questioning "what kind of people" will housing/transportation/amenities attract. I base this on listening to public meetings in SF / Bay Area so lots of local bias.
      - aeternum 5y ago
        Those selling the land to the developer profit but there are lots of examples in which home values around the new building decrease due to blocked views/shade/decreased privacy. From a societal POV we should be building higher density and the drawbacks are worth it, but it is also in the rational self-interest of those building neighbors to vote against the new development. NY has alleviated this somewhat by granting all existing landowners some air-rights that they can choose to sell to nearby highrises. Something like this might be the right way to go so that the nearby owners receive some recompense.
        cheriot 5y ago
        The same laws that prevent mid size apartment buildings often prevent an existing home from being divided into a duplex or triplex. Why restrict the number of kitchens and exterior doors? For most single family exclusive neighborhoods, I don't think air rights are relevant. They don't want people with less money moving in. It's the same motivation as Marin County, CA and the Georgetown neighborhood of DC refusing train stops to "keep the riff raff out". The exclusion is the point.
- ahoy 5y ago
  I see this notion a lot, that density decreases home values. Yet home prices are at their highest in our densest cities. I just don't buy it.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Walkable neighborhoods tend to be expensive and those where jobs are. If you just add apartment house to existing residential street, you achieve neither. Especially when zoning does not allows small shops to appear.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    Assuming you're right and increasing density somehow does not decrease home value/price in the densest cities, then how can up zoning/increasing density help alleviate the housing crisis? It's like saying 'We want to change the zoning to make housing more affordable but don't worry it won't make housing more affordable'.
    - cheriot 5y ago
      Because relaxed zoning increases the price of land and decreases the price of interior space. In the most expensive cities, it's the value of land that's going up. The houses themselves are often the same structures that housed the working class in the 50s.
2deep5me 5y ago
> This. Everything's equivalent. This. This.

supernova87a 5y ago

I read a good article some time ago about how as long as we gravitate towards symbolic and emotional / headline-grabbing solutions, we will feel good and think that we've solved problems, but end up having made little progress. These problems have taken decades to mature (or even are an endemic part of how a system is), and it's a bit naive to think that some quick fix will undo them. Rent control, affirmative action, drug policy, wealth disparity -- all of these have headline-grabbing proposed solutions (often with heated protests) but when it comes down to it (and you observe after a few months), people vote with their $ and behavior according to deeper considerations on the choices they actually want. While people may say (or appear to) be in support of whatever cause-of-the-moment grabs the headlines, when it actually costs them (or their kids), they will not do what you hoped.

bitexploder 5y ago
> I read a good article some time ago about how as long as we gravitate towards symbolic and emotional / headline-grabbing solutions, we will feel good and think that we've solved problems, but end up having made little progress. Or, to say it another way, as long as we tolerate politics that are basically just performance art nothing changes.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  I don’t think that I would say it that way at all. The parent comment simply makes the point that people vote with their own interests in mind, but say otherwise as long as it doesn’t cost them. We don’t just “tolerate” performance art politics - we actively encourage and vote for it because the alternatives are expensive and unpalatable. It’s much more comfortable to “blame profits” or “blame campaign financing” or blame Jeff Bezos or blame capitalism than to acknowledge that in a city that maximizes global utility and wellness, you might not have the right to keep poor people from living near you.
pydry 5y ago
It isnt voting that kills off these things. It's campaign financing. Profit friendly "solutions" tend to get given prominence (e.g. a new mental health clinic or two) over profit-unfriendly solutions that actually work (e.g. rent control, building competing housing that decreases the value of existing stock). It's not really about voter preferences, though. It's about $$$. If you genuinely believe that homelessness is primarily solved with obviously palliative solutions like mental health clinics then you're probably quite a credulous person. The people touting these ideas certainly know they dont work and if there were more money in actually building housing they'd guide you to believe that instead.

nightski 5y ago

This is why I live in a small city with tons of affordable housing. Quality of life here is a lot better than you'd expect. While I visit large cities, they often seem more dystopian then somewhere I'd actually want to live. Liberals can have them.

bobthepanda 5y ago
The problem is that because, by their nature they are small, it doesn't take that many people fleeing blue-state large cities to also overheat a small city housing market. This is currently a massive problem in the Intermountain West in places like Boise.
- nradov 5y ago
  There are a lot of small cities. They can't all overheat. Eventually the supply of blue-state refugees will run out.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    The migration has been ongoing since the 1980s, so the value of "eventually" may be worthless to the currently living.

rosndo 5y ago

It’s not that different in Europe, we still get the same silly virtue-bikeshedding. In my city the government requires developers to include “affordable” flats in luxury developments and then complains when the residents of the “affordable” flats have to enter through a separate “poor door” and don’t get to enjoy the swimming pool and wine cellar.

pydry 5y ago
Yet those are the apartments that sell out. In my city (London) that happens too. The ultra luxury flats are 50% unsold and have an occupancy rate that is lower still and they are STILL building more luxury housing with swimming pools and gyms nobody uses. The Soviet Union wasnt this bad at allocating resources. This is a free market that needs to be taken out and shot. It's culminated in the creation of assets, much like NFTs, whose existence is not predicated on them actually being used because all it needs to do is soak up capital, and actually useful economic activity had to be mandated into existence by local government (Ordinances to mandate % affordable housing). The worst part isnt even that. The worst part is that if developers cheap out and sell you a flammable flat they can charge you $100k++ after you've bought the flat to fix the flammability that was a result of their shoddy construction. And if you do die, it's not their problem. This is the culmination of decades of the UK mindlessly nodding along to the 1%'s "market knows best" propaganda. There's a reason the supposedly "free market" Singaporean government builds 90% of the housing stock in the country like they're fervent Stalinists. Coz that's the economically efficient way to house people.
- rosndo 5y ago
  > Yet those are the apartments that sell out. Well yeah, they’re generally amazing deals for decent quality new built apartments. Yeah sure, the staircase looks just average and not like a luxury hotel and there’s no gym or infinity pool! Doesn’t really seem like such a disaster when you get to live in a nice heavily discounted apartment on some of the most desirable square feet of earth in the world.
  - pydry 5y ago

bandicoot8 5y ago

>The problem with fixing housing is that it requires change, and the tolerance for economic change for your typical liberal voter is very limited. This applies to most voters, not just liberals ones. But I agree, as someone living in the SF Bay Area, the NIMBYism is hypocritical and very annoying to see.

double_nan 5y ago

Sometime ago I came to a conclusion that there might be another reason why american (western) left is talking more than acting on the problems from their agenda: any action has 2 inherent risks: risk of failure and risk of success. While risk of failure is quite easy to understand, risk of success is a very different beast. Risk of success is when solved problem renders the entire movement pointless and puts people in power at risk of losing control.