22 ms·

Not for nothing, but, if you're a private developer looking to get the public's money to build something that you're going to sell and profit from either direct

Not for nothing, but, if you're a private developer looking to get the public's money to build something that you're going to sell and profit from either directly or through special tax breaks that the rest of us have to are up for, usually in special variance of zoning that the rest of us have to abide by, you SHOULD have to jump through a lot of hurdles to prove you aren't a grifter.

crate_barre 5y ago
Ok I feel you, what if I own a sports team and promise promise promise that that stadium you are going to pay for is going to improve the community? Is that enough proof? How about an Amazon warehouse? But yeah, to your point, building more housing in a supply constricted market requires like way more proof.
- hammock 5y ago
  What makes you feel that it's easier to build a stadium than subsidized housing? How many people, man-hours and money do you believe is spent on the efforts to get a ballpark or Amazon campus approved? Really believe it's less than a multifamily development?
  - pas 5y ago
    adjusted for cost-benefit to taxpayers and profitability for developers the stadium suddenly doesn't look so good, or, um, looks amazing for those special interests.
    - hammock 5y ago
      Would be interested in an actual analysis of that, not just hand waving. A devil's advocate might say that a stadium comes with built-in jobs and attracts 10,000s of intercity spectators every week who have a lot of money burning a hole in their pocket, whereas subsidized housing brings a few families, most of whom have very little money or income. Of course there are other metrics to consider than economic impact.
      - pas 5y ago
        > The consensus among economists on the question of sports facility subsidies likely stems from the basic economic intuition that government subsidies ought to address some “market failure,” and economists sense that there is no compelling case to be made for sports subsidies. see also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- dylan604 5y ago
  My favorite are the developers that promise a certain percentage of affordable housing in their high dollar developments, but never ever come close to that and never get penalized later.
  - deepakhj 5y ago
    You can't "affordable housing" your way to cheaper housing or rent. It can help with reducing displacement, but it increases the cost of the market rate units. The overall problem is a lack of supply. Portland recently passed an IZ ordinance and it had devastating effects on new housing construction.
  - pas 5y ago
    nobody even sued them or the city for damages?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Who would do the suing? The people that can barely afford the housing? Surely it's not going to be the city, as the developer is more than likely in cahoots with the people that would be doing the investigating. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I've been in/around this world too long to see it as anything but cynical.
      - pas 5y ago
        It seems like either a typical class action suit. The city's negligence/unenforcement led to higher rents in that neighborhood. Or could be even easier to show that the lack of said units led to displacement for actual families. I'm not saying it's easy peasy but if affordable unit advocates believe they are important then logically enforcing the regulations they fought for shouldn't be just shrugged off, at least as a signal to cities and developers.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    The municipality that I'm in lets developers ignore the state-wide law that mandates certain amounts of affordable housing to be built in new developments. The developers and real estate investors that are government officials also don't like to recuse themselves from such matters, either.
- Swizec 5y ago
  > But yeah, to your point, building more housing in a supply constricted market requires like way more proof. Having lived in downtown San Francisco for 7 years now, I can’t help but notice how all the new highrises and fancy apartments have pushed down the prices of the normal stuff. My current landlord tried to sell his house before we moved in and couldn’t get “enough” money for it because why pay $1,000,000 for a house from 1906 when you could pay the same for new construction across the street? Instead he had to settle for renting (to us). 3 years later and similar apartments in the area are now selling for $800,000 because there’s even more new construction around. Rents are down too. Why pay $4000/mo to live in an old house when you can pay $4200/mo to live in a luxury highrise across the street?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    This is the correct answer. The problem is the landlords and owners vote, which cause the restrictive policies on new housing.
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  Not sure if you're either sarcastic or not. The issue is that the housing to be built is below market, and needs some special dispensation of permits, tax breaks, or direct grants. Those commercial and leisure entities you're talking about often push for these elements too, but they usually have to promise something in return, even so far as accepting clawback provisions and fines for failing to do so. Affordable Housing builders AFAIK never have these strings attached. If you'd counter to me with examples where this wasn't part of the agreement for commercial/leisure or where it was for affordable housing, I'd completely agree those are exceptions worth a closer look.
mistermann 5y ago
> you SHOULD have to jump through a lot of hurdles to prove you aren't a grifter. Agreed, but I wonder if the hurdles that are currently in place are even remotely optimal. Would it be funny if they were not, and no one really cared?
- pas 5y ago
  one big problem is that elected officials are involved. these rules should be set and the application validated somewhere around state level. if the city wants to do their own thing, sure, they can set up their own separate system (to provide more funds for example in exchange for more/stricter rules), but that should be optional for the developer.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >one big problem is that elected officials are involved. Not sure why you're complaining about this. You elected those those folks. If they aren't doing it right, then elect someone else. It's what's called "representative democracy." I hear that it's been tried in a few places and has had some minor successes. /s Me? I prefer a dictatorship. But, of course, only if I'm the dictator. Beyond that, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."[0] [0] often attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Winston Churchill
    - pas 5y ago
      I'm not even complaining, at best I'm armchair quarterbacking :) I made an observation that mixing local politics with getting approval for an already set rules seems ripe for conflicts of interest, inconsistency, arbitrariness, predictably bad optics when local special interest groups get favorable treatment compared to less special (ie. poorer) groups. basically separation of powers is missing at the local level. the executive branch (ie. civil service) should be separate from the local "legislature"
      - nobody9999 5y ago
ceeplusplus 5y ago
The end result of that is that low income housing doesn't get built and market rate housing that doesn't have unnecessary and burdensome regulatory requirements gets built instead. > usually in special variance of zoning that the rest of us have to abide by The solution is to remove the zoning in the first place, not add more requirements to get an exception to it.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  i think you just have to phrase this differently: newly built housing is not cost effective to sell to low income people
  - f7ebc20c97 5y ago
    There is zero technical reason why housing can't be cheap as hell in this day and age. It's all due to government restrictions. And I'm not talking about shanty towns either - that's what you get when legal housing is too expensive to build!
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      Indeed, housing can be very cheap. See military barracks or flop houses/SROs. Housing is expensive as a means to keep poor people away from the middle class.
      - f7ebc20c97 5y ago
        Then why can't you build a perfectly fine cabin on your own rural property without government inspectors coming around and micromanaging. US/Canadian automobiles are also needlessly expensive, there are many awesome vehicles sold in Mexico etc., like the Hilux, and I don't see it as a conspiracy to keep poor people down, but an overabundance of caution from bureaucrats covering their ass and regulatory capture. It's really hard to argue the libertarian point of view because you're always trying to point out the "unseen costs".
civilized 5y ago
No, you should have to jump through enough hurdles to prove you aren't a grifter. Whether "enough" means "a lot" or "each and every hurdle that is already in place" is precisely what's at issue here. But I suppose it's convenient to take the side of maximum administrative burden if your goal is to minimize the amount of housing that is built.
panic 5y ago
How about we let the grifters build the housing and then take it from them afterward if they turn out to be grifters?
- thereticent 5y ago
  Sounds like a way to end up with shoddy, dangerous housing or incomplete or impossible to complete projects.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Most of the hoops are things like performing endless studies of traffic and infrastructure with a narrow set of grifting consulting firms even if the same study has already recently been done.
- b3morales 5y ago
  It's been my experience that the farther you let an undesirable process proceed, the higher the chance that it will reach its undesirable conclusion. The enforcers will make decisions based on sunk costs; there will be more loopholes for the grifters to exploit; the time demands of due process will let them manipulate to their benefit; and there will be higher consequences for disrupting the status quo (e.g. there will be people actual living in the buildings already).
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Here's an even better suggestion: withdraw federal and state funding for roads, schools, water and sewage &c if housing targets are not met. The local NIMBYS will come around once the potholes become too bad and the school's roof starts leaking.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    Federal contribution to the things you mentioned is rather low in NIMBY areas, so NIMBYs will be more than happy to pay it. Seriously, do the math. The federal funds do not magically appear out of nowhere, they are collected from the very same NIMBYs, and it’s only a small fraction of their total federal tax bill.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
kortilla 5y ago
Jumping through hurdles to build confidence is exactly what con artists are good at doing though. They are more likely to invest and thrive in bureaucratic processes because they have a much higher expected return than competitors. The more arduous you make it, the more likely you price out people who actually do work.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Just like a home lock, this won't keep out the dedicated grifter. But it'll make things a lot harder for someone looking to make a quick buck in an unethical way.
  - WindyLakeReturn 5y ago
    I think this example might be more telling that what you intended. A lock is meant to keep out everyone without the key, while the intent of the bureaucratic process is to keep out bad actors while letting the well intended ones through, without them needing a key to bypass the system entirely.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      Maybe you missed it, but that's exactly my point. With the exception being that a dedicated bad actor won't have a real problem getting through (e.g. breaking the door, lock, or another window, or by picking it; it's really not difficult).
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  I don't believe that's simply a linear relationship all the way down to zero. You're talking in most cases about tens of millions of dollars in NPV over the usable capital life of the projects in question, if not an order of magnitude or 2 higher. I'm not equipped to critique the OP on every point, but I don't learn what's wheat and what's chaff from his Kafkaesque description of it all. The government contracting system in my experience and learning, all the way back to Boss Tweed, is a MAJOR source of corruption and theft. ALWAYS sold with the best of intentions.
imgabe 5y ago
Grifters are perfectly happy to lie on dozens of pointless forms because they know they’re going to grift a bunch of free money at the end. It’s the people who want to get down to doing the actual work that don’t have the patience for it. An overly complicated process just encourages grifters because there’s more ways for them to create confusion and conceal what they’re doing.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  By the principle of charity I sympathize with this, but this doesn't hold up without evidence. For example, what are the penalties for lying/grifting in this area? Does this all vary with the degree of corruption in the particular state/city/town? Or is it all corrupted to varying degrees nationwide?
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    Historically the penalties for grifting these programs are nothing in the vast majority of cases, if it's even discovered. The problem is a bunch of frontloaded vetting that is never followed up on.
    - _bfhp 5y ago
      So these forms and processes can be essentially spammed and nobody gets any real fine or other legal penalty, even when flagrant criminality is found? It seems like there would be major incentive for press outlets to expose this as government waste or capitalist greed, so I would be curious to see any existing journalism about this.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  It also encourages well-connected people.
  - Eji1700 5y ago
    And massive corporations who are extremely profit driven. I was born in a very small town in California. They didn't want to become just another highway stop for shopping. They wanted to keep their small town flavor/community/charm. So of course they made TONS of rules and roadblocks to stop "The wrong people" from building there. It's now a highway stop with a bestbuy and the like....because it turns out that the massive corporate chains can pay people to sit there and jump through your hoops, but the smaller well meaning community developer will just say fuck it and move.
pas 5y ago
one fundamental problem is that this many hoops for these small projects just don't make much economical sense. (that's why there's only so few of "free money" projects.) basically this is the curse of the low density again. in denser cities where building a ~500 unit apartment complex takes the same approval more affordable units are going to enter the market.
RoddaWallPro 5y ago
You haven't said anything real here. Everyone agrees you should have to do at least some extra paperwork to get the tax breaks. The point of contention is how much paperwork. Is it 1 page? Is it 100 pages? Is it 10,000 pages? A day of extra paperwork or 5 years of extra paperwork? How many hurdles exactly are needed? That's what the discussion is. Many people think that what this Twitter thread is describing is too many hurdles. Are you saying you think this seems like a perfectly correct amount of hurdles?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "The point of contention is how much paperwork. Is it 1 page? Is it 100 pages? Is it 10,000 pages? A day of extra paperwork or 5 years of extra paperwork?" What is this argument? If you hire a lawyer to defend you in coirt, wikk you measure how goos he is by the amount of paperwork he submittes to the court?
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  Yes. You're talking about people asking for special dispensation in money and legal rights that get granted by agency policies and board votes, something far removed from the democratic process of the voters who don't get these privileges. I would draw a hard line at disparate arbitrary and capricious allowances, i.e., making an affordable housing developer in a poor area jump through a ton of hoops, but letting a polluting power plant developer sail right through. But seeing as this process is an exception to equality under the law granted at the whim of a board that may not even be elected in some cases, I have no qualms with making it by default really hard. You want to change zoning laws? Fair. Do it for everybody via the elected town council or state legislature where the public has input.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
I can put my money to work anywhere on earth anytime I want with a few clicks of a mouse. Make it less profitable to provide housing and my money goes somewhere else, could be anywhere, I don't care. Make providing affordable housing the most profitable thing I can do, and you will have affordable housing. I'm not jumping through any hoops for you. Your choice.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Affordable housing is a band aid at best. Mostly it’s not even that because of pathologies. What I want is an affordable housing market. If I have to pay you to put up units and then impose rules about who and how you sell or rent them, I’ve already lost.
- tomrod 5y ago
  I believe you just justified taxation.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    You want my money, and in return, you will give me....what? Nothing. You have nothing to offer me, other than taxation. Have a nice night.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      Affordable housing, roads, utilities, criminal justice, social safety net, healthcare, or other social needs may not be profitable but are still needed for the functioning of society. Hence, taxes are justified as charitable giving is insufficient to cover the costs and a functioning society is almost universally desirable over autarky. At least, that was my takeaway from your original comment describing the behavioral characteristics regarding the affordable housing market.
amluto 5y ago
Proving you’re not a grifter should not require $100k of forms, working around grumpy neighbors and useless counsel members, and dealing with the degree of arbitrary decision making that’s apparently involved.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ch4s3 5y ago
I know someone who works on the deal side of affordable housing construction, and has an urban planning masters. From everything she’s said about it, it seems like it would be a really crappy grift. There’s basically no money in it even if you tried to cut a bunch of corners. She works for a not for profit developer that’s well capitalized and they can barely make it work.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  These overly burdensome rules are just like all the rules and paperwork imposed on welfare recipients. The conservative strategy is "fine, if we can't kill this social program, we'll just drown the whole process in paperwork to make people go away...under the excuse of preventing fraud and slash the funding of the agency that processes it, and do our best to stuff the agency full of conservative bench-warmers who will gleefully, but as slowly as possible, reject paperwork for the slightest infraction." Getting WIC benefits (food stamps for pregnant or new mothers) involves multiple in-person interviews per year (which means taking off time from any work, and usually traveling to a regional office that isn't accessible via public transit)...those interviews seem singularly focused on making sure that the pregnant lady is still pregnant, then actually produced a child, and then later, still has the child under their care. Because, you know, there's all these women who file for WIC, get abortions but then keep claiming WIC benefits. The government is very, very concerned about getting scammed out of a maximum benefit per month of: one gallon of juice, 6 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of cereal, 1lb of cheese, 2 dozen eggs, $11 for fruit and veg, 2lb of bread, 1lb of beans or other legumes, and 1 lb of peanut butter.

crate_barre 5y ago

Ok I feel you, what if I own a sports team and promise promise promise that that stadium you are going to pay for is going to improve the community? Is that enough proof? How about an Amazon warehouse? But yeah, to your point, building more housing in a supply constricted market requires like way more proof.

hammock 5y ago
What makes you feel that it's easier to build a stadium than subsidized housing? How many people, man-hours and money do you believe is spent on the efforts to get a ballpark or Amazon campus approved? Really believe it's less than a multifamily development?
- pas 5y ago
  adjusted for cost-benefit to taxpayers and profitability for developers the stadium suddenly doesn't look so good, or, um, looks amazing for those special interests.
  - hammock 5y ago
    Would be interested in an actual analysis of that, not just hand waving. A devil's advocate might say that a stadium comes with built-in jobs and attracts 10,000s of intercity spectators every week who have a lot of money burning a hole in their pocket, whereas subsidized housing brings a few families, most of whom have very little money or income. Of course there are other metrics to consider than economic impact.
    - pas 5y ago
      > The consensus among economists on the question of sports facility subsidies likely stems from the basic economic intuition that government subsidies ought to address some “market failure,” and economists sense that there is no compelling case to be made for sports subsidies. see also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
dylan604 5y ago
My favorite are the developers that promise a certain percentage of affordable housing in their high dollar developments, but never ever come close to that and never get penalized later.
- deepakhj 5y ago
  You can't "affordable housing" your way to cheaper housing or rent. It can help with reducing displacement, but it increases the cost of the market rate units. The overall problem is a lack of supply. Portland recently passed an IZ ordinance and it had devastating effects on new housing construction.
- pas 5y ago
  nobody even sued them or the city for damages?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Who would do the suing? The people that can barely afford the housing? Surely it's not going to be the city, as the developer is more than likely in cahoots with the people that would be doing the investigating. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I've been in/around this world too long to see it as anything but cynical.
    - pas 5y ago
      It seems like either a typical class action suit. The city's negligence/unenforcement led to higher rents in that neighborhood. Or could be even easier to show that the lack of said units led to displacement for actual families. I'm not saying it's easy peasy but if affordable unit advocates believe they are important then logically enforcing the regulations they fought for shouldn't be just shrugged off, at least as a signal to cities and developers.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  The municipality that I'm in lets developers ignore the state-wide law that mandates certain amounts of affordable housing to be built in new developments. The developers and real estate investors that are government officials also don't like to recuse themselves from such matters, either.
Swizec 5y ago
> But yeah, to your point, building more housing in a supply constricted market requires like way more proof. Having lived in downtown San Francisco for 7 years now, I can’t help but notice how all the new highrises and fancy apartments have pushed down the prices of the normal stuff. My current landlord tried to sell his house before we moved in and couldn’t get “enough” money for it because why pay $1,000,000 for a house from 1906 when you could pay the same for new construction across the street? Instead he had to settle for renting (to us). 3 years later and similar apartments in the area are now selling for $800,000 because there’s even more new construction around. Rents are down too. Why pay $4000/mo to live in an old house when you can pay $4200/mo to live in a luxury highrise across the street?
- bombcar 5y ago
  This is the correct answer. The problem is the landlords and owners vote, which cause the restrictive policies on new housing.
lr4444lr 5y ago
Not sure if you're either sarcastic or not. The issue is that the housing to be built is below market, and needs some special dispensation of permits, tax breaks, or direct grants. Those commercial and leisure entities you're talking about often push for these elements too, but they usually have to promise something in return, even so far as accepting clawback provisions and fines for failing to do so. Affordable Housing builders AFAIK never have these strings attached. If you'd counter to me with examples where this wasn't part of the agreement for commercial/leisure or where it was for affordable housing, I'd completely agree those are exceptions worth a closer look.

mistermann 5y ago

> you SHOULD have to jump through a lot of hurdles to prove you aren't a grifter. Agreed, but I wonder if the hurdles that are currently in place are even remotely optimal. Would it be funny if they were not, and no one really cared?

pas 5y ago
one big problem is that elected officials are involved. these rules should be set and the application validated somewhere around state level. if the city wants to do their own thing, sure, they can set up their own separate system (to provide more funds for example in exchange for more/stricter rules), but that should be optional for the developer.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >one big problem is that elected officials are involved. Not sure why you're complaining about this. You elected those those folks. If they aren't doing it right, then elect someone else. It's what's called "representative democracy." I hear that it's been tried in a few places and has had some minor successes. /s Me? I prefer a dictatorship. But, of course, only if I'm the dictator. Beyond that, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."[0] [0] often attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Winston Churchill
  - pas 5y ago
    I'm not even complaining, at best I'm armchair quarterbacking :) I made an observation that mixing local politics with getting approval for an already set rules seems ripe for conflicts of interest, inconsistency, arbitrariness, predictably bad optics when local special interest groups get favorable treatment compared to less special (ie. poorer) groups. basically separation of powers is missing at the local level. the executive branch (ie. civil service) should be separate from the local "legislature"
    - nobody9999 5y ago

ceeplusplus 5y ago

The end result of that is that low income housing doesn't get built and market rate housing that doesn't have unnecessary and burdensome regulatory requirements gets built instead. > usually in special variance of zoning that the rest of us have to abide by The solution is to remove the zoning in the first place, not add more requirements to get an exception to it.

foolfoolz 5y ago
i think you just have to phrase this differently: newly built housing is not cost effective to sell to low income people
- f7ebc20c97 5y ago
  There is zero technical reason why housing can't be cheap as hell in this day and age. It's all due to government restrictions. And I'm not talking about shanty towns either - that's what you get when legal housing is too expensive to build!
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    Indeed, housing can be very cheap. See military barracks or flop houses/SROs. Housing is expensive as a means to keep poor people away from the middle class.
    - f7ebc20c97 5y ago
      Then why can't you build a perfectly fine cabin on your own rural property without government inspectors coming around and micromanaging. US/Canadian automobiles are also needlessly expensive, there are many awesome vehicles sold in Mexico etc., like the Hilux, and I don't see it as a conspiracy to keep poor people down, but an overabundance of caution from bureaucrats covering their ass and regulatory capture. It's really hard to argue the libertarian point of view because you're always trying to point out the "unseen costs".

civilized 5y ago

No, you should have to jump through enough hurdles to prove you aren't a grifter. Whether "enough" means "a lot" or "each and every hurdle that is already in place" is precisely what's at issue here. But I suppose it's convenient to take the side of maximum administrative burden if your goal is to minimize the amount of housing that is built.

panic 5y ago

How about we let the grifters build the housing and then take it from them afterward if they turn out to be grifters?

thereticent 5y ago
Sounds like a way to end up with shoddy, dangerous housing or incomplete or impossible to complete projects.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  Most of the hoops are things like performing endless studies of traffic and infrastructure with a narrow set of grifting consulting firms even if the same study has already recently been done.
b3morales 5y ago
It's been my experience that the farther you let an undesirable process proceed, the higher the chance that it will reach its undesirable conclusion. The enforcers will make decisions based on sunk costs; there will be more loopholes for the grifters to exploit; the time demands of due process will let them manipulate to their benefit; and there will be higher consequences for disrupting the status quo (e.g. there will be people actual living in the buildings already).
HarryHirsch 5y ago
Here's an even better suggestion: withdraw federal and state funding for roads, schools, water and sewage &c if housing targets are not met. The local NIMBYS will come around once the potholes become too bad and the school's roof starts leaking.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Federal contribution to the things you mentioned is rather low in NIMBY areas, so NIMBYs will be more than happy to pay it. Seriously, do the math. The federal funds do not magically appear out of nowhere, they are collected from the very same NIMBYs, and it’s only a small fraction of their total federal tax bill.

MrStonedOne 5y ago

kortilla 5y ago

Jumping through hurdles to build confidence is exactly what con artists are good at doing though. They are more likely to invest and thrive in bureaucratic processes because they have a much higher expected return than competitors. The more arduous you make it, the more likely you price out people who actually do work.

darkerside 5y ago
Just like a home lock, this won't keep out the dedicated grifter. But it'll make things a lot harder for someone looking to make a quick buck in an unethical way.
- WindyLakeReturn 5y ago
  I think this example might be more telling that what you intended. A lock is meant to keep out everyone without the key, while the intent of the bureaucratic process is to keep out bad actors while letting the well intended ones through, without them needing a key to bypass the system entirely.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Maybe you missed it, but that's exactly my point. With the exception being that a dedicated bad actor won't have a real problem getting through (e.g. breaking the door, lock, or another window, or by picking it; it's really not difficult).
lr4444lr 5y ago
I don't believe that's simply a linear relationship all the way down to zero. You're talking in most cases about tens of millions of dollars in NPV over the usable capital life of the projects in question, if not an order of magnitude or 2 higher. I'm not equipped to critique the OP on every point, but I don't learn what's wheat and what's chaff from his Kafkaesque description of it all. The government contracting system in my experience and learning, all the way back to Boss Tweed, is a MAJOR source of corruption and theft. ALWAYS sold with the best of intentions.

imgabe 5y ago

Grifters are perfectly happy to lie on dozens of pointless forms because they know they’re going to grift a bunch of free money at the end. It’s the people who want to get down to doing the actual work that don’t have the patience for it. An overly complicated process just encourages grifters because there’s more ways for them to create confusion and conceal what they’re doing.

_bfhp 5y ago
By the principle of charity I sympathize with this, but this doesn't hold up without evidence. For example, what are the penalties for lying/grifting in this area? Does this all vary with the degree of corruption in the particular state/city/town? Or is it all corrupted to varying degrees nationwide?
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Historically the penalties for grifting these programs are nothing in the vast majority of cases, if it's even discovered. The problem is a bunch of frontloaded vetting that is never followed up on.
  - _bfhp 5y ago
    So these forms and processes can be essentially spammed and nobody gets any real fine or other legal penalty, even when flagrant criminality is found? It seems like there would be major incentive for press outlets to expose this as government waste or capitalist greed, so I would be curious to see any existing journalism about this.
ajmurmann 5y ago
It also encourages well-connected people.
- Eji1700 5y ago
  And massive corporations who are extremely profit driven. I was born in a very small town in California. They didn't want to become just another highway stop for shopping. They wanted to keep their small town flavor/community/charm. So of course they made TONS of rules and roadblocks to stop "The wrong people" from building there. It's now a highway stop with a bestbuy and the like....because it turns out that the massive corporate chains can pay people to sit there and jump through your hoops, but the smaller well meaning community developer will just say fuck it and move.

pas 5y ago

one fundamental problem is that this many hoops for these small projects just don't make much economical sense. (that's why there's only so few of "free money" projects.) basically this is the curse of the low density again. in denser cities where building a ~500 unit apartment complex takes the same approval more affordable units are going to enter the market.

RoddaWallPro 5y ago

You haven't said anything real here. Everyone agrees you should have to do at least some extra paperwork to get the tax breaks. The point of contention is how much paperwork. Is it 1 page? Is it 100 pages? Is it 10,000 pages? A day of extra paperwork or 5 years of extra paperwork? How many hurdles exactly are needed? That's what the discussion is. Many people think that what this Twitter thread is describing is too many hurdles. Are you saying you think this seems like a perfectly correct amount of hurdles?

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"The point of contention is how much paperwork. Is it 1 page? Is it 100 pages? Is it 10,000 pages? A day of extra paperwork or 5 years of extra paperwork?" What is this argument? If you hire a lawyer to defend you in coirt, wikk you measure how goos he is by the amount of paperwork he submittes to the court?
lr4444lr 5y ago
Yes. You're talking about people asking for special dispensation in money and legal rights that get granted by agency policies and board votes, something far removed from the democratic process of the voters who don't get these privileges. I would draw a hard line at disparate arbitrary and capricious allowances, i.e., making an affordable housing developer in a poor area jump through a ton of hoops, but letting a polluting power plant developer sail right through. But seeing as this process is an exception to equality under the law granted at the whim of a board that may not even be elected in some cases, I have no qualms with making it by default really hard. You want to change zoning laws? Fair. Do it for everybody via the elected town council or state legislature where the public has input.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

I can put my money to work anywhere on earth anytime I want with a few clicks of a mouse. Make it less profitable to provide housing and my money goes somewhere else, could be anywhere, I don't care. Make providing affordable housing the most profitable thing I can do, and you will have affordable housing. I'm not jumping through any hoops for you. Your choice.

bradleyjg 5y ago
Affordable housing is a band aid at best. Mostly it’s not even that because of pathologies. What I want is an affordable housing market. If I have to pay you to put up units and then impose rules about who and how you sell or rent them, I’ve already lost.
tomrod 5y ago
I believe you just justified taxation.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  You want my money, and in return, you will give me....what? Nothing. You have nothing to offer me, other than taxation. Have a nice night.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Affordable housing, roads, utilities, criminal justice, social safety net, healthcare, or other social needs may not be profitable but are still needed for the functioning of society. Hence, taxes are justified as charitable giving is insufficient to cover the costs and a functioning society is almost universally desirable over autarky. At least, that was my takeaway from your original comment describing the behavioral characteristics regarding the affordable housing market.

amluto 5y ago

Proving you’re not a grifter should not require $100k of forms, working around grumpy neighbors and useless counsel members, and dealing with the degree of arbitrary decision making that’s apparently involved.

deleted 5y ago
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ch4s3 5y ago

I know someone who works on the deal side of affordable housing construction, and has an urban planning masters. From everything she’s said about it, it seems like it would be a really crappy grift. There’s basically no money in it even if you tried to cut a bunch of corners. She works for a not for profit developer that’s well capitalized and they can barely make it work.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
These overly burdensome rules are just like all the rules and paperwork imposed on welfare recipients. The conservative strategy is "fine, if we can't kill this social program, we'll just drown the whole process in paperwork to make people go away...under the excuse of preventing fraud and slash the funding of the agency that processes it, and do our best to stuff the agency full of conservative bench-warmers who will gleefully, but as slowly as possible, reject paperwork for the slightest infraction." Getting WIC benefits (food stamps for pregnant or new mothers) involves multiple in-person interviews per year (which means taking off time from any work, and usually traveling to a regional office that isn't accessible via public transit)...those interviews seem singularly focused on making sure that the pregnant lady is still pregnant, then actually produced a child, and then later, still has the child under their care. Because, you know, there's all these women who file for WIC, get abortions but then keep claiming WIC benefits. The government is very, very concerned about getting scammed out of a maximum benefit per month of: one gallon of juice, 6 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of cereal, 1lb of cheese, 2 dozen eggs, $11 for fruit and veg, 2lb of bread, 1lb of beans or other legumes, and 1 lb of peanut butter.