6 ms·

> CMV Rent is high because the demand in large cities majorly out strips supply. All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply

by TOMDM 4y ago

> CMV Rent is high because the demand in large cities majorly out strips supply. All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause.

ricardobeat 4y ago
Increasing the supply alone does not counter the gentrification / ghetto effects the parent comment talked about, in fact it might amplify them. A gross oversimplification, but if you somehow make ten thousand new apartments available in Manhattan at $1k/month, they will eventually fill up with low-income tenants, which will make them undesirable. Pressure on all the existing $5K properties will remain the same.
- mattzito 4y ago
  Why would they fill up with low income tenants? Why would that make it undesirable?
  - namelessoracle 4y ago
    Because low income anywhere (rental area or even just low income suburban areas) typically has a population that is less able to invest into their area (in time or money), and historically has shown that they seek an extractive relationship with their environment rather than invest in it.
    - feet 4y ago
      Are you joking? Poor people are the exploitative ones? That's just entirely false The entire basis of capitalism in the US is that the work of the poor is exploited by those with the capital to build factories and businesses which extract labor and resources from the poor people That's why they can't invest. You have it entirely backwards
      - jimmaswell 4y ago
        Exactly. Most of a poor person's income will be spent locally every paycheck. Higher income, more is saved or sent offshore etc
    - mym1990 4y ago
      Haha "extractive relationship" come on man. Poor people aren't vampires, they need to be resourceful in their environment to survive.
- a_c_s 4y ago
  Pressure would remain the same just as eating a single grape would not abate a person's hunger: NYC has millions of existing housing units. To make a significant dent in the rent would require building hundreds of thousands of new apartments.
- runako 4y ago
  Are you suggesting that people paying $5k are doing that because of some inherent property of a $5k rental, and that they would not prefer to pay the year 2000 rent on the same unit, say $3000? If people paying $5k would prefer to pay $3k for their units, why would this logic not also apply to people who are currently paying $3k? If lower rents would make the city become undesirable, why did people want to move there in the year 2000, when rents were much lower?
  - pvarangot 4y ago
    > inherent property of a $5k rental, The inherent property of a 5k rental he's referring to is that it costs 5k. Most people paying 5k for a studio just _don't want people around their houses_ specially if they are poorer than them. Otherwise they would be paying less than 3k for a room with a shared kitchen and bathroom or renting a bigger place with roommates.
- Aunche 4y ago
  $1k/month rent isn't exactly low income material. As a high income SWE, I definitely feel like I'm sucking the city dry in a way. I'm not making $8 chopped cheeses. I'm not building parks. I'm not creating art. I'm just a consumer. Having said that, what's even worse than me is "low income" consumers. A lot of affordable housing, especially HDFC apartments, end up in the hands of the children of the rich. Not only are they not producing anything of value, they're also costing us tax dollars.
spaniard89277 4y ago
The policy I mention is precisely that, public housing being at least 40% of the supply. If demand increases, you increase supply.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  So you're telling me that the government should build millions of new units in NYC, until they control 40% of the market? Am I understanding that correctly?
  - treeman79 4y ago
    I think he wants the government to seize housing from others. Which will ensure that absolutely no one develops anything in that state again
    - martin_a 4y ago
      Bullshit. Vienna hasn't seized those properties, they just invested and built them themselves. NYC could to the same.
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    If the private market won’t do it, why not?
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Because the private market can't do it. When most cities in the US have 80%+ of its land zoned for single-family units, developers can not build anything other than expensive McMansions.
      - Swizec 4y ago
        > cities in the US have 80+ of its land zoned for single-family units How is that even a city? Single family zoning is a suburban desert at best. Even remote villages have more life and vibrancy than that.
voidhorse 4y ago
Sure that’s the capitalist narrative explanation. The actual, human, explanation is that landlords see that they can get away with charging absurd rates because consumers are willing to make dumb decisions to get what they want, so they do it. I’m sick of these economic abstractions that constantly try to explain away our problems, and take away the responsibility from the human actors that cause these effects. It’s not some abstract “supply and demand” that we should focus on—it is the landlords and renters and their decisions that are to blame. We need to introduce some agency and accountability back into our discussions of economics otherwise capitalism will continue to be an abstract machine in which horribly unethical actions are justified by removing human actors and human culpability from the equation. Belief in “the market” is not dissimilar to religious belief. Furthermore, analyses in capitalist terms often lead us to more problems. If the problem is “supply”, people will say “ok build more homes”, but that first of all never seems to actually work and secondly has a large number of additional negative effects such as increasing overcrowding and climate problems.This ridiculous tendency to not actually blame the people responsible for these negative conditions is ridiculous. It’s a large part of the reason we’re in this mess.
- TOMDM 4y ago
  I mean sure, if you want to address it from the demand end of things that would work if there were a viable solution. The hard fact is that people want to live in large cities. Even if you were to legislate that all landlords had to provide housing at cost + 5%, there would still be a demand for more housing as people desperately bid to enter those areas. Further more, you'd see people never give up those rentals because there would be a mile long waiting list for every property that is under rent control. I have a lot of sympathy for people disgusted by the greed landlords display, but at the end of the day, the issue here is that more people want to live in these places than there are homes for them. So the wealthy bid their way in and everyone else be damned or destitute in order to compete. If you want radical policy, eminent domain low density housing in city limits and build apartment rises on them.
  - voidhorse 4y ago
    That’s fair, but I don’t see how it would prevent similar effects from eventually spidering out to those city limit properties once the demands propagate to those areas. I think the solution will require a mix of infrastructure solutions (building more homes) and regulatory solutions. I’m not saying landlords can’t make money, but there should definitely be greater restrictions around how much they can raise rates (which did exist, but which NYC is steadily removing) and renters need to be afforded more rights and protections too.
toto444 4y ago
My two cents : I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I think the solution to housing cost is to make smaller cities, towns and the countryside more attractive by having higher local tax rates in cities. This source of income could be used to build better infrastructure in the rest of the country.
- mym1990 4y ago
  Having higher local taxes in major cities would just expand the problem. The poor and middle class will get further pushed out, and the rich who can afford the tax and prefer living in the city will stay, in which case you just get SF all over again.
- voidfunc 4y ago
  At some point you run out of people that can move into the city... which might make the city huge, but eventually supply will outstrip demand. Also no thanks to wealth redistribution. The rest of the country sucks outside the coasts sucks and its mostly because they have regressive politics. It's their own damn fault nobody wants to live there.
- charliea0 4y ago
  NYC has substantially higher taxes than most of its suburbs. It also has a much higher draw due to its dense population supporting fancy bars, arts, and other world class amenities. The network effects of living close to other interesting, cosmopolitan, or just niche social group people are also valuable.
- dionidium 4y ago
  > I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I believe that allowing more units will lower prices, but what if it didn't? What if all that happened is that a whole bunch more people got to live where they want to live, productivity increased, and the largest cities got more dynamic and interesting? What if that's all that happened?
HPsquared 4y ago
High rent reduces demand and reflects an equilibrium between supply and demand. That, and people in Manhattan simply can afford to pay more, so are able to bid up the prices higher than tenants in other places.
- TOMDM 4y ago
  True. People are asking how you would lower the price though. If you don't _want_ lower prices, then the NIMBY positions make sense, don't build more to meet rising demand, keep prices high and poorer people out.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause. So are the ones that do increase supply, so long as they are not doing it in a way which deliberately undercuts the fact that there are positive feedback loops at work (and cutting those positive feedback loops means reducing quality of life and economic opportunity in ways no one wants.) Among the thing that drives demand for housing is available work (demand for labor). Increasing housing supply so more of that demand is met increases demand for local services, and thereby available work, increasing demand for housing. That's not the only positive feedback loop involved, but it's one of them.

by TOMDM 4y ago

ricardobeat 4y ago

Increasing the supply alone does not counter the gentrification / ghetto effects the parent comment talked about, in fact it might amplify them. A gross oversimplification, but if you somehow make ten thousand new apartments available in Manhattan at $1k/month, they will eventually fill up with low-income tenants, which will make them undesirable. Pressure on all the existing $5K properties will remain the same.

mattzito 4y ago
Why would they fill up with low income tenants? Why would that make it undesirable?
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  Because low income anywhere (rental area or even just low income suburban areas) typically has a population that is less able to invest into their area (in time or money), and historically has shown that they seek an extractive relationship with their environment rather than invest in it.
  - feet 4y ago
    Are you joking? Poor people are the exploitative ones? That's just entirely false The entire basis of capitalism in the US is that the work of the poor is exploited by those with the capital to build factories and businesses which extract labor and resources from the poor people That's why they can't invest. You have it entirely backwards
    - jimmaswell 4y ago
      Exactly. Most of a poor person's income will be spent locally every paycheck. Higher income, more is saved or sent offshore etc
  - mym1990 4y ago
    Haha "extractive relationship" come on man. Poor people aren't vampires, they need to be resourceful in their environment to survive.
a_c_s 4y ago
Pressure would remain the same just as eating a single grape would not abate a person's hunger: NYC has millions of existing housing units. To make a significant dent in the rent would require building hundreds of thousands of new apartments.
runako 4y ago
Are you suggesting that people paying $5k are doing that because of some inherent property of a $5k rental, and that they would not prefer to pay the year 2000 rent on the same unit, say $3000? If people paying $5k would prefer to pay $3k for their units, why would this logic not also apply to people who are currently paying $3k? If lower rents would make the city become undesirable, why did people want to move there in the year 2000, when rents were much lower?
- pvarangot 4y ago
  > inherent property of a $5k rental, The inherent property of a 5k rental he's referring to is that it costs 5k. Most people paying 5k for a studio just _don't want people around their houses_ specially if they are poorer than them. Otherwise they would be paying less than 3k for a room with a shared kitchen and bathroom or renting a bigger place with roommates.
Aunche 4y ago
$1k/month rent isn't exactly low income material. As a high income SWE, I definitely feel like I'm sucking the city dry in a way. I'm not making $8 chopped cheeses. I'm not building parks. I'm not creating art. I'm just a consumer. Having said that, what's even worse than me is "low income" consumers. A lot of affordable housing, especially HDFC apartments, end up in the hands of the children of the rich. Not only are they not producing anything of value, they're also costing us tax dollars.

spaniard89277 4y ago

The policy I mention is precisely that, public housing being at least 40% of the supply. If demand increases, you increase supply.

missedthecue 4y ago
So you're telling me that the government should build millions of new units in NYC, until they control 40% of the market? Am I understanding that correctly?
- treeman79 4y ago
  I think he wants the government to seize housing from others. Which will ensure that absolutely no one develops anything in that state again
  - martin_a 4y ago
    Bullshit. Vienna hasn't seized those properties, they just invested and built them themselves. NYC could to the same.
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  If the private market won’t do it, why not?
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Because the private market can't do it. When most cities in the US have 80%+ of its land zoned for single-family units, developers can not build anything other than expensive McMansions.
    - Swizec 4y ago
      > cities in the US have 80+ of its land zoned for single-family units How is that even a city? Single family zoning is a suburban desert at best. Even remote villages have more life and vibrancy than that.

voidhorse 4y ago

Sure that’s the capitalist narrative explanation. The actual, human, explanation is that landlords see that they can get away with charging absurd rates because consumers are willing to make dumb decisions to get what they want, so they do it. I’m sick of these economic abstractions that constantly try to explain away our problems, and take away the responsibility from the human actors that cause these effects. It’s not some abstract “supply and demand” that we should focus on—it is the landlords and renters and their decisions that are to blame. We need to introduce some agency and accountability back into our discussions of economics otherwise capitalism will continue to be an abstract machine in which horribly unethical actions are justified by removing human actors and human culpability from the equation. Belief in “the market” is not dissimilar to religious belief. Furthermore, analyses in capitalist terms often lead us to more problems. If the problem is “supply”, people will say “ok build more homes”, but that first of all never seems to actually work and secondly has a large number of additional negative effects such as increasing overcrowding and climate problems.This ridiculous tendency to not actually blame the people responsible for these negative conditions is ridiculous. It’s a large part of the reason we’re in this mess.

TOMDM 4y ago
I mean sure, if you want to address it from the demand end of things that would work if there were a viable solution. The hard fact is that people want to live in large cities. Even if you were to legislate that all landlords had to provide housing at cost + 5%, there would still be a demand for more housing as people desperately bid to enter those areas. Further more, you'd see people never give up those rentals because there would be a mile long waiting list for every property that is under rent control. I have a lot of sympathy for people disgusted by the greed landlords display, but at the end of the day, the issue here is that more people want to live in these places than there are homes for them. So the wealthy bid their way in and everyone else be damned or destitute in order to compete. If you want radical policy, eminent domain low density housing in city limits and build apartment rises on them.
- voidhorse 4y ago
  That’s fair, but I don’t see how it would prevent similar effects from eventually spidering out to those city limit properties once the demands propagate to those areas. I think the solution will require a mix of infrastructure solutions (building more homes) and regulatory solutions. I’m not saying landlords can’t make money, but there should definitely be greater restrictions around how much they can raise rates (which did exist, but which NYC is steadily removing) and renters need to be afforded more rights and protections too.

toto444 4y ago

My two cents : I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I think the solution to housing cost is to make smaller cities, towns and the countryside more attractive by having higher local tax rates in cities. This source of income could be used to build better infrastructure in the rest of the country.

mym1990 4y ago
Having higher local taxes in major cities would just expand the problem. The poor and middle class will get further pushed out, and the rich who can afford the tax and prefer living in the city will stay, in which case you just get SF all over again.
voidfunc 4y ago
At some point you run out of people that can move into the city... which might make the city huge, but eventually supply will outstrip demand. Also no thanks to wealth redistribution. The rest of the country sucks outside the coasts sucks and its mostly because they have regressive politics. It's their own damn fault nobody wants to live there.
charliea0 4y ago
NYC has substantially higher taxes than most of its suburbs. It also has a much higher draw due to its dense population supporting fancy bars, arts, and other world class amenities. The network effects of living close to other interesting, cosmopolitan, or just niche social group people are also valuable.
dionidium 4y ago
> I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I believe that allowing more units will lower prices, but what if it didn't? What if all that happened is that a whole bunch more people got to live where they want to live, productivity increased, and the largest cities got more dynamic and interesting? What if that's all that happened?

HPsquared 4y ago

High rent reduces demand and reflects an equilibrium between supply and demand. That, and people in Manhattan simply can afford to pay more, so are able to bid up the prices higher than tenants in other places.

TOMDM 4y ago
True. People are asking how you would lower the price though. If you don't _want_ lower prices, then the NIMBY positions make sense, don't build more to meet rising demand, keep prices high and poorer people out.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause. So are the ones that do increase supply, so long as they are not doing it in a way which deliberately undercuts the fact that there are positive feedback loops at work (and cutting those positive feedback loops means reducing quality of life and economic opportunity in ways no one wants.) Among the thing that drives demand for housing is available work (demand for labor). Increasing housing supply so more of that demand is met increases demand for local services, and thereby available work, increasing demand for housing. That's not the only positive feedback loop involved, but it's one of them.