4 ms·

>As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis ... That has relatively little to do with building homes. More to do with zoning and nimbyism.

by nabla9 4y ago

>As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis ... That has relatively little to do with building homes. More to do with zoning and nimbyism. You can get a home in area where there are no jobs or the commute distances are too long.

giantg2 4y ago
It would be nice if we didn't have such a herd mentality and some companies decided to revitalize some of the old rust belt cities by creating jobs there. There's some tech presence in Pittsburgh. Some of the smaller cities could benefit too though.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  I don't think the problem is herd mentality. If you open an office in Silicon Valley you've got local talent for all types of positions, proximity to funding, and in general somewhere executives and upper management (likely) want to live. Rust Belt cities don't really offer the same advantages. They might have cheaper rent but that doesn't help if no one wants to relocate to there. No company wants to be on the hook for revitalizing a city.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving.
    - danans 4y ago
      > That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. Call it what you will, but people generally want to live around other people - preferably people they care about but at least people who are not dangerous to them or impose much social or financial cost on them. > People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. Actually many previously declining places have reached critical mass and people are making improvements and attracting more people. But those places (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati), are sucking up most of the interest and creating their own gravity, leaving little left for Youngstown and Flint. > It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving. Of course it's easier - it's simple economies of scale. People seek access to physical and social resources. Raw land or emptied cities and towns with crumbling infrastructure don't provide that.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    There are a lot of people who want to live there. Sure more people want to live in the Valley, but there are still a lot of smart people who don't. And also a few people who moved to the Valley who want to get out. Most of this is about family - it is very hard to move to a new city as your family support network is gone. Those who had a bad family life growing up don't care, but those who had a good family life will accept a lot of pain to stick with family. (I live 300 miles from my family, I'm jealous of my siblings who call grandma for an emergency babysitter at the last minute) With remote work there is no reason you can't hire people who want to live in whatever rust belt city, and there are a lot of them. Just giving good salary to people in rust belt areas would go a long way to helping those cities.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      There are smart people that live in rust belt cities, there's just fewer of them in any given city than in all of the Bay Area. For a company it'll be harder to keep that rust belt city staffed. It's also unattractive for employees to move there since there's fewer tech employers. In the Bay Area someone can walk out of Google and find a job pretty quickly with the same length commute. If someone relocated to Cleveland they can't necessarily do the same thing and face a prospect of relocating again. Remote work is one way rust belt cities can revitalize themselves. There's a lot those cities can do to attract remote workers even if they're not attracting the companies themselves. Their states need to help by harmonizing some employment and tax laws with the states where tech companies are based. No one is moving to Cleveland if a "no working for competition" clause in an employment contract is legal in Ohio. Side note: I don't mean to pick on Cleveland but it's sort of the rust belt poster child.
- nabla9 4y ago
  It's not mentality, it's basics of urban economics called Economies of agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration Productivity increases in urban centers. Bigger, the better. At some point negative externalizes and bottlenecks that limit growth but if those would be solved, the potential upside could be even greater. For human capital the benefits from labour pooling and matching and knowledge spillovers are enormous.
themitigating 4y ago
What? You're first comment is a pointless argument to the statement "As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis" which is simply stating a fact not the reason behind it. You then switch to a sarcastic comment making light of what could be a horrible situation if you can't find a job because of where you live. The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?
- giantg2 4y ago
  "The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?" I think they're comment is valid conversation. The Gates Foundation is likely more interested in the company's impact in South America, or in being climate friendly. I don't see anything in article that actually makes the case for why these would help alleviate the housing shortage. Maybe the could, but the info on that isn't in the article.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    I don't see anything in the article that implies either of those motives
    - giantg2 4y ago
      If you have any background on the Gates Foundation it should be easily implied. If not, here's a quote. Also, the article talks about low cost housing in South America. Housing is another topic the gates foundation typically focuses on. "Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies"
      - themitigating 4y ago
        That's an unrelated organization founded by bill gates in 2015. The gates foundation was founded in 2000.
        4y ago
Tade0 4y ago
Costs of materials follow real estate prices therefore it's always beneficial to seek ways to build homes cheaper. Zoning and nimbyism, while contributing factors, are not the root cause. It's the idea that real estate should be seen as an investment - it gained popularity in China in recent years, causing a lot of unnecessary construction and spilling over to the rest of the world. Fortunately(for us at leat) there are early signs that this scheme is collapsing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-real-estate-market-crisis-protests-may-spur-multi-billion-dollar-rescue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-rea... Funnily enough in my neighbourhood (Eastern EU) there's already a: - Block of so-called "microapartments" - units too small to be legally considered housing. This one was started before the respective law was changed due to an explosion in such projects. - A project which took people's money in 2019 and then... never did anything. It's not even a hole in the ground - it's the previous building still scheduled to be demolished. Apparently the madness also spilled over outside of China.

by nabla9 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago

It would be nice if we didn't have such a herd mentality and some companies decided to revitalize some of the old rust belt cities by creating jobs there. There's some tech presence in Pittsburgh. Some of the smaller cities could benefit too though.

giantrobot 4y ago
I don't think the problem is herd mentality. If you open an office in Silicon Valley you've got local talent for all types of positions, proximity to funding, and in general somewhere executives and upper management (likely) want to live. Rust Belt cities don't really offer the same advantages. They might have cheaper rent but that doesn't help if no one wants to relocate to there. No company wants to be on the hook for revitalizing a city.
- giantg2 4y ago
  That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving.
  - danans 4y ago
    > That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. Call it what you will, but people generally want to live around other people - preferably people they care about but at least people who are not dangerous to them or impose much social or financial cost on them. > People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. Actually many previously declining places have reached critical mass and people are making improvements and attracting more people. But those places (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati), are sucking up most of the interest and creating their own gravity, leaving little left for Youngstown and Flint. > It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving. Of course it's easier - it's simple economies of scale. People seek access to physical and social resources. Raw land or emptied cities and towns with crumbling infrastructure don't provide that.
- bluGill 4y ago
  There are a lot of people who want to live there. Sure more people want to live in the Valley, but there are still a lot of smart people who don't. And also a few people who moved to the Valley who want to get out. Most of this is about family - it is very hard to move to a new city as your family support network is gone. Those who had a bad family life growing up don't care, but those who had a good family life will accept a lot of pain to stick with family. (I live 300 miles from my family, I'm jealous of my siblings who call grandma for an emergency babysitter at the last minute) With remote work there is no reason you can't hire people who want to live in whatever rust belt city, and there are a lot of them. Just giving good salary to people in rust belt areas would go a long way to helping those cities.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    There are smart people that live in rust belt cities, there's just fewer of them in any given city than in all of the Bay Area. For a company it'll be harder to keep that rust belt city staffed. It's also unattractive for employees to move there since there's fewer tech employers. In the Bay Area someone can walk out of Google and find a job pretty quickly with the same length commute. If someone relocated to Cleveland they can't necessarily do the same thing and face a prospect of relocating again. Remote work is one way rust belt cities can revitalize themselves. There's a lot those cities can do to attract remote workers even if they're not attracting the companies themselves. Their states need to help by harmonizing some employment and tax laws with the states where tech companies are based. No one is moving to Cleveland if a "no working for competition" clause in an employment contract is legal in Ohio. Side note: I don't mean to pick on Cleveland but it's sort of the rust belt poster child.
nabla9 4y ago
It's not mentality, it's basics of urban economics called Economies of agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration Productivity increases in urban centers. Bigger, the better. At some point negative externalizes and bottlenecks that limit growth but if those would be solved, the potential upside could be even greater. For human capital the benefits from labour pooling and matching and knowledge spillovers are enormous.

themitigating 4y ago

What? You're first comment is a pointless argument to the statement "As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis" which is simply stating a fact not the reason behind it. You then switch to a sarcastic comment making light of what could be a horrible situation if you can't find a job because of where you live. The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?

giantg2 4y ago
"The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?" I think they're comment is valid conversation. The Gates Foundation is likely more interested in the company's impact in South America, or in being climate friendly. I don't see anything in article that actually makes the case for why these would help alleviate the housing shortage. Maybe the could, but the info on that isn't in the article.
- themitigating 4y ago
  I don't see anything in the article that implies either of those motives
  - giantg2 4y ago
    If you have any background on the Gates Foundation it should be easily implied. If not, here's a quote. Also, the article talks about low cost housing in South America. Housing is another topic the gates foundation typically focuses on. "Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies"
    - themitigating 4y ago
      That's an unrelated organization founded by bill gates in 2015. The gates foundation was founded in 2000.
      - 4y ago

Tade0 4y ago

Costs of materials follow real estate prices therefore it's always beneficial to seek ways to build homes cheaper. Zoning and nimbyism, while contributing factors, are not the root cause. It's the idea that real estate should be seen as an investment - it gained popularity in China in recent years, causing a lot of unnecessary construction and spilling over to the rest of the world. Fortunately(for us at leat) there are early signs that this scheme is collapsing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-real-estate-market-crisis-protests-may-spur-multi-billion-dollar-rescue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-rea... Funnily enough in my neighbourhood (Eastern EU) there's already a: - Block of so-called "microapartments" - units too small to be legally considered housing. This one was started before the respective law was changed due to an explosion in such projects. - A project which took people's money in 2019 and then... never did anything. It's not even a hole in the ground - it's the previous building still scheduled to be demolished. Apparently the madness also spilled over outside of China.