11 ms·

> It's not that the factories are being cheap (at least not in all cases), but the gov has to step in and bring real estate price under control, this is often t

• anovikov 4y ago
  Bingo! Real estate prices and rents are so high precisely because this is what the majority (that is, homeowners) want: they want their home equity to go up. And they will vote for whoever makes it more likely. Want to solve it? Scrap democracy (so no one gives a damn what people want), or scrap market economy (so the Party will provide free housing to everyone). I'd much rather stick with expensive rent.
  • nostrademons 4y ago
    Or just have everybody kill everybody else. Reduce the population and you reduce demand for housing, food, energy, and all those other pesky necessities of life that have become too expensive. /s, but history shows that this is how things usually end.
    • _carbyau_ 4y ago
      Yup. I see this as increasing pressures. What matters is the rate of increase. Everyone is competing to ensure they are not at the bottom. But: - will the pressure rise slowly enough to simply pressure those at the bottom to have less children. - will the pressure rise cause those at the bottom to explode. IE riots in the streets etc I think the second option as more likely. By definition, those in power are out of touch with those at the bottom.
  • astrange 4y ago
    It's a coordination problem. They'll vote for people who prevent it locally, but if you move power a bit up to the state level there isn't nearly so much interest in preventing it, which is why other countries don't have this issue outside the Anglosphere. Even moving from per-district to at-large city council members is enough to improve things, though we seem to be moving in the other direction there.
• missingcolours 4y ago
  This seems like a very Big Coastal Metro-centric view that is probably true in those areas but doesn't capture what's happening elsewhere. Home prices in Metro Detroit, for example, used to be quite reasonable and have recently exploded to being rather unaffordable for most people. There hasn't really been any population growth to speak of, so it's not clear to me why would we need or want more housing to be constructed in order for prices to be reasonable, as was the historic norm.
  • downrightmike 4y ago
    Even in a cheap area in a western red state, last year, flippers bought a house, slapped a for sale sign and doubled the price the next month. Those are still sitting unsold. And now houses are being bought by flippers who are slapping an extra 2.5 times the price they got it for in the same month. None of these houses are selling. Just sitting empty.
    • Animats 4y ago
      That sort of thing should end with the end of low interest rates. When interest rates were near zero, borrowing money to purchase unused real estate could be profitable if you could sell some of it. No longer true.
      • bobthepanda 4y ago
        Right, unless those flippers paid with straight cash, they are going to have a hard time raising more money to buy more houses, and they might go underwater on the current ones. To see what that looks like on steroids, China's economy is at real risk of recession due to property developers running out of cash and failing to build promised developments. (Most apartments in China are purchased before construction starts, so you can buy a house and not end up with one in the end.)
        • edmundsauto 4y ago
          Even if investors pay cash, they need cheap interest rates to be able to sell at a profit to people who need a loan.
• epicureanideal 4y ago
  Higher density is not actually required. There are hundreds of square miles of unbuilt land even within 30 minutes driving distance of Palo Alto and the rest of Silicon Valley. It's just not possible to build there due to environmental regulations, government ownership of the land, and so on. As for sustained decrease in residential property values, yes, that is the real problem. Voters who own homes won't vote for policies that let everyone else have a cheaper home. It is going to need to happen in some other state, and that state will need to draw away so many workers that California house prices fall anyway, and then maybe the policies will change.
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    The main limit there is usually transportation infrastructure, but there is not exactly room for more lanes on any of the Bay Area's highways, let alone space for new highways. Rail scales better, but that's also not really getting a move on anytime soon, and in any case rail scales better if density is high development and nearby.
  • shusaku 4y ago
    Ah yes, just tear down the redwood forest.
    • socialismisok 4y ago
      Or farmland, because that's just unused space, right?
      • jhbadger 4y ago
        That's how it's been seen traditionally in the US, unfortunately. Silicon Valley in California used to be the site of the largest fruit producing area in the world from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s, but technology turned out to be more profitable. The Orlando area in Florida was also a major citrus producer until the 1970s and the coming of Disney World and other theme parks that located there to get traffic from Disney visitors.
    • 4y ago
• epicureanideal 4y ago
  > Both of these would be very unpopular with voters. We need to find a way to never be in this situation again. For example, create Special Economic Zones where by law housing construction is expected to constantly be happening, and it is impossible to prevent it by law.
  • uup 4y ago
    One of the founding principles of this country is “no taxation without representation.” Disregarding the will of the voters seems to run contrary to that.
    • nirimda 4y ago
      If the law obliges construction to happen, and the law prevents it from being prevented, then the will of the people is expressed legislatively. This would normally be considered an expression of representation. This kind of a SEZ could be terminated if the relevant people elected relevant representatives to the relevant legislature.
    • astrange 4y ago
      Pro-housing principles have been quite popular with California voters; Scott Wiener (the state senator with the most aggressive upzoning bills) is the most popular elected official in SF even. It's just they're only popular at the state level, not the local level - that's what it means to be a NIMBY. But none of the major YIMBY policies have lost anyone an election yet that I know of.
    • kaashif 4y ago
      The will of the voters is sometimes different depending on what you ask them. If you ask people if they support a constitutional right to free speech, they'll probably say yes. If you ask them if someone should have a right to say some specific disagreeable thing, many people will say no. Similarly with NIMBYism, people say they want houses built and support candidates who say they'll fix the housing crisis, but if you ask them about some specific planned development close to them, they say no. I have no idea what the will of the voters actually is on this issue. Everyone agrees there's a problem, but most people are against all solutions.
• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > that means Density is unavoidable. But residential values can freeze or barely grow in nominal terms. That won’t cause a crisis. Public housing built to be sold at an affordable price, not let to wards of the state, maybe with an aim at redeveloping blighted areas, is a model I’m fond of. (See Roosevelt Island.)
  • uup 4y ago
    I don’t think the public can building housing well. Public housing projects aren’t typically seen as desirable places to live.
    • mellavora 4y ago
      counter-example. How much of suburbia was built on the GI bill? There is more than one architype of public works projects
      • throwawayallday 4y ago
        GI Bill suburbia was built by private home builders and contractors, not the government. They were not public works. The government subsidized the loans.
        • mellavora 4y ago
          Government loan subsidies, government loan guarantees, additional subsidies in the mortgage interest rate deduction, local government paying for infrastructure (roads/utilities), ... perhaps I take a broader definition of public works than you do. Also, say a city or state government wants to build a low-cost/low-income housing (or take historical examples if you will), the type of undesirable stuff the parent was talking about. Who do you think actually does the building work? Is it government employees, or is it sub'ed out to private builders and contractors? And if it is government workers, can you please explain why say the Army Corps of Engineers would be better or worse at building a bridge than say a private contractor? Which of the two is more incentivized to cut corners and do things on the cheap wherever possible?
• bamboozled 4y ago
  Americans aren’t going to voluntarily move to high density housing to work in factories. It’s just not the culture.
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    They will if the pay is good enough. See: tech workers.
    • krapp 4y ago
      Tech is a bubble that's about to burst. No one is going to pay factory workers anywhere close to that.
• geysersam 4y ago
  Why should residential property values increase anyway? It's not like the population growth in the US (overall) is staggering. Property prices the last couple of decades are largely artificial. They've long been disconnected from the supply and (non-speculative) demand, that's (one important reason) why the market's been unable to solve the problem. The signal is broken.
  • ThrustVectoring 4y ago
    > Why should residential property values increase anyway? Total non-worker consumption is equal to the unconsumed portion of total worker production, the worker-to-retiree ratio is getting worse each year, and total productivity gains are stalling. Working-age adults have to get squeezed somehow on pain of retirees voting different policies, and housing/rent/mortgage is the least flexible in terms of household budget and least politically obvious pathway for it.
  • ako 4y ago
    Housing prices are mostly supply and demand driven, but it's the supply and demand of location, not of the building itself. Next to that, the maximum price is largely defined by how much people can and are willing to borrow with a typical income for the location and the type of building. And with location being in short supply, locations (and houses) go for maximum price. With rent going up, maximum price will come down, to keep total price the same.
    • geysersam 4y ago
      > how much people can borrow This is the main factor, and it's a result of the monetary policy of the last decades. Since this number has been increasing compared to wages, it's becoming less sensible to build apartments for rental. But at the same time, those are needed to increase density and availability of affordable housing in attractive cities. It's a mess.
      • Karrot_Kream 4y ago
        It's complicated. The loose monetary policy is certainly one aspect. Another is that most American city-center residential areas are still zoned at low densities. If organic growth could lead to organic densification in central locations, there would be less impact to the housing market, but American zoning is stuck in the aftermath of WWII and is loathe to densify.
• LAC-Tech 4y ago
  Everyone loves to talk about fixing the supply issue, but no one wants to touch the demand issue.
  • KerrAvon 4y ago
    In what sense? Zero population growth, or incentivizing corporations to not congregate in only like six metro areas in the entire US or what?
    • LAC-Tech 4y ago
      In most developed countries experiencing population growth, it's mainly driven by immigration. That's pretty easy for a nation state to control.
      • dane-pgp 4y ago
        For what it's worth, current policies in Europe may already be enough[0]: > The EU-27’s population is projected to increase from 446.8 million in 2019 and peak to 449.3 million in 2026 The situation in China is apparently similar[1]: > China’s population will peak in 2022 due to negative natural growth [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=497115 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/28a1f975-8374-4b87-b2ba-2e60ddf203a0 https://www.ft.com/content/28a1f975-8374-4b87-b2ba-2e60ddf20...
  • astrange 4y ago
    No, the lack of supply was intentionally created to stop "the demand issue", by which they meant "other people having children". And California certainly doesn't produce enough houses for even their own children; talk to any suburban boomer and they'll tell you 1. their kids have moved out of state and 2. their kids don't deserve to live near them and had better become millionaires first. This was popularized by 70s books like Cities as Growth Engines and The Population Bomb, which IIRC also caused China to ruin their demographics by introducing the one-child program. It was recently parodied in movies by that Thanos guy. It is not your new idea that everyone else is ignoring.
• bigbluedots 4y ago
  One solution would be to discourage the use of housing as a vehicle for investment, perhaps by requiring that in most cases the owner lives in the property.
  • herbst 4y ago
    What about people that prefer to rent for whatever reason? Or have to because their financial situation? These options would become more rare, likely more expensive.
  • astrange 4y ago
    That would make it much harder to move, because you end up owning two houses when you do that. Also, some people like renting and have enough problems finding rental housing. Literally you just have to build more housing. It's fine to say this.
  • red_admiral 4y ago
    I personally like the Georgist take on this one (Lars Doucet on substack has a good explanation). The basic idea is to tax not the house, but the underlying land value.
  • dagw 4y ago
    One solution would be to discourage the use of housing as a vehicle for investment Sweden does this through various policies. The main outcome is that finding a rental apartment is virtually impossible.
• Akronymus 4y ago
  > * Higher density living i don't think it'd actually be that unpopular IF it comes with decent public transport + walkability + mixed use and such, like in europe. I HIGHLY doubt it is possible to do in the near term in the US.
  • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    High density living done in Europe is only a few cities and most of them aren't much of a step up. Realistically people would have to look at Tokyo-scale high density living as a starting point to tackle most complaints.
  • esel2k 4y ago
    Why not? I ask this as european that lives in an appartement close to city center. We have about 32 families in the space where you have typically a big us house. And no I don’t live in poverty - 100sqm rooftop, own garage spot and really enjoy my 10min cycling time everywhere. I work daily with people from Boston. I think downtown is not that different in terms of willingness to have similar lifestyle. I think many don’t know how good density living means and it would be totally doable also in the US, not overnight. I guess there is still a big of a perception: Without your big house and garden your are nothing/« you didn’t make it » . Once this is gone I guess it could go fast.
    • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      Stating your living conditions without naming rent/mortgage, income and location isn't very useful. Average Joe can't find a place in most cities, and educated, young Europeans are struggling to earn median while being pushed to work in the cities. European cities also aren't that dense, generally speaking. Building high is an exception and only pushed recently, in places with infrastructure already present.
      • yourusername 4y ago
        >European cities also aren't that dense, generally speaking. Building high is an exception and only pushed recently, in places with infrastructure already present. Buildings 5 stories high get similar or higher density than anything but the most extreme high rise neighbourhoods and are a better place to live. Easily get to 15k per km2 without highrises.
• ksec 4y ago
  What about.... building a massive new City somewhere? A new City for the Wealthy, with modern infrastructure. Another new City that is designed for Manufacturing, with new housing and infrastructure based on those needs.
  • bluGill 4y ago
    It is called a suburb. You can plan whatever you want, and people might or might not come. But if it isn't next to an existing city nobody will come.
    • vladak 4y ago
      Closed cities, like those in Russia/Soviet union are exception. Either people were forced to come or the incentives were too high to refuse.
• krageon 4y ago
  It doesn't mean high(er) density living at all (at least not how it is understood in the rest of the world). The US is mostly empty space, no flats or whatever required.
  • Hard_Space 4y ago
    Higher density happens because investors want to maximize the use of land in desirable areas, not because land is unavailable or difficult to zone. I live in Bucharest, a city of incredibly high RE development, and most of the new buildings are more compressed and crowded in on each other than they were under communism, which is a common occurrence in the former Soviet satellite states [1]. From my window, I can see across the Delta Vacaresti, a wildlife reserve that was once a neighborhood that Ceausescu just had time to raze to the ground for some new insane scheme before his people shot him. Across the way, I see three massive multistory residential blocks going up, crowded together like pedestrians on a metro train at rush hour - only one side of the front-most block has any view of the Delta, while the others literally live in each other's shadows, lacking sunlight. By contrast, communist design principles designed a whole neighborhood, with schools and hospitals and doctors, with the 'megablocks' seen as small cities in themselves that needed dedicated support systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIxUuuJX7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIxUuuJX7Y
• thrown_22 4y ago
  People have an idea that the suburbs were this magical place where you had cheap housing, fast commutes, large gardens and a family of 6 children. Just because you see it in a sitcom doesn't mean it's true. Or to quote the guys who did the big bang theory: "We went to the apartments of real physics post grads and they were too depressing to put on television." The same was true for suburbs in the 1950s which could be afforded by a family of four with only the father working.
• mcv 4y ago
  > The second point would also probably cause some serious economic problems, as a lot of peoples' and businesses' decisions are based on property values generally going up faster than the rate of inflation. But that's a big problem. If housing prices go up faster than inflation, then eventually most of our costs of living will be housing. And here we are, apparently. I think it's also a big problem that housing costs are ignored in inflation calculations. I think that has lead to the rise in housing costs in general having been ignored. And now it's become a problem.
• scaredginger 4y ago
  I think something missing here is that people often want to live in urban areas. For many young people, these are the places where all the interesting things are happening. You're always surrounded by other people and culture. Prices are high in these areas because they are so attractive; we need to increase supply to meet it
  • leetcrew 4y ago
    people don't just want to live in cities, they want to live in a few specific neighborhoods within those cities. for example, a peculiar thing has been happening in baltimore. average housing prices have been steadily going up while the population is actually shrinking. there is a glut of supply citywide, with entire blocks sitting vacant. but the competition over units in a few cool neighborhoods is enough to totally offset that. we could provide satisfactory homes and services to everyone in america, if we made it a priority. but we will never be able to build enough supply in the most desirable neighborhoods. people just need to get over that.
• lr1970 4y ago
  > * Higher density living USA is non-uniformly populated. The middle of the country is nowhere as dense as the coasts. Our goal as a society should be better land use across the whole country. That would require incentives on the government level.