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> My hypothesis has been that renters stopped voting. Who are these renters who stopped voting? I can only speak for Australia, however the average age of rent

> My hypothesis has been that renters stopped voting. Who are these renters who stopped voting? I can only speak for Australia, however the average age of renters has been rising for decades. Most of Gen Y have come to terms with the fact they will likely never own property in a major city. These people keep voting, but their vote isn't accomplishing anything. > Density hurts landowners by decreasing property values and landowners vote. How does density actually hurt landowners? If you own a house in a heavily consolidated urban area your property value will hardly have decreased. Look at the value of houses in Ultimo, Chippendale, Pyrmont, for instance. Also consider that maybe people just don't want to live in a highrise legoland, or think that endless urban consolidation is a good thing for our cities.

arcticbull 4y ago
> How does density actually hurt landowners? If you own a house in a heavily consolidated urban area your property value will hardly have decreased. Correct because, and I can only speak for America, those big cities stopped building. San Francisco alone is short about a quarter million homes, like 33% of the existing population. There’s a whole Wikipedia article on it. That’s why it’s so unaffordable. > Also consider that maybe people just don't want to live in a highrise legoland, or think that endless urban consolidation is a good thing for our cities. This is a pretty funny position to take. Those cities didn’t get to high rises because nobody wanted to live in them. You know those buildings are full … right? If nobody wanted to live there prices would be way lower and they never would have built denser housing. Tokyo is a great example of a major metro where supply and demand are roughly equal and they haven’t seen houses increase in price since 1990. Their units cost a bit more than cost of construction. This is the power of federalizing zoning rules so city councils can’t get between you and building a house on your property.
- robocat 4y ago
  > San Francisco alone is short about a quarter million homes If they added a quarter million homes, do you think they would still be short another quarter million homes? Not saying densification is bad. But in some cities the density can keep increasing and not have any drop in demand. Apartment prices in dense cities don’t drop?
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    > If they added a quarter million homes, do you think they would still be short another quarter million homes? Not in this market, haha. The number was based on the quantity of houses added vs the quantity of jobs added in SF and the surrounding area. (From [1]: "For example, from 2012 to 2016, the San Francisco metropolitan area added 373,000 new jobs, but permitted only 58,000 new housing units") But over time? Maybe. > Apartment prices in dense cities don’t drop? There are very few cities where supply of housing is allowed to meet demand for housing - but as I mentioned, Japan is a great example. Japan hasn't seen an increase in the cost of housing since edit: [1995, not 1990 as I mistakenly claimed in GP post]. [2] Compare to the US. [3] What happens is that they stop going up in price. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIHOSNS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIHOSNS
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Yea, also adding more homes or more units will just increase rents and prices anyway, especially with higher interest rates. At the end of the day a lot of people have this very wrong idea that living in the best weather and in the epicenter of a global city with top-tier jobs, food, etc. will ever be “affordable”. It simply will not be. Ever.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Tokyo has all of those things, and yet. Why do you think supply and demand do not exist in the housing market? Why is this the one market on earth where it won't ever work? If you have as many houses as jobs in the nearby area then it will be more affordable. That's just facts. Further higher interest rates lead to lower house prices, to an extent (but only to the extent supply exceeds demand) because people buy houses based on monthly mortgage affordability. People have looked into this. Here are the results. [1] > The resultant high demand for housing, combined with the lack of supply, (caused by severe restrictions on the building of new housing units) caused dramatic increases in rents and extremely high housing prices. I'm not saying you'll be able to live in SF for the cost of living in a shack in the corn belt, but there's no reason it'll be "unaffordable forever and there's nothing we can do about it" when that historically wasn't the case and there are other global counter-examples. And a ton of research was done on this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

arcticbull 4y ago

> How does density actually hurt landowners? If you own a house in a heavily consolidated urban area your property value will hardly have decreased. Correct because, and I can only speak for America, those big cities stopped building. San Francisco alone is short about a quarter million homes, like 33% of the existing population. There’s a whole Wikipedia article on it. That’s why it’s so unaffordable. > Also consider that maybe people just don't want to live in a highrise legoland, or think that endless urban consolidation is a good thing for our cities. This is a pretty funny position to take. Those cities didn’t get to high rises because nobody wanted to live in them. You know those buildings are full … right? If nobody wanted to live there prices would be way lower and they never would have built denser housing. Tokyo is a great example of a major metro where supply and demand are roughly equal and they haven’t seen houses increase in price since 1990. Their units cost a bit more than cost of construction. This is the power of federalizing zoning rules so city councils can’t get between you and building a house on your property.

robocat 4y ago
> San Francisco alone is short about a quarter million homes If they added a quarter million homes, do you think they would still be short another quarter million homes? Not saying densification is bad. But in some cities the density can keep increasing and not have any drop in demand. Apartment prices in dense cities don’t drop?
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > If they added a quarter million homes, do you think they would still be short another quarter million homes? Not in this market, haha. The number was based on the quantity of houses added vs the quantity of jobs added in SF and the surrounding area. (From [1]: "For example, from 2012 to 2016, the San Francisco metropolitan area added 373,000 new jobs, but permitted only 58,000 new housing units") But over time? Maybe. > Apartment prices in dense cities don’t drop? There are very few cities where supply of housing is allowed to meet demand for housing - but as I mentioned, Japan is a great example. Japan hasn't seen an increase in the cost of housing since edit: [1995, not 1990 as I mistakenly claimed in GP post]. [2] Compare to the US. [3] What happens is that they stop going up in price. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIHOSNS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIHOSNS
- ericmay 4y ago
  Yea, also adding more homes or more units will just increase rents and prices anyway, especially with higher interest rates. At the end of the day a lot of people have this very wrong idea that living in the best weather and in the epicenter of a global city with top-tier jobs, food, etc. will ever be “affordable”. It simply will not be. Ever.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Tokyo has all of those things, and yet. Why do you think supply and demand do not exist in the housing market? Why is this the one market on earth where it won't ever work? If you have as many houses as jobs in the nearby area then it will be more affordable. That's just facts. Further higher interest rates lead to lower house prices, to an extent (but only to the extent supply exceeds demand) because people buy houses based on monthly mortgage affordability. People have looked into this. Here are the results. [1] > The resultant high demand for housing, combined with the lack of supply, (caused by severe restrictions on the building of new housing units) caused dramatic increases in rents and extremely high housing prices. I'm not saying you'll be able to live in SF for the cost of living in a shack in the corn belt, but there's no reason it'll be "unaffordable forever and there's nothing we can do about it" when that historically wasn't the case and there are other global counter-examples. And a ton of research was done on this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage