8 ms·

Where does this narrative about evil greedy developers come from? If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet

Where does this narrative about evil greedy developers come from? If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet demand. It’s not that different from restricting the supply of milk and getting angry that milk producers will make more money when those restrictions are lifted. Yeah, they will, but only because there is more demand for their product than they were previously legally allowed to satisfy. Developer margins should actually decrease when zoning is more permissive anyway. Right now in SF there is a whole cottage industry of “facilitators” and direct graft/corruption making it hard to build housing unless you know how to work the system. While it’s absolutely true that developers can cut corners, I personally don’t see them as any more evil than any other business.

TedShiller 4y ago
[flagged]
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  The fact that housing prices are high isn't a sign of greed: it's a sign of a constrained supply. Developers build housing, the price is set by what people are willing to pay.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - burntwater 4y ago
    The price is also set by developers. There's no reason for rent to increase 30-50% in a single year other than literal greed. Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. But it's still greed raising the price.
    - fasteddie 4y ago
      The people actually building the buildings (developers) are, generally, different than the people renting out buildings (landlords). Developers profit when more units are built, landlords are hurt with increased competition. Also, recent California law was changed so that the maximum allowable annual rent increase is ~10% (still rough if you are hit with that, but better than 30%).
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      To be pedantic, the price is set by the leasing office, which may or may not be run by the developer. People do have a choice in the matter: they choose to live elsewhere. If an apartment raised rents 30-50% for no reason, that's what everyone would do and they would get no tenants. Except, they're not raising rent for no reason. They're raising rent because housing is becoming a scare commodity, and there's way more people looking for housing than there are housing units available. If they look elsewhere the prices would also be high. The "greedy" developers are the ones that are capable of bringing us out of this situation by profiting off this shortage by building more housing. Hostility to developers is a big reason why San Francisco and similar ares have such high housing costs.
    - jjav 4y ago
      > Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. That's not entirely true. Yes, you need a place to live. But it doesn't have to be right there, it can be elsewhere. I wanted to live in Manhattan but the rents were insane. Eventually I gave up on the idea and moved elsewhere.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Truth is people want to live in a community of the character they choose when they moved into that community. The high density housing community seems to think everyone just needs an efficiency unit in a Soviet style housing block and anyone else is an entitled NIMBY. What the person said was developers don’t care about the community they’re building into. Loosening of community rules means they can move in start building the anti-NIMBY idealized massive communal living arcology in the on the east and west of your 100 year old Victorian neighborhood blocking the sun for 70% of the day, razing historic buildings and creating a construction zone for the next five years. Then once they’ve made everyone miserable for forever they pocket the profit and use it to buy a nice Victorian in a community with community zoning laws.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  > your 100 year old Victorian neighborhood Well, you know, it sure would be nice if people could build more of those tightly-clustered Victorians in, say, San Francisco, to continue the classic character of the city and replace ugly box houses... but zoning laws mean they can't.
  - rrsmtz 4y ago
    Even if they could, they wouldn't. The modern trend is demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s.
    - opportune 4y ago
      Have you been to California? A lot of the housing they are demolishing to build 5-over-1s are kinda shitty 1950s-60s ranches. Not really beautiful at all.
    - techsupporter 4y ago
      I'm truly sorry if this comes off as a personal attack because I'm trying really hard for it not to be but my frustration bubbles over. > demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s YES. BECAUSE THAT'S ALL MODERN ZONING PERMITS. WHICH IS PRECISELY THE [bad word] PROBLEM. In our haste, particularly on the West Coast, to ensure that we build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody, we've made zoning codes that produce THIS OUTCOME. There's a reply upthread that says that density advocates want to cram everyone into Soviet-style "dystopian" high rises and, to be honest, your reply here sounds a lot like that. A WORLD of difference exists between "detached dwelling on a 7,500 square foot lot" and "clone stamp 5-over-1 with empty retail on the bottom." BUT ZONING DOESN'T PERMIT IT. We absolutely should be building rowhouses and stacked flats and plaza housing and all of the other beautiful, people-scale-yet-still-dense, workable housing types that have been tried all over the planet yet America thinks we're too god damn special to have because "American Dream". If you have rules that say you can only build 5-over-1s, it should come as no shock at all when those are the only things being built, especially in the very tiny slice of areas where it's permitted to build anything dense at all.
kevinburke 4y ago
People are looking for any scapegoat for the problems in their community so they don't have to look in the mirror. This is the same reason why there's a persistent myth that homeless are bused in from other states or whatever (when in reality, 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street). It absolves people of blame
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street Do you have a citation for that? I could do with a decent source.
  - kevinburke 4y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Sadly I can't get to that. Never mind!
      - mdavidn 4y ago
        Here's the source cited by the Times. Skip to slide 24. https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3437-2019-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count-presentation.pdf https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3437-2019-greater-los-ang...
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        Thank you! That seems to show 65% of the homeless population of LA County were living there before they became homeless - others travelled within state or from another state to be there. That wasn't quite what I expected to see based on the stats cited above, but it's useful info. Thank you.

TedShiller 4y ago

[flagged]

Manuel_D 4y ago
The fact that housing prices are high isn't a sign of greed: it's a sign of a constrained supply. Developers build housing, the price is set by what people are willing to pay.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- burntwater 4y ago
  The price is also set by developers. There's no reason for rent to increase 30-50% in a single year other than literal greed. Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. But it's still greed raising the price.
  - fasteddie 4y ago
    The people actually building the buildings (developers) are, generally, different than the people renting out buildings (landlords). Developers profit when more units are built, landlords are hurt with increased competition. Also, recent California law was changed so that the maximum allowable annual rent increase is ~10% (still rough if you are hit with that, but better than 30%).
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    To be pedantic, the price is set by the leasing office, which may or may not be run by the developer. People do have a choice in the matter: they choose to live elsewhere. If an apartment raised rents 30-50% for no reason, that's what everyone would do and they would get no tenants. Except, they're not raising rent for no reason. They're raising rent because housing is becoming a scare commodity, and there's way more people looking for housing than there are housing units available. If they look elsewhere the prices would also be high. The "greedy" developers are the ones that are capable of bringing us out of this situation by profiting off this shortage by building more housing. Hostility to developers is a big reason why San Francisco and similar ares have such high housing costs.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Will people pay it? Yes, because they have no choice in the matter, they need a place to live. That's not entirely true. Yes, you need a place to live. But it doesn't have to be right there, it can be elsewhere. I wanted to live in Manhattan but the rents were insane. Eventually I gave up on the idea and moved elsewhere.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Truth is people want to live in a community of the character they choose when they moved into that community. The high density housing community seems to think everyone just needs an efficiency unit in a Soviet style housing block and anyone else is an entitled NIMBY. What the person said was developers don’t care about the community they’re building into. Loosening of community rules means they can move in start building the anti-NIMBY idealized massive communal living arcology in the on the east and west of your 100 year old Victorian neighborhood blocking the sun for 70% of the day, razing historic buildings and creating a construction zone for the next five years. Then once they’ve made everyone miserable for forever they pocket the profit and use it to buy a nice Victorian in a community with community zoning laws.

crooked-v 4y ago
> your 100 year old Victorian neighborhood Well, you know, it sure would be nice if people could build more of those tightly-clustered Victorians in, say, San Francisco, to continue the classic character of the city and replace ugly box houses... but zoning laws mean they can't.
- rrsmtz 4y ago
  Even if they could, they wouldn't. The modern trend is demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s.
  - opportune 4y ago
    Have you been to California? A lot of the housing they are demolishing to build 5-over-1s are kinda shitty 1950s-60s ranches. Not really beautiful at all.
  - techsupporter 4y ago
    I'm truly sorry if this comes off as a personal attack because I'm trying really hard for it not to be but my frustration bubbles over. > demolishing beautiful, sustainably-built housing with shoddy, ugly, mass-produced 5-over-1s YES. BECAUSE THAT'S ALL MODERN ZONING PERMITS. WHICH IS PRECISELY THE [bad word] PROBLEM. In our haste, particularly on the West Coast, to ensure that we build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody, we've made zoning codes that produce THIS OUTCOME. There's a reply upthread that says that density advocates want to cram everyone into Soviet-style "dystopian" high rises and, to be honest, your reply here sounds a lot like that. A WORLD of difference exists between "detached dwelling on a 7,500 square foot lot" and "clone stamp 5-over-1 with empty retail on the bottom." BUT ZONING DOESN'T PERMIT IT. We absolutely should be building rowhouses and stacked flats and plaza housing and all of the other beautiful, people-scale-yet-still-dense, workable housing types that have been tried all over the planet yet America thinks we're too god damn special to have because "American Dream". If you have rules that say you can only build 5-over-1s, it should come as no shock at all when those are the only things being built, especially in the very tiny slice of areas where it's permitted to build anything dense at all.

kevinburke 4y ago

People are looking for any scapegoat for the problems in their community so they don't have to look in the mirror. This is the same reason why there's a persistent myth that homeless are bused in from other states or whatever (when in reality, 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street). It absolves people of blame

robertlagrant 4y ago
> 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street Do you have a citation for that? I could do with a decent source.
- kevinburke 4y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Sadly I can't get to that. Never mind!
    - mdavidn 4y ago
      Here's the source cited by the Times. Skip to slide 24. https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3437-2019-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count-presentation.pdf https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3437-2019-greater-los-ang...
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        Thank you! That seems to show 65% of the homeless population of LA County were living there before they became homeless - others travelled within state or from another state to be there. That wasn't quite what I expected to see based on the stats cited above, but it's useful info. Thank you.