4 ms·

It’s funny how when it comes to housing, better way is always to do something that won’t have a meaningful impact on most people for many years or even decades

It’s funny how when it comes to housing, better way is always to do something that won’t have a meaningful impact on most people for many years or even decades.

spankalee 3y ago
As opposed to things that don't work at all, like not building housing?
Buldak 3y ago
A lot of things are like that (e.g. nuclear energy).
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  And are thus eclipsed by better, safer solutions like renewable energy.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    The US generates ~18% of its electricity from nuclear, ~13% from wind and solar and ~60% from fossil fuels. France generates ~68% of its electricity from nuclear, ~10% from wind and solar and ~8% from fossil fuels. We're trying to reduce the number for fossil fuels, one of these is actually working.
lmm 3y ago
It took 70 years to create this mess, it's going to take 70 years to fully fix it.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
If you want to make it faster you could subsidize new construction. If you have more demand than supply, the only ways to make it otherwise are to reduce demand and increase supply. Methods of reducing demand are generally unpleasant. What alternatives do you imagine there even are? If you have a million families and 800,000 housing units, your choices are building 200,000 more housing units or something worse than that.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Banning corporate ownership of single family homes, including forced sale of existing portfolios, occupancy requirements, mandated development on state-owned landed, direct state construction vs. subsidies.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Banning corporate ownership of single family homes, including forced sale of existing portfolios Then corporate investors buy large buildings instead of single family homes (note that this is primarily what they do anyway), the prices for rentals in multi-unit buildings goes up (because it costs more to buy the property with more corporations bidding on it), the prices for single family home rentals goes up (because some of the landlords sell to occupants rather than smaller landlords so there are fewer rentals available) and what you've done is transfer some of the cost from more affluent prospective single family home buyers onto less affluent renters. > occupancy requirements They just convert unoccupied units to some other use or claim they're under construction, and if there is no exception for units under construction you've made construction more expensive and get less of it. It's also kind of weird because they're already losing thousands of dollars a month in rent if the unit is empty, and the higher rents are the more they lose, so isn't the market already providing the incentive you're trying to get here? There's a reason well over 90% of the units in high demand areas are already occupied. If you really want to increase occupancy then get rid of rent control -- it lowers that exact incentive to put the unit on the market which raises rents for all other units across the city, and has the same effect for new construction because of the risk (or certainty) that the building will be put under rent control in the future. > mandated development on state-owned landed The state often makes inefficient use of the land it owns, but it typically doesn't own that high a proportion of land in the city, especially if you're just going to use it to build more single family homes. Allowing a 100-unit building to be built where there is currently a single family home creates 99x more housing than converting some park to a single family home -- and then you lose the park. > direct state construction vs. subsidies Then the state uses government contractors who charge more and you get less construction for the same number of tax dollars. And also, this is just a different kind of construction subsidy. You're not getting out of needing to build more housing.

It’s funny how when it comes to housing, better way is always to do something that won’t have a meaningful impact on most people for many years or even decades.

spankalee 3y ago

As opposed to things that don't work at all, like not building housing?

Buldak 3y ago

A lot of things are like that (e.g. nuclear energy).

bugglebeetle 3y ago
And are thus eclipsed by better, safer solutions like renewable energy.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  The US generates ~18% of its electricity from nuclear, ~13% from wind and solar and ~60% from fossil fuels. France generates ~68% of its electricity from nuclear, ~10% from wind and solar and ~8% from fossil fuels. We're trying to reduce the number for fossil fuels, one of these is actually working.

lmm 3y ago

It took 70 years to create this mess, it's going to take 70 years to fully fix it.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

If you want to make it faster you could subsidize new construction. If you have more demand than supply, the only ways to make it otherwise are to reduce demand and increase supply. Methods of reducing demand are generally unpleasant. What alternatives do you imagine there even are? If you have a million families and 800,000 housing units, your choices are building 200,000 more housing units or something worse than that.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
Banning corporate ownership of single family homes, including forced sale of existing portfolios, occupancy requirements, mandated development on state-owned landed, direct state construction vs. subsidies.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Banning corporate ownership of single family homes, including forced sale of existing portfolios Then corporate investors buy large buildings instead of single family homes (note that this is primarily what they do anyway), the prices for rentals in multi-unit buildings goes up (because it costs more to buy the property with more corporations bidding on it), the prices for single family home rentals goes up (because some of the landlords sell to occupants rather than smaller landlords so there are fewer rentals available) and what you've done is transfer some of the cost from more affluent prospective single family home buyers onto less affluent renters. > occupancy requirements They just convert unoccupied units to some other use or claim they're under construction, and if there is no exception for units under construction you've made construction more expensive and get less of it. It's also kind of weird because they're already losing thousands of dollars a month in rent if the unit is empty, and the higher rents are the more they lose, so isn't the market already providing the incentive you're trying to get here? There's a reason well over 90% of the units in high demand areas are already occupied. If you really want to increase occupancy then get rid of rent control -- it lowers that exact incentive to put the unit on the market which raises rents for all other units across the city, and has the same effect for new construction because of the risk (or certainty) that the building will be put under rent control in the future. > mandated development on state-owned landed The state often makes inefficient use of the land it owns, but it typically doesn't own that high a proportion of land in the city, especially if you're just going to use it to build more single family homes. Allowing a 100-unit building to be built where there is currently a single family home creates 99x more housing than converting some park to a single family home -- and then you lose the park. > direct state construction vs. subsidies Then the state uses government contractors who charge more and you get less construction for the same number of tax dollars. And also, this is just a different kind of construction subsidy. You're not getting out of needing to build more housing.