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People need a place to live that's close-enough to where they work. Folks highly value shelter as a means of improving their chances of survival. Yet we broadl

People need a place to live that's close-enough to where they work. Folks highly value shelter as a means of improving their chances of survival. Yet we broadly refuse to dismantle a century of ever-tightening restrictions on what can be built nor simplify or eliminate processes that slow down and drive up costs for the little that's legal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/20/housing-shortage-cities-build-more/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/20/housing-s...

teddyh 3y ago
How would the latter help with the former?
- zbrozek 3y ago
  By making more supply (housing units) available in greater variety, at lower cost, and more quickly we can drive down their price and make it possible to satisfy more demand. Unfortunately a lot of folks think that housing doesn't follow the same simple economic rules that we've observed for all other physical goods. So they don't allow supply and we continue to spiral deeper and deeper into a housing crisis. If housing were abundant, we wouldn't be reading articles about the rise of living in cars.
  - teddyh 3y ago
    I’m not sure; every time we allow people to build more unconstrained, what gets built is luxury housing and upscale office buildings. This is obvious; given a choice, this is what nets the most profit.
    - zbrozek 3y ago
      In a functional market where demand signal drives production the value of a thing declines as it ages. Japan has this figured out. Tokyo is relatively affordable because it is possible to build just about any form of housing anywhere. Further, there isn't unlimited demand at every price point. When you constrain supply to the point that high-end demand can consume more than total possibly supply, of course builders only build to the high end of the market. Finally, we've made the high end of the market the only thing which can possibly pencil out by driving up costs. Planners demand low floor area ratios, high parking rates, articulated facades, parks dedications, high impact fees - that money ultimately comes from the buyer or the renter. So by making those demands you price out increasingly large portions of the population.
  - beej71 3y ago
    The problem with a lot of these places like Seattle is that adding to the supply is really hard. It's not like there are a million acres of land just waiting to have houses put on them. Sure, you can build a skyrise, but first you need to get permission of the 20 families whose homes you're going to raze.
    - woah 3y ago
      This is nonsense. American cities (especially west coast) make it extremely difficult to build anything anywhere, even on parking lots and crumbling warehouses. There are vacant lots all over SF, in some of the most expensive neighborhoods on earth. Nobody has "raze homes". The hard part is getting permission from 20 retirees who show up at planning meetings and oppose everything on the grounds of fear of change and who think that seeing the sight of a 5 story building is an environmental catastrophe.
2devnull 3y ago
The real estate market is driven by speculation no? So that has to be solved before building more is ever going to be a useful option. Otherwise we just pour gas on the fire of real estate speculation by expanding the size of the bubble. Building supply without any restriction in demand just scales the problem up linearly in proportion to the money put into new development.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  Could you elaborate on how building apartments specifically for low income residents would do this? My county has started buying old hotels and whatnot to convert for their uses.
- throwaway6734 3y ago
  How do you figure? If more houses are built, prices will go down.
  - jfghi 3y ago
    I disagree with this notion. Rental values are often controlled algorithmically. Given the low inventory of housing for sale, it’s possible for the monopolists to purchase the new homes and use vacancy in order to maintain higher levels of pricing for the portfolio by artificially controlling the supply levels.
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      If property taxes were evaluated the same way for the landlords as for everyone else, that wouldn't be feasible would it? And home maintenance and insurance for unoccupied homes is typically very high. There is also the risk of squatting or the cost of people to prevent that. Has anyone done some math on the housing density that is most economical? My guess would be that the height limit would be close to five or six stories before the engineering to go higher was excessive, but that is just a wild guess. Courtyards down to ground level so people can have an external view seem wasteful from a heating and cooling perspective, most people don't want to live with no windows.
flatline 3y ago
She points out many things that would help and yet I am unsure by how much. There is only so much land in and around most major cities. Anything “affordable” with access to desirable things will not remain so for long. The most likely outcome in my mind is endless tracts of poorly thought out suburban development, more reliance on cars and less on public transit, thus exacerbating other problems. Yes SF has some special and critical issues but demand to live in and around the city will always outstrip supply. There are a few places that have tried to do suburban city planning well, but even if you buy into a walkable neighborhood with jobs, who stays put at a job for more than a few years? Most people will still want new opportunities that will put them back in their cars. I would love to think that remote work will solve some of this, but myself and many others do not find that fulfilling or sustainable in the same way as even being in the office 2-3 days a week. RTO is increasingly becoming a trend, which I personally find unfortunate but can understand. We can and should get rid of some dated zoning restrictions and ineffective leaders but it’s not going to be a panacea by any means.
- hfuyf65 3y ago
  It is kinda fascinating. I just returned from US roadtrip ( UT region ) and there is a lot of unused space. Remote could help with a lot of it were it not for 'old school management'( quotation marks, because that is the current PC terms for luddites ).
  - nurple 3y ago
    Not only is there a lot of unused space, but the legislature and developer oligarchs are firmly in bed with each other. As an example, right in the heart of one of the fastest growing areas of the valley, one of the most prolific apartment building developers is being given tailor made QOZs on which to build low income units. Building on these gives the developer a perpetual abeyance on any capital gains, they don't have to pay tax on their profit at all! These QOZs were intended to incentivize the development of land in rural areas where development is not being done by the capital class, but are being abused to put money in the pockets of the rich to ensure there's somewhere to keep the slave class close by all the tech bros so they can cook their lunch. Heaven forbid they were actually used in rural areas and created jobs where these humans could leave the city and seek some semblance of self-determination.
nurple 3y ago
I think a pivotal part of your statement is "close". Close in time and close in distance are not necessarily mutually inclusive. There are many things we could do to to break this coupling if we had the will to spend the time and resources innovating on improving the human condition, but everyone is too busy trying to get theirs to do it. Those with the resources are incentivized to keep the status quo and often even use those resources to ensure their continued control of how and where people live to ensure their profits.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
I am not from USA but it’s the same even in my country. There are too many silver snowflakes out there fantasising about a “free” reign real estate development and in their dreamy reality they imagine that somehow benefiting the “people magically. They can’t even fathom the extent to which these things are rigged and artificially projected e.g. price.

teddyh 3y ago

How would the latter help with the former?

zbrozek 3y ago
By making more supply (housing units) available in greater variety, at lower cost, and more quickly we can drive down their price and make it possible to satisfy more demand. Unfortunately a lot of folks think that housing doesn't follow the same simple economic rules that we've observed for all other physical goods. So they don't allow supply and we continue to spiral deeper and deeper into a housing crisis. If housing were abundant, we wouldn't be reading articles about the rise of living in cars.
- teddyh 3y ago
  I’m not sure; every time we allow people to build more unconstrained, what gets built is luxury housing and upscale office buildings. This is obvious; given a choice, this is what nets the most profit.
  - zbrozek 3y ago
    In a functional market where demand signal drives production the value of a thing declines as it ages. Japan has this figured out. Tokyo is relatively affordable because it is possible to build just about any form of housing anywhere. Further, there isn't unlimited demand at every price point. When you constrain supply to the point that high-end demand can consume more than total possibly supply, of course builders only build to the high end of the market. Finally, we've made the high end of the market the only thing which can possibly pencil out by driving up costs. Planners demand low floor area ratios, high parking rates, articulated facades, parks dedications, high impact fees - that money ultimately comes from the buyer or the renter. So by making those demands you price out increasingly large portions of the population.
- beej71 3y ago
  The problem with a lot of these places like Seattle is that adding to the supply is really hard. It's not like there are a million acres of land just waiting to have houses put on them. Sure, you can build a skyrise, but first you need to get permission of the 20 families whose homes you're going to raze.
  - woah 3y ago
    This is nonsense. American cities (especially west coast) make it extremely difficult to build anything anywhere, even on parking lots and crumbling warehouses. There are vacant lots all over SF, in some of the most expensive neighborhoods on earth. Nobody has "raze homes". The hard part is getting permission from 20 retirees who show up at planning meetings and oppose everything on the grounds of fear of change and who think that seeing the sight of a 5 story building is an environmental catastrophe.

2devnull 3y ago

The real estate market is driven by speculation no? So that has to be solved before building more is ever going to be a useful option. Otherwise we just pour gas on the fire of real estate speculation by expanding the size of the bubble. Building supply without any restriction in demand just scales the problem up linearly in proportion to the money put into new development.

galleywest200 3y ago
Could you elaborate on how building apartments specifically for low income residents would do this? My county has started buying old hotels and whatnot to convert for their uses.
throwaway6734 3y ago
How do you figure? If more houses are built, prices will go down.
- jfghi 3y ago
  I disagree with this notion. Rental values are often controlled algorithmically. Given the low inventory of housing for sale, it’s possible for the monopolists to purchase the new homes and use vacancy in order to maintain higher levels of pricing for the portfolio by artificially controlling the supply levels.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    If property taxes were evaluated the same way for the landlords as for everyone else, that wouldn't be feasible would it? And home maintenance and insurance for unoccupied homes is typically very high. There is also the risk of squatting or the cost of people to prevent that. Has anyone done some math on the housing density that is most economical? My guess would be that the height limit would be close to five or six stories before the engineering to go higher was excessive, but that is just a wild guess. Courtyards down to ground level so people can have an external view seem wasteful from a heating and cooling perspective, most people don't want to live with no windows.

flatline 3y ago

She points out many things that would help and yet I am unsure by how much. There is only so much land in and around most major cities. Anything “affordable” with access to desirable things will not remain so for long. The most likely outcome in my mind is endless tracts of poorly thought out suburban development, more reliance on cars and less on public transit, thus exacerbating other problems. Yes SF has some special and critical issues but demand to live in and around the city will always outstrip supply. There are a few places that have tried to do suburban city planning well, but even if you buy into a walkable neighborhood with jobs, who stays put at a job for more than a few years? Most people will still want new opportunities that will put them back in their cars. I would love to think that remote work will solve some of this, but myself and many others do not find that fulfilling or sustainable in the same way as even being in the office 2-3 days a week. RTO is increasingly becoming a trend, which I personally find unfortunate but can understand. We can and should get rid of some dated zoning restrictions and ineffective leaders but it’s not going to be a panacea by any means.

hfuyf65 3y ago
It is kinda fascinating. I just returned from US roadtrip ( UT region ) and there is a lot of unused space. Remote could help with a lot of it were it not for 'old school management'( quotation marks, because that is the current PC terms for luddites ).
- nurple 3y ago
  Not only is there a lot of unused space, but the legislature and developer oligarchs are firmly in bed with each other. As an example, right in the heart of one of the fastest growing areas of the valley, one of the most prolific apartment building developers is being given tailor made QOZs on which to build low income units. Building on these gives the developer a perpetual abeyance on any capital gains, they don't have to pay tax on their profit at all! These QOZs were intended to incentivize the development of land in rural areas where development is not being done by the capital class, but are being abused to put money in the pockets of the rich to ensure there's somewhere to keep the slave class close by all the tech bros so they can cook their lunch. Heaven forbid they were actually used in rural areas and created jobs where these humans could leave the city and seek some semblance of self-determination.

nurple 3y ago

I think a pivotal part of your statement is "close". Close in time and close in distance are not necessarily mutually inclusive. There are many things we could do to to break this coupling if we had the will to spend the time and resources innovating on improving the human condition, but everyone is too busy trying to get theirs to do it. Those with the resources are incentivized to keep the status quo and often even use those resources to ensure their continued control of how and where people live to ensure their profits.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

I am not from USA but it’s the same even in my country. There are too many silver snowflakes out there fantasising about a “free” reign real estate development and in their dreamy reality they imagine that somehow benefiting the “people magically. They can’t even fathom the extent to which these things are rigged and artificially projected e.g. price.