6 ms·

We underbuilt housing for 30 years leading to the pandemic. This is the result of that. New housing units per new person. Dashed line at median. https://fred.

We underbuilt housing for 30 years leading to the pandemic. This is the result of that. New housing units per new person. Dashed line at median. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1cYTJ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1cYTJ

wombat-man 3y ago
We really need a nationwide push to fix this. This is just going to get worse and worse.
- konschubert 3y ago
  Remove zoning restrictions and community review processes and watch new construction shoot up.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Or, take the non-liberation and crack down on the naked profiteering that is modern real estate. In many areas there appear to be lots of empty living units being kept as investments and second/fourth homes. Anyone owning an empty house or apartment should be taxed whatever amount it necessary to encourage them into at least renting that place out and thereby expanding the pool of available living units in the market.
    - returningfory2 3y ago
      It doesn’t need to be either/or. We can simultaneously increase housing supply through new construction and disincentivize suboptimal uses of housing you describe.
    - anthonypasq 3y ago
      why does everyone fail to understand that the reason real estate is an "investment" is because prices are skyrocketing because supply is artificially constrained. If we just built properly real estate wouldnt be such a great investment. My parents happened to buy their house in an area that wasnt super desirable and continued to not be super desirable. If they had just invested their down payment in the S&P it would be worth twice what the house is. But as it is, investors seem convinced real estate is a great investment because governments refuse to let people build so prices continue to skyrocket. In Japan the value of a building reaches $0 after 30 years because they rebuild everything. A building is an inherently depreciating asset, yet my tenement in Boston build in the 1880's continues to go up in value because they cant build shit.
      - chung8123 3y ago
        There is only a finite amount of land. The land value will most likely rise with demand and inflation regardless of the building that is there. Owning a home is an investment because you need a place to live and in the location on where you want to establish yourself. A home going up in value only helps a person on the side and hurts them in the short term because of taxes. Also only accounting for the downpayment is an incomplete investment picture. Most real estate is bought on leverage which multiplies returns. You cannot force people to think that the value of a building is zero just because you want it to be. We have seen new homes further out command very high prices here in the US because of culture and there are a lot that desire the fit and finish of a new home but for the most part the old homes are still desirable and livable. Eventually old homes are rebuilt or remodeled and if they sell at the lowest point (like after a fire) will be sold for land value.
        konschubert 3y ago
        Last time I checked, the bay are was mostly single-storey homes. You could probably house 10 times as much people on the same land if you bought 6 storey apartment blocks. Land is finite, but upzoning it still reduces the cost of a square meter of floor space. I agree with you that the value of real estate is : building + land. While the building deprecates, the value of the land is going up. But this can at least be dampened by upzoning and by taxing land value.
        anthonypasq 3y ago
        all im saying is that investment groups would not be investing in real estate over tech stocks if supply wasnt artificially constrained.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      > In many areas there appear to be lots of empty living units Citation needed. (There is a problem with Prop 13 in California, where old people stay in houses that are way to big for them, removing supply from the marktet. But that's not the "empty apartments" you're referring to)
      - sandworm101 3y ago
        It all depends on the definition of empty. I take a practical approach: if there isn't someone sleeping in that unit regularly, it is empty. If I walk my dog through a neighborhood and see countless dark/cold apartments, ones where nobody has seen a light turn on in years and the mail either piles up or has been stopped, those are empty. Others take different approaches. Some are of the view that a unit is not empty so long as it is listed as someone's "primary residence", irrespective of whether they actually sleep there.
    - adolph 3y ago
      > Anyone owning an empty house or apartment should be taxed whatever amount it necessary to encourage them into at least renting that place out That approach will surely encourage the hoarders and wreckers to build more housing.
    - aaronsimpson 3y ago
      This just isn't true, especially in areas where housing costs are the worst. I don't have a citation right now, but I'm pretty sure a city in Canada attempted this (Vancouver?) and the returns were paltry, because the underlying fact just wasn't true. There is no glut of empty apartments and condos in markets like California, New York, Washington, Florida, Washington D.C., etc. full stop.
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    Yeah, something along these lines. Also just making apartments that Americans can be comfortable in. We are so attached to this single family home idea that is unsustainable.
    - mrbgty 3y ago
      Curious. Why are single family homes unsustainable?
      - ebiester 3y ago
        The land that is next to the jobs is expensive. The construction costs of single homes are going to make it out of reach for those who are in housing precarity, even if you make them "tiny houses."
        Ferret7446 3y ago
        Why not phrase it as "having too many kids and accepting too many immigrants is unsustainable" rather than "single family homes are unsustainable"?
      - huehehue 3y ago
        Housing type and housing location have a large impact on energy usage. 1000 homes outside of a city requires 1000 cars, and the structure itself will likely not nearly be as energy efficient as a single unit in a larger building. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/location_efficiency_btu.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/lo...
        mrbgty 3y ago
        Sure, things can be made more efficient one way or another. But why are single family homes unsustainable?
      - etiennebausson 3y ago
        Might not be the best resource for this, but the youtube channel "Not just bikes" has a few very interesting video on suburbs that could be a decent start. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A To go further, there are plenty of article around the subject on https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/
  - xnx 3y ago
    Including trailers parks. New trailer parks and trailers built to modern standards could fill a lot of housing need.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      It's better than homelessness, but in areas where land is expensive, renting an apartment in a high-rise might end up being cheaper than renting a trailer spot.
      - xnx 3y ago
        Definitely. Different tradeoffs in every locality, but more trailer parks would make other housing cheaper.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      "Manufactured house". It's mostly a sorely needed rename to avoid the connotations, but most trailers never get moved once placed so it's not a useful feature to retain. And also "modular home", which is the middle ground between manufactured and conventional.
      - xnx 3y ago
        Thank you. If new manufactured home / modular home neighborhoods were allowed, relocating homes would be a lot more viable. Trailer park landlords might be one of the worst types of landlords, so it would be great if there was more competition: "From floods to slime: Mobile home residents say landlords make millions, neglect them" https://www.npr.org/2022/08/21/1112299858/from-floods-to-slime-mobile-home-residents-say-landlords-make-millions-neglect-t https://www.npr.org/2022/08/21/1112299858/from-floods-to-sli...
- lapcat 3y ago
  > We really need a nationwide push to fix this. "Four states accounted for more than half of the nation’s homeless population" (California, New York, Florida and Washington) https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-homeless-people https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...
  - MSM 3y ago
    Those four states are where 90m of the 330m people live, so it's not really all that surprising.
    - mattstir 3y ago
      To be fair, that alone doesn't account for it, since 90m only ~25% of the total population, so it's still skewed. Probably attributable to density and cost of living etc though.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Florida/Washington/California are more hospitable to surviving while homeless. New York has New York City, which has a law requiring it to provide shelter from the elements for all homeless. Not much of a surprise that there are more homeless where a person is more likely to survive winters and summers without shelter.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - heresie-dabord 3y ago
    Thank you for useful link. It has a dynamic chart and I played with it by adding cold-weather states and desert states. Excluding people who choose not to sink money into housing, if we consider the demographic where homelessness is not a choice (e.g. mental illness, drug addiction, poverty), what do CA, NY, FL, and WA offer that favours homelessness? Some factors could be: favourable climate, large cities with more "survival opportunities", food banks, injection sites, and other social services. Oregon scores high as well. >" These are the 10 states with the most homeless people, according to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report: California (171,521) New York (74,178) Florida (25,959) Washington (25,211) Texas (24,432) Oregon (17,959) Massachusetts (15,507) Arizona (13,553) Pennsylvania (12,691) Georgia (10,689)
- pierat 3y ago
  When said housing is being bought by VCs and companies, then to be rented back to people in the community for 50% more than purchase, yeah it's not going to do much at all. I've watched my 2 local communities go through this right now. House 10y ago was under 100k. Now is bought by rental firm, and only rented at $2000/mo And it's also more terrible, that things like the student loan crisis also hits credit, therefore also affecting home ownership. And regardless of paying rental stabily for 5y doesn't matter to a bank and mortgage. The boomers and older never had to deal with "credit". They did have to prove income. Now, we suffer under 10x worse. There's so many problems, and they're all tightly intertwined. The result is that simple supply isn't the only fix. Punishing companies for making homes into rentals with exponentiating taxes would help. Requiring banks to accept proof of rental as proof of payment burden would also help. So would reducing/eliminating zoning. But none of these are palatable to 'The American People' (aka the rich). Ready Player One talked about 'The Stacks'. And more and more, that seems like what our country is turning towards with our decline.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > The boomers and older never had to deal with "credit". What do you mean? They had to take out mortgages just the same. And for example in the 70s the mortgage interest was sometimes over 10%
- mistrial9 3y ago
  some of the largest financial scandals in Federal government are around HUD Housing and Urban Development. Here in California the State urban development funds were literally slush funds for the local rulers. People need to see the dark sides of public funding for themselves, saying it here is not enough.
- TradingPlaces 3y ago
  The biggest issues are zoning and NIMBYs, and these are local. Hard to make a national push, or even a statewide push. I could write 5000 words on how that’s going in California right now (better than expected, but slow).

wombat-man 3y ago

We really need a nationwide push to fix this. This is just going to get worse and worse.

konschubert 3y ago
Remove zoning restrictions and community review processes and watch new construction shoot up.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Or, take the non-liberation and crack down on the naked profiteering that is modern real estate. In many areas there appear to be lots of empty living units being kept as investments and second/fourth homes. Anyone owning an empty house or apartment should be taxed whatever amount it necessary to encourage them into at least renting that place out and thereby expanding the pool of available living units in the market.
  - returningfory2 3y ago
    It doesn’t need to be either/or. We can simultaneously increase housing supply through new construction and disincentivize suboptimal uses of housing you describe.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    why does everyone fail to understand that the reason real estate is an "investment" is because prices are skyrocketing because supply is artificially constrained. If we just built properly real estate wouldnt be such a great investment. My parents happened to buy their house in an area that wasnt super desirable and continued to not be super desirable. If they had just invested their down payment in the S&P it would be worth twice what the house is. But as it is, investors seem convinced real estate is a great investment because governments refuse to let people build so prices continue to skyrocket. In Japan the value of a building reaches $0 after 30 years because they rebuild everything. A building is an inherently depreciating asset, yet my tenement in Boston build in the 1880's continues to go up in value because they cant build shit.
    - chung8123 3y ago
      There is only a finite amount of land. The land value will most likely rise with demand and inflation regardless of the building that is there. Owning a home is an investment because you need a place to live and in the location on where you want to establish yourself. A home going up in value only helps a person on the side and hurts them in the short term because of taxes. Also only accounting for the downpayment is an incomplete investment picture. Most real estate is bought on leverage which multiplies returns. You cannot force people to think that the value of a building is zero just because you want it to be. We have seen new homes further out command very high prices here in the US because of culture and there are a lot that desire the fit and finish of a new home but for the most part the old homes are still desirable and livable. Eventually old homes are rebuilt or remodeled and if they sell at the lowest point (like after a fire) will be sold for land value.
      - konschubert 3y ago
        Last time I checked, the bay are was mostly single-storey homes. You could probably house 10 times as much people on the same land if you bought 6 storey apartment blocks. Land is finite, but upzoning it still reduces the cost of a square meter of floor space. I agree with you that the value of real estate is : building + land. While the building deprecates, the value of the land is going up. But this can at least be dampened by upzoning and by taxing land value.
      - anthonypasq 3y ago
        all im saying is that investment groups would not be investing in real estate over tech stocks if supply wasnt artificially constrained.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    > In many areas there appear to be lots of empty living units Citation needed. (There is a problem with Prop 13 in California, where old people stay in houses that are way to big for them, removing supply from the marktet. But that's not the "empty apartments" you're referring to)
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      It all depends on the definition of empty. I take a practical approach: if there isn't someone sleeping in that unit regularly, it is empty. If I walk my dog through a neighborhood and see countless dark/cold apartments, ones where nobody has seen a light turn on in years and the mail either piles up or has been stopped, those are empty. Others take different approaches. Some are of the view that a unit is not empty so long as it is listed as someone's "primary residence", irrespective of whether they actually sleep there.
  - adolph 3y ago
    > Anyone owning an empty house or apartment should be taxed whatever amount it necessary to encourage them into at least renting that place out That approach will surely encourage the hoarders and wreckers to build more housing.
  - aaronsimpson 3y ago
    This just isn't true, especially in areas where housing costs are the worst. I don't have a citation right now, but I'm pretty sure a city in Canada attempted this (Vancouver?) and the returns were paltry, because the underlying fact just wasn't true. There is no glut of empty apartments and condos in markets like California, New York, Washington, Florida, Washington D.C., etc. full stop.
- wombat-man 3y ago
  Yeah, something along these lines. Also just making apartments that Americans can be comfortable in. We are so attached to this single family home idea that is unsustainable.
  - mrbgty 3y ago
    Curious. Why are single family homes unsustainable?
    - ebiester 3y ago
      The land that is next to the jobs is expensive. The construction costs of single homes are going to make it out of reach for those who are in housing precarity, even if you make them "tiny houses."
      - Ferret7446 3y ago
        Why not phrase it as "having too many kids and accepting too many immigrants is unsustainable" rather than "single family homes are unsustainable"?
    - huehehue 3y ago
      Housing type and housing location have a large impact on energy usage. 1000 homes outside of a city requires 1000 cars, and the structure itself will likely not nearly be as energy efficient as a single unit in a larger building. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/location_efficiency_btu.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/lo...
      - mrbgty 3y ago
        Sure, things can be made more efficient one way or another. But why are single family homes unsustainable?
    - etiennebausson 3y ago
      Might not be the best resource for this, but the youtube channel "Not just bikes" has a few very interesting video on suburbs that could be a decent start. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A To go further, there are plenty of article around the subject on https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/
- xnx 3y ago
  Including trailers parks. New trailer parks and trailers built to modern standards could fill a lot of housing need.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    It's better than homelessness, but in areas where land is expensive, renting an apartment in a high-rise might end up being cheaper than renting a trailer spot.
    - xnx 3y ago
      Definitely. Different tradeoffs in every locality, but more trailer parks would make other housing cheaper.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    "Manufactured house". It's mostly a sorely needed rename to avoid the connotations, but most trailers never get moved once placed so it's not a useful feature to retain. And also "modular home", which is the middle ground between manufactured and conventional.
    - xnx 3y ago
      Thank you. If new manufactured home / modular home neighborhoods were allowed, relocating homes would be a lot more viable. Trailer park landlords might be one of the worst types of landlords, so it would be great if there was more competition: "From floods to slime: Mobile home residents say landlords make millions, neglect them" https://www.npr.org/2022/08/21/1112299858/from-floods-to-slime-mobile-home-residents-say-landlords-make-millions-neglect-t https://www.npr.org/2022/08/21/1112299858/from-floods-to-sli...
lapcat 3y ago
> We really need a nationwide push to fix this. "Four states accounted for more than half of the nation’s homeless population" (California, New York, Florida and Washington) https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-homeless-people https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...
- MSM 3y ago
  Those four states are where 90m of the 330m people live, so it's not really all that surprising.
  - mattstir 3y ago
    To be fair, that alone doesn't account for it, since 90m only ~25% of the total population, so it's still skewed. Probably attributable to density and cost of living etc though.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Florida/Washington/California are more hospitable to surviving while homeless. New York has New York City, which has a law requiring it to provide shelter from the elements for all homeless. Not much of a surprise that there are more homeless where a person is more likely to survive winters and summers without shelter.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- heresie-dabord 3y ago
  Thank you for useful link. It has a dynamic chart and I played with it by adding cold-weather states and desert states. Excluding people who choose not to sink money into housing, if we consider the demographic where homelessness is not a choice (e.g. mental illness, drug addiction, poverty), what do CA, NY, FL, and WA offer that favours homelessness? Some factors could be: favourable climate, large cities with more "survival opportunities", food banks, injection sites, and other social services. Oregon scores high as well. >" These are the 10 states with the most homeless people, according to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report: California (171,521) New York (74,178) Florida (25,959) Washington (25,211) Texas (24,432) Oregon (17,959) Massachusetts (15,507) Arizona (13,553) Pennsylvania (12,691) Georgia (10,689)
pierat 3y ago
When said housing is being bought by VCs and companies, then to be rented back to people in the community for 50% more than purchase, yeah it's not going to do much at all. I've watched my 2 local communities go through this right now. House 10y ago was under 100k. Now is bought by rental firm, and only rented at $2000/mo And it's also more terrible, that things like the student loan crisis also hits credit, therefore also affecting home ownership. And regardless of paying rental stabily for 5y doesn't matter to a bank and mortgage. The boomers and older never had to deal with "credit". They did have to prove income. Now, we suffer under 10x worse. There's so many problems, and they're all tightly intertwined. The result is that simple supply isn't the only fix. Punishing companies for making homes into rentals with exponentiating taxes would help. Requiring banks to accept proof of rental as proof of payment burden would also help. So would reducing/eliminating zoning. But none of these are palatable to 'The American People' (aka the rich). Ready Player One talked about 'The Stacks'. And more and more, that seems like what our country is turning towards with our decline.
- jjav 3y ago
  > The boomers and older never had to deal with "credit". What do you mean? They had to take out mortgages just the same. And for example in the 70s the mortgage interest was sometimes over 10%
mistrial9 3y ago
some of the largest financial scandals in Federal government are around HUD Housing and Urban Development. Here in California the State urban development funds were literally slush funds for the local rulers. People need to see the dark sides of public funding for themselves, saying it here is not enough.
TradingPlaces 3y ago
The biggest issues are zoning and NIMBYs, and these are local. Hard to make a national push, or even a statewide push. I could write 5000 words on how that’s going in California right now (better than expected, but slow).