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Housing prices, of course. It turns out that refusing to build housing to meet demand has serious consequences: homelessness, street crime and filth due to hom

by api 3y ago

Housing prices, of course. It turns out that refusing to build housing to meet demand has serious consequences: homelessness, street crime and filth due to homelessness, inability to hire for any but the highest paid jobs, families leaving because you can’t raise kids, and being passed over for other areas by new talent among others. I saw a national map recently of places likely to lose congressional representation over the next 5-10 years vs places that will gain. It was almost perfectly a map of places where you can’t build housing vs places where you can.

toenail 3y ago
> It turns out that refusing to build housing Refuses to build? If there is demand and nobody builds the market sounds broken.
- api 3y ago
  In most of these places it’s basically illegal. Housing is run as a cartel to benefit existing homeowners and landlords.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Don’t underestimate the gullible economically illiterate who undergird the support for anti-development policies. Without them, the NIMBY bloc wouldn’t have staying power.
    - sidlls 3y ago
      "Temporarily embarrassed millionaire"[1] describes this mindset. It is quite prevalent in America's poor. I've seen too many poor Americans exhibit this mentality to not believe it is more or less a truism at this point. The propaganda of the wealthy and connected in this country has been remarkably effective. [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        This is related, but different. A lot of San Franciscans have been pitched anti-science bogus economics around development causing higher prices. (It’s not true [1].) They vote against more housing not because they think they’ll soon be rich enough to afford it, but because they’re afraid of getting priced out. [1] https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/ https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-...
    - api 3y ago
      "Stop greedy developers!" The proper retort to this is to point to all the homeless and ask: if there were a famine, would the slogan be "stop greedy farmers?"
- madhadron 3y ago
  Markets are at best a tiny piece of the question on housing. It has more to do with zoning, infrastructure planning, incentives among the various roles involved in building, the foibles of real estate sales, the voice of incumbent residents who moved there because of the state of affairs that now has insufficient possibility for housing... At the far end of that you have a market for what is there. It's nearly impossible to buy a well designed, well built house in many places because there aren't any. But the invisible hand of the market largely just skyrockets prices for limited, poor buildings because it doesn't have much real effect on the rest.
- sidlls 3y ago
  https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-permits-san-francisco-17652633.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-permits-san-f... "To build housing in San Francisco, developers must first receive planning approval, known as entitlement, to ensure the city supports the type, size and design of housing proposed for a site. This part of the process took an average of 450 days over the last 18 months, according to recent data from the state." Housing in the SF bay area is broken, largely due to the efforts of entrenched interests (developers and people who bought 50 years ago for an inflation-adjusted tiny fraction of current prices).
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > an average of 450 days To put this into perspective, this adds 5% to the cost of a project in financing alone [1]. That’s $70,000 for a median home [2], about half of the city median household income [3]. Half of a household’s production in an entire year, just in delays. [1] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value_month=202312 https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/... [2] https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/housing-m... [3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia/PST045222 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...
- simonw 3y ago
  Right: the market is broken, because local government policies make it too hard to build.
- eilefsen 3y ago
  In the US, it is illegal in many places (arguably, most) to build dense housing. Parking minimums, setback requirements, "euclidean" single family zoning. The market didnt break itself, the local governments collectively did.

by api 3y ago

toenail 3y ago

> It turns out that refusing to build housing Refuses to build? If there is demand and nobody builds the market sounds broken.

api 3y ago
In most of these places it’s basically illegal. Housing is run as a cartel to benefit existing homeowners and landlords.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Don’t underestimate the gullible economically illiterate who undergird the support for anti-development policies. Without them, the NIMBY bloc wouldn’t have staying power.
  - sidlls 3y ago
    "Temporarily embarrassed millionaire"[1] describes this mindset. It is quite prevalent in America's poor. I've seen too many poor Americans exhibit this mentality to not believe it is more or less a truism at this point. The propaganda of the wealthy and connected in this country has been remarkably effective. [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      This is related, but different. A lot of San Franciscans have been pitched anti-science bogus economics around development causing higher prices. (It’s not true [1].) They vote against more housing not because they think they’ll soon be rich enough to afford it, but because they’re afraid of getting priced out. [1] https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/ https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-...
  - api 3y ago
    "Stop greedy developers!" The proper retort to this is to point to all the homeless and ask: if there were a famine, would the slogan be "stop greedy farmers?"
madhadron 3y ago
Markets are at best a tiny piece of the question on housing. It has more to do with zoning, infrastructure planning, incentives among the various roles involved in building, the foibles of real estate sales, the voice of incumbent residents who moved there because of the state of affairs that now has insufficient possibility for housing... At the far end of that you have a market for what is there. It's nearly impossible to buy a well designed, well built house in many places because there aren't any. But the invisible hand of the market largely just skyrockets prices for limited, poor buildings because it doesn't have much real effect on the rest.
sidlls 3y ago
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-permits-san-francisco-17652633.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-permits-san-f... "To build housing in San Francisco, developers must first receive planning approval, known as entitlement, to ensure the city supports the type, size and design of housing proposed for a site. This part of the process took an average of 450 days over the last 18 months, according to recent data from the state." Housing in the SF bay area is broken, largely due to the efforts of entrenched interests (developers and people who bought 50 years ago for an inflation-adjusted tiny fraction of current prices).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > an average of 450 days To put this into perspective, this adds 5% to the cost of a project in financing alone [1]. That’s $70,000 for a median home [2], about half of the city median household income [3]. Half of a household’s production in an entire year, just in delays. [1] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value_month=202312 https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/... [2] https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/housing-m... [3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia/PST045222 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...
simonw 3y ago
Right: the market is broken, because local government policies make it too hard to build.
eilefsen 3y ago
In the US, it is illegal in many places (arguably, most) to build dense housing. Parking minimums, setback requirements, "euclidean" single family zoning. The market didnt break itself, the local governments collectively did.