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>The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing So pretty much anyone who owns property? It'

>The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing So pretty much anyone who owns property? It's not like homeowners are fighting to have new apartments built in their neighborhood. It's very well known that even the most bleeding heart liberal areas still have insane NIMBY problems. The blunt truth is that everyone who invested in a home in popular markets (read: a regular everyday metro homeowner) is going to have to take a big hit on the largest investment most of them will ever make in their life. This intrinsically makes it very unpopular on the whole. It's not some shadowy organization pulling strings behind the scenes. It's just about everyone who pays a mortgage and votes. Just read a housing expansion approval measure through a homeowners eyes: "Do you approve a measure to lower your home's sale price by 10-20% in order to allow people who earn less than you to move into the area? To grow classroom sizes and increase traffic?" It's like asking people to volunteer to have needles stuck in their eyes. What is the upside for them?

eszed 3y ago
"Lower your home's sale price by 10% or 20%" is bad framing. For one thing, it's speculative: there's no way to tease any particular nearby building project's effect out of the thousands of other factors (most of them orders of magnitude more significant - like local and temporal macro-economic conditions) that effect home prices. For another, it ignores potential positive effects. If new building improves local economic conditions, then your home's price (still speculatively, mind you) could equally as well be increased. (With relaxed zoning you might hit the lottery, and find that your lot is worth building an apartment on, and never have to work again!) Focusing entirely on potential negatives is unfair argumentation. Even apart from price, this approach places emphasis on (potentially) negative second-order ("traffic"), while ignoring (potential) positive second-order effects. In my case I'd straight up trade a 20% decrease in my homes sale price in twenty years (I'd still come out $$ ahead) for twenty years of living near a re-vitalised (instead of currently derelict) commercial strip. I don't think it'd work out that way: I think living walking distance from, say, a nice coffee shop, pub, grocery store, and cinema (those buildings already exist, by the way, they just need to re-open, which can only happen if more people are nearby) would increase my home's eventual value. That's speculation, too, but equally worthy of consideration as the negative cases.

eszed 3y ago

"Lower your home's sale price by 10% or 20%" is bad framing. For one thing, it's speculative: there's no way to tease any particular nearby building project's effect out of the thousands of other factors (most of them orders of magnitude more significant - like local and temporal macro-economic conditions) that effect home prices. For another, it ignores potential positive effects. If new building improves local economic conditions, then your home's price (still speculatively, mind you) could equally as well be increased. (With relaxed zoning you might hit the lottery, and find that your lot is worth building an apartment on, and never have to work again!) Focusing entirely on potential negatives is unfair argumentation. Even apart from price, this approach places emphasis on (potentially) negative second-order ("traffic"), while ignoring (potential) positive second-order effects. In my case I'd straight up trade a 20% decrease in my homes sale price in twenty years (I'd still come out $$ ahead) for twenty years of living near a re-vitalised (instead of currently derelict) commercial strip. I don't think it'd work out that way: I think living walking distance from, say, a nice coffee shop, pub, grocery store, and cinema (those buildings already exist, by the way, they just need to re-open, which can only happen if more people are nearby) would increase my home's eventual value. That's speculation, too, but equally worthy of consideration as the negative cases.