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In our town even when new housing is approved litigious and wealthy homeowners will delay the projects with lawsuit after lawsuit. Meanwhile we have derelict p

In our town even when new housing is approved litigious and wealthy homeowners will delay the projects with lawsuit after lawsuit. Meanwhile we have derelict properties and a lot of empty commercial real estate. I don’t know how to solve it but it seems to only takes a handful of homeowners to scuttle a project. And I fear my town will slide into irrelevance and decay at this rate. And for some reason popping up another strip mall or box store doesn’t cause the same ire? It’s all very strange.

pydry 3y ago
[flagged]
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  This is only possibly correct in situations where you have a surplus of units and lots of vacancies. Any situation where the problem is a shortage of units those two policies will make it worse by making the math of building more units look worse. What you actually need are policies that make it profitable to offer market units at lower prices profitably from many different suppliers to get both enough supply on the market as well as that supply being from enough different suppliers that they compete the prices down rather than abusing oligopoly market power to capture more profit for themselves. Example policies: - Get rid of most categories of residential zoning into one or two zones and have the least dense zone allow for high density while also allowing people to choose to build less dense (i.e. one zone that allows up to 80% lot coverage and six stories and one for more dense than that). - Set tight turn around times for development and building permits and switch them from default not approved to default approved unless the city makes a valid case from a very short list of potential reasons. Basically make it impossible to not approve something very quickly that fits within the new zoning guidelines. - Set tight timeline requirements for all construction inspections to keep the construction process moving. - taxing land based on maximum allowed construction rather than what is there would making holding vacant land and not building way more costly, which should spur development. It would also make it dramatically cheaper to do assessments since all that will matter is lot square footage and general area for the purpose of assessment. - Enforce antitrust law so that no one can own enough units in any area to have market power. If you want to be a large REIT you will need to diversify geographically. There's a bunch more nuance to this than I have outlined above but this is turning into a novel already so I will end it here.
  - pydry 3y ago
    >Any situation where the problem is a shortage of units those two policies will make it worse by making the math of building more units look worse. That doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever. Rent control on 3 units doesn't make it less profitable to build 6 if you can build 6. That would still make 6 lots of rent instead of 3. That equals more profit. It actually creates an incentive to build MORE units because with rent control and higher property taxes they won't make profits from building enormous luxury apartments that function as gold-bar-like store of value for people who have ungodly amounts of cash. Beware the construction industry propaganda - they want policies that boost their profits, NOT policies which will enforce the market discipline on them they need to make them build more units in a higher density. I can see from your response that you've picked some of it up...
bradleyjg 3y ago
I don’t know how to solve it The first step is to move these questions back up to the national levels. Localism has been a policy disaster.
- johngladtj 3y ago
  So the disaster can spread nationally rather than being contained locally? The true solution is simple, reverse the infringement on property rights that is causing the issue in the first place. The only one who should have any say about what gets built in a plot of land should be the owner.
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    Perfect as the enemy of the good and all that.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - seabass-labrax 3y ago
    You seem to have rose-tinted spectacles for an earlier time, in which there is no 'infringement of property rights'. Yet, no such time really existed since the Norman Conquest at the latest. Contemporary to when the first building regulations were invented in the middle ages, we had everything from socage to slavery: so yes, property rights were rather strong if you were lucky to be one of the 0.1% with some aristocratic background. I would posit that the real tragedy is the inclosure Acts, which in a couple of decades undid centuries of social progress away from feudalism towards community-focused common land use, which was not only an efficient system but also a fair one.
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    > So the disaster can spread nationally rather than being contained locally? The local vs global incentives differ, which is why removing local power will help. At the global level, voters care (a bit) about things like social unrest, homelessness, their kids being priced out of housing. And the 'burden' of increasing housing is shared roughly equally across everyone. At the local level, the incentives work very differently. If the local community restricts housing, they get all the benefits and push the costs (homelessness, housing crisis, etc) onto broader society.

pydry 3y ago

[flagged]

snapplebobapple 3y ago
This is only possibly correct in situations where you have a surplus of units and lots of vacancies. Any situation where the problem is a shortage of units those two policies will make it worse by making the math of building more units look worse. What you actually need are policies that make it profitable to offer market units at lower prices profitably from many different suppliers to get both enough supply on the market as well as that supply being from enough different suppliers that they compete the prices down rather than abusing oligopoly market power to capture more profit for themselves. Example policies: - Get rid of most categories of residential zoning into one or two zones and have the least dense zone allow for high density while also allowing people to choose to build less dense (i.e. one zone that allows up to 80% lot coverage and six stories and one for more dense than that). - Set tight turn around times for development and building permits and switch them from default not approved to default approved unless the city makes a valid case from a very short list of potential reasons. Basically make it impossible to not approve something very quickly that fits within the new zoning guidelines. - Set tight timeline requirements for all construction inspections to keep the construction process moving. - taxing land based on maximum allowed construction rather than what is there would making holding vacant land and not building way more costly, which should spur development. It would also make it dramatically cheaper to do assessments since all that will matter is lot square footage and general area for the purpose of assessment. - Enforce antitrust law so that no one can own enough units in any area to have market power. If you want to be a large REIT you will need to diversify geographically. There's a bunch more nuance to this than I have outlined above but this is turning into a novel already so I will end it here.
- pydry 3y ago
  >Any situation where the problem is a shortage of units those two policies will make it worse by making the math of building more units look worse. That doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever. Rent control on 3 units doesn't make it less profitable to build 6 if you can build 6. That would still make 6 lots of rent instead of 3. That equals more profit. It actually creates an incentive to build MORE units because with rent control and higher property taxes they won't make profits from building enormous luxury apartments that function as gold-bar-like store of value for people who have ungodly amounts of cash. Beware the construction industry propaganda - they want policies that boost their profits, NOT policies which will enforce the market discipline on them they need to make them build more units in a higher density. I can see from your response that you've picked some of it up...

bradleyjg 3y ago

I don’t know how to solve it The first step is to move these questions back up to the national levels. Localism has been a policy disaster.

johngladtj 3y ago
So the disaster can spread nationally rather than being contained locally? The true solution is simple, reverse the infringement on property rights that is causing the issue in the first place. The only one who should have any say about what gets built in a plot of land should be the owner.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  Perfect as the enemy of the good and all that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  You seem to have rose-tinted spectacles for an earlier time, in which there is no 'infringement of property rights'. Yet, no such time really existed since the Norman Conquest at the latest. Contemporary to when the first building regulations were invented in the middle ages, we had everything from socage to slavery: so yes, property rights were rather strong if you were lucky to be one of the 0.1% with some aristocratic background. I would posit that the real tragedy is the inclosure Acts, which in a couple of decades undid centuries of social progress away from feudalism towards community-focused common land use, which was not only an efficient system but also a fair one.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  > So the disaster can spread nationally rather than being contained locally? The local vs global incentives differ, which is why removing local power will help. At the global level, voters care (a bit) about things like social unrest, homelessness, their kids being priced out of housing. And the 'burden' of increasing housing is shared roughly equally across everyone. At the local level, the incentives work very differently. If the local community restricts housing, they get all the benefits and push the costs (homelessness, housing crisis, etc) onto broader society.