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> bringing too many people into the country via immigration The housing situation has clearly severely declined post pandemic at the same time that immigration

> bringing too many people into the country via immigration The housing situation has clearly severely declined post pandemic at the same time that immigration was restarted and increased, but I gotta point out that Vancouver has had a severe homeless crisis my entire life, long, long before this recent government changed immigration rates or even came to power. As far back as 2007 I was reading articles about how Vancouver was net losing the sort of affordable housing that those most at risk of homelessness depended on. Unsurprisingly the amount of homeless in Vancouver has continued to increase. https://thetyee.ca/News/2007/07/10/SRO-Losses/print.html https://thetyee.ca/News/2007/07/10/SRO-Losses/print.html But you're absolutely correct that the core of this problem is a severe lack of building. Both a lack of construction of market product and below market publicly owned housing. Building more homes is the solution to get our way out of this crisis and end homelessness. If there is any real villain here to blame IMO it is Jean Chretien, who with the severe austerity budget of 1993 completely got the Federal government out of all social housing development and building of housing plunged to near nil for decades. The chart from this article is remarkable. https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/04/22/Why-Cant-We-Build-Like-1970s/ https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/04/22/Why-Cant-We-Build-Lik...

brailsafe 2y ago
True, on all points, but it wasn't just him, it's been a decades long process of multiple parts of the economy failing imo. One does wonder though how things would be if we simply cancelled zoning and other needlessly bureaucratic development restrictions in the 80s, and enabled automatically correcting policy that was outside the hands of both property owners and politicians. Every time I see an anti tower sign in east van it makes me want to throw a rock through that person's window, and the fact this tension exists on a local level is ridiculous.
- cyberax 2y ago
  We have a natural experiment: Minneapolis vs. Madison. Minneapolis abolished the single-family zoning and parking requirements in 2018. And it worked, developers swarmed the city like vultures attracted to carrion. Madison did no such nonsense. Can you guess the impact of these policies on housing costs? The house price growth in Minneapolis _accelerated_, just like in the nearby Madison. Here are the price growth charts: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1COwL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1COwL
  - tacitusarc 2y ago
    I defy the data [1]. There is too much complexity in that single example and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently for it to not make sense that increasing demand to meet supply would reduce cost. 1. For clarity, this phrasing is from here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrHRcEDMjZcx5Yfru/i-defy-the-data https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrHRcEDMjZcx5Yfru/i-defy-the...
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > I defy the data. Sorry. The reality doesn't care about your defiance. Upzoning does not lead to lower housing prices. Even the most extreme urbanists admit that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might-not-lower-housing-costs-do-it-anyway https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might... > and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently Ah, here it is. Have you considered that there, you know, might be "too much complexity" for "Economy 101" to fully explain the situation? The _only_ way to decrease the housing prices is to BUILD MORE SUBURBS. Or even new cities entirely. You don't have any other options. Sorry again. Well, maybe one more: the Detroit route. Reduce the city population and the prices will go down.
      - tacitusarc 2y ago
        Firstly, your link is focused on zoning changes, specifically how they are insufficient to prompt addition supply to be built. From your linked blog post: > Freemark finds extremely mixed and uncertain evidence for the effects of upzoning, and one of several reasons he identifies is that the link between upzoning and actual housing production is tenuous. In other words, “Are they allowed to build it?” is a different question from, “Are they building it?” Secondly, building more suburbs and more cities increases the supply… which indicates agreement that the price problem is one of insufficient supply. EDIT: To be perfectly clear, the data I disagree with is that increasing supply in Minneapolis failed to impact price. This is the contention of the comment I responded to, and it is fundamentally different from the claim that zoning changes fail to increase supply.

brailsafe 2y ago

True, on all points, but it wasn't just him, it's been a decades long process of multiple parts of the economy failing imo. One does wonder though how things would be if we simply cancelled zoning and other needlessly bureaucratic development restrictions in the 80s, and enabled automatically correcting policy that was outside the hands of both property owners and politicians. Every time I see an anti tower sign in east van it makes me want to throw a rock through that person's window, and the fact this tension exists on a local level is ridiculous.

cyberax 2y ago
We have a natural experiment: Minneapolis vs. Madison. Minneapolis abolished the single-family zoning and parking requirements in 2018. And it worked, developers swarmed the city like vultures attracted to carrion. Madison did no such nonsense. Can you guess the impact of these policies on housing costs? The house price growth in Minneapolis _accelerated_, just like in the nearby Madison. Here are the price growth charts: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1COwL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1COwL
- tacitusarc 2y ago
  I defy the data [1]. There is too much complexity in that single example and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently for it to not make sense that increasing demand to meet supply would reduce cost. 1. For clarity, this phrasing is from here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrHRcEDMjZcx5Yfru/i-defy-the-data https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrHRcEDMjZcx5Yfru/i-defy-the...
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > I defy the data. Sorry. The reality doesn't care about your defiance. Upzoning does not lead to lower housing prices. Even the most extreme urbanists admit that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might-not-lower-housing-costs-do-it-anyway https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might... > and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently Ah, here it is. Have you considered that there, you know, might be "too much complexity" for "Economy 101" to fully explain the situation? The _only_ way to decrease the housing prices is to BUILD MORE SUBURBS. Or even new cities entirely. You don't have any other options. Sorry again. Well, maybe one more: the Detroit route. Reduce the city population and the prices will go down.
    - tacitusarc 2y ago
      Firstly, your link is focused on zoning changes, specifically how they are insufficient to prompt addition supply to be built. From your linked blog post: > Freemark finds extremely mixed and uncertain evidence for the effects of upzoning, and one of several reasons he identifies is that the link between upzoning and actual housing production is tenuous. In other words, “Are they allowed to build it?” is a different question from, “Are they building it?” Secondly, building more suburbs and more cities increases the supply… which indicates agreement that the price problem is one of insufficient supply. EDIT: To be perfectly clear, the data I disagree with is that increasing supply in Minneapolis failed to impact price. This is the contention of the comment I responded to, and it is fundamentally different from the claim that zoning changes fail to increase supply.