2 ms·

Places that people want to live. Which are often aspirational. Plenty of people live in places that would be 2nd, 5th, or even 10th on their list if money were

by lazide 1y ago

Places that people want to live. Which are often aspirational. Plenty of people live in places that would be 2nd, 5th, or even 10th on their list if money were not a concern, eh? And that’s normal. And almost everyone could live in those out of the way places too. Which is why comparing against the rest of the country is valid. Just like comparing SF to Vacaville. Or South SF. Or Oakland. There are definitely parts of Paris that your typical Parisian (or even atypical French citizen!) cannot afford to live, yes? And many, many live in Paris’s equivalent to Oakland. (Or NYC’s Harlem) It could be better - but people also have this weird mental block where the only place they ‘can live’ is also the same place everyone else wants too, but they can’t afford it, and somehow it is everyone else’s problem to fix that for them.

crooked-v 1y ago
The studies on this subject look at entire metro areas (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives/us-housing-shortage https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...), which include places like Oakland and Vacaville, not just city downtowns. "Want to live" here isn't just 'aspirational', it's covering basic elements like 'are there actually enough jobs there'. "Oh, there are fifteen million empty houses" means absolutely nothing because most of those houses are in places where there's no way for any substantial number of people to actually make a living.
- lazide 1y ago
  ding ding ding the housing prices have nothing to do with some vague notion of ‘I want to live there’, but are rather a proxy for the expected economic value of a place * people’s ability to leverage it. Give businesses a reason to spread out a bit and not concentrate in these urban centers, and voila - all those ‘undesirable houses’ are all the sudden more desirable, and all those crazy zoning issues and nimby’s are not such an issue anymore. And the housing crisis mostly evaporates. But since availability is also a proxy for competition for those jobs, it’s not like folks have too much incentive to make it easy eh?

by lazide 1y ago

crooked-v 1y ago

The studies on this subject look at entire metro areas (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives/us-housing-shortage https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...), which include places like Oakland and Vacaville, not just city downtowns. "Want to live" here isn't just 'aspirational', it's covering basic elements like 'are there actually enough jobs there'. "Oh, there are fifteen million empty houses" means absolutely nothing because most of those houses are in places where there's no way for any substantial number of people to actually make a living.

lazide 1y ago
ding ding ding the housing prices have nothing to do with some vague notion of ‘I want to live there’, but are rather a proxy for the expected economic value of a place * people’s ability to leverage it. Give businesses a reason to spread out a bit and not concentrate in these urban centers, and voila - all those ‘undesirable houses’ are all the sudden more desirable, and all those crazy zoning issues and nimby’s are not such an issue anymore. And the housing crisis mostly evaporates. But since availability is also a proxy for competition for those jobs, it’s not like folks have too much incentive to make it easy eh?