4 ms·

The primary issue is the people that live in "no poors allowed" area can literally push the poors out of a voting area and thus use their "no poors allowed" pol

The primary issue is the people that live in "no poors allowed" area can literally push the poors out of a voting area and thus use their "no poors allowed" policies to take over local governments. Which ultimately allows them to expand the "no poors allowed" zones. Another major issue is there's a false impression about what's profitable when it comes to property ownership. That, in turn, drives up the price of property in a way no amount of "tent cities" can really compete with. In particular, landlords are using their freedoms to price fix and gouge. They've all realized that it's better to have 50% occupancy with 10x what a competitive market could bear (netting them 5x the profit of competition) then it is to shoot for 70% or 100% occupancy at a competitive market rate. And the cost of joining their ranks is high enough that there's really no option for a spoiler to come in and disrupt the market. Further, we have the freedom of airbnb which has recognized that if you pay a rate that's 30x the cost of rent you only need rent a property out once a month to turn a profit. And, as it turns out, that rate is often somewhat competitive with a hotel. All these freedoms give property owners massive extractive power against the working class. Zoning, IMO, is a red herring to the real problem. You can fix it, you can not fix it. It really doesn't matter because builders very often are participating in exactly the same structure and they aren't going to build themselves out of profit. Looser restrictions will mostly just mean they'll spend even less delivering homes while still charging the same rates because their rates are based not on a market but rather on the income of their tenets. The fix is a brutal one. The poors need to understand the predicament and vote for politicians that will serve their interests and not the interests of the property owners. A very hard uphill battle because property owners have a lot of money and politicians can be unfortunately easy to buy.

cousin_it 4mo ago
Your heart is in the right place, but I want to push back a bit. Zoning is a red herring, sure, but landlords and airbnb are a red herring too. The truth is worse. The natural bloc for restricting housing construction and increasing home values is all homeowners! Everyone with a mortgage, too! Maybe the fight is still winnable, but we need to see clearly what we're up against.
- bluGill 4mo ago
  I do not disagree.
- cogman10 4mo ago
  I disagree. I live in an area where there's almost no homeowner pushback to new housing. A lot of it is going in. Yet the housing market and property values continue to increase and record setting rates. It's quiet far from the individual home owner that's driving these rates at this point. The closest I can blame individual home owners here is because they just so happen to always vote for big property owners. Most of my local politicians are landlords themselves.
- inigyou 4mo ago
  Everyone who owns a home is incentivized to keep the property value up, but not all of them actually feel and respond to that incentive. In the same way that a pig farm owner is incentivised to keep the beautiful clean nature, but makes more money farming smelly pigs instead.
  - bluGill 4mo ago
    People regularly have conflicting incentives.
  - hakfoo 4mo ago
    Isn't the solution just to take the market out of real estate? At the individual-homeowner level, a lot of NIMBYism, HOA activity, and other toxic activity is grounded in "I have $400k of equity sunk into this square of land and it's the only meaningful asset I have for my increasingly oncoming retirement." There are probably plenty of people who are subconsciously self-sabotaging due to that-- they may personally prefer a denser neighbourhood or more mixed-use facilities, but that Zillow number is blinking in their mind at the same time. If the real estate were nationalized and people were leasing it from a state-owned trust, at basically its cost of operation (maintenance and amortized construction costs), it would free up a lot of resident income for other use or investment opportunities, and make a lot of changes less threatening to residents. (ISTR claims that rents in the USSR were on the order of 5% of income, and this when 30% or less was still a feasible story in the US)
AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
You got the diagnosis right but I’m not convinced voting would change anything - even though it’s definitely true that it could matter, most of the structural issues are upstream of the ballot aka who gets to be on the ballot in the first place is the real problem “If voting changed anything they wouldn’t let us do it” - Emma Goldman
- cogman10 4mo ago
  Who gets on the ballot is determined by voting. I'm not going to lie, I'm not deluded enough to think voting will (often) bring change quickly. I don't even have a lot of hope in the likelihood of it working. However, it's not nothing and it's something everyone can and should do. Politics is a major part of all aspects of life and you'll do yourself no favors by completely opting out because it's hopeless.
  - AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
    >Who gets on the ballot is determined by voting. That’s not even remotely true political parties determine privately who they will fund to put on the ballot underneath their particular party The public is not invited to vote in those outside of certain primaries and even then the people who are proposed for the primaries are chosen from the party members Ballot access for third-party or non-affiliated typically require a petition to apply and that threshold is again set by party members in office >Politics is a major part of all aspects of life and you'll do yourself no favors by completely opting out because it's hopeless. Voting is the lowest possible bar or participation for political engagement Organizing and agitating are the day to day efforts people should be doing but aren’t because they prefer to have money
    - bluGill 4mo ago
      The party itself is made up of the people. It isn't hard to join and get influence. Local elections in particular are easy, they are looking for help. Local elections make for people they look for to run in higher elections

cousin_it 4mo ago

Your heart is in the right place, but I want to push back a bit. Zoning is a red herring, sure, but landlords and airbnb are a red herring too. The truth is worse. The natural bloc for restricting housing construction and increasing home values is all homeowners! Everyone with a mortgage, too! Maybe the fight is still winnable, but we need to see clearly what we're up against.

bluGill 4mo ago
I do not disagree.
cogman10 4mo ago
I disagree. I live in an area where there's almost no homeowner pushback to new housing. A lot of it is going in. Yet the housing market and property values continue to increase and record setting rates. It's quiet far from the individual home owner that's driving these rates at this point. The closest I can blame individual home owners here is because they just so happen to always vote for big property owners. Most of my local politicians are landlords themselves.
inigyou 4mo ago
Everyone who owns a home is incentivized to keep the property value up, but not all of them actually feel and respond to that incentive. In the same way that a pig farm owner is incentivised to keep the beautiful clean nature, but makes more money farming smelly pigs instead.
- bluGill 4mo ago
  People regularly have conflicting incentives.
- hakfoo 4mo ago
  Isn't the solution just to take the market out of real estate? At the individual-homeowner level, a lot of NIMBYism, HOA activity, and other toxic activity is grounded in "I have $400k of equity sunk into this square of land and it's the only meaningful asset I have for my increasingly oncoming retirement." There are probably plenty of people who are subconsciously self-sabotaging due to that-- they may personally prefer a denser neighbourhood or more mixed-use facilities, but that Zillow number is blinking in their mind at the same time. If the real estate were nationalized and people were leasing it from a state-owned trust, at basically its cost of operation (maintenance and amortized construction costs), it would free up a lot of resident income for other use or investment opportunities, and make a lot of changes less threatening to residents. (ISTR claims that rents in the USSR were on the order of 5% of income, and this when 30% or less was still a feasible story in the US)

AndrewKemendo 4mo ago

You got the diagnosis right but I’m not convinced voting would change anything - even though it’s definitely true that it could matter, most of the structural issues are upstream of the ballot aka who gets to be on the ballot in the first place is the real problem “If voting changed anything they wouldn’t let us do it” - Emma Goldman

cogman10 4mo ago
Who gets on the ballot is determined by voting. I'm not going to lie, I'm not deluded enough to think voting will (often) bring change quickly. I don't even have a lot of hope in the likelihood of it working. However, it's not nothing and it's something everyone can and should do. Politics is a major part of all aspects of life and you'll do yourself no favors by completely opting out because it's hopeless.
- AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
  >Who gets on the ballot is determined by voting. That’s not even remotely true political parties determine privately who they will fund to put on the ballot underneath their particular party The public is not invited to vote in those outside of certain primaries and even then the people who are proposed for the primaries are chosen from the party members Ballot access for third-party or non-affiliated typically require a petition to apply and that threshold is again set by party members in office >Politics is a major part of all aspects of life and you'll do yourself no favors by completely opting out because it's hopeless. Voting is the lowest possible bar or participation for political engagement Organizing and agitating are the day to day efforts people should be doing but aren’t because they prefer to have money
  - bluGill 4mo ago
    The party itself is made up of the people. It isn't hard to join and get influence. Local elections in particular are easy, they are looking for help. Local elections make for people they look for to run in higher elections