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How Much Housing Will Be Built?

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Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#41

Post by mcguire »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3
raldi wrote: post #2

If you click the link and, leaving all the rest of the defaults alone, drop the required affordable housing percentage from 10% to 0%, you lose about 4,000 affordable units but gain 6,000 market-rate ones. So, would this change increase or decrease displacement? Well, another recent Berkeley study concluded that a new market-rate apartment has about half the displacement-fighting impact of a below-market-rate apartme…

The entire concept of low income housing is a scam to keep market rate prices high. Build enough market rate housing that the price falls to what low income people can afford and you don't need any low income housing. If the government spent the money it spends subsidizing rents on subsidizing construction then the problem would be solved.

"If the government spent the money it spends subsidizing rents on subsidizing construction then the problem would be solved."

What makes you think they don't?

In fact, wasn't that the problem in 2008?

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#42

Post by mcguire »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #14
tsmffh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government price controls do not fundamentally change the cost only the price. If the government is so efficient and can, somehow, make housing cheaper than it would be in a free market why shouldn't they also take control of the food supply? Computers? Software? All industry?

The government created a market failure by passing restrictive zoning regulations leading to a severe under-supply of housing. Resolving the market failure requires either eliminating the restrictions or providing enough cash money to justify the builder's expense in contending with them. Obviously the better solution is to do away with the restrictions, but politics is the devil's day job and all that.

"The government"?

Good thing there's no actual people involved.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#43

Post by TelAviv_1 »

LionessLover wrote: post #36
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're so worried about earthquakes, you're more than welcome to leave the Bay yourself. And I love how you equate building more housing to lifeless Chinese skyscrapers.

> If you're so worried about earthquakes, you're more than welcome to leave the Bay yourself. What an inane response.

Your response is inane, too.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#44

Post by pjc50 »

LionessLover wrote: post #36
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're so worried about earthquakes, you're more than welcome to leave the Bay yourself. And I love how you equate building more housing to lifeless Chinese skyscrapers.

> If you're so worried about earthquakes, you're more than welcome to leave the Bay yourself. What an inane response.

Especially as I'm five thousand miles away from the Bay.

Anyway, the point stands that the problem isn't solved because plenty of people either don't want it solved or refuse a solution that disadvantages them the slightest bit. A common problem the world over.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#45

Post by raldi »

pjc50 wrote: post #25
mickrussom wrote: post #18

The bay area. The best, brightest, smartest, pedigreed, hardest working most motivated people on earth. And we cant solve the simplest problems in the Maslow's hierarchy. American Indians solved the housing problems with Teepees and Wigwams - so much for being "smart." There was an article recently where a google employee was living in a 24 ft truck in the google parking lot. This Bay Area mess is a self inflicted jo…

"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…

We don't need to turn into Guangzhou. We could cut housing prices in half by increasing the supply by 30%, and we could do that by replacing 6% of the city's single family houses with six-story apartment buildings. The other 94% could be left alone, and we wouldn't have to build anything else.

Details: https://reddit.com/comments/4lwg49/h/d3qnrsb

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#47

Post by chuckcode »

mickrussom wrote: post #18

The bay area. The best, brightest, smartest, pedigreed, hardest working most motivated people on earth. And we cant solve the simplest problems in the Maslow's hierarchy. American Indians solved the housing problems with Teepees and Wigwams - so much for being "smart." There was an article recently where a google employee was living in a 24 ft truck in the google parking lot. This Bay Area mess is a self inflicted jo…

Really appreciate the note on public transportation. Limited housing gets a lot of the press currently but other infrastructure including public transportation is pretty overwhelmed currently as well. The traffic is already the second worst in the nation [1], and existing major public transportation like bart[2] and caltrain[3] are also overloaded. It also seems like it would be a lot easier to fix as the current system is pretty crazy with most public transportation done at the county level with 20 operators in 9 counties so for most public transportation you can't cross a county line without transfering[4]. I think a lot of people living in the bay would be more open to development if there were actually going to be infrastructure to support it.

[1] http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/list [2] http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-gets-candid-... [3] http://www.caltrain.com/Page3882.aspx [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/bay-areas-disjointed-pu...

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#48

Post by rwhitman »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #30
eru wrote: post #12

Building denser has to be part of the solution. One way is to build up. Another is to also remove minimum parking requirements: See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.ht... and http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf

An easy fix might be to turn single story strip malls into two story dual purpose buildings. Stores on bottom, rooms on top. I doubt this would do much to change aesthetics.

Usually when a strip mall is re-zoned for mixed use, they demolish the older structure.

But on the aesthetic side it's possible to turn these buildings into something interesting if they're renovated by someone creative. Worked across the street from this place when an architecture firm bought and renovated it: http://www.rchstudios.com/639-larchmont-boulevard/

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#49

Post by enf »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #13
raldi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, just building 111,000 (increasing the city's supply by 30%) would cut housing costs in half. Source: http://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employmen...

As far as I can tell, the model shown here doesn't seem to take supply and demand into account when calculating the price of the resulting housing.

What do you mean? The model is nothing but rent=demand/supply with an attempt to figure out what weights go on these parameters. What would you do differently?

(Author of blog post here.)

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#50

Post by superuser2 »

eru wrote: post #12

Building denser has to be part of the solution. One way is to build up. Another is to also remove minimum parking requirements: See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.ht... and http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf

If you cut parking spaces without corresponding improvements in transit infrastructure, the city is strictly less livable and living sprawl looks like an even better idea.
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