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How Much Housing Will Be Built?

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Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#91

Post by natrius »

rsync wrote: post #87
natrius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, it's morally bankrupt. Four middle class families spend more on housing than most Bay Area single-family homeowners. If it were legal for those families to live in a four-plex, they'd outbid wealthy families for that land. The wealthy pay cheaper prices by using the law to prevent people with less money from bidding against them. The wealthy can't actually afford the idyllic single-family neighborhoods they cl…

"Sorry, it's morally bankrupt. Four middle class families spend more on housing than most Bay Area single-family homeowners. If it were legal for those families to live in a four-plex, they'd outbid wealthy families for that land." Yes, I also wish I had a pony.

In the face of injustice, some accept it as the way the world works. Others fight to end injustice. Economic segregation laws are abhorrent, and I am fighting to end them in Austin. I hope others fight to end them everywhere.

https://www.facebook.com/DesegregateATX/

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#92

Post by mickrussom »

foolfoolz wrote: post #57
qmr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived all over the country, there is nothing special about people in the bay area. You may think you are special, I assure you you are not. Sort of like companies claiming to only hire "the top 3%". The rest of your comment shows why the area as a whole is often kind of stupid.

the most special thing about the bay is its the best place for a software engineer to find a job in the entire country, and maybe the best density of highest paid software jobs in the world

Relative to the cost of living and housing I would say bay area is way underpaid at this point

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#93

Post by eru »

superuser2 wrote: post #50
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.

You just start charging for curbside parking, and remove mandatory minimum parking requirements for buildings.

People are still free to build parking places (and even charge for them).

The hope is that by ending the parking subsidy for car owners, they choices will be informed by something closer to their full economic impact.

(The cost can even be borne by the same people---ie currently a car owner might as well be paying for his own parking on average with other taxes / higher rent / etc. The economics still work out to better incentives, if we allocate the whole cost to the decision that causes it.)

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#94

Post by thescriptkiddie »

tamana wrote: post #69
raldi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't try to cut prices in half withoit a story for the people who are going to lose have their investment in real estate (including tax payments on unrealized gains) or they will fight you on it. You need a way to move the windfall profits to the people crushed by regulation changes.

Those people are profiting from the misfortune of others. They aren't providing any useful good or service. They simply held on what should have been a depreciating asset, reaped the benefits of negative externalities, and now they expect the government to protect their ill-gotten gains. Fuck that. The entire point of regulation is to prevent these sorts of market failures.

The best part is many of these people aren't even landlords. So many homeowners are obsessed with the values of their homes staying high, even though it benefits them in no way whatsoever. Well, unless you count "paying more property tax" and "making the neighborhood affordable to everyone but wealthy white families" as benefits. These people are working against their own self-interest because some banker convinced them that real estate was a good investment.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#95

Post by eru »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #17
eru wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the government spent the money it spends subsidizing rents on subsidizing construction then the problem would be solved. Or just give poor people money?

And lose a third of it to the government bureaucracy? And probably construct a new generation of welfare-trap, making people afraid to earn more money for fear of losing their benefit?

That giving the money to poor people was a suggestion relative to `give it to construction companies as a subsidy'---which is really, really stupid.

Depending on your political leanings, you might be happier with just lower taxes.

(And yes, the welfare-trap is probably real. Make sure to watch out for effective marginal tax rates of poor people especially.)

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#96

Post by superuser2 »

eru wrote: post #93
superuser2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You just start charging for curbside parking, and remove mandatory minimum parking requirements for buildings. People are still free to build parking places (and even charge for them). The hope is that by ending the parking subsidy for car owners, they choices will be informed by something closer to their full economic impact. (The cost can even be borne by the same people---ie currently a car owner might as well be…

>they choices will be informed by something closer to their full economic impact.

There's no need for weasel words. We want fewer cars and less driving, so we use policy to make it less pleasant to own and drive a car.

Okay, fine. But what are you replacing it with? Because making driving hurt more is a net loss to subjective well-being unless you're prepared to replace it with something better (i.e. a few billion dollars of rail).

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#97

Post by eru »

dragonwriter wrote: post #78
njs12345 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government policy determines the price of land. Land is a major component of the cost of housing, so it stands to reason that government intervention in housing policy can make housing less expensive. For instance, imposing a very high land value tax would reduce the value of land, which would in turn reduce the cost of housing.

> For instance, imposing a very high land value tax would reduce the value of land, which would in turn reduce the cost of housing. It would only potentially reduce the tax-exclusive cost of housing. It would not reduce the tax-inclusive cost. (In fact, the rational expectation would be that it would radically increase the tax-inclusive cost.)

It would not change the tax-inclusive cost of housing. Land taxes can not be passed on.

You are right, that the tax-inclusive cost of housing won't change with a land tax on its own, at least not as a first order effect.

If however, you eg use the land tax proceeds to lower taxes on labour and capital, building higher (ie using more capital for housing) will become more economically feasible. (No economic revenue will be lost. Lower taxes in a jurisdiction directly lead to higher land prices---which the land tax will capture.)

There's also some other second order effects, like less NIMBYism. (https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF) This will make development easier.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#98

Post by eru »

branchless wrote: post #27
efaref wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to buy-to-leave is surely extremely high taxation on properties left empty (and I'm talking "10% of market value" levels of taxation, enough to obliterate any possible returns on investment).

Land value tax is the solution. Stop taxing labour, tax land.

Also, stop taxing capital, while you are at it.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#99

Post by eru »

kbenson wrote: post #67
simonh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be either unreasonably punitive or easy to avoid. Properties needing renovation or structural work can't reasonably be penalised for not being occupied, so owners would simply arrange for unoccupied buildings to be permanently having work done on them. I'm sure there are plenty of builders that would help them out for moderate fees. I'm sure there are other ways round something like this too.

That's fairly easily dealt with. Require it be occupied for more than 6 months of the year, otherwise 1% (or 0.5%, whatever) of market value per month unoccupied. 80% of construction costs can be subtracted from any unoccupied housing fees applied. Any fudging on the construction fees paid/received is tax fraud on one or both parties. I really like this idea, except that "market value" is vague, and would require a b…

It seems like a cute solution. But it's a bit unnecessary, and complicated.

Ie you probably would want to tax under-occupation as well. (Otherwise you just declare a bunch of apartments as a single unit, and have a single dude check in every once in awhile. They did that in Britain, because of different legal treatment of trespassing between empty and `occupied' buildings.) But how do you define under-occupation? Where do you draw the line?

Just use a land tax. It's simpler and harder to evade.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#100

Post by eru »

mathattack wrote: post #38
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The dangerous problem is that it isn't the government who subsidizes rents, it's everyone else. If the subsidy were visible (the government writing a check to landlords) people would raise hell. Instead it's a hidden subsidy. The housing costs and rents of everyone goes up (including low-income income people) except for the lucky few who win the subsidized housing lottery. The intent of low income housing is laudable…

Same for cars, and their parking.

The government forces everyone to write cheques to car owners. (Even the car owners themselves, of course. It's a tragedy of the commons; like eg communal charging for electricity in a whole city.)

http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf

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