Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#61

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #5

bllguo wrote: post #2

So how does the process of adding housing units work? If there's space as the article claims, and plenty of demand, whats holding things up? Bureaucracy? I'd like to see reasonable prices sometime in my life !

Well that valley has pretty much every bit of flat land developed, so where are you going to put these high density developments without knocking down existing houses?

I also wanted to note that not all of the new housing is coming on top of houses. Close to where I live, there's a strip mall with an enormous parking lot that just got knocked down and is being converted to mixed-use development, including lots of apartments[1]. A bit further away next to Lawrence Caltrain station, and old suburban-style office park was torn down and again, has a big mixed-use development being built there[2].

1 - http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/10/13/santa-cla...

2 - http://blogs.mercurynews.com/internal-affairs/2014/05/19/san...

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#62

Post by pjlegato » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #52

baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

There's gotta be a way to economically make a lack of density untenable. Urban sprawl is a threat to the environment, we talk about charging a tax on Carbon, what about on Urban Sprawl? P.S: Not saying a carbon tax is the best idea, but urban sprawl (like carbon emissions) have a negative impact on the environment but zero impact on maximizing capital gains. They two must be tied somehow.

There are lots of ways. Extremely high gasoline taxes seem to be popular in Europe. When driving costs $10 or $12 a gallon instead of $2 or 3, people want to drive a lot less.

High property values also work, as in Europe. In a relatively small European country, there is just a lot less land supply, so it costs a lot and people tend to build much more densely. By contrast the US is huge and has an enormous amount of vacant land, so land is (relatively) extremely cheap in the US, encouraging low density development.

Finally, the main reason low density is tenable is that zoning laws in the US are in most places specifically set up to discourage high density construction and make it unprofitable.

In the early 20th century, zoning laws were first enacted in the US by the so called "Progressive Movement". They observed that the rich enjoyed spacious country estates while the poor lived in crowded, dense slums, so they decided to "help" the poor live in what they deemed better conditions by making it illegal or difficult to build new high density neighborhoods at all.

More on this topic in the book "Living Downtown," by Paul Groth: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49p...

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#63

Post by nwah1 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

pjlegato wrote: post #44

xienze wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which was created to combat the problem of grandma kicked out of her house because she can't afford her property taxes. How do you get around that?

One way is to eliminate property taxes altogether and shift revenue to sales tax, payroll tax, VAT, or other non-property tax sources.

Except that taxes on land value have no deadweight loss, unlike all those others. And property taxes fall heavily upon land values.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#64

Post by hkmurakami » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

epa wrote: post #14

baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

As a home owner in this area, the majority likely already have double or triple unrealized gains on their home value. The potential to lift that to 'quadruple', for the cost of increased noise, traffic, people, etc is probably not worth the the incremental gain (in theory).

In the previously underdeveloped and less desirable neighborhoods of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and even Mountain View, home prices have more than quintupled since the early 90's. In the first two, prices have roughly doubled since 2010.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#65

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #17

hx87 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many other problems in California, this one can be largely traced back to a single source: Proposition 13

Which was created to combat the problem of grandma kicked out of her house because she can't afford her property taxes. How do you get around that?

Have a narrow version of prop 13 for grandmas. If you've lived there for 10+ years, it's your primary residence, and can prove economic hardship, sure, you can get a break on your property taxes.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#66

Post by hx87 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #45

hx87 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She can take the payout and buy some place more affordable, perhaps even an apartment in the building that replaces her house. Not the best outcome for her, I'm sure, but beats the hell out of starving municipal and state governments of revenue, broken infrastructure, and forcing everyone else to pay extortionate rents and mortgages just to live there. If the law allows it and the regulatory compliance costs are low…

Any argument that boils down to "grandma should move to make room for the techies" lacks perspective and will never gain any political traction. Moving is not just something you "do" after building a life somewhere for 40 years.

As I mentioned, she doesn't have to 'move' except in the most technical sense--she can take house a home equity loan (made possible by the house's appreciation) and convert her house into an apartment by adding another floor or converting a garage or by demolishing the house and building an apartment block in its stead. She can continue to live in one of the units, probably the first floor, and benefit from a reliable stream of income from tenants.

Oh, and BTW, this idea that "techies" aren't people, or somehow less deserving of moral consideration than everyone else, is reprehensible.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#67

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #52

baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

There's gotta be a way to economically make a lack of density untenable. Urban sprawl is a threat to the environment, we talk about charging a tax on Carbon, what about on Urban Sprawl? P.S: Not saying a carbon tax is the best idea, but urban sprawl (like carbon emissions) have a negative impact on the environment but zero impact on maximizing capital gains. They two must be tied somehow.

> Urban sprawl is a threat to the environment, we talk about charging a tax on Carbon, what about on Urban Sprawl?

A carbon tax (as long as cars use energy derived from sources covered by a carbon tax, whether that's fossil fuels directly or electricity produced in some share by burning fossil fuels) is a tax on urban sprawl, since urban sprawl forces longer trips and less-fuel-efficient transportation.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#68

Post by pjlegato » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

nwah1 wrote: post #63

pjlegato wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way is to eliminate property taxes altogether and shift revenue to sales tax, payroll tax, VAT, or other non-property tax sources.

Except that taxes on land value have no deadweight loss, unlike all those others. And property taxes fall heavily upon land values.

The question was simply about how it could be guaranteed that grandmas can't be priced out of their own houses in conditions of sharply rising property values, not about optimal tax structure in general.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#69

Post by disposeofnick9 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #58

disposeofnick9 wrote: post #19

I live in a VW somewhere in Silicon Valley. Ask me anything (respectful, non-troll) EDIT: I don't usually bite, but when I do, I won't eat much.

You mean one of those mini-buses? http://www.truckchamp.com/images/articles/vw-minibus---abbey...

Not quite as old and cool as an aircooled 22 window DIY EV like the electric samba, just a digijet Vanagon Westy water-boxer plankton-burner. If/when I had 12 grand, I'm ripping the gas motor out and going EV because there's so many free/cheap charging places available now. Plus, climate change and jihaadis.

PS: CA, NJ and others plz vote today. I did yesterday. If you want change, you gotta be counted.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#70

Post by hkmurakami » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

Similar forces in effect for school districts. I remember Cupertino being against additional medium density development because of concern over overcrowding of schools. Given that background I'm modestly surprised that the new Vallco redevelopment got approved.