61–70 of 126 posts
Folks - please add immigration. Why on earth people don't grasp that when population is increasing mostly due to newcomers it affects housing ... this bothers me - because it's politicized, nobody can talk about it it seems. Immigration is just a reality, it's part of the equation - it has real effects on housing costs and wages, one can't ignore it because sometimes the answers might not jive with one's politics. So…
That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding. Economics has fuzzy areas, but basic principles of supply and demand are very well-established. It's clearly nonsensical to imagine that we can simultaneously lower prices, limit supply, and allow for demand growth. The longevity of this bizarre idea demonstrates how strongly political ideas of how the world ought to work blind us to how the world does work. We…
"That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding." There never was. There are actual, valid debates around construction policy, however. Among them: 1) should you prefer subsidized housing or market-rate? 2) should you remove cheap, existing housing stock to make room for market-rate? 3) does new construction lead to gentrification of affordable neighborhoods? The article is explicit that the answer to #1 is…
Interfering with the market almost always produces poor global outcomes, even if interventions can provide an illusion of success in small localized cases. Sure, you can protect your neighborhood from gentrification or whatever, but at the cost of impoverishing an entire city. How is that fair or just?
I believe in caring about people, not abstractions like neighborhoods, and so support greatly loosening zoning laws and allowing builders to build the market-rate housing that people demand.
That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding. Economics has fuzzy areas, but basic principles of supply and demand are very well-established. It's clearly nonsensical to imagine that we can simultaneously lower prices, limit supply, and allow for demand growth. The longevity of this bizarre idea demonstrates how strongly political ideas of how the world ought to work blind us to how the world does work. We…
It is perplexing to me why the burden of proof was ever placed on "increasing supply decreases prices" when the mechanism by which rent control + limiting construction is supposed to benefit anyone besides those already occupying those units is totally unclear. I don't even think it's "ought" vs "does" - it's more NIMBY interests being more ingrained into local politics allowing them to somehow gaslight everyone into…
People who live in an area want policies that will benefit them at the expense of newcomers, full stop.
And when you concentrate value and therefore power in those existing landowners to an extreme degree, you get a political feedback loop strong enough to overpower something as trivial as reality. After all, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding." There never was. There are actual, valid debates around construction policy, however. Among them: 1) should you prefer subsidized housing or market-rate? 2) should you remove cheap, existing housing stock to make room for market-rate? 3) does new construction lead to gentrification of affordable neighborhoods? The article is explicit that the answer to #1 is…
See, that's the problem: anti-housing advocates have the wrong moral object in mind. There's no use caring about "neighborhoods". A neighborhood doesn't dream of owning a house one day. A neighborhood doesn't have kids that have to squeeze into a single bedroom. A neighborhood feels neither happy nor sad and doesn't care whether it's preserved. Interfering with the market almost always produces poor global outcomes,…
Yeah, fuck 'em. For that matter, let's not care about cities or states, either. As long as the national mean rent goes down, everything is dandy, right? After all, we all know that real estate is global. Let the poor move to North Dakota. /s
When you have two affordable neighborhoods in a city, and you gentrify both, the fact that rents are a few bucks cheaper city-wide is thin gruel for the people who got evicted. Nor does it "impoverish" the rest of the city to not gentrify those neighborhoods -- they're out some small number of dollars a month.
"I believe in caring about people, not abstractions like neighborhoods"
That's obviously untrue. You believe in the long-term effects of markets, even if they screw actual poor people in the short term. That's fine, but don't pretend you're doing social work in the near-term.
All you can really say about markets is that the only thing they "care" about is the most profitable allocation of capital.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can tell you 100% there is a debate over supply effects. There are many people (Peter Cohen, Causa Justa, Calle 24, some folks with red roses on Twitter, others) who show up at public comment in SF who believe that more market rate housing increases displacement and causes even higher prices.
The "debate" is likely a result of motivated reasoning. Humans do it all the time . 1. Decide to stake out a position A. 2. Think of reasons that A might be true. 3. Use these arguments to claim that anyone arguing !A is wrong. 4. Feel satisfied.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding." There never was. There are actual, valid debates around construction policy, however. Among them: 1) should you prefer subsidized housing or market-rate? 2) should you remove cheap, existing housing stock to make room for market-rate? 3) does new construction lead to gentrification of affordable neighborhoods? The article is explicit that the answer to #1 is…
See, that's the problem: anti-housing advocates have the wrong moral object in mind. There's no use caring about "neighborhoods". A neighborhood doesn't dream of owning a house one day. A neighborhood doesn't have kids that have to squeeze into a single bedroom. A neighborhood feels neither happy nor sad and doesn't care whether it's preserved. Interfering with the market almost always produces poor global outcomes,…
Folks - please add immigration. Why on earth people don't grasp that when population is increasing mostly due to newcomers it affects housing ... this bothers me - because it's politicized, nobody can talk about it it seems. Immigration is just a reality, it's part of the equation - it has real effects on housing costs and wages, one can't ignore it because sometimes the answers might not jive with one's politics. So…
just build more housing.
In general, more saturation of humans == more problems.
People make fun of NIMBY, but at the end of the day who better to manage the neighborhood than the people who are already invested in it..?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not all that crazy to me, I can imagine many scenarios where that could happen. The answer is, as always, "it depends". It depends on what you build, how you build it, where you build it, how it's perceived, the time interval across which you're measuring prices, etc. Price of stuff is way more nuanced than surface-level supply and demand. It all comes down to perception of value, and there are a LOT of factor…
It's not as contingent as you think. We normally model the supply curve as a line going up and to the right, indicating that price increases stimulate the creation of additional supply. The demand curve has the opposite slope and effect. These curves form an "effective field theory". They explain what's happening at a high level. In reality, supply and demand curves aren't necessarily linear, and at small scales, the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the "degradation" happens because we forgot that we can build up, as well as out, in much of the US https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
I don't think we "forget", I think developers are after the quick buck and buyers are after most-sqft-per-dollar. Building up or down is more expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't renters also have votes? If so then it's a matter of ratio and willingness to mobilize/fund efforts.
Renters vote but tend to be under-represented on City Councils and such because they are a) younger, b) have less money, c) move more often than people with homes. Renters don't vote as regularly as homeowners.