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To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

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Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#61

Post by conanbatt »

mywittyname wrote: post #59
nwah1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the supply of land is perfectly inelastic, and it already commands the highest price that can be obtained. "A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground." - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations "It is in vain in a Country whose great…

I think you should cite actual research rather than thought-experiments from 18th century philosophers.

Milton friedman was an advocate of LVT, and I think stiglitz or krugman as well. There is economic consensus on LVT being good, although how good it is is hard to know, as LVT is a very hard tax to politically pass.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#62

Post by kyledrake »

epistasis wrote: post #51
conanbatt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing situation is a California wide problem. The bigger government is the first one messing up housing.

I agree that it's a California wide problem, though I think the cause is slightly different in different parts of the state. What do you mean by: > The bigger government is the first one messing up housing. Do you mean that State policies are the ones messing up housing? I think that Prop 13 and CEQA get named sometimes for stopping housing development, but a far bigger hurdle are the local zoning policies, and the v…

Seconded opinion for strong regional government with zoning control. If the property owner fiefdoms aren't going to address the problem, it's time to take solving that problem away from them.

To give an example of how bad this is, the city of Atherton has sued Caltrain 7 times over the electrification project, the latest one related to (wait for it..) the use of 5 45 foot poles instead of 10 35 foot ones. https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2018/03/01/caltrain-and-ath...

And this despite the fact it comprises less than a mile of the track and doesn't even stop at the Atherton station during weekdays.

How can anyone expect this problem to get any better without major changes to zoning control and major revisions to the property tax/rent subsidies? I'm not holding my breath, and neither are all the other people that are starting to think about leaving.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#63

Post by epistasis »

conanbatt wrote: post #60
epistasis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's a California wide problem, though I think the cause is slightly different in different parts of the state. What do you mean by: > The bigger government is the first one messing up housing. Do you mean that State policies are the ones messing up housing? I think that Prop 13 and CEQA get named sometimes for stopping housing development, but a far bigger hurdle are the local zoning policies, and the v…

All the cities in california are failing to build for the demand. SF and LA are obvious because they are the biggest, but its a state level problem. The core problem to me is taxation: California should have a Land value tax, but instead of that, it rewards owners with things like prop 13, and punishes workers by using sales taxes and income taxes. Just changing that taxation would change everything: owners would not…

Totally agree that Prop 13 is a huge problem, it's a hugely regressive tax that seems completely out of place in a state that's supposed to be liberal or even leftist. California's liberalism is only skin deep, particularly among the wealthy, who pull their kids of out public school increasingly too.

This report from 2015:

http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing...

has a section titled "Why DO Coastal Areas Not Build Enough Housing?"

* Community Resistance to New Housing.

* Environmental Reviews Can Be Used to Stop or Limit Housing Development.

* Local Finance Structure Favors Nonresidential Development.

* Limited Vacant Developable Land.

And Prop 13 feeds into the third in a huge way, and a bit into the first.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#64

Post by city41 »

alangpierce wrote: post #45
coding123 wrote: post #3

And the freeways can support this how?

Most people I know in San Francisco don't own cars and certainly don't make use of freeways as part of their commute. With high-density cities and good public transit, you really have much less need for cars. Also, given that cars are inherently dangerous, cause environmental harm, and take up a lot of space, it seems like it's in the public interest to discourage car ownership/use.

San Francisco is just one part of the problem, the other part is Silicon Valley. In SV, housing is even more expensive than SF, and public transportation is dismal at best. Rush hour in the San Jose area rivals that of LA, NY, etc.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#65

Post by redthrowaway »

What is far more likely is that people will simply leave the Bay Area, and demand will fall. It's far easier to create tech clusters in other cities than it is to convince a bunch of NIMBY boomers that other people need places to live, too.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#66

Post by redthrowaway »

weeksie wrote: post #38

Just a reminder that the growth rates for SF, SV, Seattle, Portland are all pretty puny compared to the growth rates of, e.g. Detroit at its peak. Hell they're not even that crazy compared to growth rates those cities have handled before. People just aren't interested in any perceived threat to their property values so they're strangling growth based on an entitlement mindset. No, sirs and ma'ams, your home's price a…

>No, sirs and ma'ams, your home's price appreciation isn't a right.

No, but they do have a right to vote for policies and politicians that defend their interests.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#67

Post by ajross »

charlesdm wrote: post #39
sampo wrote: post #25

Just quoting the last paragraph. This is the kind of honesty people need. > Intellectual honesty requires taking numbers seriously. Either we prioritize making the Bay Area affordable for all of us or we don’t. The less housing we build, the more wealth will be trapped in high housing prices. Unless we decide to grow our housing stock to accommodate our economy, we are continuing to choose the interests of those who…

Who could have guessed, policy makers that serve the hand that feeds them?

Actually no, or not the way you mean. This is a legitimate moral trap: the "policy" at hand is construction permitting and land zoning, and those are almost exclusively local laws and regulations set at the city and county level.

Those governments, by design, serve the interests of their local citizens. That is, the population they serve is inherently skewed toward existing property owners. You can't fix this by complaining about money in politics or whatever, that's not why it's happening.

The solution has to be at the broader government level (i.e. in Sacramento in this case), wrenching back some of the control that has traditionally been local in the interests of the broader population and not just, say, Palo Alto residents.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#68

Post by api »

ajross wrote: post #67
charlesdm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who could have guessed, policy makers that serve the hand that feeds them?

Actually no, or not the way you mean. This is a legitimate moral trap: the "policy" at hand is construction permitting and land zoning, and those are almost exclusively local laws and regulations set at the city and county level. Those governments, by design, serve the interests of their local citizens. That is, the population they serve is inherently skewed toward existing property owners. You can't fix this by comp…

At this point I'm strongly in favor of the nuclear option: a state-level proposition to implement uniform pro-density zoning reforms.

It should also include at least a selective repeal of proposition 13 for non-occupant residences and a re-assessment of all such residences to tax those who are using our real estate as a financial instrument rather than a place to live.

I'd also be in favor of an extra tax on out-of-state residences held by non-occupants and on out-of-state non-occupant purchases.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#69

Post by marcell »

weeksie wrote: post #38

Just a reminder that the growth rates for SF, SV, Seattle, Portland are all pretty puny compared to the growth rates of, e.g. Detroit at its peak. Hell they're not even that crazy compared to growth rates those cities have handled before. People just aren't interested in any perceived threat to their property values so they're strangling growth based on an entitlement mindset. No, sirs and ma'ams, your home's price a…

> No, sirs and ma'ams, your home's price appreciation isn't a right

Doesn't increased density help property values? If I can build a high rise on your 1 acre plot of land, its value should go up.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#70

Post by TomVDB »

rb808 wrote: post #30
sampo wrote: post #25

Just quoting the last paragraph. This is the kind of honesty people need. > Intellectual honesty requires taking numbers seriously. Either we prioritize making the Bay Area affordable for all of us or we don’t. The less housing we build, the more wealth will be trapped in high housing prices. Unless we decide to grow our housing stock to accommodate our economy, we are continuing to choose the interests of those who…

If density increases the people who will benefit the most are current landowners. If you have single family home on a big lot, its value will go up many times if you can suddenly build an apartment building on it.

Most current home owners have no interest in selling to a developer or developing ourselves. We just want to continue live in conditions that were present when we bought it: a nice house with a garden on a quiet street.

Yes, that is selfish, but I'm not going to apologize for not wanting an apartment complex next door. That said, I'm not going to vote against a state level politician who wants to relax zoning laws to improve affordable housing.

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