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Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

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Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#41

Post by mgolawala »

shse wrote: post #19
ajmurmann wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds amazing!

That’s how it will look like https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AoPpFfXwx_o

That is not a problem of population density, that problem is inadequate peak capacity in transportation infrastructure. For example if you stack subway lines one under the other simalar to those described by Elon Musk, or increase the capacity of the existing public transport system through through faster & more frequent trains, you can resolve such issues. You just need to commit to spending on the infrastructure to support the population density.

Interestingly, it is policies like prop 13 in California that restrict the revenue needed to invest in the infrastructure to support higher population densities.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#42

Post by jeffbax »

thenanyu wrote: post #33
shse wrote: post #5

Cities are full. US population has doubled since 1960. If we get rid of zoning we will end up with overpopulated cities like Hong-Kong, Jakarta, Moscow, Tokyo.

I love Tokyo and HK. They are wonderful cities to live in and have terrific public services. Have you been to the cities you named?

Tokyo has one of the best land-use regimes in the world, the way they have kept housing prices down is a miracle compared to other cities.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/th...

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la...

> Here is a startling fact: in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).

> Tokyo’s steady construction is linked to a still more startling fact. In contrast to the enormous house price booms that have distorted western cities — setting young against old, redistributing wealth to the already wealthy, and denying others the chance to move to where the good jobs are — the cost of property in Japan’s capital has hardly budged.

> This is not the result of a falling population. Japan has experienced the same “return to the city” wave as other nations.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#43

Post by r00fus »

mrep wrote: post #17
shse wrote: post #5

Cities are full. US population has doubled since 1960. If we get rid of zoning we will end up with overpopulated cities like Hong-Kong, Jakarta, Moscow, Tokyo.

No they are not, look at the varience in population density of us cities [0] and it's pretty obvious lots of them can expand. The real problem is that jobs are highly local and people want to live in an area where their are lots of job opportunities. Thus, cities with lots of good job opportunities beget more job opportunities like how Amazon chose New York instead of a smaller city. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w…

The lack of societal and governmental support for mass transit makes it doubly difficult for cities to scale.

Gotta support our struggling petroleum industry!

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#45

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dragonwriter wrote: post #18
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

> a shortage of new construction, a lack of tenant protection "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction. High rents are a signal to developers that there is money to be made constructing new housing. If it's not possible to make the money, they won't do the construction, which is what rent control causes. You get a population of existing residents with…

> "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction. Sure, tenant protection is, but “especially rent control” is wrong: that's just a tenant protection that conservatives/libertarians tend to think is vulnerable to argument. Minimum habitability standards do more to create a lack of affordable housing, but winkingt the argument that that isn't a necessary cos…

> Sure, tenant protection is, but “especially rent control” is wrong

It depends how you're measuring. If you mean by "amount of net cost / lost income to property owners" then sure, it's not especially anything because it's exactly anything to the degree that it does that.

But if you measure in terms of value for money, rent control sucks. Requiring landlords to have functioning clean water costs them money, but it also makes them money -- tenants are willing to pay more for an apartment that isn't falling apart. Some things may cost more than they benefit the landlord in making the apartment more valuable, but at least they may come closer to break-even, and the cost in incentive is only the difference between the two. Rent control is pure dead weight loss.

Of course, this is also the argument for why most of the other regulations aren't needed, because anything above break-even would get done anyway -- you don't need a law requiring someone to improve their building in a way that results in a net profit. The apartments that become unmaintained slums are the rent controlled ones, because the rent is sufficiently below market that the tenants would suffer the flaws rather than moving out.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#46

Post by coldtea »

doombolt wrote: post #10
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

> a shortage of new construction, a lack of tenant protection "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction. High rents are a signal to developers that there is money to be made constructing new housing. If it's not possible to make the money, they won't do the construction, which is what rent control causes. You get a population of existing residents with…

"Rent control" is the idea that people already living in a city have more rights to live there than people who are not. While it may sound socially just it is also one of most un-progressive (conservative) things you can imagine. It literally conserves the population of a given district.

>While it may sound socially just it is also one of most un-progressive (conservative) things you can imagine. It literally conserves the population of a given district.

Well, who said conservative is bad?

It's about the interests of this or that group (e.g. given population vs people coming from outside). Arguments can be made for either, but if a given population is not protected, then those coming from outside wont be protected (from people coming from outside later on) either.

People build cities to be protected and prosper long time in them, not to give opportunities to third parties to come and displace them from the places they've built and helped grow.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#47

Post by twelvechairs »

gaadd33 wrote: post #37
Domark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, I've been hearing about these problems since I lived there in 1995. 1995 would have given an intelligent species enough time to build a money-losing, poor-people housing skyscraper or two. Yes building vertically in crowded places is a challenge and expensive but those are just excuses. Since 1995 they could have figured out a way to get the job done, so now we have to examine what the problems are.

Isn't that what the "towers in a park" style of public housing from the 60s and 70s are? From that we've found that it isn't a good solution, eg Cabrini–Green Homes or Robert Taylor Homes I think people have been looking into these issues for far longer than 1995.

Speaking as someone who works in this field theres a lot weve learned about towers. Suffice to say dont build them in the middle of nowhere, for the poorest in society only, and with acres of non-defensible space in front.

The best planning in cities today is building transit oriented development at a scale to match your city's housing need. Do it in the right places with a reasonable design and it works great

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#48

Post by jayd16 »

jeffbax wrote: post #38
js8 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong. In Prague, they started removing rent controls several years ago, and we have seen highest increase in property values in maybe three decades. Also, if I owned some property, I am not sure I would want to invest in building new one and have to decrease rent rather than enjoy the fact that the rent is high. All in all, I suspect that rent control might be quite insignificant factor in housing sca…

Rent control being bad for the housing market is one of the few generally agreed upon conclusions across the political spectrum of economists https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html > Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, e…

The reason this subject is tough is because quantity and quality do not necessarily lead to affordability for the same population as rent control. Laissez Faire economics always works for the faceless theoretical self interested actor but how are rising prices and new builds going to help to someone from being priced out? It can't. If it did, the control would be benign anyway.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

Domark wrote: post #20
jayd16 wrote: post #11

These article are pretty ridiculous and I see this political bent more and more on here. The article/book makes a huge leap in assuming progressive cities are somehow worse at housing. The reality is people actually want to live there. The most densely populated cities in the US, and in general all cities, lean left politically. Finding new housing is important but we're really losing perspective on how successful th…

The problem is, I've been hearing about these problems since I lived there in 1995. 1995 would have given an intelligent species enough time to build a money-losing, poor-people housing skyscraper or two. Yes building vertically in crowded places is a challenge and expensive but those are just excuses. Since 1995 they could have figured out a way to get the job done, so now we have to examine what the problems are.

> 1995 would have given an intelligent species enough time to build a money-losing, poor-people housing skyscraper or two.

Welcome to planet Earth. We humans are intelligent as individuals, but not as a species. At species level, we're just gradient descenders with delusions of grandeur.

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