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The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

nytimes.com

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Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#11

Post by sbzodnsbd »

mabbo wrote: post #4

You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…

It is. In my city at least. And at the federal level for landlords as well.

My local taxes depend on my land value + my house value.

Larger land, (or more desirable) more taxes.

In federal taxes, for a rental unit, you get a depreciation expense only on the value of the structure. Not on the land. So more valuable land vs. structure, less federal discount.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#12

Post by mchannon »

ykevinator wrote: post #8
mabbo wrote: post #4

You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…

The services used are proportional to bodies inhabiting, at least to some extent. Sewage, roads for example.

This is exactly wrong.

Services used are inversely proportional to bodies inhabiting.

In far-flung suburbia, you still need all those miles of roads and sewer pipes serving a relatively small number of people.

One of the papers did an excellent heat map of the Bay Area and pinpointed where all the traffic congestion originates. The eastern periphery of San Jose was the worst.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#13

Post by mrfusion »

ykevinator wrote: post #8
mabbo wrote: post #4

You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…

The services used are proportional to bodies inhabiting, at least to some extent. Sewage, roads for example.

I think your two examples are actually the opposite.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#14

Post by rmah »

codingdave wrote: post #7
mabbo wrote: post #4

You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…

That would significantly increase the taxes on agricultural use. Is that your intent? To incentivize high density residential, while making it hard to grow food?

There isn't much agricultural land, if any, in cities and suburbs. In the US, land is taxed at the local level (municipality and county), not at the state or federal level.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#15

Post by mabbo »

sbzodnsbd wrote: post #11
mabbo wrote: post #4

You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…

It is. In my city at least. And at the federal level for landlords as well. My local taxes depend on my land value + my house value. Larger land, (or more desirable) more taxes. In federal taxes, for a rental unit, you get a depreciation expense only on the value of the structure. Not on the land. So more valuable land vs. structure, less federal discount.

> My local taxes depend on my land value + my house value

Are they separate line items? Or combined? The difference matters.

My condo is taxed based on the whole value of the unit- which is something like 1/2 of the cost of a house in the same neighbourhood, which means I'm taxed about 1/2 of what they are. But I use 1/100th the amount of land they use. Meanwhile, the cost to the city in terms of infrastructure (pipes, roads, drainage, etc) is much lower than the houses in the subdivision down the road.

In effect, today's laws makes high-density-home owners subsidize the high cost of maintaining subdivisions by taxing on total value only. Switch it to 50% value and 50% land use, with explicit line items for each and you'll see more demand for high density housing.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#16

Post by reitzensteinm »

mabbo wrote: post #4

You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…

It may be interesting to make land taxes progressive, rising exponentially based on the value of the land divided by the number of occupants.

Three adults sharing a flat would pay next to nothing, but not even Bill Gates could afford to make an inner city skyscraper his home.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#17

Post by friedman23 »

epmatsw wrote: post #2

> because developers mostly would build high-end units This is such a frustrating perspective.

Any new modern apartment is considered luxury. Its actually impossible to build non luxury apartments in Sf. It seems what people want is for builders to actively destroy the apartment after they build it so that it will be rented at a lower price.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#18

Post by DataWorker »

California has a ‘too many people problem’. Housing is less critical than transportation, infrastructure, fire safety, jobs for all demographic groups (as opposed to tech jobs for well born young white men), and so on. Building housing is like giving candy to calm a child’s tantrum.

Re: The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing

#20

Post by mabbo »

DataWorker wrote: post #18

California has a ‘too many people problem’. Housing is less critical than transportation, infrastructure, fire safety, jobs for all demographic groups (as opposed to tech jobs for well born young white men), and so on. Building housing is like giving candy to calm a child’s tantrum.

All prices are determined by supply and demand.

You're complaining that demand is too high as a reason to not increase supply.

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