The answer to California's housing crisis is more housing • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by aetherson » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #14

codingdave wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a coordination problem with this, though -- how do you get all the different cities to all adopt this tax scheme, and if some don't, don't we just shift around density?

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

#22

Post by Bombthecat » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

AbdulMohammad wrote: post #19

If more housing was the answer then NYC would not have a housing problem. The answer is not more housing.

Absolutely agree! In my opinion the only way is to make smaller cities attractive! No matter how high or wide you build. People want to move to cities. Except they see a chance in smaller viliages. So we need more / attractive jobs in villages and better infrastructure. Including theaters, cinemas, shops, kindergartens etc etc.

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

#23

Post by ajross » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

AbdulMohammad wrote: post #19

If more housing was the answer then NYC would not have a housing problem. The answer is not more housing.

Then what is the answer? People want to live in NYC, LA and the Bay Area. They need homes in the places they want to live, and if they don't get them they won't stay put: they'll move to sprawl in New Jersey, Orange County and Livermore. And those places will suck, and we'll all pay the costs in infrastructure stress.

Build housing where the jobs are. That absolutely is the answer. Any other solution is isomorphic to "put the desirable jobs somewhere else", a puzzle the whole world[1] is trying to solve, and failing. Housing is something we know how to do.

[1] Except for the handful of desirable cities.

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

#24

Post by andrewmutz » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

People already want it and developers would build it. But, at least in California, the problem is that local zoning laws make building it illegal.

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

#25

Post by analog31 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #15

sbzodnsbd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (pipe…

In my locale, assessments are required to be based on market value. The market doesn't assign a separate value to the house and the land.

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

#26

Post by adrr » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

epmatsw wrote: post #2

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

Because the cost to create a unit makes them high end from the start. You have to add fire suppression systems, elevators, seismic reinforced construction and pay for the land. NPR had a segment on it, listing the costs to build a modern day high rise unit and it there is no way to build it for low-income housing and make a profit. Even if given the land, at most it is break-even.

Low income would have to rely on housing that wasn't new. Kinda like cars, it wouldn't make sense to have car manufacturers to try to create a sub $10k car when you require air bags, backup cameras, tire pressure monitors etc.

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

#27

Post by kitsunesoba » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

Bombthecat wrote: post #22

AbdulMohammad wrote: post #19

If more housing was the answer then NYC would not have a housing problem. The answer is not more housing.

Absolutely agree! In my opinion the only way is to make smaller cities attractive! No matter how high or wide you build. People want to move to cities. Except they see a chance in smaller viliages. So we need more / attractive jobs in villages and better infrastructure. Including theaters, cinemas, shops, kindergartens etc etc.

Much easier said than done. For this to happen you’d have to convince multiple companies, hopefully across several industries, to risk opening offices and shops in such towns on nothing but faith that they’ll fill up in a somewhat timely manner, and then you have to convince a bunch of folks to move to these towns. Neither is particularly simple or straightforward.

And of course, there also a large portion of people who have no desire to live in towns or suburbs, and these plans wouldn’t appeal to them at all. I’m personally in this camp — I’ve had enough small town for a lifetime already.

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

#28

Post by eveningcoffee » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

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.

It sounds nice until people are forced out of their homes because suddenly the area becomes hip.

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

#29

Post by ahelwer » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

Have there been any studies examining the impact on the market of banning career landlords and REITs? What happens if you restrict residential housing to being owned by a single person who cannot own anything else in that area, rather than letting capital have the run of the place and treating homes as an investment plaything?

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

#30

Post by Eridrus » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

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…

Land taxes are a great idea, but they are even less popular than zoning changes.

Almost every housing law has carveouts for small buildings/landlords with few apartments since they are politically powerful and relatively sympathetic.

Advocating for land taxes rather than zoning changes is wishful thinking