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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

#101

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dragonwriter wrote: post #50
mabbo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 The costs in terms of lots of services that aren't physical infrastructure scales with population, though, and for some services (or for adverse impacts that services don't fully mitigate) is also higher, rather than lower, for the same population when density is hi…

The base of the land value tax is the value of the land though. If the land is in the middle of a high population density area then the land is worth more and it generates more tax revenue.

The difference between this and property tax is that if you have a 12 story building on one piece of land and a 2 story building on the adjacent one, otherwise identical piece of land, they both pay the same tax, giving the second property owner more incentive to build.

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

#102

Post by DataWorker »

futureastronaut wrote: post #40
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.

Since you're race baiting, I'd like to point out that there are plenty of us white guys out here who are not from privileged backgrounds and who have worked very hard to get to where they are. Please stop with the prejudice, for all people.

I’m talking job growth and demographics. The answer isn’t to make everyone learn to code. We need jobs for other demographic groups. Look at San Francisco and the displacement that’s occurred. To pretend it’s orthogonal to race or age or parental ses is simply wrong. Yes, you and many others may be somewhat exceptional, somewhat. I’m referring to aggregate statistics, not exceptional cases.

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

#103

Post by throwaway34241 »

Gh0stRAT wrote: post #85
robertAngst wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite an interesting take, your state government is fighting local governments? This is truly another dimension of the More/Less government dichotomy they teach you in school. Btw, it seems the local governments are quite Anti growth? Am I understanding that correctly?

Correct. The city council is elected by residents of the city, and land owners have a strong financial incentive to elect representatives who will limit housing. (The shortage drives-up their property values) You might think that renters living in the city would eventually outweigh the landowners and elect council members in favor of new housing, but instead SF passed a rent control measure which prevents the current…

I'd also add that people who have long commutes aren't represented in the city they work in, although they have a voice at the state level.

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

#104

Post by snidane »

maxxxxx wrote: post #58

I think there should be a national effort to "spread out" the economy and fight the trend towards centralization in a few areas. If you build more housing in CA, even more people will move there and the overcrowding will become even worse. There should be incentives for companies to move away from places like SV and NY. More acceptance of remote work would help too but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

This is an instance of Jevon's paradox. The more housing you build to meet housing need of people then even more people will come in creating even larger demand for housing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

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

#105

Post by firethief »

ip26 wrote: post #89
sanderjd wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious about the pros and cons here. Neither way seems obviously better than the other. Why is concentration worse than distribution? Why is distribution better?

Concentration begetting more concentration combined with an unwillingness (don't underestimate SV's ability to dig in its heels) to develop leads to a real estate black hole for dollars, where an ever increasing portion of wealth is diverted to the competition for a place to live.

That's not tying up wealth, it's tying up money, and I don't see how that is even one of the many problems with the situation in e.g. SF.

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

#106

Post by throwaway34241 »

mabbo wrote: post #87
eveningcoffee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's going to happen to areas no matter what. There is very little you can do about that. What we can do is increase housing supply so that prices of all homes are lower.

For primary residences you could also do things like defer payment on the increases until sale, so no one is forced out of their home but the people who have huge capital gains do not also get a tax break. Rental property shouldn't need a special break though, if there's a housing shortage and prices are up it's very likely that rents are up too.

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

#107

Post by snidane »

Gh0stRAT wrote: post #85
robertAngst wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite an interesting take, your state government is fighting local governments? This is truly another dimension of the More/Less government dichotomy they teach you in school. Btw, it seems the local governments are quite Anti growth? Am I understanding that correctly?

Correct. The city council is elected by residents of the city, and land owners have a strong financial incentive to elect representatives who will limit housing. (The shortage drives-up their property values) You might think that renters living in the city would eventually outweigh the landowners and elect council members in favor of new housing, but instead SF passed a rent control measure which prevents the current…

It's funny to see the incentives at play. The rent control mechanisms are a hidden redistribution channel from money collected by income taxes straight to pockets of landlords.

Ie. gov gives rent subsidies of $100 to poor. Landlords react by rising rent prices by $100 because od this new 'disposable income'. The poor don't feel any difference, only the working population which gets squeezed.

The money flows from workers and businesses through the poor straight to rentiers.

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

#108

Post by temp99990 »

ip26 wrote: post #84
kradroy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should tear down the Fed Mint building behind that Safeway and turn it into housing. I don't even believe that branch does anything other than print proofs. A waste of space, but it's not happening during this presidency for sure.

Organizations that live on indefinitely- governments, universities, churches- don't give up land almost as a rule. One or two hundred years from now, they might really need this or that plot, and it could be nearly impossible to acquire then. One easy to appreciate example are universities & other schools holding (& sometimes leasing) land adjacent to them. If they didn't, in the distant future if they need to expand…

Definitely a few post office closures I’m aware of...

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

#109

Post by epistasis »

dgudkov wrote: post #99
rileymat2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure some areas that are growing are ideal from a water usage perspective, but I thought density was very efficient and should be promoted.

Density creates land scarcity which in turns gives a lot of power to landlords who collect the lion's share or economic benefits created by density. Density should come hand in hand with power-rebalancing measures, e.g. tax property hikes, more efficient zoning, and government-controlled rent, but practically it doesn't happen.

Density is the response to land scarcity that takes away power from landlords, not the other way around. When there's massive land scarcity, but density is not allowed, it gives landlords far far more power than if density were allowed.

Land value taxation is one way to reduce speculative land use by landlords, but it's rarely used, unfortunately. And in California it would require overturning Prop 13, a hugely regressive tax policy that has been somehow falsely enshrined as helping the little guy out, when in reality it mostly helps landlords and speculative land hoarders.

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

#110

Post by honkycat »

People should just move to bumblefuck nowhere, Iowa where the land is cheap, there is no public transit or taxi service, no nature to interact with, and hang out with a bunch of racist uneducated Evangelical yokels who think driving around the country running over varmits is a great Friday night.

Tons of opportunity there. It's just as good. Trust me. I've never lived there but I love to imagine the simple country life.

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