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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

#111

Post by guardiangod »

cf wrote: post #83
robertAngst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in an up and coming suburb of Detroit and every new apartment / condo building is incredibly skewed towards the high end. >new And what happens to the old units? They are sold and rented to the non-super wealthy. I also live in south east michigan and my neighborhood is undergoing gentrification, they are tearing down 1000 sq ft homes and replacing them with 3500 sq ft homes. What is the problem? I couldn't…

Old units in many places are frequently renovated and re-sold to upper-middle class and wealthy tenants. The end result is an erosion of housing stock for average and low-income residents.

But the said "upper-middle class and wealthy tenants" already bought the "new apartment / condo building" that were built in the first place.

It seems to me that opponents seem to think there is a phantom limitless pool of "upper-middle class" that buys up all the new high-end condo _and_ all the refurbished older units.

Logically speaking, this is not possible

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

#112

Post by raydev »

robertAngst wrote: post #62
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #48

Let's overturn Prop 13 first.

>government creates zoning laws that cause prices to skyrocket >person wants more government I've been confused about this perspective, can you break down the thought train you have?

Don’t confuse “more government” with “different policies”.

If abusive parents exist, our first thought shouldn’t be to ban the existence of parents.

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

#113

Post by dragonwriter »

friedman23 wrote: post #79
dragonwriter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What some people want is subsidized building of units in exchange for rent limits.

Ok so what you want is subsidized luxury apartments. Because the quality of the apartment doesnt seem like its going down under your model.

> Ok so what you want is subsidized luxury apartments.

The main thing that makes an apartment luxury is location and being new; new construction in the Bay Area (except maybe an isolated single unit or small development in a particularly blighted area) is luxury inherently. The only thing that's not is old units, and you can't ramp up the supply of old housing units easily (about the closest is you could do a minimal inhabitable renovation on existing units that are too dilapidated to be legally inhabitable, but the supply of those is limited and IIUC it's often more expensive to do that than demolishing and rebuilding front scratch.

So, yes, that's literally the most cost effective way to increase the supply of affordable housing for anybody but the rich.

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

#114

Post by 80mph »

drfuchs wrote: post #97

And what will be the source of the water for additional California residents to subsist on? We just went through a 7-year drought, and they seem to be becoming more frequent and longer; never mind that climate change is making it all worse, as the snow-pack gets smaller and melts quicker. We can cut agriculture and build more dams somewhere to buffer more snow melt, but these are politically difficult to pull off, an…

Not too long ago during the Camp/Paradise fires, just about everyone in northern CA was breathing a toxic cloud of burnt drywall, cars, chemicals, etc. for over a week. Think of the millions of gallons of water wasted, flame retardants dumped, and carbon emissions created. Californians need to live in denser construction near jobs. No more sprawling, low-level construction where fires can easily spread and jump from one building to the next.

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

#115

Post by aswanson »

madengr wrote: post #74
rmah wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not always. Here in KS side of Kansas City suburbs you will find crop fields between dense, multi-story developments. The agriculture land tax is applied throughout the state. The developers exploit this to pay vastly lower property taxes than if it were vacant land. One instance in particular, they’ll run a harvester right next to a 6 story development, and it probably only takes 10 minutes of run-time. Pretty crazy…

KU seems to have an excellent emag staff, from your comments. Would you recommend sending a son there for EE (out of state)? Also, did you take any classes under Dr. John Schmalzel? I had a few classes with him and he went there.

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

#116

Post by Retra »

robertAngst wrote: post #62
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #48

Let's overturn Prop 13 first.

>government creates zoning laws that cause prices to skyrocket >person wants more government I've been confused about this perspective, can you break down the thought train you have?

They had six government, now they want seven government. It's always good to have spare government in case one of them breaks.

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

#117

Post by friedman23 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #113
friedman23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so what you want is subsidized luxury apartments. Because the quality of the apartment doesnt seem like its going down under your model.

> Ok so what you want is subsidized luxury apartments. The main thing that makes an apartment luxury is location and being new; new construction in the Bay Area (except maybe an isolated single unit or small development in a particularly blighted area) is luxury inherently. The only thing that's not is old units, and you can't ramp up the supply of old housing units easily (about the closest is you could do a minimal…

> The main thing that makes an apartment luxury is location and being new; new construction in the Bay Area (except maybe an isolated single unit or small development in a particularly blighted area) is luxury inherently.

Ok, so a 1 bedroom 2nd story apartment in San Francisco in a new building without air conditioning and without a dedicated doorman that costs $4000 a month is luxury but a $1200 a month apartment on the 25th floor of a highrise in Atlanta with a view of the entire city, a dedicated doorman that will bring groceries and packages to your door and air conditioning isn't?

Or are they both?

The San Francisco option is to be clear not a luxury apartment. It's just overpriced.

So what I'm saying is

> The main thing that makes an apartment luxury is location and being new; new construction in the Bay Area (except maybe an isolated single unit or small development in a particularly blighted area) is luxury inherently

this statement is flat out wrong.

>So, yes, that's literally the most cost effective way to increase the supply of affordable housing for anybody but the rich.

Just so we stop using terms that were invented for the sake of propaganda such as "affordable housing" and "luxury apartments" why don't we call a thing what it really is?

Affordable housing - a limited supply of apartments taken off the market and given off in a lottery to a lucky few who get to pay less than market rate for rent. The rent is subsidized by the rest of the people living in the city.

Luxury apartment - a normal apartment that is overpriced due to artificial scarcity. This artificial scarcity exists because of people using direct democracy to vote for laws that they believe to be in their interest without any understand of the second or third order effects of the law.

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

#118

Post by friedman23 »

robertAngst wrote: post #57
andrewmutz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can someone explain how/why California has failed government policy? And why more government involvement in sectors would be a good thing? I understand the benefits of central planning, but when I see it fail locally, I wonder if the flaws outweigh benefits.

>Can someone explain how/why California has failed government policy?

The proposition system. People in California voted for laws that were in their interest without taking into account (or not caring about) the 2nd or 3rd order effects of the policy.

The result is that existing property owners are reaping massive sums of money while the rest are struggling to make ends meet.

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

#119

Post by kradroy »

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…

The US Federal government sells land/property all the time.

And as a consequence of the old adage "time is money", an indefinitely existing organization has an indefinite amount of money. Those institutions you mentioned have no issue buying whatever they want; holdouts be damned. A government pretty much has infinite money, churches are quite wealthy as a whole, and universities have a substantial pool of donors to tap despite having insanely large endowments that are quite well managed.

I don't think your argument holds up.

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

#120

Post by DuskStar »

ip26 wrote: post #93
adrr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hou…

Where has the middle gone? Is it either extreme luxury or low income assistance?

The middle is old luxury housing.
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