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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

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

friedman23 wrote: post #117
dragonwriter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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

No, affordable housing for a given income level is defined by a cost formula. Achieving affordable housing for lower income levels is frequently done by the means you describe, because you literally cannot build it in quantity if it is distributed by normal market means because what is new will be desirable, and therefore both expensive and snapped up by the well-off, for that reason alone.

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

#132

Post by taysic »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #101
dragonwriter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And then what when everything has become skyscrapers? I think it’s perfectly ok that not everyplace wants this end result.

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

#133

Post by taysic »

epistasis wrote: post #128
taysic wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing jobs in one area reduces competition among landlords while fostering multiple job centers with amenities encourages competition including price competition

What "focuses" jobs in one area though? Is it a conscious choice to place a job in a location, or is it the density of the people and the skills that allows the jobs to exist at all? The idea that jobs can be placed anywhere flies in the face of pretty much every single city's economic development efforts over the past few decades. It's not realistic, or reasonable. What can be placed anywhere is housing. The only re…

If you’re talking about Silicon Valley that was converted from fruit groves to sprawl and a job center then how was that the result of density? In terms of density it’s not much different to many areas.

The focusing is done due to a whole host of reasons but certainly encouraging jobs to spread out is not a bad idea for a number of reasons - including having options and livability

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

#134

Post by madengr »

aswanson wrote: post #115
madengr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, if your son is interested in RF and RADAR/Remote Sensing, they have an excellent program.

No, looks like he was there before me. I did an MSEE in ‘96, under Moore and Gogineni.

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

#135

Post by DataWorker »

epistasis wrote: post #128
taysic wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing jobs in one area reduces competition among landlords while fostering multiple job centers with amenities encourages competition including price competition

What "focuses" jobs in one area though? Is it a conscious choice to place a job in a location, or is it the density of the people and the skills that allows the jobs to exist at all? The idea that jobs can be placed anywhere flies in the face of pretty much every single city's economic development efforts over the past few decades. It's not realistic, or reasonable. What can be placed anywhere is housing. The only re…

People usually cite network effects, or more simply the VC and big money people live in sf and nyc and prefer their workers live there too. How many billionaires live in Boise?

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

#136

Post by dang »

honkycat wrote: post #110

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 li…

Regional flamewar isn't allowed here any more than nationalistic flamewar is. We ban accounts that post this way, so please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#137

Post by dgudkov »

epistasis wrote: post #109
dgudkov wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regre…

>Density is the response to land scarcity that takes away power from landlords, not the other way around.

"Density" in my comment is population density, not construction density. Unfortunately, construction density (and height) is restricted by zoning and all kinds of bylaws. Most residential areas in North America allow only single-family houses and prohibit multi-tenant buildings with 3-4 floors or more. Landlords benefit from such zoning rules immensely, because they drive land price up.

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

#138

Post by ip26 »

DuskStar wrote: post #120
ip26 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The middle is old luxury housing.

Is that a unique SV situation? Where I live, most new housing is close to or only slightly above general market price for the corresponding market segment (e.g. 2br condo, 3br SFH, etc). It usually seems to come with pretty ordinary trappings- ordinary countertops, ordinary fixtures, maybe the floors are laminate, etc. Luxury appointment can be found, but nobody's building five hundred units with gold inlay.

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

#139

Post by ip26 »

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…

new construction in the Bay Area is luxury inherently

The very state of newness is in itself luxury? That's a pretty damning assessment.

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

#140

Post by ip26 »

80mph wrote: post #114
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…

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.

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but you don't exactly solve the problem of fire propagation from house to house by putting everyone all into one building. A given suburban house might propagate and burn down. But if a 500 unit apartment building goes, you're losing 500 units, no ifs ands or buts.

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