Over or under? Pretty simple to make one law that caps rents like they do in many cities in Europe.
One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
31–40 of 84 posts
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#32Using this database of regulation metadata, https://quantgov.org/state-regdata/ the articles starts out saying that the California Code of Regulations "contains more than 21 million words". Which made me curious: how many words for Texas' code? Answer: 15 million. $ grep '^[[:digit:]]' admincode_california_metadata.csv | cut -d, -f5 | tr '\n' '+' | (cat; printf "0\n") | bc 21172868 $ grep '^[[:digit:]]' admincode_tex…
I think the most important issue in modern governance that nobody ever talks about is the tendency for the number of laws and the size of the legal code to monotonically grow towards infinity
I’ve heard of the idea of baking expiation into any given law. Useful laws get renewed, useless ones get expunged.
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
California's property tax is less than half of that of Texas, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Combine that with the fact that CA has prop 13, and one of the highest GDP per capita, and... Does anyone really think it's the regulation that's making prices high?? Sure, they're not helping. But high incomes and low taxes are a recipe for high prices. The only other state with high incomes and this…
I'm glad that you agree that CA taxes and regulates real estate. The consensus is pretty much its the regulation that's doing it. Given the regulatory environment in CA, I would certainly never attempt to build a house there. I personally know people that have and the regulatory costs and delays are just ridiculous. The next step is obvious. The government must come to the rescue and subsidize housing.
> I'm glad that you agree that CA taxes and regulates real estate.
What kind of manipulative garbage is this? onlyrealcuzzo isn't agreeing with the point you made; you aren't agreeing with the point onlyrealcuzzo made; and the point that you're making is only very slightly and tangentially supported by the thing that you're pointing out that onlyrealcuzzo tangentially said. This looks much more like you're trying to play gotcha games with onlyrealcuzzo's post, rather than dealing with it in good faith.
Edited to fix the user name.
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
If construction takes longer, costs increase. This is indisputable. Imagine you buy a piece of land for $100,000 with the intention of developing it. Until the property is developed and sold, you have numerous carrying costs (taxes, insurance, debt payments, etc.). In California, your annual carrying costs may easily be $8,000-$10,000 per $100,000. If it takes you one year to develop the property, you need to sell th…
Regulations are known upfront. Good contractors and architects know each city's processes and how to navigate through them.
That's probably true, but it also limits the number of available contractors to the ones who know a particular city's processes. It would be harder for a smaller contractor to operate across multiple jurisdictions. So it limits competition, which drives up prices.
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#35I personally feel regulation slows down new construction, but doesn't necessarily increase costs. Dilapidated houses still go for large sums, so I suspect land costs to be a major reason as well. Additionally, lack of contractors is becoming an issue(demand increases, costs increases) with many of them working indefinitely over in fire-ravaged areas like Paradise or Santa Rosa.
Regulation most certainly increases construction costs. Safety features will definitely increase cost. So does environmental compliance. I don't necessarily think those are bad things, but they definitely increase costs.
From the article:
"These energy rules reflect an important priority for Californians, but they contribute to staggering construction costs and, in turn, higher house prices. Affordable housing builders spend $400,000 per unit, on average, for new housing in Los Angeles, more than any other city in the country. State energy standards contribute to this cost."
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#36I personally feel regulation slows down new construction, but doesn't necessarily increase costs. Dilapidated houses still go for large sums, so I suspect land costs to be a major reason as well. Additionally, lack of contractors is becoming an issue(demand increases, costs increases) with many of them working indefinitely over in fire-ravaged areas like Paradise or Santa Rosa.
Slowing down a project increases cost. Also if your total construction per year can’t keep up with incoming migration the net difference will be demand growth which necessarily raises housing costs.
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#37Full disclosure: This is an op ed piece from a right-wing "free market" think tank funded by the Koch brothers.[1]
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#38Using this database of regulation metadata, https://quantgov.org/state-regdata/ the articles starts out saying that the California Code of Regulations "contains more than 21 million words". Which made me curious: how many words for Texas' code? Answer: 15 million. $ grep '^[[:digit:]]' admincode_california_metadata.csv | cut -d, -f5 | tr '\n' '+' | (cat; printf "0\n") | bc 21172868 $ grep '^[[:digit:]]' admincode_tex…
Next step: programatically determine which state has more "regulation" based on text analysis.
[deleted]
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#39I am curious, would you be supportive of a federal law that takes over zoning if housing prices are more than x above the median income in that area? IE, take control away from NIMBAs?
Of course not. Why shouldn’t the people who live there be able to decide the character of their city? If the cost of living gets too high either people will move to lower cost of living and companies will follow or the opposite will happen. The United States is a big country with lots of land. Besides, the federal government is the least representative of people in larger cities. Your vote counts s lot more in rural…
For deep and persistent reasons, a society’s highest-value economic activity and growth will tend to be in cities. The stakes are much higher than architectural taste, and decisions about access to those economies affect everyone. People getting locked out of an economy have a stronger claim to a seat at the table than people worried about shadows.
An abundance of land suited to agriculture or resource extraction is irrelevant in a dispute about access to the 21st century economy, which is essentially urban.
Re: One reason for the high cost of housing in California is overregulation
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the most important issue in modern governance that nobody ever talks about is the tendency for the number of laws and the size of the legal code to monotonically grow towards infinity
I’ve heard of the idea of baking expiation into any given law. Useful laws get renewed, useless ones get expunged.
The article mentions that Rhode Island did that wholesale: "The Democratic-dominated Rhode Island government recently eliminated more than 30% of its rule volume by setting an expiration date for its entire regulatory code, forcing state agencies to start fresh."