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Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

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Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#121

Post by arcticbull »

exabrial wrote: post #110

How to increase the housing supply: get the government out. Places in California requires things like requiring all homes to have a high amperage outlet in the garage for charging electric cars. Do you really think people that are struggling to keep a roof over their head are driving a Tesla?

Yes, let's get the government out, of deciding how tall houses can be.

Removing the requirement for a high-amperage outlet (a tiny incremental cost during building) is like an umbrella in a hurricane. Nice to have, but totally doesn't solve the real problem.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#122

Post by SolaceQuantum »

hanniabu wrote: post #108
treis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't really save all that much money by building a barely livable pod vs an actual apartment. The big cost items are kitchens and bathrooms. Those are mostly fixed costs, i.e. it costs the same to plumb a toilet, shower, and sink in a 50 sq foot bathroom as a 100 sq foot one. Only when you get to stupid high real estate cost does a ~300 sq foot pod start making sense over ~600 ft 1 bed or ~1000 sq ft 2 beds. It'…

> The big cost items are kitchens and bathrooms Why does a pod need a kitchen and bathroom? If it had those it'd be called a studio apartment. A pod is essentially anything from a dorm room styled apartment to a half-height room big enough to have a bed to sleep in and a shelf for a few items (like the Japanese have). In any of those cases you'd have communal kitchens and bathrooms. This would actually also be good s…

Doesn't this already exist in communal living places like Ollie in NYC?

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#123

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

> the city passed a series of neighborhood plans in and around downtown that relaxed zoning and removed parking requirements, making it easier and cheaper to build.

Wait, you mean deregulation isn’t just a republican talking point? And restrictive city (and state) governments were the problem this whole time???

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#124

Post by raldi »

MarketRateSucks wrote: post #96
raldi wrote: post #8

See also: Friday's “Don’t Blame Tech Bros for the Housing Crisis” column: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/opinion/sunday/housing-cr...

Real galaxy brain take there. “Housing prices have always fluctuated, therefore these fluctuations are unrelated to this other highly correlated factor”. Not that I disagree much with the substance of pointing out Prop 13, etc, but you should also definitely blame tech for loading an entire industry into a metro area.

Traditionally, metro areas would have not just one, but many industries (e.g., NYC with banking, fashion, journalism, law, or Tokyo which is the capital of most of Japan's industries, and the national capital too), but they would also allow housing to be built, and that did indeed avoid the kinds of housing crisis we're seeing in cities today that are practicing exclusionary zoning.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#125

Post by landryraccoon »

huntertwo wrote: post #24
arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

Two thoughts 1) Isn't a developer also making an investment when they build these high as hell micro-apartment apartment buildings? 2) How do you avoid a race to the bottom in terms of housing quality when you allow said micro-apartments? Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods while the rich are living in abundant villas? I'm all for affordable housing but it seems too nuance…

> How do you avoid a race to the bottom in terms of housing quality when you allow said micro-apartments? Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods while the rich are living in abundant villas?

I don't see how this is worse than what we have right now. SF housing is already dystopian.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#126

Post by mschuster91 »

helen___keller wrote: post #83
nhebb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. Apparently I'm the lone dissenter on this, but I think for many people this is a side benefit that they may hope for, but the primary objective is simply to own a home that they can live in and raise a family.

I don't know your age, but from my experience this is a generational thing. During the great suburban expansion, houses were parroted as your greatest asset and your biggest investment. In the modern era, if you don't own a home already you probably couldn't care less about the investment quality of a home. You just want a home to live in and call yours without an 80 minute commute.

> During the great suburban expansion, houses were parroted as your greatest asset and your biggest investment.

The "investment" should not be "I can sell this in 20 years for a boatload of profit" but rather "I don't have to pay rent when retired, only property taxes + maintenance + energy".

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#127

Post by fortran77 »

arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

Many people who own houses don't want the value/price of their homes to go up, because that means property taxes will go up.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#128

Post by zhoujianfu »

treis wrote: post #81
sampo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods At least the poor would have the choice between the barely livable pod in downtown, or a house 2 hours commute away. Currently they can only choose the latter.

You don't really save all that much money by building a barely livable pod vs an actual apartment. The big cost items are kitchens and bathrooms. Those are mostly fixed costs, i.e. it costs the same to plumb a toilet, shower, and sink in a 50 sq foot bathroom as a 100 sq foot one. Only when you get to stupid high real estate cost does a ~300 sq foot pod start making sense over ~600 ft 1 bed or ~1000 sq ft 2 beds. It'…

Yeah, I think it’s silly when people complain about developers not building affordable housing.

Nobody expects car manufacturers to build new run-down clunkers they sell for $200... they build new cars and people who can’t afford them generally buy cheap used ones!

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#129

Post by Shivetya »

huntertwo wrote: post #24
arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

Two thoughts 1) Isn't a developer also making an investment when they build these high as hell micro-apartment apartment buildings? 2) How do you avoid a race to the bottom in terms of housing quality when you allow said micro-apartments? Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods while the rich are living in abundant villas? I'm all for affordable housing but it seems too nuance…

the fad of tiny homes shows what can be done with a limit amount of space and we must always be aware of one fact.

our bias as to what we would accept is not what others would accept. let alone what qualifies as a micro apartment, is the size the same world wide or even nation wide?

We already have a market that is effectively subsidized/funded by government and that is why we have the problem we do have. Government does not have to serve the market, it only has to serve the particular housing program put in place and no more.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#130

Post by helen___keller »

MarketRateSucks wrote: post #96
raldi wrote: post #8

See also: Friday's “Don’t Blame Tech Bros for the Housing Crisis” column: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/opinion/sunday/housing-cr...

Real galaxy brain take there. “Housing prices have always fluctuated, therefore these fluctuations are unrelated to this other highly correlated factor”. Not that I disagree much with the substance of pointing out Prop 13, etc, but you should also definitely blame tech for loading an entire industry into a metro area.

> definitely blame tech for loading an entire industry into a metro area

Supply and demand gonna supply and demand. It's weird to "blame tech" for existing and injecting a massive amount of jobs into our economy; there's no metro region that could have handled that growth without the same effect on price, and there is no singular entity responsible for concentrating tech into a single city instead of distributed more evenly.

Maybe Houston could have come close to handling it without massive price increases, but I'm guessing Houston is too spread out to enjoy strong network effects, and probably would have become gridlocked with traffic to boot.

New York could have "handled" it, from a raw housing & transit perspective, but the region is already pricy and all of Manhattan (which has the best access to jobs and transit across the metropolitan region) has long since gentrified, so I don't know if that really counts.

(Of course, part of the reason no region could have handled it is precisely because of how Americans approach zoning and growth. Like our politics, our cities and neighborhoods seem to be static until there's an absolutely overwhelming force against the status quo, and even then sometimes that's not enough to change anything)

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