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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

#211

Post by khuey »

specialist wrote: post #58
huntertwo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please don't sour the discourse by providing a false choice. There are a lot of options (opportunities) between residential zoned single family dwellings with huge setbacks and love hotels. Simply progressively incrementally upzoning areas, on a fixed 30 year schedule, is The Correct Answer. So that (for instance) Seattle would go from 75% zoned residential today to 70% in 2050. That kind of long term planning makes…

The idea that "allowing multifamily housing" is somehow different from "zoned residential" shows an interesting cognitive bias here.

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

#212

Post by mattmaroon »

beamatronic wrote: post #178
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…

I think you have a false choice in there somewhere. Yes we want housing to grow more than 2%. No we don’t need housing to grow by 500%.

If housing grows by more than wages, it gets progressively more unaffordable. There is no number at which it is both a good investment and remains affordable because those two things are, by definition, opposite.

Even in the best growing markets, like San Francisco, housing is still not a very good investment. It's only gone up about 8% per year over the last decade. That significantly underperformed the s&p 500.

The real reason people want to use it as an investment is that you can get it at a very low interest loan, whereas you cannot with the s&p. this has the unfortunate effect of making well-off people more well-off, at the expense of making poor people poorer.

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

#213

Post by gnopgnip »

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…

(1) does not have to be true. You can "lose" money, or break even selling a home and still come out ahead compared to renting. An example of this is "low income" homes that have strict price controls, and are in high demand with waiting lists or lotteries to buy.

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

#214

Post by dominotw »

arcticbull wrote: post #56
dominotw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ? Why are there endless articles in news that this isn't the case.

HDI is a composite score of which housing is an element. It includes all sorts of things like access to water, access to health care, etc, etc. I'm suggesting that continuing to develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly. I'm unaware of any studies which correlate specifically housing wi…

> develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly.

That doesn't logically compute though.

Decrease in population is correlated with housing shortage in US.

Only conclusions we can draw from this is,

1. Housing is irrelevant to population growth

or

2. Decreasing housing will lead to further population shrinking.

3. Housing has unknown effects on population growth. In which case it can go either way.

I don't see how you it can lead to your conclusion.

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

#215

Post by telchar »

treis wrote: post #143
bobthepanda wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of older apartments don‘t have full kitchens, but that isn‘t a bad thing. Some people just don‘t need full kitchens, and you can get by with a hot plate and a rice cooker.

A full appliance package can be bought for under 2 grand retail. You can save a little bit of labor/material by eliminating the need for a couple circuits, but not that much. Not much extra work to pull additional wires if you already have to do one. So the savings just aren't there to meaningfully impact the housing cost.

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth here. You say that kitchens and bathrooms are the "big cost items" yet here you say that omitting or scaling them back doesn't save much. How can both things be true?

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

#216

Post by sagarm »

rch wrote: post #185
ogre_codes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. Not just city councils. Residents, environmental groups, and special interest groups controlled by residents have a huge influence on limiting housing through legislation as well. Often places where housing is approved by the city are stalled in courts for years. City councils can control some of t…

It's worth noting that some of the groups you mention are motivated by a general opposition to rent seeking developers, and would be perfectly amenable to a 6 unit resident-owned coop in the same location.

Are those residents going to build that 6-unit themselves?

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

#217

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

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…

This is so correct!

I wish we could sticky this post at the top of every housing discussion.

Progress means things become more affordable and cheaper. For instance the price of lighting up a room has come down my many orders of magnitude. It used to cost a significant portion of one's earning to buy a candle and light up a room for an hour, now it costs mere pennies. I hope some day humanity can have that kind of progress in housing as well.

The way to get there is to start opening up innovation. Start letting builders build it the way they want, and allow startups to create new ways to make buildings. We can deregulate certain parts of the towns/cities or start new ones. We need to open things up and reduce barriers to entry. That's why there was an explosion of innovation on the internet: no barriers to entry and no regulations to get in the way. Let's do the same for housing and see what progress we can make.

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

#218

Post by wnissen »

bonniemuffin wrote: post #31
huntertwo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Currently the poor are homeless or enduring multi-hour mega-commutes or stuffing a bunch of people into a single studio apartment. Well-located "barely livable wage slave pods" would be a huge improvement for a lot of people. I agree that the race to the bottom effect is a problem, but I think even the worst-case scenario would still be better than our existing housing situation.

Correct. A fire in a nice, completely unremarkable neighborhood about 40 miles east of San Francisco destroyed 4 units and made 35 people homeless. Almost 9 people to a home. And this is a solid 3-hour roundtrip commute from San Francisco or Mountain View. "Dickensian" is the word for it. Not literally, perhaps, because the housing situation in Dickens's time was even worse, but there is human misery on a broad scale.

https://www.independentnews.com/news/chestnut-street-fire-in...

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

#219

Post by afpx »

pertymcpert wrote: post #209
afpx wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. But, are you expecting a 10% decrease in prices, or 0.5%? Why so defensive? I’m asking Because if it works, I’d like to sell the idea to skeptics. We all lean scientific here, right?

It's not him/her being defensive, it's basic economics that shouldn't have to be explained...

Sometimes one has to understand intermediate economics ....

For instance, in cases of inelastic demand and low liquidity (like housing), if prices are pegged at a maximum that buyers can pay, the actual equilibrium price could be much higher. In that case, a small amount of extra supply will not lower prices.

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

#220

Post by rubyn00bie »

StacyRoberts wrote: post #204
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…

This is a very urban viewpoint. There are millions of people in rural areas who can't afford to buy a home as well. Cheap mortgages are a huge factor,I agree with that. I think city policies are a problem but nowhere near 100%. Banks and cheap risk free lending massively dwarf the impact of city policy.

That'd be a big no friend, since 80% of America's population lives in urban centers.

It's a strictly factual viewpoint that you want to distort to fit your lens which is quite clearly in favor of your (likely) minority (rural) freeloading* living situation.

America has by far and away the cheapest/easiest country to buy a home in general.

* Most people who live in rural areas are subsidized in huge amounts by the government for things like telephone access, electricity, and roads. They says they "only rely on themselves" but it's bullshit.

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