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California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

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Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#281

Post by pdonis »

scarface74 wrote: post #271
barry-cotter wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t true. The only industry I’m aware of that might actually be a natural monopoly, as in the efficient number of companies is one, is aircraft manufacturing. Local utilities aren’t natural monopolies, cable isn’t a natural monopoly, water, gas, electricity, these definitely aren’t natural monopolies. If manufacturing semiconductors, with fabs that cost tens of billions of dollars isn’t a natural monopoly, why…

Local utilities aren’t natural monopolies, cable isn’t a natural monopoly, water, gas, electricity, these definitely aren’t natural monopolies. How are utilities not a natural monopoly? The cost and disruption of building infrastructure to serve everyone is definitely a monopoly. Do you really want four or five companies digging up streets and building pipes, wires, etc? Also, if you had multiple companies competing,…

> How are utilities not a natural monopoly?

Water, sewer, and storm drain, yes, that's a plausible natural monopoly. Electrical power, telephone, and internet, no. At most the conduits that the cables have to go through could be a natural monopoly, but not the services themselves.

> if you had multiple companies competing, they would only serve the most profitable customers who live in the most dense areas. You see that now with internet providers - especially fiber

This could be an argument for individual municipalities building their own infrastructure, owning it, and leasing it to service providers like ISPs.

It is not an argument for what we actually have in the US, which is higher-level governments giving monopolies to private companies, and those private companies successfully suing individual municipalities that try to build their own infrastructure, own it, and lease it to service providers.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#282

Post by neilparikh »

scarface74 wrote: post #277
harryh wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone in this situation can easily take out a home equity loan to pay the taxes and come out way ahead. Your assertion that the higher taxes would force them to move is wrong.

Say you have equity in a non public company, would you be okay if the government taxed your equity forcing you to take out a loan against it?

These 2 scenarios aren't equivalent. Land is an exclusionary good; you using it means I can't. Equity is non-exclusionary. Additionally, the city has to provide services to owners of land, which requires money. The government has no such obligation to owners of equity.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#283

Post by Twixes »

justinzollars wrote: post #168
bsimpson wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad that my supervisor got replaced with Dean Preston, whose entire persona is crafted around housing policy; yet, he is so staunchly against actually building housing. He's the epitome of everything wrong with SF Supervisors: they pit communities against each other to create political gridlock and build voting blocs for reelection, but do fuck-all to actually solve San Francisco's problems. No matter how…

Dean is a nice guy but I believe the way he looks at the problem is naive. He believes land lords are to blame for high costs - but I see this as a function of what the market is willing to support. He could guide the invisible hand of the market if he would allow more housing. But he favors character of the neighborhood over housing.

Landlords are to blame for squeezing people like lemons (which extracts a lot money from software engineers and the like while leaving lower classes without decent housing), but the underlying problem is indeed insufficient supply. But what's really being done about either of these things?

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#284

Post by koboll »

codemac wrote: post #99
exjdjeejfh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principled is a way of making it sound less terrible than 'restrained'. California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts.

Are Napa, Atherton, and Malibu filled with environmentalists? I'm so confused by your reaction, are there specific housing policies that are focused on the environment that have had bigger effects than things like prop 13? or cities with 30k jobs in a year but 300 units of housing (looking at you, mountain view)?

I think their point is that environmental concerns are a convenient criticism when you don't want to come out and say "building adequate housing in my neighborhood threatens to slightly slow the growth in value of the investment I have decided to dump my entire net worth into"

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#285

Post by neilparikh »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #269
dodobirdlord wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no victims. What a ridiculous take. Besides, the problem of people wanting to remain in their existing homes is trivially solvable by deferring property taxes as liens against the property to be paid on the death of the owner. Average property tax in California is ~1%, so a person could live an entire lifetime without having to pay anything. But of course that was never the real reason anyone supported th…

Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t tax people for living in the properties they own. Property taxes are just another way to ensure that one never owns their homes 100%. Leins? Who in their right minds would agree to this? When you want someone to part with their money or wealth, you have to give them a reason to do so. ‘We want what you have’ is not a good reason. It becomes a punitive tax and is based on coe…

> You can’t tax people for living in the properties they own.

We have to do this if we want to allocate land properly. Land is an exclusionary good, so one person owning a piece of land means that someone else can't own it.

Imagine a society with no property tax. What prevents one (or a few people) from buying up all the land, holding it indefinitely, and then charging arbitrarily high rent to everyone else? Property tax forces people to sell if they using it inefficiently, and makes sure that few aren't able to take land and exclude everyone else.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#286

Post by neilparikh »

fortran77 wrote: post #37
lern_too_spel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason California has the highest sales and income taxes is that it has the lowest property tax. People who have held property for a very long time are taxed very little relative to how they would be taxed in other states, and people who are new are taxed a lot.

California does NOT have the lowest property tax. It is very distasteful for you to try to win an argument by lying. http://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/property-tax-by-state And if you rank the states by percentage revenue from property tax, you'll see they are right in the middle https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

The property tax in Palo Alto is 0.42%, which is less than 48 states in US. So, not dead last, but I think you can agree that it's pretty close.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#287

Post by koboll »

dragonwriter wrote: post #184
0xB31B1B wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all 40 senators in CA own a home in CA and something like 65% own at least one unit they rent out. This decision is extremely frustrating coming from a legislature filled with landlords.

> This decision is extremely frustrating coming from a legislature filled with landlords. Not only do the people have the power to vote out legislators, in California they also have the power to bypass them and legislate directly. But, while there is broad consensus that housing is a problem, there isn't broad consensus on solutions among the public any more than there is among legislators.

Homeowners are disproportionately likely to vote, so their constituents no doubt agree with them on this issue.

The real problem is that when you incentivize and subsidize putting your net worth into a single large investment vehicle, and then let holders of that investment decide how much competition to it will be allowed nearby, it creates a vicious cycle of ever-increasing supply shortage.

Eventually, of course, this will reverse. When the boomers die, renters will be the ones voting. But not before an entire generation has their net worth leeched by a geriatric vampire class of rent-seeking housing supply hoarders.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#288

Post by [deleted] »

bobthepanda wrote: post #241
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paris is shaped like a snail and concentric circles of density and affluence with the inner most circle being most affluent. Paris also has a stellar and reliable public transport system and is very walkable. Bay Area wants the density (and property taxes inflow) but don’t want to invest in infrastructure and public transport.

> Bay Area wants the density (and property taxes inflow) They already have sufficient density and property prices to actually invest in infrastructure. The problem has always been Prop 13 and the artificial limits placed on taxes that would otherwise fund infrastructure locally.

[deleted]

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#289

Post by joejerryronnie »

Twixes wrote: post #276
jimmaswell wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preserving nice low density areas is not selfish. Why does everyone need to be entitled to live anywhere they want?

Maybe because that's where the best jobs are. Maybe because that's where they're from and it's not their fault they're getting priced out (gentrification). Maybe because they just really like the place. In any case, you don't get to be a gatekeeper. Cities are public.

If the OP doesn’t get to be a gatekeeper, why do you get to be a change agent?

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#290

Post by arrosenberg »

pdonis wrote: post #279
arrosenberg wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not completely sure about the etymology of the word, but I do know that in the US, most monopolies were not government granted. They were achieved through aggressive M&A, market manipulation, and other abusive practices (much of which should be seen as a negative externality on the affected human communities). That is exactly why the government was granted significant power to restrain concentrated entities from…

> in the US, most monopolies were not government granted Railroads: government granted. Public utilities: government granted. Telephone: government granted. Air travel: government granted. Cable TV: goverment granted. ISP: government granted. Seems like a lot.

It seems like the common factor enforcing the monopoly is high capital cost as a barrier to entry. That moat allows monopolizing companies to focus their resources on capturing the state to maintain their monopoly status.

The remedy would seem to be for more decisive government action - to regulate or nationalize the infrastructure, break up the incumbents as necessary, and create a robust market for services that utilize the infrastructure and pay rents and taxes to the government.

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