411–420 of 645 posts
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Or maybe it’s due to lack of income. How about what do in Singapore? 97% of the population lives in state owned apartments on 99 year leases. Affordable to luxury homes for all income levels.
How about some of the much denser megacities? For example, Tokyo, or Seoul? Both are far more affordable than the much less dense first tier cities of the US.
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> You are absolutely correct that the root cause of the housing crisis is capitalism and the commodification of housing. Every other commodity in my life, food for instance, is dirt cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Housing is expensive because it is not a commodity. You have to beg the government to allow it to exist.
You're speaking past each other. In marxist economics literature "commodification" means something is able to be bought and sold, not that it is a commodity in the broader ecconomic sense (an undifferentiated good with broadly elastic demand). "Honor" isn't commodified, "dignity" isn't commodified, "food" is commodified, and "rare collectible art" is commodified.
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This is the most common argument I hear against building, but I am firmly convinced that the reason you have the commute problem in the Bay area isn't because of the number of people, but because the resistance to building has forced development further and further out. Consider that there is still housing growth, but its in South San Jose, Morgan Hill, and Gilroy. Those people all have to drive past Los Gatos, Cambe…
The market has shown people are willing to make the commute. Not only would you need to induce the current commuters to move, you also need to ensure they aren't simply replaced by more commuters, which isn't necessarily a given.
There is a fixed amount of people at any point in time in a metropolitan area. Building at the center will not make new people appear. It removes people from the commuting crowd.
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Because the great value of cities lies in the network effects that arise when hundreds of thousands of people live and work in the same neighborhoods. Ideas cross-polinate, spawn, and mutate creating wealth. And the value produced by a city increases super-linearly, perhaps exponentially, as population density increases. Policies that place artificial limits on city densities choke off that engine of wealth. It may b…
It’s not easy clearly if it means that someone else has to pay the price of it without any benefit. If you want older people/property owning seniors on fixed incomes to move out, pay them. It’s as simple as that. The truth is that most cannot pay. The value of the dollar they earn is imaginary. The whole system from Wall Street to wages to taxes is a Ponzi scheme. Land has value. Water or access to water has value. I…
No one is calling for Grandma to be evicted. Property taxes for residents could be allowed to accumulate unpaid until sale or transfer of a property.
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Since when is homeownership a requirement for retirement savings? What about IRA's, 401ks? That they chose to stake so much on a more volatile asset is not the fault of the people around them. Should cities sacrifice their urban well-being, pushing people out on the streets and guaranteeing lower-income people can never live there, for the sake of some elderly residents who put their eggs in one basket?
Investment in the market is incredibly volatile compared to real estate. That's why it's called "real" estate.
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You could absolutely have more diversity by simply adding people , rather than displacing or removing anyone, which is precisely what the comment suggested.
Sure. You can add people. IF they can afford to buy in. Clearly they can’t...that’s not the problem of existing homeowners who aren’t ‘diverse’ enough for the younger generation.
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> More neighbors also means more customers for local businesses, which means more shops and restaurants in walking distance Big reason I moved from Ljubljana, Slovenia to San Francisco. There’s just more stuff here and it’s amazing. The economies of scale are insane. I have more good restaurants within walking distance now than I used to have in the whole city.
FWIW I'm seriously considering doing the reverse. I don't care about restaurants, but cleanness and neatness and uniqueness in Slovenia is something I miss dearly in Cali
What I miss most is real nature. Trees that are properly green, the changing of seasons, the mountains in the distance. That’s what I miss most. And good european food. Super hard to find in SF
Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the best things you can do on several fronts: * It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out. * It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things. * It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might…
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That is correct. So people who got into the "stock market" are being protective about their investment. Unless there is a path to offer them relief they will always vote against diluting their hard earned money. Most of the people who didn't get in often approach the problem as, "yeah, screw them, make it good for me", and then act surprised as to why they don't get the votes. But it seems like you understand the iss…
And the people who did get in often approach the problem as, "yeah, screw them, I got mine." So we have two groups who have countervailing interests. But of course the property owners have more money--and also time, education, social capital, and so on--so they are the ones who usually win this fight.
A more charitable interpretation is that it takes a lifetime of wealth accumulation to be able to buy a home in today's California, and it is not unreasonable to be concerned about the potential of losing your life's single largest investment. Casting them as a cartoon villains solves nothing.
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I'm a renter but please, this is about families protecting the value of the primary asset that they hope to live on in retirement. Home assets don't skyrocket in value when there is lots of supply. If we frame this thing as reasonable-needs-of-renters vs unreasonable-wants-of-homeowners, then everyone is going to remain at loggerheads.
The house that the owner lives in is not an asset. It's a durable consumer good. Wanting your home to appreciate in value forever is like expecting your 20-year-old car to sell for more than its sticker price. It really only works for art installations, created by a collaboration of architect, engineer, and builder, with some living space inside. Framed in these terms, most families do not have any significant assets…
Thank you. I had already figured that considering one's house to be an asset is the wrong way to think about it, but lacked the words for how to then accurately describe what it actually is. "Durable consumer good" captures what a house is and does much better, IMO.
Getting this attitude more widespread is going to be difficult, sadly. The land that the house rests upon absolute is an asset, and the house thereupon can't be readily decoupled from the land (trailers and double-wides not withstanding). Thus conflating the actual asset, the land, with the consumer good it is presently being used to produce, the house, is a reasonable mental shortcut.