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California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

nytimes.com

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Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#601

Post by hedora »

jariel wrote: post #566
buss wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I unironically want 4 million new homes in San Francisco. The housing shortage in the Bay Area might be the single largest drag on American prosperity.

"Yes, I unironically want 4 million new homes in San Francisco." Why would any SF resident care even a little bit what non-residents think of their housing situation? "The housing shortage in the Bay Area might be the single largest drag on American prosperity." Have you considered that someone's home, their life is not a function of 'industrial prosperity'? And that they're not interested in having their neighbourho…

It’s also up to the residents to pay property taxes, and owners not to horde empty housing units as investments. Also, I’ve been a resident here for over a decasde, and I’m sick of paying small fortunes to landed gentry.

Bay area housing is a ponzi scheme, and younger families have to choose between their careers and buying in at nonsensical pricing.

Local governments suppress housing starts and intentionally snarl the roads to keep the house of cards standing.

Sooner or later the older residents will be outnumbered by people that moved here, and the reckoning will probably be swift and severe. As you said, it’ll be up to the residents to decide.

A few years back, there were signs in Cupertino saying “no four story apartments”. I agree. If you’re within 0.25 miles of transit, it should be illegal to build (or improve) anything that short. I’m guessing this isn’t what the NIMBYs had in mind though.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#602

Post by jariel »

pmiller2 wrote: post #576
jariel wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yes, I unironically want 4 million new homes in San Francisco." Why would any SF resident care even a little bit what non-residents think of their housing situation? "The housing shortage in the Bay Area might be the single largest drag on American prosperity." Have you considered that someone's home, their life is not a function of 'industrial prosperity'? And that they're not interested in having their neighbourho…

Why do you assume the person you’re replying to isn’t a SF resident? Their profile indicates they are, in fact.

I'm not assuming the residency of the commenter, my comments are directed to commenters in general. Everyone seems to have a strong view of how many homes SF ought to have, moreover, most are making false assumptions about the nature of the problem, and the unassailable civic virtue of their own motivations without respecting the valid lamentations of 'the other side'.

In particular, tech people, or even the intelligentsia in general, tend to have an odd disregard for cultural issues and tend to see 'housing' as entirely an economic or civic function (i.e. numbers, pricing, density, affordability) while disregarding the nature of the fact that these are communities and homes. (Witness the fact that everyone on this thread, and in most reference articles tend to talk about issues such as 'price')

I watched in my lifetime the city of Vancouver get bulldozed over and replace with a zillion apartment buildings. The money is nice, but otherwise, it's a brutally garish city, the architecture is thoughtless, it's just another 'pop up' city of the theme of the New Millenium / Pacific Rim. It will not age well. What's more - even as Van has evolved towards this super-high density Hong Kong / New York physicality, costs have skyrocketed and affordability has plummeted. This should be of no surprise of course, as almost everyone in the Western world, more density generally implies less affordability and certainly 'less space'. Have a look [1]. Texan cities like Dallas are considerably more affordable and considerably less dense.

Bulldozing most of a beautiful city possibly against the wishes of its citizens to drive some kind of risky civic/industrial experiment is ... an extreme view.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#603

Post by jariel »

dasil003 wrote: post #574
jariel wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yes, I unironically want 4 million new homes in San Francisco." Why would any SF resident care even a little bit what non-residents think of their housing situation? "The housing shortage in the Bay Area might be the single largest drag on American prosperity." Have you considered that someone's home, their life is not a function of 'industrial prosperity'? And that they're not interested in having their neighbourho…

Facebook engineers are not the ones being forced out of the area.

Most new housing in the Bay will go to higher than average income earners, not poorer people, unfortunately. The Bay is a very dynamic city there vastly more people who would like to live there than actually do, given the right conditions. The Bay may have to contend with paying 'regular people' simply a lot more and contemplate actually sharing more of that wealth being created.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#604

Post by DataWorker »

buss wrote: post #444
mrfusion wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the movement growing? Do you see a way forward?

We're growing a lot! YIMBY Action just brought in People for Housing Orange County and Peninsula For Everyone as affiliate clubs. We're in the process of expanding into Denver and NYC. The demise of Scott Wiener's SB50 this year has certainly been a disappointment, but we try not to pin our hopes on any single solution. It took us 50 years to get where we are, and we expect it'll take at least 10 to get out. That wil…

Then why align with business interests against the interests of individual citizens? You know that most voters are not high paid tech workers frustrated by the lack of luxury mix used lofts. I’m sure with enough pr money from developers you can trick some poor folks into thinking a development boom will help them, but you are betting on ignorance. The economics are very clear; building in the Bay Area cannot lower prices. Build where it makes sense, outside the Bay Area, at a rate that’s optimal for people and the environment. Plenty of room in Livermore for high density, green, lower cost development. If we added a million people to north beach, it wouldn’t be north beach anymore. Is that the goal?

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#605

Post by bbreier »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #411
bbreier wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you been to either cities?

Yes, I've lived in both.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#606

Post by jariel »

jjeaff wrote: post #580
jariel wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no shortage of homes in San Francisco. Prices are a function of demand and that's it. Every city has to ultimately decide what kind of community they want to have and then act accordingly. As SF is an attractive city, every home ever built there will essentially be bought or occupied, there is nearly an unlimited number of people who would like to live there - so it's merely a matter of what kind of density…

SF is not a neighborhood of "fairly expensive homes". It is a neighborhood of some of the most expensive homes on the planet. At a median home price of $1.7m, owning a home in SF is reserved for those grandfathered in or the wealthy.

The homes on Monte Rey are even more expensive but it's beside the point. There is plenty of inexpensive housing in Cali and the US to accommodate most needs.

Everyone deserves 'affordable housing' but not everyone deserves 'affordable housing' in the specific spot they want.

And FYI New York and Hong Kong even more expensive and much denser - should NYC 'triple its density'? Will that make thins better? Or maybe there's something missing from this logic.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#607

Post by hedora »

ScottBurson wrote: post #578
BurningFrog wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger point is that today allowing housing construction is a burden for cities. You hint that it would be good if all cities shared that burden. This is especially true in California, due to Prop 13. If we reformed the relevant rules, so cities profited from allowing new housing, I think a lot would change in this area!

Yeah, Prop. 13 is such a disaster. Supposedly, the big selling point was that seniors on fixed incomes were getting priced out of their homes. But that would only happen because they have a substantial, appreciating asset . These aren't poor people who deserve our sympathy; they're relatively well-off people with a cash-flow problem! We could have solved their cash-flow problem without destroying our cities' tax base…

Here’s a simple compromise that most people I know support:

Eliminate prop 13 for all but one property, both for individuals and for businesses. This would eliminate the current tax loophole for investment properties, and demand that tech companies that have scaled to more than one campus pay their fair share to the communities they are located in.

Also, have prop 13 valuations reset whenever the property changes hands (including inheritance, and, for commercial real estate, this would get rid of the “sell via a holding company” loophole).

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#608

Post by _hardwaregeek »

greedo wrote: post #270
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I don't think communities should go away. Cities can have communities if you build them in the right way. I just think these communities need to evolve from the particular format of a single family house with a lawn, car and garage. Plus I'm a little perplexed at the library analogy. I'm not saying we need to lower funding or anything. If anything we should be pumping more money into suburbs so that they can build…

It's the idea that if someone doesn't like something, it doesn't matter if others do. In my town, a typical midwest college town, we have suburbs, we have more urban areas with smaller/older houses in row neighborhoods. We have apartments galore, and condos in downtown areas. A bit of something for everyone. Expecting a community to "evolve" means losing something of this. Other than young people who want to live in…

First of all, I get that people like living in the suburbs. But people also like eating beef and like driving Hummers. Unfortunately we need to do less of all of these.

> Apartment living is no fun with families.

That is a gigantic assumption. I grew up in an apartment and it was great. My parents wouldn't trade living in an apartment in a major city for a house in the suburbs for anything. Plenty of families all around the world do just fine in apartments.

I disagree that existing cities can't be redesigned. Sure, we'd need to invest in public transportation. And sure, we'd have to build other infrastructure. But the case in the article is a pretty obvious case for expansion. You have a town that is 30 minutes by rail from SF, an epicenter of insanely expensive real estate, and yet nobody can expand because people are worried it'll destroy their precious suburbs.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#609

Post by mlyle »

RangerScience wrote: post #588
mlyle wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hmm. I like the sentiment, but I'd be worried about the implementation (sounds like complex tax math) You already need to keep track of two assessed values for prop 13, along with history for catch-up basis increase. All you need to keep track of here is original tax rate (to know the maximum for this year) and deferred amount. > I can imagine a housing bubble popping and you end up under water due to owed taxes wh…

> No one's guaranteed to make money on every asset. There's a difference between "I have lost money on this thing" and "I owe more because I sold this thing". By a house (debt-free) for $100, and, say, tax of $1. Something happens for a decade, so it's worth $1000, tax of $10 per year for 10 years; $90 is deferred. Later, thing un-happens and more, now house is worth $60, with $90 in deferred tax, so if you sell it..…

> By a house (debt-free) for $100, and, say, tax of $1. Something happens for a decade, so it's worth $1000, tax of $10 per year for 10 years; $90 is deferred. Later, thing un-happens and more, now house is worth $60, with $90 in deferred tax, so if you sell it... you end up owing $30, for a net loss of $70, instead of the $50 in loss on the asset?

Takes a long time to get to these situations without crazy valuation swings (+900%, then -94%?) and under 2%-ish tax rates. That would be a net loss of $130, too.

> ...or is there something I'm getting really, really wrong?

Pretty much. In most property tax regimes, it's the parcel itself that has the tax owed, and the assessor doesn't/can't go after past owners. Most mortgages are recourse-free, too-- it may be bad for your credit to not pay, but they take the property and don't come after your other assets.

There's a societal benefit, here, too, BTW. If you have a property that's worth $10M to others, but you employ it for a use that's worth $100k to you... accruing tax on the $10M encourages you to make a transaction that will leave the property better employed.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#610

Post by exterrestrial »

davidw wrote: post #227
Spooky23 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rental housing has price floor that distorts the market. Once a property diverges from the requirements of housing subsidy programs, it usually gets abandoned. In most places new supply is high end and is making more housing available for people who don’t lack access.

> In most places new supply is high end and is making more housing available for people who don’t lack access. In most places, new cars are more expensive than used ones, but if you stopped providing new cars, the price of the used ones would shoot up as everyone started competing for a dwindling supply of cars. Same goes for housing. Also, it's a longer term process with housing, but 'filtering' is a real thing: htt…

You can’t compare cars to real estate and property.

For one, most property and real estate appreciates in market value on it’s own. This makes spec construction viable, and why most new apartment buildings in expensive cities are ”luxury” units and rented for very high rates. The owners are happy to let them sit empty and starve the market to max out demand when they know there is enough jobs in the area that people are competing heavily to move there.

In addition, the markets are tiny compared with cars, which are easy to move to cars to other markets (cities).

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