Long ago: let’s go West
Now: let’s go East
California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
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Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#12Thesis of the article: Californians are fleeing California and causing the same housing pressure in the spots they flee to. The real question is whether these other locations can avoid the high-density housing NIMBY response that became entrenched in California. It isn't just a matter of income disparity, which the article pivots to. It's also a matter of density and demand.
>>> That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.
The thesis is that the problem is not limited or caused by California, it' a national problem. California and Californian expat-related growth are just a particularly glaring example.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#13Thesis of the article: Californians are fleeing California and causing the same housing pressure in the spots they flee to. The real question is whether these other locations can avoid the high-density housing NIMBY response that became entrenched in California. It isn't just a matter of income disparity, which the article pivots to. It's also a matter of density and demand.
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Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#14Thesis of the article: Californians are fleeing California and causing the same housing pressure in the spots they flee to. The real question is whether these other locations can avoid the high-density housing NIMBY response that became entrenched in California. It isn't just a matter of income disparity, which the article pivots to. It's also a matter of density and demand.
The challenge you have is that people view housing as an investment . Americans expect their home values to keep pace with inflation. And because housing values are so expensive, there's a tremendous amount of psychological pressure to "preserve" what they've purchased beyond their own property line (eg: "Neighborhood character"). For these reason, they're going to oppose any new supply entering the market. The only…
You're being very unfair here. When you choose a place to live you are not only choosing the structure in which you reside, you are choosing the surrounding environment as well. People's desire to keep the environment from changing too much extends beyond financial interests. I live in a quiet suburban neighborhood, and I want it to remain a quiet suburban neighborhood even if the value of my house drops.
In fact, I would love to see the value of my house drop, along with the value of all the houses around me, because that would make it easier for me to move locally and improve some of the sub-optimal features of my current situation, not least of which is that my house is much too big for my needs. But I can't move to a smaller house because the tax hit I would take makes it cost more than I can justify. The smaller houses around me now cost more than our house did when we bought it, so if we move we take both a one-time capital gains hit and an ongoing property tax hit. None of that would happen if houses depreciated like cars.
UPDATE: Please take note that I am not saying I have any kind of right to keep my neighborhood from changing, only that my desire to keep it from changing is not purely financial. (In fact, in my case, it is the exact opposite!)
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#15Long ago: let’s go West Now: let’s go East
If you could animate it the flow might look like it bounces off the west coast and heads back inland. Technically, cities are infestations of humans.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#16Thesis of the article: Californians are fleeing California and causing the same housing pressure in the spots they flee to. The real question is whether these other locations can avoid the high-density housing NIMBY response that became entrenched in California. It isn't just a matter of income disparity, which the article pivots to. It's also a matter of density and demand.
The challenge you have is that people view housing as an investment . Americans expect their home values to keep pace with inflation. And because housing values are so expensive, there's a tremendous amount of psychological pressure to "preserve" what they've purchased beyond their own property line (eg: "Neighborhood character"). For these reason, they're going to oppose any new supply entering the market. The only…
>> The challenge you have is that people view housing as an investment. Americans expect their home values to keep pace with inflation.
Because real estate appreciation is one of the few ways left for people to be able to retire somewhat comfortably after working in jobs that pay garbage salaries and having to deal with medical costs that are sky high even with what people call “insurance”.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#17Thesis of the article: Californians are fleeing California and causing the same housing pressure in the spots they flee to. The real question is whether these other locations can avoid the high-density housing NIMBY response that became entrenched in California. It isn't just a matter of income disparity, which the article pivots to. It's also a matter of density and demand.
> Thesis of the article: Californians are fleeing California and causing the same housing pressure in the spots they flee to.
Anecdotally, it seems true. Utah housing used to be cheap, but now in Salt Lake valley the prices are just exploding as tons of Californians move to the tech hubs near Lehi and SLC and buy up all the houses with cash
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#18Why did the title get changed from the original NYT title? "The Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis."
We changed it because it was baity. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . When we do that, we try to replace the title with representative language from the article itself ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). There's nearly always something—if not a subtitle, then a sentence in the article body—that neutrally summarizes the article. (The lat…
Thanks for the explanation, and for the all the effort you guys put in moderating the site.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#19I would argue this isn't a California problem or a national problem. It's a global problem. Example: Hong Kong. In Hong Kong the government funds itself in large part through property ownership. They are therefore incentivised to make housing as expensive as possible. The result is predictable. I would argue that in democracies this will remain a problem as long as the majority of voters benefit from high housing prices. When combined with rent control you don't need to own property to benefit from high housing prices, since you are likely paid as if you where paying market rate rent. I don't really see any practical solutions. Work from home might change things a bit but I'm pessimistic, since lots of people want to live near stuff, which requires living near other people, which means someone has an inventive to raise prices. Perhaps boomers cashing out all there housing at once might help things.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The challenge you have is that people view housing as an investment . Americans expect their home values to keep pace with inflation. And because housing values are so expensive, there's a tremendous amount of psychological pressure to "preserve" what they've purchased beyond their own property line (eg: "Neighborhood character"). For these reason, they're going to oppose any new supply entering the market. The only…
You're being very unfair here. When you choose a place to live you are not only choosing the structure in which you reside, you are choosing the surrounding environment as well. People's desire to keep the environment from changing too much extends beyond financial interests. I live in a quiet suburban neighborhood, and I want it to remain a quiet suburban neighborhood even if the value of my house drops. In fact, I…
If your gains are less than $250K (single) or $500K (married-filing-jointly), you've owned it for 2 years, and you've lived there 2 of the last 5 years, your gains are excluded federally.
In general, the structure does depreciate very slowly (in real dollars) and the land appreciates in value (at least in desirable areas), typically more than swamping the slight depreciation on the structure.