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California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

nytimes.com

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Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#41

Post by majormajor »

sokoloff wrote: post #8

I feel like I got served an appetizer and a small dessert, with no main course in between. California has a housing crisis in some cities. Californians are moving out of those cities. The cities that they're moving into are experiencing an increase in demand (directly restating the previous). That's pushing up prices (not shocking), which is preventing some people with less money from outbidding people with more mone…

Demonizing single family houses seems rather dated in 2021. Single family home prices are surging in much of California too (while apartment prices and condo prices... not so much!), it's not just "everyone is fleeing!"

California was short on both types of housing - what has changed is that it is in even higher demand now! And if remote work continues after COVID, that will continue.

Add to that more efficient electric cars + more self-driving capabilities, and I think the demand pendulum will continue to swing back towards sprawl.

You also have a bunch of millennials still in child-bearing age ranges who are getting around to that.

You won't fix a single family home demand surge by replacing single family homes with other things.

"How will we make sprawl work better than it has in the past" seems a more useful question.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#42

Post by imtringued »

lisper wrote: post #14
spamizbad wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

>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.

The expectation that one can settle down and expect their city to be built to a finished state which is kept frozen in time is an incredibly damaging mindset. City planners have to predict what is going to happen in the future decades ahead.

People didn't do this 100 years ago. They didn't do this thousands of years ago. They did something far simpler. They built their city and then they rebuilt their city, house by house, incrementally, one step at a time over decades to match changing needs.

Here's a talk by Charles Marohn regarding this topic: https://youtu.be/Em7nqDqQ8oM

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#43

Post by AdrianB1 »

Affordable housing is a misleading term used for a few different situations: unless the problem is well defined, there is no proper solution.

if affordable means anyone should own a house, no matter the income or lack of - that is utopia. If affordable means cheap enough that lower third income bracket can still afford a house, there are solutions - high density blocks of flats like we have all over in Europe. But if you want cheap houses in the middle of an upscale neighborhood, that is nonsense.

The size of the house is an inverse of the income even in Europe: people who can afford live in single homes or lower density constructions, the people that cannot afford that live in high density places, but you cannot build a couple of towers in the middle of a low density neighborhood, it was tried in UK and failed miserably for everyone.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#44

Post by shuckles »

zepto wrote: post #39
shuckles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately (for you), your desire for a quiet suburban neighborhood should not give you the ability to immiserate other people who want to live there by prohibiting the construction of homes for them. Do you value your quiet suburban neighborhood enough to buy and pay property taxes on the whole block or subdivision? If not, I recommend you look for estates on acreage in remote areas.

“immiserate other people who want to live there“ Perhaps true, but what right do the people who don’t live in his neighborhood but want to have the right to immiserate the people who already live there by building high density blocks? Why do you not recommend those people to look for acreage in remote areas?

Building apartments is not a pox on a community. In fact, the most valuable real estate on the planet has lots of apartments. And are you seriously asking why people may want to live someplace for reasons other than it being an undistinguished suburb? School, weather, jobs, community?

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#45

Post by jeffbee »

desert_boi wrote: post #37
jeffbee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's handy to say "nowhere is building" but it's not really supported by the data. Look at Dallas and Houston compared to San Francisco. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Tc

Is there a similar source that would let you compare MSAs for building of housing units? I'd be interested to see how Boise's MSA lines up with the Bay Area. Most Californian transplants I'd met growing up in the area were from Sacremento/SoCal though.

Does this get you started? Population-adjusted new housing starts for both Boise and San Francisco MSAs since 2000.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6Uf

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#46

Post by majormajor »

shuckles wrote: post #40
majormajor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could reframe the opposition as "your money shouldn't mean you can just come into our area and remake it however you want." Neither side is purely unsympathetic here.

Was one’s single family home a naturally occurring building? What gave one the right to build it? Your both sides argument sounds plausible but it’s not-sensical.

That's sorta just how private property works. At some point, land was unowned, structures were unbuilt, etc. Ever since then, we've put the "rights" in the hands of the current owners and/or the government they live under...

Short of arguing from a purely socialist or communist approach, saying the current owner's preferences matter less than the hypothetical would-be future occupants of the area is the non-sensical part, I think.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#47

Post by shuckles »

lisper wrote: post #36
cltby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure itself does depreciate (ask any landlord!). It's the land value that's surging.

Sure, but the structure and the land are tightly bound. I can't buy or sell a structure without also buying or selling the land that it sits on, so this is kind of irrelevant.

One of the advantages of non-single family zoning is exactly that it allows us to decouple the two.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#48

Post by gonehome »

jeffbee wrote: post #38
kwk1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your quote chopped off an important qualifier present in the original comment.

Explain? The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth. They've got a city the size of Berkeley that didn't even exist 50 years ago.

> The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth.

This isn't enough to support the idea unless prices have also not climbed.

The Bay Area population has dramatically increased and prices have too because building to support this growth has been fought by NIMBYs via bad policy.[0] As a result houses on the peninsula have reached insane prices and there is little available for new people, see: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...

Myself and many of my friends (~30yrs old) rent with multiple roommates.

The only people that can buy experienced some sort of exit event or have a lot of FAANG equity with two FAANG incomes. Even then they have to pay property tax on that insane value that the NIMBYs don't pay.

Maybe Houston has done a better job, but population increase itself isn't much evidence.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

Bad incentives for existing owners to restrict growth exist everywhere, but they're particularly bad in California because of Prop 13.

The most frustrating bit to me, is that the NIMBYs that won the housing lottery and leverage their political power to screw everyone else also play victim. I hope one day we can pass something that corrects a lot of these bad incentives. The new RHNA housing policy and things like Sacramento's elimination of single family zoning are the way. SB50 and related policy would help too.

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#49

Post by imtringued »

zepto wrote: post #39
shuckles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately (for you), your desire for a quiet suburban neighborhood should not give you the ability to immiserate other people who want to live there by prohibiting the construction of homes for them. Do you value your quiet suburban neighborhood enough to buy and pay property taxes on the whole block or subdivision? If not, I recommend you look for estates on acreage in remote areas.

“immiserate other people who want to live there“ Perhaps true, but what right do the people who don’t live in his neighborhood but want to have the right to immiserate the people who already live there by building high density blocks? Why do you not recommend those people to look for acreage in remote areas?

> but want to have the right to immiserate the people who already live there by building high density blocks?

We should start by tearing this building [0] down, otherwise everyone surrounding that property will live in misery.

[0] https://youtu.be/KuFKIfLHhgY

Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one

#50

Post by jeffbee »

majormajor wrote: post #41
sokoloff wrote: post #8

I feel like I got served an appetizer and a small dessert, with no main course in between. California has a housing crisis in some cities. Californians are moving out of those cities. The cities that they're moving into are experiencing an increase in demand (directly restating the previous). That's pushing up prices (not shocking), which is preventing some people with less money from outbidding people with more mone…

Demonizing single family houses seems rather dated in 2021. Single family home prices are surging in much of California too (while apartment prices and condo prices... not so much!), it's not just "everyone is fleeing!" California was short on both types of housing - what has changed is that it is in even higher demand now! And if remote work continues after COVID, that will continue. Add to that more efficient elect…

People don't buy houses because they have children, they gather both children and houses because they are prosperous. Millenials (some of whom are now past their child-bearing years) and younger generations won't just get houses because of the inexorable march of time. First they'll need money.
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