Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The structure itself does depreciate (ask any landlord!). It's the land value that's surging.
California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
71–80 of 299 posts
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#72'Single family' dwellings tend to have a small bit of yard space (not directly a plus for me), an air-gap with other units that helps with some noise abatement, and sometimes a choice of utilities (like Internet). There's room to park the nomad-mobile (the car that's required for efficient traversal of the many suburban wastelands and the gaps between cities).
If you own, rather than rent, you're able to change and modify many things.
There are still issues of BBQs, intense dryer scent bombs, and smokers. Parties, loud vehicles, and other annoyances too.
+++ my own ideal solution criteria +++
* Able to own * Able to modify inside the walls * Privacy of noise isolation * Privacy of fresh air * Internet choice (#1) * Parking included (#2)
The privacy issues I see most easily resolved by requiring mechanical isolation spaces, similar to the old wetwalls, between units, above and beneath as well. My ceiling should not be directly hanging off of someone else's floor. The extra mechanical space also allows room for proper ducting of intakes and exhausts to allow a building intake of fresh air through a common filtration unit, and exhaust through a similar scrubber unit to remove particulate matter and minimize ecological pollution.
#1 Internet choice would happen after the last mile. The last mile being municipal fiber to ethernet links, and transit at high speed for base taxpayer cost to 2-3 peering points out of the local set. Real choice would be offered by competition at those locations. Peering points might be likely at government command and control centers (city hall, police hq, fire stations), or temples of information worship (libraries, schools, post offices?).
#2 Parking is the terminus of the inter-city and inter-state interlink that currently exists. This doesn't have to be per building. A 'cave of steel' like city could have interfaces (parking garages) at the edges, ideally with monitored space, even small storage boxes (garages) for cars. Naturally these would also be cargo terminals and there'd be a good transit system between them and everyplace within the city. This would require urban planning, mass transit and/or people-mover belts, and maybe an electric cargo drone delivery system. BTW, wouldn't an electric cargo drone delivery system be a lovely civic infrastructure aid? Completely eliminates the most annoying aspects of all current delivery services.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
And who was compensated when those rights were taken away from property owners by the invention of zoning in the early 1900s and down zoning in the mid 1900s? In addition, you are confusing owning a particular plot of land with rights over all neighboring plots. The latter is distinctly not your private property.
Yes, that's where the government aspect comes in. But again, what you decry as "non-sensical" instead seems like it could also just be called "response of a community towards potential market failure modes." You are ascribing moral blame to just one side of a more complicated situation. It would be like if all I was talking about is how big developers bribe local governments to get permits to build their shit - neith…
The other side is all future residents who might want to live in a quadplex where a SFH exists today. Those people usually pay a large percent of their income in rent and "commute til they qualify."
How are both sides understandable? My claim is simply that a private individual should be able to buy a lot of land in almost any American city and build a quadplex on it. This was legal until very recently in our history. How will this be the end of the community as we know it?
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
California has a statewide housing crisis. Most cities in the country also have their own housing crises.
>Most cities in the country also have their own housing crises. No they don't. The ones that do are the ones who's housing market is all jacked up by California money that wants off the sinking ship.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Most cities in the country also have their own housing crises. No they don't. The ones that do are the ones who's housing market is all jacked up by California money that wants off the sinking ship.
"If you ignore all the cities people want to live in, the remaining don't have a housing crisis."
The "housing crisis" is unique to California and markets that are jacked up by California money that wants off the sinking ship. I know a lot of those people want to believe that everyone is doing it just as wrong as they are but if you fire up zillow and start looking at the suburbs of Cleveland, Buffalo, Montgomery, and all the other places that wealthy people leaving places like CA like to deride as dead or dying it becomes immediately apparent that they're affordable.
Edit: I was a moron to even reply to you. Based on everything else you've said on this topic we will not see eye to eye and nothing productive will come of this.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, there is an inverse relationship between prosperity and child-bearing.
Only if you make improper global comparisons. Within comparable American populations, wealth is positively associated with fertility. "Examining data from 1985 to 2007, Lovenheim and Mumford use short-run home price variation over time within cities as their shock to family wealth. They find that a $100,000 increase in the value of one’s home results in a 16% increase in the probability of having a child." https://ww…
That's not entirely rejecting that across Americans the curve could rise at the lower end of "prosperity" as well. Which, according to this study, it does and average number of children decreases almost perfectly steadily with increasing decile of lifetime earnings (see Table 2): https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~scholz/Research/Kids%20and%20Wealt...
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Most cities in the country also have their own housing crises. No they don't. The ones that do are the ones who's housing market is all jacked up by California money that wants off the sinking ship.
The Midwesterner shouldn't fear the Californian. That's a boogyman. The Midwesterner however, should have a real fear of their fellow wealthy Midwesterners, who will go from one house to 2.5 on average after their children come of age and outbid the middle class midwesterner for the limited housing stock available in predominantly single family home cities.
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you ignore all the cities people want to live in, the remaining don't have a housing crisis."
There's half a dozen or so big east coast cities that are expensive. Nevertheless you can find $200-400k houses 1-1.5hr out (half that if you're willing to sacrifice having a big yard) and rents are blue collar levels of affordable despite those cities being some of the most expensive (basically second to CA). The "housing crisis" is unique to California and markets that are jacked up by California money that wants o…
Re: California’s affordable housing problem is really a national one
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Houses are linked to prosperity. I have doubts that children are overall linked to prosperity.
If you believe that fertility is negatively associated with prosperity, then the idea that people will buy these houses because they have children is especially wrong.
The crisis described here is that more people want them than can get them. So if the trend is that more people will want standalone houses specifically, versus just any sort of housing unit, proposed solutions that reduce the supply of them are bound to backfire for areas that implement them.
Basically: is this the start of a different era in terms of demand profiles, driven by remote work, or is this just a short-term bubble?