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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

#191

Post by gonehome »

gwright wrote: post #172
gonehome wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cool site, I made a graph that I think illustrates my point more clearly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B6ZP It's the change in population vs. the change in new housing with a separate line for each. It's not super easy to understand because the population change is in thousands of people and housing is just in individual units, but I think it's clear from the graph (if I'm reading it correctly) that…

Wouldn't you have to have some sort of adjustment for singles vs families over time? and for average number of people in a household? Number of people in a household has a cultural factor and age factor also (young single people often share households, more young people => higher density). I have no idea impactful those numbers would be, just pointing out that there are lots of confounding factors to consider.

Yeah totally, I think those are all things to consider.

I'd also guess a factor of young single people sharing households is due to limited supply and high cost. If it was affordable to have your own apartment, more people would do so. The roommate situation is partly (though not entirely) a symptom of failure to build.

You can see this when you compare regions, where I grew up (western new york) housing is super cheap even though there's a lot less economic opportunity. Nobody I know from high school that stayed there lives with roommates. Many have bought their own (nice, new) house for ~150k. That house in the bay area would be 3 million easily.

So while I agree there are confounding factors at play, the housing supply issue is so extreme I think the others are largely rounding errors.

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

#192

Post by floatingatoll »

tqi wrote: post #141

Why is this always framed as a problem caused by people looking for a place to live? I moved to SF for a job. I'm not the one who decided to not build enough new housing for 30 years. I'm not the one who decided to approve all those new office buildings. Yet I was the problem for renting an overpriced apartment from an SF native who bought in the 90s, and now pays less than $8K/yr in taxes on a place worth over $1M.…

The NIMBY problem suggests that it's not so much your fault at all - the locals would have passed zoning laws preventing housing for you from being built, as they did in SF ("protect our views" and such) - but actually the fault of the locals for resisting density upgrades.

Imagine, in SimCity terms, if your Low-Density High-Wealth Residential citizens passed a ballot measure preventing you from building Medium-Density Residential zones, and you have the essential problem of SF and other regions in a nutshell.

People don't like density upgrades, and they fight against them tooth and nail. It's what we get for allowing density to be zoned locally, and it's something that other countries just don't even allow when it's bad enough that homelessness is a problem. "Your city block is being upgraded to a megatower, here's due payment for your home and you get first right of refusal on a free home in the megatower."

Be warned, though; once you become an established local, you are extremely vulnerable to falling prey to this exact behavior. I know several awesome people who finally made their wealth and bought a house in SF, and promptly turned into anti-density NIMBY folks - because they were afraid that they might not make a profit on their home, or because they liked their neighborhood, or whatever.

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

#193

Post by rcpt »

nutshell89 wrote: post #100

The problem is that not only is there zero appetite to phase out housing-as-investment boosting policies like the mortgage interest deduction, imputed rent exemption, and cap gains exemption at the federal level, en vogue affordable housing strategies have focused on keeping interest rates low, providing 1st time home-buyer tax credits, and strengthening fair lending regulations. The U.S.(western nations with high ho…

Since this article is about California you can't leave out Prop 13. I'll argue that's done more for real estate investors in the state than all those other policies combined.

https://www.taxfairnessproject.org/ for the unfamiliar

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

#194

Post by tqi »

jayd16 wrote: post #190
nine_k wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP pays a market-rate rent and local taxes for the accommodation. What "everybody else" is doing?

The tone suggests OP is entitled to more and that housing policy should change to benefit them over other residents. Its a common sentiment I see on HN that seems to suggest California should continue to bend to support new residents. I have no problem with the people that move to California but the back pressure is bound to happen and native Californians seem despised for it.

Again, I don't mean to imply that anyone owes me anything. But as I said, I'm not the one who decided how much housing to build. And I'm not the one who decided how much rent to charge. Both of those decisions were made by "native" Californians (whatever that means). So all I'm objecting to is the notion that I (and other "transplants") the ones solely responsible for this mess.

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

#195

Post by handmodel »

rayiner wrote: post #85

People focus on the supply side, which is important, but has anyone looked at the demand side? How do people have so much money to drive up these prices? I grew up in an 1,100 square foot house, built in 1950, my parents bought for $175,000 in 1989. Today Redfin has it at $660,000. Its a drab house in a drab suburb of DC. It's no boom town--the population of the town has grown just 10% in 30 years. But everyone just…

I think you are still talking about a supply side issue there.

If a drab suburb only has 10% population growth but massive increase in home prices that is because the town council has only increased the available lots by 10%. There are a lot more people in the DC metro area now so the increase of people who want to live in your suburb has probably doubled in that 30 years.

Of course if a town issues no new building permits as the surrounding areas grow of course demand per unit will go up.

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

#196

Post by handmodel »

rayiner wrote: post #174
harryh wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

175k to 660k in 32 years is only a 4.25% increase per year. That's really not much at all.

It’s true it’s less than some other places, but it’s almost double the headline rate of inflation over that time. For a town that—let me tell you—truly has nothing going on.

I don't know what town this is but the DC Metro area has a ton going for it. The population has almost doubled over that time period. If your town only approved minimal zoning increases during that time then of course prices will shoot up.

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

#197

Post by rcpt »

jeffbee wrote: post #135
lotsofpulp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to be educated if there's something I'm missing. Is there a legal maneuver in CA that can prevent people from using their real estate for whatever it's zoned for, excluding frivolous lawsuits?

Yes, many jurisdictions in California require city permits for demolition and the process for getting those permits is by no means guaranteed. In my city after you apply for a permit you have to post public notice for 90 days so your nosy neighbors have a chance to go to the "landmarks preservation commission" to argue that your dilapidated shack in which nobody has lived for 50 years is, in fact, a priceless treasur…

Lisa: "But if we did use fire..."

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

#198

Post by spothedog1 »

mint2 wrote: post #189
opportune wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think removing many of these housing discounts would only partially impact housing costs, since these affect the majority of buyers and most home purchasing decisions are made on the basis of the monthly payment. That is, after removing some of these policies, people would probably still end up paying the same monthly payment, just with lower nominal housing costs. The bigger issue to me is the constriction of supp…

I take issue with the “too much protected land” stance. The protected land is a treasure. And paving it over with suburbs will not fix housing. See LA. Vast sprawl and still sky high housing. Oh it’s a wee bit better prices? Let’s pave everything. Turning the Bay Area into la or Phoenix sounds like an awful idea. Densifying I can get behind, turning the protected lands into a concrete wasteland of parking lots and ho…

They're not talking about protected nature preserves and national parks, they're talking about protected single family zoning which prohibits density increases.

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

#199

Post by Xcelerate »

bedhead wrote: post #185
ashtonkem wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say that another constant is the belief that living in a place for a certain period of time confers a sense of ownership over a city, along with the right to decide who should and should not live there. You obviously see that in states where Californians are moving, but you even see that in California against those who moved there recently for a job. Frankly I find it completely bizarre.

Both of these comments are so viscerally true. I live most of the year in a very small town (as in, no home mail service) that's also a big tourist destination. It has all the usual tension between townies, second home owners, and tourists, but the thing that really shocked me when I moved here was how there is a sort of caste system among locals with a bunch of dimensions like how long you've lived there, if you own…

We moved to Asheville a few months ago and noticed the same phenomenon. Combine low local wages with high incomes of people working remotely or buying a second home and you get a strange dynamic within the town.

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

#200

Post by rcpt »

jandrese wrote: post #137
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…

It's really impossible to not view your house as an investment when you've been paying for it for 30 years and have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in it. This goes double if your plan is to work till retirement, then sell the house and move to someplace more laid back. So really the local government needs to be willing to tell people to pound sand when they hold up new construction. But since the local gove…

God I'd love to watch some movies where the developers win and kick those little NIMBY orphan shits out on their asses.
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