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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

#261

Post by spiralx »

nomel wrote: post #235
majormajor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> City planners have to predict what is going to happen in the future decades ahead. Current trend: single family houses have shot up in demand due to remote work. So is the prescription "tear down single family houses"? Seems like cities that do that are just going to push people even faster towards other areas which aren't so saturated. If this trend continues some sort of balancing between not just SF/NY but even…

Looking at the listings in the Bay Area, condos are more expensive than homes, with the same square footage, since they're new and "luxury". I question if tearing down houses for something high density would make anything cheaper.

People are moving into the city and buying those luxury condos instead of buying houses in existing neighbourhoods and driving up prices there.

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

#262

Post by mpg33 »

xvedejas wrote: post #161
mpg33 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas is also a good example of that density only matters if there is a land scarcity problem. There are areas in Canada where building massive towers has been premature and also led to increase in costs.

I sincerely doubt that building towers lead to an increase in costs in the existing housing stock, unless something very strange is afoot.

Cost of building a tower is much more than something like rowhouses, multiplexes. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver bypass the "missing middle". So it's mostly single family homes with various "tower node districts".

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

#263

Post by floatingatoll »

punchclockhero wrote: post #260
floatingatoll wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-Densi…

Now I want NIMBYs in city builder games randomly preventing the player from creating and/or upgrading zones. Chances are they will be treated like the nobles in Dwarf Fortress, that's forced to leave or killed off in spectacularly creative ways.

It's all fun and games until someone's home value is depressed by a zoning decision, and then your city goes bankrupt because they mob against you on SimCitter :)

"Due to your citizens refusing to approve tax levies for sewage system upgrades, your city has died of dysentery."

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

#264

Post by MrMan »

This anti-NIMBY astroturfing on HN is fascinating. There is a repetitive hammering of a short list of talking points.

I am from the East Coast which is very built up. We largely don't have this weird NIMBY anger. In a lot of places here there are tons of tall buildings being built. The whole angry discourse is alien to me.

No one moving to New York is angrily ranting about "NIMBYS" undermining their supposed right to cheap housing. Or not when I moved to NYC.

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

#265

Post by dublinben »

souprock wrote: post #227
JJMcJ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incremental: Take an R-1 neighborhood. Don't necessarily allow 10 floor buildings, though that wouldn't be the end of the world. Maybe allow 25% of houses to be turned into duplexes, even less of a change than row houses. That alone would increase units available. Humor: The famous Painted Ladies, a block of Victorians in San Francisco, one end of the block has a 7 floor apartment building.

What about the fair share of on-street parking? A normal home will have 1 to 3 cars, but most likely they go in a garage or driveway. The street is mostly left for visitors. There is room for a friend, a grandma, a kitchen renovator, a pool cleaning service, and so on. Spill-over happens when somebody has a big party or when the SWAT team shows up, but those are rare occurrences. Add the apartment complex though, and…

>A normal home will have 1 to 3 cars

Maybe in a single-family zoned, suburban community. Density allows for more efficient transportation modes, like walking, biking, and public transit.

To cite one of the most extreme examples in the US, fewer than half of households in New York City have a car. In some neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen, as few as 11% of households have a car.[0]

[0]https://www.addressreport.com/blog/manhattan-neighborhoods-w...

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

#266

Post by MrMan »

rayiner wrote: post #159
davidw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, for people looking for other examples of how to grow, who might not like the idea of Houston's sprawl, I've always liked this article: https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-...

Yes, housing isn’t a problem in a city whose population is the same today as it was in 1935, in a country that’s projected to slowly shrink over the next century.

The whole population of the US is not growing, there are just a few places where there is growth.

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

#267

Post by MrMan »

asdff wrote: post #69
rustybelt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you say some places are growing and others are stagnating or shrinking. If every place has a certain capacity to grow given the necessary pressure to do so, wouldn't more evenly distributed growth reduce the problems caused by the current uneven distribution of growth/stagnation/shrinkage? In other words, how can you say we're not growing fast enough when so many places aren't growing at all?

Because growth isn't even nor can it be, it depends on connectivity of an area to relevant features that spur further growth, such as industry, jobs, education. There are highly specific reasons for growth to happen where it happens, and 9/10 it's due to some piece of immovable necessary infrastructure that supports a wider region. For example, Chicago is the size it is because it is a confluence point of freight, fi…

So you are saying if we tax advertising housing prices will ease? I agree with you

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

#268

Post by xvedejas »

mpg33 wrote: post #262
xvedejas wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt that building towers lead to an increase in costs in the existing housing stock, unless something very strange is afoot.

Cost of building a tower is much more than something like rowhouses, multiplexes. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver bypass the "missing middle". So it's mostly single family homes with various "tower node districts".

Yes, towers are expensive, but building them doesn't make the existing SFHs more expensive. Maybe tower building and rising home prices both coincide with certain economic trends, post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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

#269

Post by MrMan »

rcpt wrote: post #200
jandrese wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah! Anyone who buys a house is a bad person

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

#270

Post by MrMan »

shuckles wrote: post #98
umvi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

If your housing market's affordability depended on everyone living in the area having low incomes, maybe it's not any better than California's housing market.

It's not better or worse it's just a price
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