Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house • Hacker News Board

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#71

Post by whimsicalism » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #69

whimsicalism wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices are going up, they will be making the money regardless of whether the renter is paying for it or the government is paying for some of it. If your point is that a subsidy will shift demand and increase the price, that is exactly what we want! A price signal to the market…

> How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices are going up, they will be making the money regardless of whether the renter is paying for it or the government is paying for some of it. Subsidies for a population that otherwise couldn’t afford it will accelerate the rate at which market price increases, especially since those subsidies will also increase as the market price does. It’s like student loans and…

> tudent loans and college prices, but worse.

It's not worse if there is cost-sharing.

And as I said above,

> that is exactly what we want! A price signal to the market to build more housing to accommodate everyone who wants to live there including displaced communities!

Inevitably, trying to keep displacement from happening is going to increase prices for newcomers. The question is whether we want to do that in a way that incentivizes increasing supply or one that keeps people out.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#72

Post by fighterpilot » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

ssalazar wrote: post #52

fighterpilot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's set mostly by supply and demand across the market. The owner and the renter can get together and negotiate a small deviation based on the property's idiosyncracies, but it's the market that's primarily driving it.

Not really. Housing resembles nothing like a free market. Supply and demand is driven a lot by political forces (regulation, political favoritism) that effectively limit supply. Large land-owning political entities or blocs have outsized influence on these factors.

Just because supply is constrained by regulations doesn't mean that pricing isn't driven by supply and demand. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#73

Post by gonehome » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #30

airhead969 wrote: post #10

Isn't this what terrible public housing is already? Could it be less terrible or would it always devolve into a housing caste system because middle-/upper-classes would never use it? Set-asides for "affordable housing" in new developments are an absolute joke because there are very few units, they often have separate "servant-like" entrances, and may not be treated equally compared to other residents. Also, the root…

The root cause is way too little development relative to demand, orchestrated via zoning regulations. Wikipedia spells this out in detail for San Francisco [1]. > Since the 1960s, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have enacted strict zoning regulations. Among other restrictions, San Francisco does not allow buildings over 40 feet tall in most of the city, and has passed laws making it easier for neighbors to…

I wish there was some way to fix the incentives so people valued growth properly.

Currently the incentives are broken. If you buy in you’re incentivized to limit any future growth to capitalize your ownership of restricted supply. This takes many forms, but zoning, “neighborhood character”, “environmentalism”, noise, shadows, etc. - it’s all about supply restriction.

If there was a way for everyone to get the increased value that came from growth more explicitly then I think the political incentives would shift. You’d still have to overcome some status quo bias, but at least there wouldn’t be a direct economic incentive for owners to restrict supply.

No idea how something like this could be structured.

At least new RHNA numbers seem good, I’d also like to see something that revokes prop13 protection for localities that block new housing. If you’re going to fuck everyone else over, you should at least have to pay for it.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#74

Post by eptcyka » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #54

whimsicalism wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is still a place for government action to help prevent historic populations of a community from getting displaced. But those programs should be implemented as subsidies , not price controls! The only reason we're so reliant on the latter is it is more easy politically to put the costs on suppliers and hope the electorate doesn't notice that you're actually exacerbating the problem.

> But those programs should be implemented as subsidies, not price controls! Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords, and an accelerant to runaway general unaffordability. You could probably split the difference with weaker rent controls and subsidies that make it look like stronger rent control from the renters side, which might mitigate the worst problems of eithe…

Its simple - tax landlordism out of viability.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#75

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

don-code wrote: post #63

I didn't quite glean a thorough understanding of the model from the article. It sounds like it's: 1) Public funds provide capital to build a new dwelling; individuals move in at rates similar to market rent. 2) Rather than rents paying a landlord, rents act like principal payments on a personal mortgage - e.g. I own $10,000 worth of shares of the property after paying $1,000/mo for ten months. 3) Eventually, I own en…

[deleted]

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#76

Post by InvertedRhodium » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #74

dragonwriter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those programs should be implemented as subsidies, not price controls! Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords, and an accelerant to runaway general unaffordability. You could probably split the difference with weaker rent controls and subsidies that make it look like stronger rent control from the renters side, which might mitigate the worst problems of eithe…

Its simple - tax landlordism out of viability.

How do people who can't afford to buy then survive? I'm in NZ and we've just seen laws introduced that makes being a landlord more expensive and unsurprisingly it's seen rental increases as a result.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#77

Post by aeternum » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #41

aeternum wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we should probably treat land as much more of a public good, especially in cities. The true value of land has much more to do with the services nearby: jobs, shops, parks, emergency services. The majority of tax should be based on the land value, independent of the cost of structures built on that land. A single-family home (whether it be a shack or a million dollar mansion) in a city center with high land value…

Land values are already captured in property taxes. There's certainly places where property taxes are too low and not doing enough to encourage better usage of the land, but that's straightforward to solve (though admittedly often not that easy politically)

Partially, but property taxes discourage improving the structures on the land as the property tax also increases based on the value of the structure. This is generally the opposite of what want. Renovations, upkeep, and property improvements are good things so why penalize them?

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#78

Post by InvertedRhodium » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #25

I'm a distributist, so I would prefer to see this type of system operated as a private cooperative, 100% owned by participants, rather than a government-run program. Why? Because then the people who get to make the decisions are the co-op participants themselves -- the people with the most skin in the game -- and the government can instead focus on areas where the participants actually need help, e.g. at the regulato…

How does that differ meaningfully from home owners associations and the like?

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#79

Post by hyperpallium2 » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

don-code wrote: post #63

I didn't quite glean a thorough understanding of the model from the article. It sounds like it's: 1) Public funds provide capital to build a new dwelling; individuals move in at rates similar to market rent. 2) Rather than rents paying a landlord, rents act like principal payments on a personal mortgage - e.g. I own $10,000 worth of shares of the property after paying $1,000/mo for ten months. 3) Eventually, I own en…

IDK but property rights can be modified, e.g. to exclude alienation (so can't be sold or inherited). You only get a lifetime right to occupy. Then, can be sold to the next person.

Nicely, this wouldn't address intergenerational poverty, nor threaten the landed gentry.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#80

Post by eulenteufel » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

don-code wrote: post #63

I didn't quite glean a thorough understanding of the model from the article. It sounds like it's: 1) Public funds provide capital to build a new dwelling; individuals move in at rates similar to market rent. 2) Rather than rents paying a landlord, rents act like principal payments on a personal mortgage - e.g. I own $10,000 worth of shares of the property after paying $1,000/mo for ten months. 3) Eventually, I own en…

Thinking about the principles laid down in the article: a) Do not require significant initial funds for buying b) Do not have other people profit of the housing

A simple solution congruent with these principles could be:

Selling the house should be restricted to yield the amount of money you put in. This excludes money spend on repairs, etc., and is to be adjusted for inflation.

You can keep living in the house as long as you are alive. Once you are dead, you lose the house and the inheritance will be the same money you would get from selling the house/apartment under the regulated terms.

The next renter of the regulated public housing apartment would just pay rent again until they have enough in their portfolio and then stop to have to pay rent.