Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming • Hacker News Board

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#551

Post by wwweston » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #169

wwweston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. It's already arguably happened; fruit orchards and irrigation turns were big part of the milieu in Orem/Provo a few decades back, and they're all but absent now, and in general the…

The thing is--and I'm not saying you specifically--but worrying about a place losing "its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place" inevitably has to go hand in hand with strong NIMBY policies. Which isn't even "wrong" in any absolute sense whatever the growth at all costs crowd here may want. Though, really, not even that helps because towns can't actually (or really w…

The way I look at it is that every popular community does have to make decisions about what is / isn't going to be part of its yard (front or back), but that optimizing for either economic accessibility or quality of life can be hard, and going for both is considerably harder. Good policy is difficult (and rarely aligns with either simple economic ideology or social aesthetics).

That said, I can't help but wonder if it is possible to shape how people buy. For example, with the existing very limited housing stock being exacerbated with large capital chasing it, I'm inclined to think that there should be property taxes that are a function of housing one already owns in a given market and supply on the market. So... want to buy a new house and keep your old one to rent out? Want to buy a third in a market where there isn't two weeks of supply on the market? Maybe you'll pay a bit more, both on the transactions and yearly. Want to buy your twelfth or twentieth unit as part of a fund or trust in a market where there isn't a week of supply on the market? Maybe you're going to get hit hard, and you should try to find some other productive use for your capital.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#552

Post by demosito666 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #488

giantg2 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not base the the revenue on income taxes instead - charge the people making money instead of forcing people out of their home through taxes? The main issues (in my opinion) with housing in the parts of CA that are always mentioned is just population density and desired living conditions. I don't see what the right fix is for that. If we're basically taking the policy that we'll raise taxes to make people want to…

> Why not base the the revenue on income taxes instead Yup, California does that. That's why CA has a reputation as a high-tax state. Although total tax burden isn't that different from places like Austin, TX though (at least that's how the numbers come out when my friend or I have seriously looked into moving there). > I don't see what the right fix is for that. Ha. People have been shouting it from the rooftops. Bu…

> Frankly, that's really the only solution. If you have n households in a country, you need approximately n homes to put them in.

But isn't it already the case? I believe that there are a bit more houses in US then there are households. So the problem is not lack of houses, it's that people don't want to live in some places where houses are abundant. They don't want to live there for the most part due to lack of good jobs. The solution then could be to even out the wage gap and job market capacity across the country.

I know that US situation is somewhat unique w.r.t. density due to suburbia and obviously this has to be addressed somehow. But it worries me a bit when people are saying "build more" as the only solution to housing prices. I live in a city which added 50% in population last 20 years, which means about 2.5 million new people. It looks like [1] and it's terrifying, the city is not suitable for living anymore, I'm now looking for somewhere to move from the place where I was born and was living for 35 years, where my friends and parent live. All this is the result of "we should build more housing". That, and corruption of course. The city which is UNESCO world heritage site is gone forever.

By the way, real estate prices still doubled last year, so even this crazy tempo doesn't help. It's akin to fighting traffic jams by building more and wider roads - it only attracts more cars.

I am aware about overly restrictive zoning rules in US and probably building more is a part of the solution, but I don't believe it's the whole solution. Be careful what you wish for.

[1] https://imgur.com/X5GrRfO

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#553

Post by _2d30 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #546

_2d30 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples. Obviously government is required for the planning and zoning reform aspects but the idea that any solution to housing price issues isn't building more is non-sensical. Singapore's solution is just building HBDs!

Houston is definitely a great example of how you can’t just build blindly and not expect your traffic and quality of life to suck. But to its credit, Houston creates an equilibrium of being just pleasant and unpleasant enough to not be great but not horrible place to live. Tokyo housing is expensive for its size. You can just get small apartments there that are affordable. Also, Japanese housing depreciates, which ta…

Dublinben: "How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places?"

You: "You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems"

Me: "Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples."

You: Does a combination of moving the goal posts on Houston to being about Houston's lack of livability and not prices as well as decides that somehow Tokyo's housing prices declining is a counterargument to building being a solution to high prices?

Tokyo is quite affordable in terms of rent and prices haven't been increasing anywhere as dramatically in other similarly classed world cities. If this source is to be believed, it's 48% cheaper than SF: https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...

I'll again point here, but there are plenty of other resources that will Tokyo's success at combating high housing prices: https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-hous...

Or here: https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#554

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #409

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unless you are looking for low cost housing.

How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places? Make them less desirable? Prevent people from moving there? Build more housing?

> How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable place

If there is fixed and relatively small unmet demand, you can build to accommodate it.

Otherwise, you can just make it less desirable. If you mistake a case where the earlier condition doesn’t apply for one where it does and start chasing it with runaway density, you’ll probably achieve this accidentally, so, one way or another, “build more” works

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#555

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #537

giantg2 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ha. People have been shouting it from the rooftops. Build more houses! More specifically, just allow people to build more houses. Stop preventing people from building more houses. Frankly, that's really the only solution. If you have n households in a country, you need approximately n homes to put them in." The whole point I was getting at was distribution. Sure you have n households in the country, but nothing says…

> The whole point I was getting at was distribution. Sure you have n households in the country, but nothing says that n/10 need to live in just one or two counties of that country. Even if you get the green light to build more, it will be very expensive to do so, and you will have population density/congestion issues. Nobody is forcing everyone to all live in one place. Some combination of lifestyle, economic opportu…

"A different set of policies would have prevented the vicious cycle and made housing cheaper and more abundant."

I think that's highly speculative. Many people in that area want single family homes or large homes. There's only so much surface area. It's not just that they want to live there, but also expect specific attributes with their housing.

"In other words, you can learn from California's example or your can make the same mistakes. Your choice."

If the policies work in other places, how can we determine that it's the policies causing the issues? Do you have a real world example of the alternate policies that won't cause those issues?

"Sure, but it is making the distribution within the US as a whole more uniform."

Not in any meaningful way. Over 50% of the US population lives in just 58 counties. They aren't moving to many rural locations, just to suburbs or smaller cities, which helps a little, but sometimes causes the same issues in those places.

"That's my point. They are not bringing the problems. They are coming, and locals are creating the problems by following the same bad policies that failed for locals in California. Yes, that does mean some things will change. You can't stop the change, but you do get to choose its character."

They do bring some of the problems when they go against established culture and force their views on others. This is pretty common. A classic example is people buying a house near an existing highway, then complaining about road noise and advocating for million dollar sound barriers.

Again, you mention policy as the problem, yet there's no example of the alternatives. Even the high level stuff mentioned previously sounds like a zero sum game - either existing owners get screwed or the new people do. I would like to see property tax eliminated and go strictly income based.

Yes, change happens, but it doesn't mean that the existing people need to roll over and not fight for their own opinions.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#556

Post by wwweston » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

khuey wrote: post #311

ghaff wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is--and I'm not saying you specifically--but worrying about a place losing "its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place" inevitably has to go hand in hand with strong NIMBY policies. Which isn't even "wrong" in any absolute sense whatever the growth at all costs crowd here may want. Though, really, not even that helps because towns can't actually (or really w…

A lot of these people are really only moving into the interior mountain towns because places like coastal California where the economic activity is that allows them to pile up this kind of wealth has become prohibitively expensive due to their own NIMBY regimes.

Metro California problems follow metro California popularity/growth.

Policies you're calling "NIMBY" are rarely the underlying cause. They're reactions. Some of them exacerbate certain problems, some of them attenuate others, but not the underlying cause.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#557

Post by wwweston » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

dendrite9 wrote: post #60

wwweston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. It's already arguably happened; fruit orchards and irrigation turns were big part of the milieu in Orem/Provo a few decades back, and they're all but absent now, and in general the…

I assume you know about the orchards of Silicon Valley? It's an interesting bit of history to me. I didn't realize the same thing was happening along the Wasatch Front, but it makes sense. E: forgot the link https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/the-last-of-his-kind-f...

Great article! I knew that orchards were part of SV's ag history, but I didn't know about Andy's and that'd be fun to visit.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#558

Post by throwaway316943 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #518

throwaway316943 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s very subjective, my definition of suckiness definitely factors in population density.

I don't think it's subjective at all. There are cities that are clean and safe and well run, and you might not want to live there because they have a lot of people, but that doesn't make the city bad. I think your preference to live away from people is subjective, and that's fine, but the rule can't be that you get to live right where you want and no one else can move. Either people can move or they can't. I presume…

I’m not saying the solution is for people to not move, I’m in favour of people living where they want. I don’t have the solution to the problems caused by rapid growth, it’s probably some combination of allowing mixed zoning so that there is enough housing and supporting businesses for the new residents along with better planning of or restrictions on municipal expansion to avoid sprawl and encourage better use of the land within the existing municipality. There’s probably a bunch of other reforms necessary to prevent the bad parts of gentrification and provide more of a safety net for people who get displaced. It’sa big hairy problem for sure.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#559

Post by RC_ITR » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #320

RC_ITR wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, nearly everyone largely agrees that wealth inequality at the current US level is bad. Wealthy people moving to low-cost areas (and thus raising cost of living) accelerates inequality for a few reasons. 1) Unlike you scenario, many working-class people in places like Sedona can only afford to rent their homes (25% of total, give or take in Sedona). These people incur huge monetary costs in being forced to move…

So if simply moving creates inequality, then what do people do? Stay in their hometown their entire life? Sounds like you need to revise the game, not hate the player.

Maybe make the choice to move to established residential areas with infrastructure and housing to support growing populations instead of water-parched small communities near natural wonders?

Alternatively, those wealthy people could use their wealth to build civic infrastructure (e.g., better roads, better school, housing for working class people) to mitigate the negative externalities of their move. But generally, those wealthy movers are moving to escape urbanism and would be loathe to do those very 'urban' things.

Again, I don't disagree with you that in the current American system, 'I've got mine, f** you' is a totally acceptable way to approach moving to a new community, but to put it in words you used, "It's not going to fly" at least not in the long term.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#560

Post by bsanr2 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #545

sagarm wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taming and beautifying What you call development in step 1... > narcissist and selfish What you call development in step 2. They're both development and urbanization. > only there as a hindrance to you. This seems like a projection. You don't seem to consider "them" as having any right to even exist. Indeed, in the next sentence you compare migrating within the US to migrating outside of it, making the xenophobia e…

They're both development and urbanization. No, turning a wilderness into viable farmland is not urbanization. There's putting in the time and work to make what you want from scratch, and then there's seeing something nice that someone else made and screaming "mine!" compare migrating within the US to migrating outside of it, making the xenophobia even more clear. Putting a false label on something doesn't make the th…

>No, turning a wilderness into viable farmland is not urbanization.

I'm 90% with you, but we need to be clear that this is not true for the way in which much of the West was settled. It was often not wilderness, but instead land watched over by Native American communities who practiced varying forms of regenerative agriculture, who had only recently been wiped out by disease or war, if they weren't still there. It was settled not by experts looking to "tame the wilderness", but largely by immigrants who were hurried, by job scarcity and discrimination, out of the East Coast and into the interior. They were extremely lucky that the land had essentially been prepared for their monocultures by generations of NA stewardship - people the government was more than happy to enable the displacement and genocide of. (And the Dust Bowl STILL happened.)

That said, after several generations of like stewardship and occupation, I favor those residents and their right to remain over new residents looking to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities. What we absolutely need is more respect for the positive aspects of long-lived communities so that we don't trample and dismantle them so casually. It may not be wholly just that the world isn't one's oyster, but as a black person who has to deal with unfortunate and continued existence of sundown towns, the reality that some places are off-limits until the locals have fixed their own issues is one that should be respected. If the lock isn't level you're just going to open the floodgates of trouble.