91–100 of 105 posts
Surprised there aren’t more comments here. This is great news for affordable housing right?
Affordable housing (or rather the zoning changes needed to realize it) is not always a popular topic on this site.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s true, but it is difficult to do in the USA since the company town concept/complex fell out of style in this country after WW2. People don’t generally live where they work, especially if they bought 10 years ago and switched jobs twice since then (and that isn’t even counting second body problems). Transit is really needed to fill in the gaps, or perhaps renting should be encouraged so people more easily move w…
Tenure of homeownership has more than doubled in the last twenty years, and it is a harmful symptom of the housing crisis, not something to be accommodated. When the housing market was more functional and job mobility in America was more robust, people only owned homes for 4 years at the median. That was the same as the median tenure at jobs. That’s the way it should be.
Surprised there aren’t more comments here. This is great news for affordable housing right?
Has there ever been an effort of freeing up high density construction that resulted in lower housing prices? In the places I lived, new construction of big apartment complexes was correlated with prices going up. The new buildings charged more for rent, people paid it, and the surrounding housing followed.
It's really telling when people look at the first 1-5 years of a building and ignore that this building will stand several decades there and with each decade that building becomes more affordable.
Seriously, how difficult is this to understand? High prices -> people build more -> more old stock -> more affordable housing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zoning laws are responsible for higher prices: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2018/pdf/rdp2018-03.... The mechanism is clear cut. Restrict supply, price goes up. There's quite a bit of empirical support as well. I don't doubt what you've observed but I think it needs to be addressed rigorously.
All i’ve seen so far is people explaining their preferred reasons for why things happen and their guesses for what new policy will do. What I haven’t seen is a case study or anecdote of something actually resulting in lower prices. (besides tech busts and covid in SF)
I am seriously disappointed that you wrote such an awful comment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have the causality wrong. - Builders build because if high demand. - Landlords raise rent because of high demand. - High demand is based on the localities productivity. Places that are in high demand have lots of jobs that pay high wages. The only way to relieve the pressure is to build faster than existing demand or to lower the productivity of the region.
Yes that’s the econ 101 explanation but what seems to have actually happened is the existing demand wasn’t driving up prices in a neighborhood of old brownstones and some rental houses until after new large apartment complexes went up and the new places charged considerably higher rent than the existing supply. This is something I heard first hand more than once from small landlords saying they were increasing prices…
Can’t see how this is a good thing - property prices will rise since there is no cap on income generation If my neighbor sells his house to a developer building condos, then my property appreciates First house to convert to condos just makes everyone else’s experience that much worse: traffic congestion, parking, schools
If I wanted to move to California and live in a single family home (my wife is from there), won’t this legislation just make those dwellings even more expensive now? Because California government says no more future supply. I get the urgency on addressing the housing situation in California, but this feels to me like “we must do something, and this is something, so we will do it”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're part of the problem. They're not banning single family homes. Just zoning for them. THere's a housing shortage, especially in urban areas right around what little public transit there is. Insisting that only a few people live on lots in this area is insane.
Respectfully, I think you are. I asked a question about the potential impact of this change on prices, and speculated about what might happen if single family homes become a rare (or rarer) commodity. I’m sorry that places like SF are managed so terribly, but it might have something to do with how hostile people there get when this issue comes up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment makes no sense. Building more housing means that housing costs will go down, making it way more likely that you WILL "be able to afford a single family home -- the American dream when you settle down..."
The bill will likely make single family residences more expensive. Since single family residences will now compete for multifamily, and multifamily uses land so much more efficiently, multifamily development will be able to outbid single family construction. Not that this is a problem. The goal of housing policy is to house people, not give a certain fraction of the population exactly what they want and telling every…
Housing demand and supply isn't something to be decided by individuals, instead by a special group of interests that must tell you what you want and what should be available.
I remember reading article about San Francisco being the "mercenary city": Young professionals come here, live in tiny apartments, get big tech wages for a couple of years, then move somewhere more affordable. With the remote situation, people are getting out of SF faster than ever. Won't this bill drive up the price of a single family home while driving down the price of multifamily homes? But the dream for most Ame…
Allowing multifamily homes to be built means people that want multifamily homes can have them. The other 98% of the land won't face the same pressure and it can bring down prices for everyone.
America is supposed to be this mecca of the mythical "free market" but as soon as it's about land suddenly those rules don't matter at all. Supply and demand don't matter. The freedom of choosing what you want doesn't matter. Instead, the local residents abuse the government to force their way of life onto other people who disagree with it.