341–350 of 368 posts
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Saddens me that the top earners in our world have to dream of affordable housing so they can save a bit of money. Probably not enough to buy a house in that same area. Sigh.
Why is that sad that he doesn't want to spend money on housing he doesn't want?
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This...is not wrong. Pioneer Square in Seattle used to have a lot of flop houses, part of it being the original "skid row" (logs skid to the saw mill, really muddy and not a desirable place to live). My grandfather in Spokane unwittingly ran a rooming house we cousins called the "empty arms" (inherited from his sister), which housed a lot of people who were just barely getting by. Seattle's flop houses are mostly gon…
As a single guy and a software engineer, I would pay full price for a pod housing if the area is safe convenient. I'd rent a co-working desk nearby and save a ton of money. These types of housing just aren't available in Vancouver (or NA in general), but I can totally see a market for it.
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This is demonstrably false, just because my property is "developed" (I'm not sure what developed vs non-developed means in this context) does not mean I consume more services. Homeowners are under no obligation to consume more city services because their property is nicer.
Value is a proxy for utilization. The alternative is a straight up land tax that would be unfair to those who decide to leave their property undeveloped.
Oh yes, my home city. I left LA for numerous reasons, absolutely unaffordable housing was one of them. Most people are doing extremely poorly in Los Angeles. It's the only city where you both have to pay an insane amount of rent, and own a car. The bare minimum survive in LA is probably around 80 k. But the median income there is only around 70k. Of the people I was meeting, almost no one had a job or any real intere…
Can you say more about this?
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Value is a proxy for utilization. The alternative is a straight up land tax that would be unfair to those who decide to leave their property undeveloped.
False choice. Another option is no tax.
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The question was, is it luxury? > If the other option is living on the street, why not? Those aren't our only choices. > some people barely make ends meet. These people need a place to live, too, a cheap, non-advanced place, with many corners cut for the sake of it being cheap to build and maintain. And they also, like other humans, need kitchens and bathrooms. Also, kitchens save a lot of money - cooking is by far t…
I agree. But it's better to have one kitchen for several units ("single rooms"), than none at all, and not even a single room. Back to the beginning: I don't think that decrepit SRO buildings had to be perpetuated. But I suppose that moving people out of them should have included an offer of some other affordable housing, back in the time they were being removed, I need to find out what has been done.
I guess, but I wonder if kitchen construction is really holding back affordable housing.
> I suppose that moving people out of them should have included an offer of some other affordable housing, back in the time they were being removed, I need to find out what has been done.
I know that in the mid-20th century, in at least some cities, when the governments cleared African-American neighborhoods for freeways, white developments, etc., there were some promises but mostly people were left high and dry. Also, remember that black people couldn't get loans- direct policy of the Federal government and New Deal - or even decent-paying jobs (or an education to get jobs ...), so they didn't own the properties where they lived (they rented) and wouldn't have received that compensation.
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> Generally for most goods markets work really well. There's two intrinsic failure cases: externalities and monopolies. I agree, but you are omitting two other cases: Equity and availability. Again, markets are built to serve those who provide the highest profit. That's fine for iPhones, but not for health, safety, education, basic food, and basic shelter. Everyone should have those, regardless of how much profit the…
Markets provide availability of goods, as long as you can accept price variability. I'll reiterate for safety and land I think these things fail for the reason I mentioned originally. Healthcare I could certainly see working in a mostly market led way, I'm personally from the UK (So extra heretical to say) Food is a bad example, as availability is ultra high. Fresh produce is scarce in areas due to low demand. Low de…
Not if the vendor goes out of business.
> Food is a bad example, as availability is ultra high. Fresh produce is scarce in areas due to low demand. Low demand leads to higher prices.
That's not the case, based on the reports I've seen. What have you seen that supports that?
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> $837,000 That's not what is happening. Per the article: 14% of the units build exceeded $700,000 each, and one project in pre-development is estimated to cost almost $837,000 per unit.
This is a meaningless nitpick. Spending "over $700,000" to house an individual is just as insane as spending "up to $837,000". Its embarrassing and ridiculous either way.