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To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

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Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#81

Post by marcinzm »

jlmorton wrote: post #68
deepsun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broken compared to what? Homelessness is an ancient problem, noone was able to solve that yet. We need to look and take lessons from systems that at least somewhat helped the problem. Of course, adjusting for the US situation, which might be just different. Compared, to, say Eastern Europe, I feel like US can just afford having so many homeless (e.g. free food and medicine for homeless in California). In many other c…

> Homelessness is an ancient problem, noone was able to solve that yet. Out of curiosity, you do realize there are lots of countries without homelessness, right?

Even the USSR had homeless and it was both illegal and everyone was provided housing. Crappy housing but housing nonetheless.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#82

Post by krschultz »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #30
arbuge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacant != abandoned. Right from the article you linked, 2nd parg: "But this doesn’t mean millions of abandoned and dilapidated homes are withering away in the suburbs. Vacant homes can be unoccupied for many reasons beyond being uninhabitable. For example, a house can be vacant because it’s still on the market to be sold or rented or it’s a vacation home not currently in use."

There are approx 5.7M vacation homes in the US. There are also approx 550,000 homeless people in the US. A system which allows such misallocation is fundamentally broken. If this is what effecient resource allocation looks like, then I want something else.

As an owner of a vacation home and a large donor to homeless charities: this is completely divorced from the reality on the ground. It's a false dichotomy proposed as a way to block solving the problem of limited housing where it's acutely needed.

My ski house in Vermont does absolutely nothing for the homeless people in my neighborhood in New York. If you put someone in that ski house what would it do? Sure it would put a roof over their head, but there are no jobs, no soup kitchens, no homeless resources. They would need a car whereas in New York they can walk and use mass transit. The town in VT is already strapped supporting many in their community (I do charity there as well, and let me tell you it's more dire than much of the New York area).

The solution is to house them here in the New York area where they are (and in fact New York does a better than average job of this).

As for it being a misallocation, I own a $1M apartment in NYC and a $300K house in Vermont. If I just owned a $1.3M apartment in NYC my bills would be exactly the same, there would be 1 fewer "vacant house", and the homeless would still be unhoused. The real misallocation is how much I get paid as a software engineer relative to other professions of similar difficulty. I happen to spend my fun money on a ski house instead of a boat or a bunch of vacations, but there's no moral difference between a vacation home and other leisure spending. So really you are arguing that some people shouldn't have such a surplus when there are homeless people. Maybe that's true, but it's one of the most unpopular positions in American politics and if you are an ally of the homeless it's not a fruitful argument to make.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#83

Post by junofan »

bredren wrote: post #57
jsnk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think this should be done?

Strong financial incentives to not possess unoccupied homes. i.e. second homes are heavily taxed, out of state second homes are even more heavily taxed. Homes under management for long term housing or resale kept in unoccupied states longer than reasonably expected incur penalties. Homes kept unoccupied due to being priced out of reasonable band may do so for limited duration--every loophole has to be addressed with…

> Residential property rental and transactions related to residential property must be way less lucrative.

The problem is growing; why take a demand-side approach? Especially one so prone to making lawyers and government officials rich? You’re just trading like-for-like as demand grows over time.

FWIW, I’m in favor of nationalizing zoning laws as Japan has done to fix supply.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#84

Post by colinsane »

Ninjinka wrote: post #44

There is no such thing as "to meet demand." If there were suddenly 4.3M more apartments, prices would drop, and suddenly there would be more demand as more people believe they can afford to have an apartment. Students who previously would have lived with their parents would want their own apartment. People with roommates would suddenly want their own place.

> There is no such thing as "to meet demand.

you’re talking about induced demand (i think that’s the term?), which is very real and makes the 4M figure in the article a bit misleading, but such demand isn’t likely to be infinite. consider an analogous endgame: i create a product which can dispense sushi for free. i give you a plate of 100 pounds of sushi, at no cost. you’re not going to eat it all, you’re not going to infinitely expand your demand to meet the available supply. supply really has met demand in this scenario.

i think a similar thing would apply to housing. even the very well-off don’t tend to purchase the maximal number of vacation homes they could afford. and i don’t think there’s any technology short of cloning that would cause a person to desire infinite residences: you can only be in on place at any given time…

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#85

Post by jsnk »

bredren wrote: post #57
jsnk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think this should be done?

Strong financial incentives to not possess unoccupied homes. i.e. second homes are heavily taxed, out of state second homes are even more heavily taxed. Homes under management for long term housing or resale kept in unoccupied states longer than reasonably expected incur penalties. Homes kept unoccupied due to being priced out of reasonable band may do so for limited duration--every loophole has to be addressed with…

So this will discourage demand for housing, which will lead to discouraging the developers to build new properties. So you will cause rise in housing prices, rent and cause housing shortage eventually.

Also, this doesn't seem to answer my question. How should expropriation be done exactly?

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#86

Post by TulliusCicero »

bluedino wrote: post #6

We're in luck. There are 16 million abandoned homes in the US https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Easily takes care of the half a million people experiencing homelessness as well.

A very large percentage of people experiencing homelessness have severe issues with mental illness or substance abuse. How do you propose to deal with the damage caused to homes that will likely be common?

I'm hugely in favor of guaranteeing housing, but putting homeless people in random houses and apartments scattered across the country is unlikely to actually work. Do any other countries actually do this to solve homelessness?

We need emergency and temporary housing with heavy support for many homeless people, and then more standard housing for people once they're more stabilized.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#87

Post by hahaxdxd123 »

pessimizer wrote: post #59
hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The empty dilapidated homes are in rural Vermont and flooded Louisiana. If you want to force people to move there, fine. I'd rather they be granted an chance to live in high economic mobility areas like NYC, SF, and Seattle without having to have wealthy parents.

According the tfa, vacant houses are in Florida, California, Texas, New York, and North Carolina, in that order. edit: then Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona, Wisconsin, then, finally, Louisiana .

These states are massive. The rural parts might have homes.

Meanwhile NYC is https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/5/17/23108792/nyc-apartment-vac...

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#88

Post by marcinzm »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #30
arbuge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacant != abandoned. Right from the article you linked, 2nd parg: "But this doesn’t mean millions of abandoned and dilapidated homes are withering away in the suburbs. Vacant homes can be unoccupied for many reasons beyond being uninhabitable. For example, a house can be vacant because it’s still on the market to be sold or rented or it’s a vacation home not currently in use."

There are approx 5.7M vacation homes in the US. There are also approx 550,000 homeless people in the US. A system which allows such misallocation is fundamentally broken. If this is what effecient resource allocation looks like, then I want something else.

Capitalism is very inefficient overall so it's sort of obvious that there'd be waste in all segments however at the same time it leads to better human quality of life overall than other systems we've tried. Or in other words if you waste 25% of 100% more than you're still ahead by 50%.

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#89

Post by junofan »

carapace wrote: post #47
bluedino wrote: post #6

We're in luck. There are 16 million abandoned homes in the US https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-stud... Easily takes care of the half a million people experiencing homelessness as well.

I think this is pretty much the most important point: we already have the houses, so we could save so much in CO2 emissions and materials if we don't build 4.3M more homes and instead just pay to put people in existing homes (via eminent domain or subsidized rents or whatever.) edit to add: A couple of people have mentioned that the vacant homes are not in desirable locations. As an anecdote, I live in Park Merced in…

People probably want a new home in a desirable location more than a one-house reduction in global CO2 emissions, so what you’re saying requires some amount of coercion. Who’s getting their house taken by the state to give to somebody else, and who’s paying to subsidize the rent?

Re: To meet demand, US needs 4.3M more apartments by 2035

#90

Post by hahaxdxd123 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #34
hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because more and more of us want walkability and all the amenities that come with it. None of my age ~25 friends have plans about moving to the suburbs, but we are disappointed at how NYC rent increases mean we will struggle to afford a nice place in Manhattan.

People in the US don’t get there’s a middle way between high-rise megacity and suburban wasteland. In the UK I live in a walkable community of detached homes. There’s villages, towns, dense suburbs of cities. The US used to be famous for small town main streets!

We don't get it because it doesn't exist. SF is pretty close tbh but unfortunately it's fairly poorly run.
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