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Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

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Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#91
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values... Your net worth is $1.7 billion, you can fuck off with your concern about that one home of yours experiencing a dip in value. I realize this comment isn't in the typical spirit of an HN comment, but that's just gross.

Do you think he really cares about home values or that he would have to breathe the same air as the poors?

Glib answer: yes.

Slightly less glib -- I think it's more about allowing the precedent. Not so much about breathing the same air as the poors, but more about letting the poors think they should have any such opportunity to share their air.

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#92

>“I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” wrote Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen in an email. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our ne…

I really don’t understand this mindset, shouldn’t you stop caring about money at a certain point? So what if one of your houses decreases in value, you’re set for life. Is it some weird money obsession/disease?

I think it's an excuse. The real reason is probably he doesn't want his neighborhood transformed. If your neighborhood is tree lined single family homes, you may not want multi-family living that breaks the "character" of your neighborhood. Lower prices also attract less affluent people, would increase school sizes, etc. I still think it's hypocritical, but I don't think its about just the home value.

Do you feel the same way about people that want to prevent chain stores or Walmarts from opening in their neighborhoods? It's something like that...

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#93
post #26
post #3

I have always wondered my community (Park City, UT) is spending money to build affordable housing rather then just paying subsidies to make existing housing more affordable. The estimated cost for the last development under consideration was something like $600,000 dollars for one unit, and that was a few years ago. I bought my market-rate condo at under $300,000 a few years before. There are plenty of lower-cost uni…

Because the population has grown more than supply in most of the western world, leading the existing housing supply as a shortfall situation versus demand that exists. Therefore by subsidising purchases and thereby increasing the purchasing power of each buyer, you just end up removing one limiting factor on sellers increasing prices, and most of the subsidy ends up pocketed by the sellers in the form of increased ho…

> most of the subsidy ends up pocketed by the sellers in the form of increased house prices

This is true if the housing supply is inelastic. But the long-run supply of housing services is very elastic[^1].

Also spending money to build housing is inflationary.

[^1]: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R284...

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#94

Aside from all the hypocrisy etc... isn't this concept just plain wrong? Doesn't more housing + business increase the property value of an area? I could see the first-order effects being a reduction of surrounding property as supply increases, but the second order effects of more people are almost always accretive. The downtown area of a city is typically some of the most expensive real estate.

There really isn't what you would call "downtown" Atherton".

What happens in downtown Atherton stays in downtown Atherton, that's why you haven't heard about it.

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#95
post #22

>“I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” wrote Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen in an email. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our ne…

>They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values... Your net worth is $1.7 billion, you can fuck off with your concern about that one home of yours experiencing a dip in value. I realize this comment isn't in the typical spirit of an HN comment, but that's just gross.

Don't his venture capital firm invest in garbage crypto companies? I seriously doubt this guy has any ethics at all.

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism doesn't even mean central planning either. Most socialists are just interested in, "everyone who wants a home should be able to get a home." Not necessarily a big fancy home with a three car garage, but somewhere they can call their own. Even if that means billionaires might lose some of their home value.

Sure, but targeted political messaging shouldn't be concerned with things like factual accuracy. The people who complain about socialists don't know any self-identified US socialists, since those Bernie-type people didn't exist before 2016.

Totally. I'm a Marxist and I have no idea where half the complaints about socialists even come from. People just make up a bogeyman and slap the "socialism" label on it.

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#98
post #96

Quoted post unavailable.

The people working in tech. This motherfucker needs us, just doesn't want us very close. Close enough that he can siphon the life out of the workforce, but not that close.

No post body was provided.

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#99
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does more housing ruin a town?

It's more the density that people object to, not more people, or more housing. It's when there's an area in the denominator. More density means more cars, more air pollution, more traffic, more noise. More accidents, more time searching for parking and standing in lines. It may not add up to ruin, but it's objectively worse.

It... Doesn't have to mean any of those things? Trains and bikes (and ebikes) and scooters and sidewalks and buses and trolleys and streetcars exist.

You don't have to design around the car...

Re: Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing

#100

>“I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” wrote Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen in an email. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our ne…

This has always seemed like a very weak argument, almost like a straw man that people believe in for some reason. Even intuitively, why would one expect that reducing land use restrictions would devalue land?

But let’s try actual, if low quality, numbers:

Houses near Atherton, in Menlo Park, seem to sell for around $500k-$1M per 1000 sq ft of lot size. That’s $500 - $1000 per sq ft lot.

Houses in Atherton, supposed home of very expensive homes, seem to sell for around $10M per acre of lot. (Yes, Atherton is so fancy that it uses different units in Zillow!). That’s about $230 per sq ft of land.

In other words, Menlo Park (not exactly a paragon of high density and unrestricted land use) has 2x-4x the land value per unit area of Atherton.

So those NIMBYs who actually want to extract dollar value from their property should support less restrictive land use!

edit: of course this is the value of random houses plus their lots. I expect the effect would be more pronounced if the houses were removed — those Atherton houses tend to be quite fancy.

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