601–610 of 691 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems naive though. Wouldn’t that argument apply to investing in almost any product people need?
No. It's an argument against rent-seeking and predatory market tactics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... and pricing out existing residents in low density housing by taxing them to oblivion.
I never understood this argument. People are not priced out of their homes. Their homes are rising in prices so they actually have assets to match the price increase. Yes they might not be able to afford the tax, but they have a million dollar asset that they could use. The whole point of the tax is to disencent a single person living in a huge house all by themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Van life isn’t a scalable alternative to permanent housing. The reasons for this are many. One of the obvious ones is that if a wealthy investor class can buy up houses and extract rent they can certainly buy up vans and extract rent. So it isn’t even resistant to the very problem you suggest it can solve. Take a look at how much a 1980s VW Westfalia is these days. It’s as absurd as house prices.
Land in desirable areas seems to me to be a much more scarce resource than the inputs and labor that go into a vehicle, especially if you add time - aka decades to make such things cheaper. Not sure how time and technology can do the same for land ownership.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every right requires infrastructure, investment, and labor to ensure. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness aren’t free. Whether or not housing should be a right, rights that are expensive to provide but are nonetheless provided anyway are nothing new.
> Every right requires infrastructure, investment, and labor to ensure. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness aren’t free. People had natural rights long before the concepts of infrastructure, investment, or labor were ever conceived. > Whether or not housing should be a right, rights that are expensive to provide but are nonetheless provided anyway are nothing new. My point wasn't about expense. It was about a…
There’s no right to property, speech, or even life itself without institutions like the police, military, and courts. There’s no right to vote without a massive election bureaucracy. There’s no right to education without a school system.
Why are we given rights like the ones I mentioned, but not housing or healthcare or basic income? It’s simply because the we haven’t collectively decided that the state should provide them. But it could. There’s no fundamental difference between providing housing and providing police protection, roads, schools, parks, and elections.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment? Of course the more attractive we make home ownership as an investment, the more investors will flock to the market. We need policies specifically benefiti…
I sold my houses in a booming market for a $70,000 loss intentionally. It has a nice effect of lowering the value of all my neighbors homes and housed a deserving family. Little did I know when I went to claim the loss on my taxes: I could not claim the loss at all. Since it was an owner occupied house and not a house owned by a corporation, it did not count as a loss I could deduct from my income nor from my capital…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America is not Europe. It will never be Europe. Things that work in Europe may not work in America, and vice-versa.
This always strikes me as an unsatisfying response. What about America is so fundamentally different than Europe that would make the same policies that work there not work here? Every time I’ve seen this type of argument brought up, it’s fallen flat when the same infrastructure is built here because it does end up working . We’re really not so unique.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's insane. More fun LA facts. LA produced ~60k housing units out of a goal of ~80k over the last 8 years. Their goal for the next 8 years is 450k. They are starting at least 1 year late due to the COVID eviction moratorium. Right now you still cannot Ellis Act an occupied property to demolish it. I would wager that they will not meet their goal.
There's a lot of low hanging fruit in LA for redevelopment that won't even require a tenant to leave. For example on most arteries you have single story commercial buildings with no one living on the property. There's also a lot of generally derelict property I've noticed for a number of years in very prominent locations that are not being redeveloped for whatever reason. For example, this building has seen a few str…
There is low hanging fruit but people with smaller pockets need to go after what is available. I looked at every multi family listing for months in LA until I found something that wasn't bleeding cash and was zoned for more units. Most listings were just unrealistic and had some hold out tenants. It turned out to be bleeding cash, but still a good buy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Land area and population density? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
Well Sweden has a lower population density than the US and there is still plenty high density housing, so your argument is? I think it would be good to do away with these simplistic this or that doesn't work here because... The US society was remodelled quite dramatically to be very car centred over a very short time and now people say that it can't be any other way because of the geography? The US was literally diff…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. It's an argument against rent-seeking and predatory market tactics.
Same, By this definition you shouldn't invest anywhere where the supply is low and demand is high, which by very consequence rules out all investments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry but with all due respect, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" is absolutely an acceptable answer. You're acting like you're entitled to live where ever you want, but the simple reality is that this is not possible. You need to come to grips with that objective fact.
Thank you so much for this beautiful insight. I just purchased a 100 sqft plot of land in the Alaskan wilderness where I will hire 20 employees and start a manufacturing business... oh wait, that's ridiculous. Your argument contributes nothing because it fails to address the real negative consequences of unaffordable housing. After a point (which we most certainly have crossed), it affects society in strongly negativ…