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Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

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Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#81

Post by tialaramex »

Kharvok wrote: post #45
deanCommie wrote: post #14

Irrespective of any economic or legal incentives or factors here, this comes down fundamentally to a lack of social trust in north america. It doesn't happen the same way anywhere else in the world like it does in US&Canada. People don't care about other people. "I got mine, ** yours." It's a problem without an easy solution.

How can you build social trust when there is no commonality with your neighbor? Without some commonality of principles how can I trust that any social contract would be recognized or understood. How do people flourish in that environment?

How can there be "no commonality" when you're both human? Like oh no, these people have different arbitrary preferences to me and so we've got nothing in common?

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#82

Post by noirbot »

eapressoandcats wrote: post #72
noirbot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is exactly true though. There's plenty of (common) ways to build intentionally expensive housing, whether that's large minimum square footage or fancy shared amenities that up the cost of living there. There's certainly demand for those things, and it's probably more profitable to saturate the most expensive "high rent" portions of the market first, but it's worth having incentives to also build sma…

The economics of this have been well observed in the car industry. Car makers prioritize luxury cars with higher margins when there is a restriction on how many cars they manufacture (due to supply or legal constraints), but if there is abundance, the lower end of the market is well served because there’s just more overall volume there.

I agree - I'm not trying to imply that no cheaper housing would ever be built if we made it easier to build, but that, as you say with cars, it's more likely to happen later as the restrictions let up. For a community or country, however, there's value in trying to serve people of all economic levels, and not simply serve the needs of the richest first. This is especially true when you're talking about building a city or neighborhood where there's a finite amount of land near a train station on highway.

If you wait for builders to "get around to" building cheaper houses, they'll be off in their own area instead of intermingled in the communities that they likely work and go to school in.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#83

Post by vel0city »

hackerlight wrote: post #36
cwkoss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that the margins are better on luxury houses/apts/condos (less plumbing per sq ft, etc), so developers are incentivized to build at lower-density than is optimal for alleviating housing supply issues.

The concept of a "luxury apartment" is an oxymoron. It's a rhetorical tool used by NIMBYs. Those apartments that get labelled this way are barely sufficient to fit a family and cost less than the median house, yet the median house would never be labelled a "luxury house".

I dunno. I lived in a "luxury apartment" for a bit. It had fancier appliances than the cheaper units I lived at. Quartz countertops. All the doors were inside with air conditioned hallways. Climate controlled storage was available on-site. A clubhouse with multiple billiard tables. Fancy pool area with multiple full outdoor kitchen setups. A golf simulator room. A private dog park. Free coffee in the clubhouse/lobby. A gym with nicer equipment than many places I've paid to have gym memberships. Dry cleaning drop off and pickup service on-site. Events put on by the building for poolside movie nights, poker nights in the clubhouse, etc. Other places had dog wash stations, car wash stations, and other amenities.

Luxury apartments can absolutely be luxurious.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#84

Post by aardvarkr »

legitster wrote: post #71

So, the title here is a bit misleading. It sounds like the particular lawsuits in question are all being flatly thrown out - the delays are normal parts of the design review process or self-imposed. > He said Mayor Harrell and Councilmember Dan Strauss are awaiting those findings before introducing legislation that would reform the design review process, including exempting design review from affordable housing proje…

Delayed since 2016… doesn’t seem normal to take 8 years to break ground

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#85

Post by notch898a »

lbarrow wrote: post #51
lvl102 wrote: post #34

I am just curious why we are allowing foreigners to buy homes in the US when we have a housing crisis. Here in New England, Chinese/Russians came in and started buying homes in the past two decades. Not only that, we end up educating their children for free in our public schools. Why? They don’t even let our companies operate in their country. Edit: they should not be able to invest in real estate in the US if US cit…

I would simply avoid having a housing crisis by allowing people to build more housing. Seems pretty win-win to me.

Allowing the foreigner from a country with no reciprocal permission for us to build in their country works against this though. They're sucking capital out of their country which in the example used of Russia/China would build several more housing units and instead building fewer units in the US. Couple this with lack of reciprocity and what you did was a relative loss in housing potential.

We need to be forcing reciprocity to make sure we're actually maximizing available housing.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#86

Post by hackerlight »

noirbot wrote: post #52
hackerlight wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of a "luxury apartment" is an oxymoron. It's a rhetorical tool used by NIMBYs. Those apartments that get labelled this way are barely sufficient to fit a family and cost less than the median house, yet the median house would never be labelled a "luxury house".

How does that not make sense? It's totally possible to have an apartment that's luxurious. Luxury doesn't mean "large" - look at luxury cars, or watches. Most other major luxury products are almost defined by how expensive they are and how they're not meant for families. Luxury is defined by it being more expensive and presumably nicer to be in than the average thing it's competing with. A luxury apartment isn't tryi…

> Luxury is defined by it being more expensive and presumably nicer to be in than the average thing it's competing with.

It's an intentional decision (one often done with malice where the objective is rhetorical persuasion) to run this comparison only with other apartments and not with general housing stock which is the real comparison that should be made. NIMBYs, in a stroke of genius, have managed to brand apartments that can barely fit a family as "luxury", yet the median house which costs more is just the "modest family home" that is being oppressed by the ghastly shadows imposed by said luxury apartments filled with, presumably, the rich elite, because who other than the rich elite could afford to live in "luxurious" dwellings? It is rhetorical trickery top to bottom with the objective of worsening the housing crisis and therefore adding to the suffering in the world.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#87

Post by vel0city »

panny wrote: post #78
vel0city wrote: post #67

I'm reminded of a recent housing development that was planned in the city where I live. They wanted to build a few hundred near zero-lot-line single family homes and townhouses. It was on land that was previously zoned industrial, so it required a pretty lengthy approval process. The neighborhood next to it fought the proposed zoning changes. Too many houses near by, increasing traffic, too close to the creek, etc. P…

Low income housing is associated with more crime, but warehouses are not. The residents were probably satisfied with the result.

The houses planned in the example I gave started at $400k at the time of planning, with the nicest units going for probably close to $700k especially if you took all the builder options.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#88

Post by noirbot »

hackerlight wrote: post #86
noirbot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that not make sense? It's totally possible to have an apartment that's luxurious. Luxury doesn't mean "large" - look at luxury cars, or watches. Most other major luxury products are almost defined by how expensive they are and how they're not meant for families. Luxury is defined by it being more expensive and presumably nicer to be in than the average thing it's competing with. A luxury apartment isn't tryi…

> Luxury is defined by it being more expensive and presumably nicer to be in than the average thing it's competing with. It's an intentional decision (one often done with malice where the objective is rhetorical persuasion) to run this comparison only with other apartments and not with general housing stock which is the real comparison that should be made. NIMBYs, in a stroke of genius, have managed to brand apartmen…

That is ascribing a lot of collusion and malice to what seems to be a pretty simple situation. I lived in some "luxury" apartments, and they were, legitimately, nicer than the other ones I'd lived in, although not especially "luxurious". But they weren't called "luxury" by some local NIMBY group, it was literally in the name of the company I was writing checks to to pay my rent. It made them sound nicer and fancier than the less nice apartments across the street.

It's trickery, but the banal trickery of marketing a product that you want to sell at a higher price. I doubt they were off sitting in some room laughing about how miserable they were making the world when they named my apartment building. I'm not a family, I don't have one, I don't want a house, I want a nice apartment. Is catering to what I'm looking for "causing suffering in the world"?

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#89

Post by DrewADesign »

jfk13 wrote: post #63
DrewADesign wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Boston setup works great. The folks on the Boston Redevelopment Authority make a ton of money on the DL. Oh did you mean work well for the general public?

Do you have evidence to support that accusation, or are you just cynically slinging mud?

> Do you have evidence to support that accusation, or are you just cynically slinging mud?

Though it was recently restructured, the BRA's long history of corruption is extremely well-documented and publicized. I'm not sure what would compel someone to leave a comment like this without taking two seconds to google it. Cynically slinging mud, maybe?

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#90

Post by firsttimebigboy »

panny wrote: post #78
vel0city wrote: post #67

I'm reminded of a recent housing development that was planned in the city where I live. They wanted to build a few hundred near zero-lot-line single family homes and townhouses. It was on land that was previously zoned industrial, so it required a pretty lengthy approval process. The neighborhood next to it fought the proposed zoning changes. Too many houses near by, increasing traffic, too close to the creek, etc. P…

Low income housing is associated with more crime, but warehouses are not. The residents were probably satisfied with the result.

correlation != causation.

Also, the residents were probably interested in increased property values, just like all home owners are.

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