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Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

benjaminschneider.substack.com

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Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#51

Post by ZoomerCretin »

> A single person making $70,000 would qualify for a one-bedroom for about $2,000 per month. A family of four making $100,000 would qualify for a three-bed for about $2,500.

So not what most people would consider "affordable". It's "affordable" because it's currently affordable to people making below the area's median income and is deed restricted. It's nearly-market rate housing.

And that's a good thing! We need more housing of all kinds for all people.

>ED1 is not going to end homelessness in LA. (Though some non-profit developers — including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which spends millions of dollars advocating against housing policies like ED1 — are using the law to build affordable housing for the formerly homeless.)

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is mentioned in a throwaway line, but it's truly one of the most bizarre parts of the housing discourse in California. It's a non-profit organization controlled by Michael Weinstein, who uses the organization as his personal slush fund to sue housing development that would block views from his office and his personal home, and sued to block any development in the city of Los Angeles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Healthcare_Foundation

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#52

Post by yterdy »

simonw wrote: post #36
cyberax wrote: post #23

[flagged]

How does building dense housing lead to higher housing costs? That seems unintuitive to me.

Devil's advocate: induced demand. Density increases interactions which are the economic point of cities, and why cities are wealthier than suburbs/rural areas (when suburbs/rural areas aren't juiced by subsidies and loans). Wealthier cities attract migration, migration increases demand for units.

That said, my personal belief is that prices are completely decoupled from demand and are more reflective of a desperation to keep them high for... other reasons.

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#53

Post by zozbot234 »

simonw wrote: post #36
cyberax wrote: post #23

[flagged]

How does building dense housing lead to higher housing costs? That seems unintuitive to me.

If living in a denser place turns out to be more desirable due to better jobs and/or amenities, the demand effect can be so strong that it more than offsets the increased supply. But that's actually a very good thing; it means that dense housing is unlocking even more value than you might have expected it to.

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#54

Post by SR2Z »

popularonion wrote: post #48
apsurd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the person that wants more dense and walkable cities, so I'm really curious to learn more about why that will ALWAYS lead to more misery down the road. Honest question, do you have any stuff I can read or terms I can search on?

Fertility rates in cities are far below replacement and falling every year. In every country, religious or secular, liberal or conservative, socialized healthcare/education or no. So they are proving simply not capable of sustaining human life. This only works as long as rural people keep having lots of kids to feed into the city, but that isn’t really happening anymore either.

This is insane - rural birthrates are higher, but birthrates are falling across the developed world in both urban and rural contexts.

It's not because of density - it's because people with options other than raising children tend to pick them since kids require a lot of effort.

SF and LA could easily be several times more dense than they currently are; that kind of increase would see the capacity of the entire state grow by double-digit percentages.

So now I've gotta ask you: if cities suck for population growth, then where would those double-digit population gains come from? It's not rural America, that's for sure.

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#55

Post by michaelmrose »

vuln wrote: post #41
apsurd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the person that wants more dense and walkable cities, so I'm really curious to learn more about why that will ALWAYS lead to more misery down the road. Honest question, do you have any stuff I can read or terms I can search on?

There is plenty of history showing the long term effects and outcome of dense housing run by the Government. Dense housing ran by private companies will always be a race to capture the most amount of profit. While Government ran dense housing will be affected by an ever decreasing budget and ever increasing cost. OP is right. We need to invest in “fly over” states. There is an abundance of land and opportunity to ach…

There are three problems you have to deal with.

Remote Work You need pervasive remote jobs to move any meaningful number of people away from the companies that presently fund their lifestyle.

Government and Desirability

Flyover states are run by gross people whose theories on how our country ought to be run that are misaligned with the people you wish would move there. This is going to cause in not many years a crisis situation with doctors choosing to move to more desirable locations and small cities lack a lot of the amenities and interest of living in the big city. People are already choosing not to live there despite decrease costs. Small cities are BORING.

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#56

Post by crooked-v »

popularonion wrote: post #48
apsurd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the person that wants more dense and walkable cities, so I'm really curious to learn more about why that will ALWAYS lead to more misery down the road. Honest question, do you have any stuff I can read or terms I can search on?

Fertility rates in cities are far below replacement and falling every year. In every country, religious or secular, liberal or conservative, socialized healthcare/education or no. So they are proving simply not capable of sustaining human life. This only works as long as rural people keep having lots of kids to feed into the city, but that isn’t really happening anymore either.

This isn't the 1800s. A clear majority of the population of the modern US lives in "the city".

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#57

Post by ZoomerCretin »

stavros wrote: post #42
BadCookie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokyo manages to remain affordable somehow. “Two full-time workers earning Tokyo’s minimum wage can comfortably afford the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in six of the city’s 23 wards.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-...

Not to detract from your point, but 2-bedroom apartments in Tokyo are 60 sqm or something.

That's 646 square feet. That's 25'5"x25'5". For an urban area, that's plenty of space. That doesn't mean literally every apartment is that small, just that small and cheap apartments are available for those who want them, and American-sized apartments with American prices are also available for those who want to pay for them.

That's one of the main reasons why housing is so expensive in the United States. We paternalistically decide that 760 square feet is the absolute minimum amount of livable space for a one-bedroom apartment, and instead force people who can't afford that much space to split a 1200 square foot apartment with three people.

Adults are more than capable of deciding for themselves how big of an apartment they would like to live in. Banning 60 square meter apartments doesn't help people who can't afford the legal mandated minimum.

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#58

Post by from-nibly »

I think they need to revisit their definition of done. All I saw was a 3d render and some people who said "could I build this" and they've somehow cracked something.

Eli goldrat would say you've solved nothing until people are living in those homes and producing in your society. (Customers' customers have received value)

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#59

Post by ipnon »

skeptrune wrote: post #22

My main takeaway from this is that the free market may have already lowered housing costs if bureaucracy would just get out of the way. I mean it seems like there is something to the bit of regulation that forces them to keep rent low, but broadly this suggests to me that the bulk of spend should be on somehow making the bureaucratic part of the system run more smoothly or be easier to navigate so more projects get a…

How much of your rent is going to salaries at city hall? How much better would the city be to substitute these salaries for cheaper rent?

Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

#60

Post by MengerSponge »

cyberax wrote: post #17

I'll save you a click: no. Here's the thing: housing in dense cities will NEVER be affordable. Never. What happened recently (and is happening in other cities like Seattle) is companies pivoting from building "luxury" crappy condos to sweet state-subsdizied housing. These kinds of projects are great for them, they don't need to care about the market demand.

Vienna's plenty affordable. It takes an investment in public transit and reasonable housing policies, but it's perfectly achievable.
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