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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?

#71

Post by ZoomerCretin »

cyberax wrote: post #25
jimbob45 wrote: post #6

What is “affordable housing”? All housing becomes affordable once you build enough of it. Is it just the politically correct way of saying “low-quality housing”?

> What is “affordable housing”? It's one of two things: 1. A polite way to say "housing project" or "subsidized housing" to not scare people. 2. A buzzword to force more housing density and/or promote social engineering agendas. When used in this sense, it isn't actually linked to affordability.

You are referring to building apartments in the second most populous city in the United States as promoting a social engineering agenda?

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

#72

Post by zozbot234 »

jeffbee wrote: post #68
crooked-v wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of anti-logic usually goes along with arguments like "well, they keep building lots of units and prices haven't gone down, so obviously it's useless to do anything but enact rent control for current residents and give the middle finger to anyone else who ever wants to live in that place", while ignoring that prices can't go down until we catch up on the literally decades of underbuilding in most US metro ar…

Prices do go down though. A new building in Oakland just got written down by the joint venture REIT that built it, in their filing they blame "historically high levels of new housing on the market". Rents in Oakland are down about 25% in real dollars from their peak in 2019.

Yes, but it's also Oakland - not really the most desirable place in the neighborhood. That's actually the kind of place where prices would be most likely to drop if you just increase density across the board. (Which is not a bad thing if you're overly worried about the detrimental effects of gentrification!)

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

#73

Post by Terr_ »

pas wrote: post #33
readthenotes1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I read from the article. Instead it seemed to be fairly arbitrary government regulations such as required shrubbery and facade articulation that make the cost of building prohibitively expensive. Now, you may be saying it's NIMBY for the LA government to require unnecessary (or mildly necessary) stuff to keep the neighborhoods beautiful, but it's I'd guess it's probably more "just because I can means…

I think the main point is the fast-tracking. Developers don't care if they need to add some landscaping to the whole thing, it just makes things more expensive in the end. What they care about is they don't want to start working on projects that then sit in drawers for years. Of course "LA cracked" nothing, because the construction industry is in absolute shambles. It basically regressed into this cutesy artisanal no…

> What they care about is they don't want to start working on projects that then sit in drawers for years.

This reminds me of another HN discussion about prediction markets, and how they can be misleading since profit is not the same as the time value of money.

For example, I could put down some money for a guaranteed profit against the people betting on "Trump will replace Biden in October 2024 after the aliens invade", but that's so far-out (in both senses) that it's not actually a good rate of return--I could be doing a lot more in-between now and then with the money.

In this case, perhaps developers could invest in a profitable project... but if the time-span is too long, the profit-per-time is bad so they'll look elsewhere.

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

#74

Post by closeparen »

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.

You can, right this moment, purchase a 2-3 bedroom condo in a glass-and-steel high rise in a central business district from a profit-seeking entity, for less than $400,000. It’s called Chicago. Something SF, LA, Seattle, etc. would be immensely improved by imitating.

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

#75

Post by jeffbee »

zozbot234 wrote: post #72
jeffbee wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices do go down though. A new building in Oakland just got written down by the joint venture REIT that built it, in their filing they blame "historically high levels of new housing on the market". Rents in Oakland are down about 25% in real dollars from their peak in 2019.

Yes, but it's also Oakland - not really the most desirable place in the neighborhood. That's actually the kind of place where prices would be most likely to drop if you just increase density across the board. (Which is not a bad thing if you're overly worried about the detrimental effects of gentrification!)

People who say that are speaking from ignorance. These new buildings are ludicrously valuable. The newest, tallest in Oakland is worth > $500 million and the rents are $2k to $4k, and it's > 90% occupied. There are tons of jobs and demand for these homes.

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

#76

Post by kiba »

echelon wrote: post #24
h0l0cube wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> required shrubbery and facade articulation Isn't that appeasing to the NIMBYs who don't want their property values to drop?

This is decades of regulation set by people who may no longer be alive. These archaic rules were crafted for a different era and are products of that time and thinking. Their desires and pressures were different than the ones we face today. We need to garbage collect the rules and streamline for today's needs. Some regulations, such as fire safety, remain important. Many others are simply an unnecessary impediment th…

Their desire and pressures probably impedes the time they're in. It's just not immediately obvious, and even today it's not completely obvious.

Typically, the response to ever increasing traffic congestion is to invest in wider highway, but the consequence remain the same, yet people continues to push for highway expansion.

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

#78

Post by ldoughty »

striking wrote: post #14
jimbob45 wrote: post #6

What is “affordable housing”? All housing becomes affordable once you build enough of it. Is it just the politically correct way of saying “low-quality housing”?

> There are dozens of building code (not just zoning code) requirements that add cost and complexity to housing projects in cities like LA. Street trees, front setbacks, off-street parking, roof decks, façade articulation — these are nice to haves, yet LA requires these features in many cases. > Without these goodies, some ED1 buildings will be ugly. Some will be poorly designed. Just about all of them, by definition…

I think it depends what permits they are waiving as part of this plan... Will we see a bunch of leaning buildings like Santos Brazil after their big tower boom?

I imagine they are keeping most of the safety ones.. but it wasn't well highlighted in the article

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

#79

Post by h0l0cube »

echelon wrote: post #24
h0l0cube wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> required shrubbery and facade articulation Isn't that appeasing to the NIMBYs who don't want their property values to drop?

This is decades of regulation set by people who may no longer be alive. These archaic rules were crafted for a different era and are products of that time and thinking. Their desires and pressures were different than the ones we face today. We need to garbage collect the rules and streamline for today's needs. Some regulations, such as fire safety, remain important. Many others are simply an unnecessary impediment th…

So it's the legacy of NIMBYs.

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

#80

Post by LoganDark »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #51

> 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 mor…

> So not what most people would consider "affordable".

Yeah, this is basically "slightly less unaffordable housing". The one-bedrooms are apparently even more expensive than the two-bedrooms here, which are already extortionary, about double the price they were less than a decade ago. I would know, as for our current place (two-bedroom) we started at under $1,000 per month and ended up here paying almost $2,000 per month instead.

Our family of three makes $35,000 a year. It's a wonder we're not homeless.

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