Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by rcbdev » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 12:16 AM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #148

rcbdev wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Vienna they have this interesting thing where any apartment built before the 50s is rent-capped, so investors usually won't go for the very picturesque old-town properties. This combined with 1/4th of apartments in the city being social housing really created a very affordable market for renters.

>really created a very affordable market for renters. I wouldn't say it's very affordable in the post pandemic, post Ukraine world. It's affordable only if you get public social housing, or if you compare the private market rents to what's happening in the likes of London, Amsterdam, Berlin or Munich, but those are high paying banking/corporate/tech hubs, while Vienna is not, and so the lower rents also reflect the l…

Most people can live in a rent-capped MRG apartment for two years and then immediately qualify for social housing and stay there until the day they drop dead - seems like a very affordable system to me, nonetheless.

The salaries are comparably horrible and that probably plays its part too in the equation, for sure, but on the other hand the salaries would also have to be higher if the state government didn't do such an excellent job at housing people for reasonable cost.

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

#162

Post by musicale » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 1:13 AM UTC

kiba wrote: post #76

echelon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Toll lanes tend to have reduced congestion versus free lanes, but they can be regressive (when the toll is more than the fuel cost savings) and often come at the expense of free lanes.

Widening highways allows toll lanes to be added without reducing the number of free lanes.

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

#163

Post by imgabe » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 2:09 AM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #146

imgabe wrote: post #114

There is no code to crack. Just build more housing and it will become affordable. If it’s not affordable, you haven’t built enough yet. It’s crazy how these cities will try literally anything except building more housing.

Not necessarily. The housing market is very complex, and there is such a thing as induced demand - for example building lots more apartments in SF would make it even more attractive for e.g. tech companies to locate, and so they would quickly be filled, without moving the price.

Induced demand refers to highways. Do you know of any studies demonstrating induced demand for housing?

As a counterpoint, look at all the empty cities China built in the middle of nowhere. According to the "induced demand" hypothesis, people should have materialized to occupy them, but that didn't happen.

Cities currently prevent the market from meeting even the regular demand, let alone any induced demand. Housing isn't going to get cheaper by not building housing.

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

#164

Post by WeylandYutani » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 2:10 AM UTC

solumunus wrote: post #140

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I don’t see any of these schemes being sustainable until they are somehow universal (eg an option even for the rich, but not one they can somehow monopolize). Like Singapore’s public housing, which isn’t gated by income, but rationed in other ways (marriage, have a family, must be a resident).

I think the only answer is that housing as an investment needs to be banned, it’s just too damaging. Not only is it making people poorer by the decade, eventually leading to a dead economy, it’s completely unproductive. Imagine if all that money were to be invested in business instead.

Or have the government build houses at cost. That is how post war Europe fixed the housing crisis.

I don't blame investors not wanting to build for the poor- they would quite literally lose money.

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

#165

Post by refurb » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 2:41 AM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #146

imgabe wrote: post #114

There is no code to crack. Just build more housing and it will become affordable. If it’s not affordable, you haven’t built enough yet. It’s crazy how these cities will try literally anything except building more housing.

Not necessarily. The housing market is very complex, and there is such a thing as induced demand - for example building lots more apartments in SF would make it even more attractive for e.g. tech companies to locate, and so they would quickly be filled, without moving the price.

It's not so simple. Some cities have too much housing. So much so the value of land goes down because of the house built on it.

Sure building more housing, pushing prices down might induce more demand, but there are a dozen other factors (not in the control of the city) that also influence demand - job vacancies, crime levels, quality of schools, etc, etc.

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

#166

Post by imgabe » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 2:43 AM UTC

beaeglebeached wrote: post #145

thisgoesnowhere wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me more about how they don't care about their property value they are simply trying to uphold the character of the neighborhood. Really the property owners and landlords are the victims here.

Imagine you spend half your working class life saving for an absolute shit hole for half a million, knowing it's an NFT that no one can build more of. Then permitting laws are liberalized and suddenly your NFT is worth no more than the labor and material cost to physically build the house, minus depreciation. It's difficult because losing that NFT means they are fucked in retirement. Oh well for them, stupid them for…

The value is in the land, not the house. If you own a plot of land with a single family house on it, and suddenly someone is able to build an apartment building on that piece of land, it will actually become much more valuable because an apartment building generates much more revenue than a SFH. They could easily sell the land to a developer and retire somewhere else.

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

#167

Post by Alifatisk » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 9:09 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #163

somewhereoutth wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. The housing market is very complex, and there is such a thing as induced demand - for example building lots more apartments in SF would make it even more attractive for e.g. tech companies to locate, and so they would quickly be filled, without moving the price.

Induced demand refers to highways. Do you know of any studies demonstrating induced demand for housing? As a counterpoint, look at all the empty cities China built in the middle of nowhere. According to the "induced demand" hypothesis, people should have materialized to occupy them, but that didn't happen. Cities currently prevent the market from meeting even the regular demand, let alone any induced demand. Housing…

Aren’t those empty houses in China prone to break down? I think I remember seeing a video of a guy visiting one of those buildings and managed to kick through the wall and floor pretty easily.

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

#168

Post by infotainment » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 9:41 AM UTC

WeylandYutani wrote: post #164

solumunus wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only answer is that housing as an investment needs to be banned, it’s just too damaging. Not only is it making people poorer by the decade, eventually leading to a dead economy, it’s completely unproductive. Imagine if all that money were to be invested in business instead.

Or have the government build houses at cost. That is how post war Europe fixed the housing crisis. I don't blame investors not wanting to build for the poor- they would quite literally lose money.

Ehh, they tried that in the US with major housing projects like Pruitt Igoe, and we all saw how that turned out.

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

#169

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 9:42 AM UTC

"The housing crisis of the middle class is largely self-inflicted. "

Yeah. With current technology, you can build an incredible amount of housing in a year or so.

The most prominent obstacle is legal, and that's mostly NIMBY activity. You can sink anything into decades of quagmire by weaponizing all sorts of environmental laws and bylaws.

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

#170

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Feb 12, 2024, 9:48 AM UTC

solumunus wrote: post #140

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I don’t see any of these schemes being sustainable until they are somehow universal (eg an option even for the rich, but not one they can somehow monopolize). Like Singapore’s public housing, which isn’t gated by income, but rationed in other ways (marriage, have a family, must be a resident).

I think the only answer is that housing as an investment needs to be banned, it’s just too damaging. Not only is it making people poorer by the decade, eventually leading to a dead economy, it’s completely unproductive. Imagine if all that money were to be invested in business instead.

I am not sure if you can "rule investments by fiat" like this. People invest in housing because they distrust investment in businesses, or at least expect smaller returns. That has some underlying cause.

If you ban investment into housing, it does not follow that people will start trusting businesses more and give them their money. I would rather expect the money to find some hitherto unexpected side channel elsewhere.

If, on the other hand, housing ceases to be a good investment because of a glut of housing, people will start investing into something else even without legal pressure to do so.

What almost the entire West has is artificial scarcity of housing, because of overregulation weaponized by NIMBYs. Artificial scarcity can be remedied, though, just like they did in LA.