HUD and state/local counterparts should invest in real estate with the sole purpose of lowering housing costs. They should aim to break-even on their investments. They should also directly build and sell houses for profit to compete against commercial entities and drive down new housing cost.
Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
171–180 of 207 posts
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A single failure doesn’t somehow cancel out the more successful versions, it says you should learn from them how not to repeat the mistakes. The toxic stew of racism of the south in the 1950s, for example, seems significant as does the realization that you can’t just toss up a building with no shopping, jobs, poor transportation access, etc. and expect it to go well.
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
>seems like a very affordable system to me
First question: How do you get in that system? Or is it reserved only for locals?
Because I contemplated moving to Vienna last year (most livable city, lowest rents and all that advertising) and I saw on Willhaben single bedroom apartments in decent shape were 1000+ Euros while software developer take home wages and perks weren't higher than in shitholes like Bucharest, Belgrade or Sofia (no offence, I'm also from around that region), sometimes even worse than there.
Second question: if the government is basically indirectly subsidizing employers by subsidizing housing for employees, meaning companies need to pay less for talent than in higher CoL areas, why then aren't more international tech companies opening offices in Vienna and instead keep hiring only in places with a housing shortage like London Berlin and Amsterdam? Something just doesn't add up. You'd think Vienna would be a magnet for companies instead of the overpriced cities with zero housing.
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, amongst others.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/4nkkq7/apartment_buil...
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not obvious that would stay fixed: depending on the dynamics of the market, it could go up, it cold go down (The demand is for housing, not land. If you manage to increase supply for housing sufficiently by increasing density, then the value is the land could go down even if you could build many more homes on it than before). I agree it's not certain that it would go down, however.
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#176[dead]
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#177Good to see this happening. That said I strongly dislike when there's a conflation of "affordable housing" (lower-case, the general concept of providing for people on lower incomes) with specific schemes you have to qualify for (often "Afffordable Housing" upper-case) - in this case it seems to be deed restrictions on income that are required in exchange for floorspace bonuses and building code relaxations? There's a…
I agree, this is a bit like shareholder's ownership in the UK and the antiquated leaseholder setting.
Just no. The solution isn't to make home ownership an even more complicated topic but to increase the stock, within the parameters of building regulations.
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Pruitt Igoe suffered from a number of structural issues (including literal issues with the structures) that had little to do with it being government funded. Indeed one of the biggest issues was the government's unwillingness to fund it - several parts of the project were cancelled, then when the city's population started to plummet and vacancies started to mount there was no assistance to make up for the shortfall in maintenance revenue.
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#179There 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 is just unsatisfied demand from parties not counted - if there are more people/companies that want to relocate to SF but can't because of a lack of available supply, that's just as much a shortage as for people and companies which wish to remain in SF.
Re: Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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