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Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

nytimes.com

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Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#361

Post by mpweiher »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #187
digging wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light pollution is relatively easily solved, there's just not much will to do so. Noise pollution is best solved by reducing car-dependency which is a non-starter in most North American cities; I can't speak for Europe but I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade.

> I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade. The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever lines were already there saw a drop in service quality. So increasing density would requi…

> [increase friction for cars...no improvement to public transport]

Hmm...aren't you forgetting something?

Last I checked, Paris had a veritable bicycling revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Paris

Le Plan vélo de Paris (2015-2020) doubled bicycle lanes to 1000km and increased ridership (apparently already high?) by 50% or more.

The current plan is to add another 180km and make Paris 100% cyclable.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#362

Post by HDThoreaun »

pas wrote: post #310
jeffbee wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who don't understand market pricing are against rent taxes because they think landlords can pass them through.

how could/would they not? everything is paid by the renters, and if the price is not high enough (to turn a risk-weighted profit) it will be removed from the market. (if there's a high enough vacancy tax and/or security costs against squatting, then eventually it will be sold. which is a one time boon for the market, but it ends up crowding out new developments for a while, and altogether this just leads to crazy wai…

Rental supply is fixed in the short term. Therefore landlords have no pricing power unless they are colluding assuming theyre trying to maximize profit and not giving tenants a deal. Landlord goal is to rent every unit for maximum amount, that means renters set the price by competing with each other.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#363

Post by mpweiher »

Aromasin wrote: post #320
vladvasiliu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade. The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever lines were already there saw a drop in service quality. So increasing density would requi…

The same is happening in the UK. They've made car travel harder without making public transport any better (outside of London), which has just lowered the average person's productivity rather than making any headway into tackling the core issue of people getting from A to B quicker, cheaper, with less pollution. They put in some heavy traffic restrictions in my local city of Oxford by closing off residential roads, f…

> [car travel harder without making public transport better]

Erm aren't you forgetting something?

London just quadrupled its bicycle network. That seems like a massive improvement to me. When I lived there, biking was...let's be kind and say "less than ideal". Last time I visited I was amazed by the improvement, with protected two-way bike lanes right on the Thames and much more.

https://momentummag.com/london-just-quadrupled-its-bicycle-n...

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#364

Post by digging »

bko wrote: post #352
digging wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now imagine the discretion of "people of all ages backgrounds income levels etc" would fall to his or her purview to decide. How much room for discretion is there actually in promoting diversity? I suppose you could forcibly break up poorer immigrant communities which would be pretty harmful.

It's simple, there are laws in the US that state that you cannot discriminate based on sex, religion, nationality, race, etc. if you would want to allow certain programs to help certain groups based on those characteristics you would have to lift those laws. Do you favor removing those laws?

Oh this is one of those conversations; I'm leaving

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#365

Post by HDThoreaun »

Ragnarork wrote: post #234
bluefirebrand wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to lean lefty, but this scheme makes me understand why libertarians want less government How much my home is worth should not be capped by whatever government thinks. That's bs If government is counter offering all of my neighbors and they are accepting it, then I am screwed. I either accept the government counter offer or I go to tribunal who will cite all of the government's recent purchases from my neighbor…

> I go to tribunal who will cite all of the government's recent purchases from my neighbors That's an assumption on your part. Both the owner and the city can mount a legal case as to why their price is the correct one. In practice, this is often done by comparison with other properties in the same area and with the same characteristics. The judge also gets to visit the actual property to have its own perspective on…

But the market is completely distorted because the government is close to a monopsony. Especially if they "preempt" an entire neighborhood. There's no private sales to point the tribunal to in that case so they have utter control over the price

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#366

Post by ecshafer »

sofixa wrote: post #71
ecshafer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US also has a per capita GDP 50% higher than Austria ($52,131 vs $76,399). At $52,131 a year per capita GDP, Austria would be neatly in second to last place as the poorest state in the Union, as it would beat Mississippi at $47,190 but be beaten by West Virginia at $53,852. So perhaps the US policy is doing something correctly.

How is GDP per capita relevant, especially not adjusted for purchasing power parity? For Austria the GDP per capita PPP is at $67-69k depending on the estimate, which would put it somewhere between 27 and 33 place of US states, so roughly in the middle. If you compare the Quality of Life Index, Austria is 9th, USA is 15th. Freedom Index - Austria is 93, USA is 83. HDI USA is 20th with 0.927, Austria is 22nd with 0.92…

GDP Per capita isn't pa particularly good metric, but it is a measure for how productive a country is. So when the original poster laments that Vienna has this model of subsidizing housing while the US needs to "get rid of econ 101 hokum", I think it does do a good job as showing that for their differences, the US does do a good job at things (creating economically productive value in this case).

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#367

Post by bugglebeetle »

orwin wrote: post #324
bugglebeetle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, it’s much better to make 53K a year and live in West Virgina than Vienna. This is a sentiment with which everyone would agree.

To be honest West Virginia is the best US state (I also am close with back to landers communities, and visited through their lenses, so I am biased). Homemade booze (I don't drink, but still), homemade goat cheese (best cheese I had in the US), best kayaking rivers, great hiking trails, great people, great horses, great musicians. What's not to love.

The rates of childhood poverty and food insecurity, for starters.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#369

Post by tom_ »

mpweiher wrote: post #363
Aromasin wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is happening in the UK. They've made car travel harder without making public transport any better (outside of London), which has just lowered the average person's productivity rather than making any headway into tackling the core issue of people getting from A to B quicker, cheaper, with less pollution. They put in some heavy traffic restrictions in my local city of Oxford by closing off residential roads, f…

> [car travel harder without making public transport better] Erm aren't you forgetting something? London just quadrupled its bicycle network. That seems like a massive improvement to me. When I lived there, biking was...let's be kind and say "less than ideal". Last time I visited I was amazed by the improvement, with protected two-way bike lanes right on the Thames and much more. https://momentummag.com/london-just-q…

The comment specifically excludes London, as it works differently from the rest of the UK.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#370

Post by HDThoreaun »

BWStearns wrote: post #13
bko wrote: post #4

The problem with charging below market prices for anything is that it necessarily leads to a mismatch of supply and demand. So the question is how do you allocate that supply? One way is to have hidden costs. This could range from straight up bribes, to paid consultants to fill out a lot of forms or talk to the right people, to just knowing someone Another way is a lottery which benefits a tiny percentage of people.…

I get these arguments against it and I'm sympathetic to the reasoning, but the point of public policy is results and the Parisian policy certainly seems to just work better than most US housing policy. SF, Boston, NYC also spend a ridiculous amount of money ostensibly trying to achieve similar outcomes but their approaches just don't work.

Paris housing works better than SF, Boston, or NYC because it is much denser, not because of public housing. American cities artificially limit density which drives up prices as everyone wants to live in the high demand area that cant densify.
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