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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

#541

Post by closeparen »

mistermann wrote: post #114
rmbyrro wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I'm against govt interventions like this, but in the case of housing, I agree with you. For a society to function in a healthy way, it can't be divided in social class "gettos". It is the responsibility of the State to spend public funds to avoid that. This is not about fairness and equality. It's about the long term survival of a society.

Even further: extremely affordable technology now exists such that the leaders of our "democracies" could ask the public's opinions on such matters in a wide variety of fine-grained ways, or even better: facilitate a high quality moderated public conversation that actually involves the public on these and other matters. This may even be a requirement for a healthy society. Unfortunately, current styles of "democracy"…

Local democracies on housing questions are extremely consistent the world over: no more people near me. If there absolutely must be more people near me, they better be exactly like me.

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

#542

Post by presentation »

mebazaa wrote: post #34

As a Parisian, who is generally angry at the city’s housing policy (build taller!), I find the public housing of the past few years to be a great achievement. In general, public housing sits on the outer edges of Paris, but the city has been agressive in reconverting buildings in posher neighborhoods. It doesn’t really lead to reduced rent (because no additional supply), but it decreases social segregation. That alon…

Don’t necessarily need to build taller, if transit (not bad in Paris already) is brought up to Tokyo levels (meaning an order of magnitude greater than anywhere else) then you just build densely outwards. Tokyo has far higher population but is mostly low-rise. A city like Paris has the bones for this.

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

#543

Post by tmnvix »

_3u10 wrote: post #168
mumblemumble wrote: post #33

My understanding is that excise taxation is generally agreed upon as the preferred method for governments to manipulate the market, both because it incurs fewer deadweight losses and because it tends to actually work better. So, what if we get rid of all these complicated rent control and rent freezes and affordable housing schemes, and instead just implement a rent tax, to be paid by the landlord, and make it progre…

Most demand for houses is from people. Most price increases are due to a lack of supply that exceeds population growth. Most lack of supply is caused by it being illegal to build higher / more dense, and a variety of other rules and regulations. Landlords are for the most part capitalizing on these broader market / regulatory trends.

> Most price increases are due to a lack of supply that exceeds population growth.

Citation definitely needed.

In my opinion, cheap credit (i.e. low interest rates) is the primary culprit. It has created an awful lot of 'artificial demand' for properties as investments as opposed to demand for properties to be used as homes. In most markets I look at, the proportion of underutilised properties has been rising (second homes, short term rentals, land banking, etc).

Here in NZ the sharp rise in interest rates caused a sudden and significant increase in homes available for sale and homes available to rent. Where did they come from?

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

#544

Post by retinaros »

presentation wrote: post #542
mebazaa wrote: post #34

As a Parisian, who is generally angry at the city’s housing policy (build taller!), I find the public housing of the past few years to be a great achievement. In general, public housing sits on the outer edges of Paris, but the city has been agressive in reconverting buildings in posher neighborhoods. It doesn’t really lead to reduced rent (because no additional supply), but it decreases social segregation. That alon…

Don’t necessarily need to build taller, if transit (not bad in Paris already) is brought up to Tokyo levels (meaning an order of magnitude greater than anywhere else) then you just build densely outwards. Tokyo has far higher population but is mostly low-rise. A city like Paris has the bones for this.

impossible to brong it to tokyo level. our people are not educated like japanese people. add the strikes, the frequent infrastructure issues and we will never reach tokyo levels. also since covid transportation is worse since they figured out they could make more money cramping up less trains

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

#545

Post by retinaros »

mebazaa wrote: post #34

As a Parisian, who is generally angry at the city’s housing policy (build taller!), I find the public housing of the past few years to be a great achievement. In general, public housing sits on the outer edges of Paris, but the city has been agressive in reconverting buildings in posher neighborhoods. It doesn’t really lead to reduced rent (because no additional supply), but it decreases social segregation. That alon…

it is already one of the densest cities on earth.. dont build within paris but modernize its suburbs and create more centers there. the public housing is actually adding social segregation as it is edging out middle class and now paris is segregated between ultra rich and poor people working to serve the rich ones

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

#546

Post by retinaros »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #518
harimau777 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do people deal with being sweaty at work? Do offices generally have showers?

Paris is mostly flat. As long as you aren't racing to work, sweat shouldn't be an issue.

it is not flat at all

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

#547

Post by retinaros »

yardie wrote: post #300
6bb32646d83d wrote: post #137

Unfortunately it means it's extremely hard to live in Paris if you're middle class. If you're upper middle class/rich, you can rent/buy. If you're poor, you get a chance to get public housing. If you're middle class, too bad for you.

I'm middle class and lived in Paris. I had rich friends and poor friends. My rich friends owned flats that occupied entire floors of a building. My poor friends got whatever social housing was available. And my middle class friends rented or bought a place in the suburbs with more space. We owned, a relatively small by American standards 55sqm, 3F, flat in the city center. My middle class friends could also rent the…

highly doubt the last decade has been a nice time to be middle class in paros. salaries unlike us major cities never rose and real instate kept increasing. average is 10k sqm which requires you to at minimum make over 100k/year to have a 40sqm flat not in top paris estate

give us more data to understand if you define yourself as middle class. salary, rent, wealth beside salary. thanks.

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

#548

Post by closeparen »

rayiner wrote: post #250
bombcar wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's effectively doing just that - tax the entire city (which taxes are usually mainly paid by the richer people) and use the taxes to subsidize poor people. So since rich people need baristas to serve them Starbucks, tax them to enable the barista to live near where she works. It should work.

> So since rich people need baristas to serve them Starbucks, tax them to enable the barista to live near where she works. That's a good characterization of what's happening. But is subsidizing people to be service workers for wealthy Parisians a good public policy and good use of public funds?

California perspective: rich people could meet their needs for workers/artists/etc by liberalizing the market, but this would cost them property value and eat into the market rents they're collecting. Favoring income-restricted housing allows them to address the same objectives without this blowback.

The cost of the necessary subsidy is calibrated to fall on grubby new-money high earners, so it is effectively free for the long-established propertied class who don't need much taxable income & locked in their property taxes long ago.

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

#549

Post by seanmcdirmid »

closeparen wrote: post #548
rayiner wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So since rich people need baristas to serve them Starbucks, tax them to enable the barista to live near where she works. That's a good characterization of what's happening. But is subsidizing people to be service workers for wealthy Parisians a good public policy and good use of public funds?

California perspective: rich people could meet their needs for workers/artists/etc by liberalizing the market, but this would cost them property value and eat into the market rents they're collecting. Favoring income-restricted housing allows them to address the same objectives without this blowback. The cost of the necessary subsidy is calibrated to fall on grubby new-money high earners, so it is effectively free fo…

Income-restricted housing isn't sustainable, nor is it very accessible (you either win the lottery and have it, or you are stuck in a very long line).

Liberalizing the market doesn't always work, even in the most dense economic liberal cities, the best environment for sustainable affordable housing is depopulation or some sort of recession or economic stagnation.

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

#550

Post by bobthepanda »

resolutebat wrote: post #483
maattdd wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your experience ? China cities are noticeably less dense than other cities in Asia (Manilla, Delhi..) or even Paris

Most of Manila is an endless sprawl low-rise housing and single-story slums, with a few areas of high-rise buildings (Makati, BGC, etc). In the average large Chinese city, more or less all the housing is high-rise.

how much of that housing is occupied vs investment, and how large are the apartments? slums get quite packed.
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