The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#261

Post by uses » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:28 AM UTC

simpaticoder wrote: post #56

What about wealth inequality as the root cause of housing shortage? Even if supply is eased, the wealthy (those who have enough capital to earn passive income) will buy the extra supply and rent to the poor. The Piketty effect takes over, they invest their profit in more housing, wealth inequality continues to get worse, and while more housing exists, it owned by an increasingly small cohort. Personally I'd like to s…

To the extent that housing speculation exists, it's because of the lack of supply. So you have the cause and effect reversed.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#262

Post by YZF » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:29 AM UTC

starkparker wrote: post #185

dannyobrien wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved in a lot of discussions about "what is journalism? what do real journalists do?", and the best response I've heard was from Ian Betteridge (of Betteridge's Law fame), who told me "Journalists pick up the phone." It may have already dated as a pithy description, but the idea of literally calling[1] people to fact-check or dig deeper is a low bar that a surprising amount of current journalism doesn't…

> I know why people blame the internet, the drop in rewards for journalism, the pressures to churn out text, that has led to. But I'd also emphasise that it's a vocational skill that not everyone is built for, or trained to do. As someone both built for and trained to do it, I can tell you I'd be making at least US$150k/year less if I was still doing it. I wager I'd be short about $1.25M in career earnings through ju…

Appreciate the inside perspective.

I'm curious what's your take on news agencies like Reuters and AP? Do they pay better? Do they have resources to do real journalism?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#263

Post by Schiendelman » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:29 AM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #255

Schiendelman wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the housing crisis is what's causing wealth inequality? Piketty's data pointed to this.

Definitely is a negative feedback loop. So I expect the trend to accelerate as long as foreign investment keeps flowing into the US in the same rates

Other than people claiming it, what actual evidence have you seen that foreign investment would be a problem if we weren't restricting housing supply?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#264

Post by whatever1 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:29 AM UTC

appreciatorBus wrote: post #215

whatever1 wrote: post #179

Housing crisis is just a result of increasing income inequality and the resulting real estate investment craze. The population of America (real demand) did not suddenly double at any state/city. Rich have become so much richer that can afford bidding wars at unattainable prices. They can buy investment homes and be cashflow negative for decades in anticipation of the increased market bidding prices. Of course they op…

The population of a place doesn't have to double, or even change at all, for prices to go up. All that is necessary is for more people to want to live in a place. Those with the $ to satisfy that desire will outbid those who don't and you can easily double/triple/10x prices with no change in population.

How come more people want to live in the entire US if the population is relatively flat? Prices are up everywhere.

The only answer is that the increased observed demand is a result of the increased investment demand (rather than native demand)

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#265

Post by vel0city » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #218

quodlibetor wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a few tenths of a percentage point of NYC Feb 2024 (last year there's data, I think) was a record low and it was 1.4% empty, according to NYC[1]. But I don't really know the methodology, and according to other nyc gov data it's surprising, since we still haven't recovered our population from COVID[2]. The first statistic (housing pressure) is based on population growth, but the NYC population statistics suggest sti…

Vacancy doesn’t mean units held empty as either a parking place for cash or held off the market. Vacancy happens when you’re painting and repairing between rentals. Vacancy happens when there’s a renovation. Things like that are normal and not nefarious. Have 1.4% vacancy rate means there is essentially no usable housing for rent. I was talking about the myth that there are tons of apartments held by rich people who…

Do you have any actual data on the rate of unoccupied properties that are not recently or soon to be available to rent in any major US markets? It seems like kind of hard data to find from my brief perusing around. I'm very interested in seeing some reliable data on this.

I had thought such units would have been included in the housing vacancy statistics, but apparently they are not.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#266

Post by Hammershaft » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

woooooo wrote: post #197

tptacek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a very wealthy, extraordinarily progressive muni (almost certainly in the top 5 nationally), and my primary political project is zoning reform, and I assure you that left-NIMBYism is a thing, and that the "we should make blue state governments perform better and increase supply of things people want" thesis of "Abundance" (Thompson and Klein's book) is a bête noire among those leftists. The argument isn't t…

> Keep in mind: Klein and Thompson's political project is a plan to organize the Democrats. This is the crux of the opposition. It's not that leftists necessarily have a problem with zoning reform, I don't at least, its fine. It's that the "abundance" project is a play for control of the party by the same losers who gave us Biden and Kamala. People on the left feel that we need to be speaking to economic problems tha…

Many leftists have a problem with zoning deregulation.

Housing supply is the biggest economic problem that regular people face.

Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson did not bring us Joe Biden, Ezra became one of the most critical mainstream journalists of Biden. Their politics are meaningfully different.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#267

Post by Schiendelman » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

gopher_space wrote: post #259

Schiendelman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle, and this is a scapegoat. it's another way to point a finger at anything but massive restrictions on supply. The easiest solution to collusion to keep prices high is to let lots of other people build and compete down price. In Washington, most new construction happens on a very small number of parcels, because that's the only place we allow it.

Nobody concerned about rent price fixing thinks that we don't also need to build more housing here. This is just another part of the problem. Are you defending the practice?

I think it simply doesn't matter. The only reason it could have any impact at all is in an incredibly constrained market. Unconstrain the market and they just won't be able to; it wouldn't work.

Also - I don't think it actually affects prices. It's just that they've gotten good at seeking price equilibrium.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#268

Post by zahlman » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:31 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #20

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordable housing is NIMBY whitewashing of reducing supply through rationining. (Note the supporters of affordable housing programmes count the largest landowning families in San Francisco and New York among their ranks.) There is an article on the front page, right now, about Denver moderating its rents through construction [1]. We've also seen this in Montana [2]. [1] https://denverite.com/2025/07/25/denver-rent-p…

100% "Supply and Demand" is a law of nature. If you build infinite luxury apartments, in the limit their value is zero. Build more luxury housing and the inventory increases. If you've met the city's housing demands (which you probably won't since nearly every city is behind on meeting demand), then it follows that typically less desirable inventory experiences less demand and will subsequently experience a price dro…

> Tax unproductive land use, eg. storage units and parking garages.

Good luck doing that before you've fixed transit, which will take forever even with a miracle of political will.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#269

Post by chermi » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:31 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #202

chubot wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said heavily processed and barely-reported If you want to say Fridman's content is "barely-reported", i.e. he barely does journalism, then I won't really argue. But the interviews are NOT heavily processed, and that's precisely why some on the left won't sit with him. (But not Thompson and Klein, because they actually have something to say.) So ironically, it kinda balances out. Being credulous attracts guests wh…

Someone "interviewing" a pundit by letting them speak for 3 hours contributes very little to our understanding of reality . We might understand a bit more about the pundit's opinions, which can be entertaining, and could theoretically be valuable, but rarely is. Someone actually looking for facts about reality would be far more useful and valuable to society. Not that we reward that sort of thing.

Letting someone talk for 3 hours is good information. It contributes a lot. Just because it's not distilled and you're not told what to think about doesn't make it not valuable.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#270

Post by throwawayqqq11 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:31 AM UTC

appreciatorBus wrote: post #210

simpaticoder wrote: post #56

What about wealth inequality as the root cause of housing shortage? Even if supply is eased, the wealthy (those who have enough capital to earn passive income) will buy the extra supply and rent to the poor. The Piketty effect takes over, they invest their profit in more housing, wealth inequality continues to get worse, and while more housing exists, it owned by an increasingly small cohort. Personally I'd like to s…

Piketty logic assumes infinite demand. Housing demand is very large, large enough to seem infinite when North American cities have spend 100 years banning every form of housing imaginable except the single family house, but it is not actually infinite. If Piketty was correct, then inflation adjusted housing cost per sqft floor would always go up everywhere all the time. But we see dramatic differences in different pe…

The housing market is much more inelastic than eg. the cars market. Whether demand in housing is infinte is a question of scale of population and wealth growth and elasticity. With that given, i would assume the postulated effect of run-off construction and renting, but we only have poluation growth and not the other two.