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The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

derekthompson.org

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Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#371

Post by tptacek »

woooooo wrote: post #359
athrun wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're just applying somewhat arbitrary purity rules to what falls into the "leftist" bucket or not. I believe that for most people "leftists" means "on the left side of the political spectrum", and so, in the US, it would be a strict superset of democrats & Liberals. But for you, it sounds like it's only subset of these, based on some criteria you haven't made explicit. Fair enough, but that's a somewhat…

It's standard among self-described leftists, to distinguish themselves from establishment liberals. I'm not even very far left and I identify with the term because party leadership are all 80yo and out of touch.

"Liberal" is an epithet here too (I'm a liberal, for whatever that's worth).

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#372

Post by imgabe »

999900000999 wrote: post #352

Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Here's how a rational market works. If I build an apartment complex, eventually those apartments will get older and more affordable. And even before that upper middle class folks will move in, freeing up their previous homes. But that's not how many in local governments see it. So you have affordable housing quotas on new developments. You have developers building units for the home…

For years in Washington DC there was one single crank who went to every community engagement meeting and prevented hundreds of units of housing from getting built.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#373

Post by lokar »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #330
kettlecorn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a more realistic (but depressing) goal is modest loss to inflation (so prices go up by 1-2% less then inflation). If you read between the lines that seems to be what Canada's approach to house affordability is going to be. Their leaders are promising housing will be more "affordable" but that the goal isn't to decrease home prices.

10 years of 2% is a real value decrease of 20%. that would be amazing!

But it’s pretty rare to see a contentious policy last that long without really clear results.

And people don’t seem to understand inflation. They expected to see real prices go down (deflation) and were upset when that did not happen.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#374

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

wodenokoto wrote: post #351
tptacek wrote: post #5

So much of the journalism we read is heavily processed and barely-reported and it's startling to see how much of a superpower simple shoe-leather reporting actually is. Derek Thompson's an incredibly sharp writer, but not really a subject matter expert on housing economics; all he did here was read papers and call up the authorities they cited, and the narrative behind those papers collapsed. We're often so down on j…

What does it mean that “so much of what we read is […] barely reported”?

It's copy-pasted from Twitter, or it's explicitly a press release from a company with minor rewording. There is no digging for the truth because the news can't afford any labor

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#375

Post by educasean »

tptacek wrote: post #340
tptacek wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link? I'd love to read countervailing reporting.

I want to say something about Stoller bringing a knife to a gunfight but really this fight only required Thompson to have a telephone. https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1951083395146231957 What did Stoller think was going to happen? Calling people up on the phone is Thompson's entire schtick at this point.

Appreciate the fact digging!

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#376

Post by munchler »

jdkoeck wrote: post #367
munchler wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm suggesting that one problem with housing is wealthy real estate developers who have undue political influence.

I wish they had more influence, then they’d be able to build more and prices would go down.

I'm all for building more housing, as long as it comes with the necessary infrastructure - schools, roads, parking, public transportation, etc. Where I live, developers seem to get government approval to build in locations where they can rake in a lot of money at high prices without having to worry about such things.

(In fact, my local government is actually closing roads near new housing because "f#ck cars" is apparently a hip idea these days.)

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#377

Post by mjvmroz »

imgabe wrote: post #372
999900000999 wrote: post #352

Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Here's how a rational market works. If I build an apartment complex, eventually those apartments will get older and more affordable. And even before that upper middle class folks will move in, freeing up their previous homes. But that's not how many in local governments see it. So you have affordable housing quotas on new developments. You have developers building units for the home…

For years in Washington DC there was one single crank who went to every community engagement meeting and prevented hundreds of units of housing from getting built.

I’ll be so interested to see what happens to this kind of thing.

I feel like we saw the absurd version of it over the past decade, where society at large had acted as though highly online reactionaries are quality signals of an underlying current.

It seems as though market share in that model is failing. I predict the pendulum will swing the other way across the board, and loud minorities in in-person forums will be given less credence… for good (by my estimation in this case) and bad.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#378

Post by denimnerd42 »

matthavener wrote: post #335
denimnerd42 wrote: post #84

i hope the next part of his article covers the zoning issues. because I'm certainly not seeing the zoning issues making the homes be on bigger lots or requiring things like 3 car garages? If anything the lots in new tract developments in dallas fort worth are smaller and have less land using features like they don't have alleys. and then in Dallas city limits any small slice of land that can possibly be used for new…

It's absolutely a zoning issue. The Texas legislature is literally overriding large cities to force them to allow smaller lot sizes. Most of Dallas, for example, is R-7.5, which drives up cost because land is expensive and it requires you to dedicate a lot of it to your yard (max 45% coverage). Only a few areas, like some PDs in old east Dallas, have been rezoned to allow the smaller lots, though you seem to believe…

oh cool thanks. max 45% coverage is pretty low. I guess I must be thinking of some very specific developments that must have gotten variances.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#379

Post by 627467 »

dandanua wrote: post #355
spicyusername wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about wealth inequality as the root cause of housing shortage? Keep building. Eventually there are more houses than people who want to be in them, regardless of whether or not they're being rented or owned. When that happens you'll see the prices fall. After all, if nobody wants to rent your house, you'll either rent it for lower or sell it. If nobody wants to buy it, you'll lower the price. Ad nauseum.

This will not work if there is an exponential wealth inequality in a society, which is where everything is heading.

Can you explain "exponential wealth inequality"?

Sounds a bit like "problem A is unsolvable because - look at here! - no one is solving problem C!"

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#380

Post by woooooo »

tptacek wrote: post #371
woooooo wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's standard among self-described leftists, to distinguish themselves from establishment liberals. I'm not even very far left and I identify with the term because party leadership are all 80yo and out of touch.

"Liberal" is an epithet here too (I'm a liberal, for whatever that's worth).

For what it's worth back, a lot of the opposition towards "establishment libs" is based more on optics than policy IMO.

Voters feel ripped off by the establishment. Running on "we're the establishment and we're here to help" is a loser, and letting Trump be the rebel is malpractice.

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