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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

#561

Post by breakyerself »

podgorniy wrote: post #477
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…

> Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Housing crisis is observed in almost all what is called "first world" (europe, japan, usa). I believe that 90% of the issue is more global than a regulation.

Most of the first world has a habit of mimicking the US.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#562

Post by spicyusername »

didibus wrote: post #287

I just couldn't keep reading with the constant "antitrust left" being refered to on every sentence. The issue, is that for me, the reader, it framed the piece as the author seemingly positioning themselves as the "the other side", the one that knows best and isn't those "antitrust left". It felt like it was creating a strawman and was engaging in tribal signaling. And when you consider the rest of the piece was them…

I mean, the article is responding specifically to a particular ideology... the antitrust left, so it makes sense.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#563

Post by thrance »

Abundance liberalism still seems like a poor attempt to curb the populist left to me.

Let's look at it from a high-level. "Fixing" the housing criris would require a major depreciation of housing assets. Does anyone believe the companies and individuals holding onto multiple homes will accept this without fighting? Of course not. The same people that are arguably responsible (directly or indirectly) for the housing crisis have a vested interest in it persisting. And we know how powerful their voices are with the establishment democrats, the ones this ad-hoc "abundance" movement defends.

There is no simple solution to this crisis, it will require something more radical than just tweaking some numbers on a spreadsheet.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#564

Post by thrance »

spicyusername wrote: post #560
thrance wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who will build homes if there's no one to buy them?

Having more homes than people want to buy would be an amazing problem to have.

Yes but that's impossible, the builder needs a buyer before he builds.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#565

Post by niam »

grafmax wrote: post #467
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…

Abundance YIMBYism has many shortcomings. It doesn't address the risk of gentrification and displacement, the slow and unproven trickle-down effect of market-rate housing, or the critical need for direct public housing to serve low-income communities. Journalistic ideologues deserve little praise for dismantling the weakest counterarguments of their opponents while ignoring core criticisms.

> It doesn't address the risk of gentrification and displacement

This is a puzzling critique because it seems very much in the wheelhouse of "abundance YIMBYism" to advocate for cheaper housing--an argued byproduct of which is that fewer people are displaced. It probably changes the problem statement of gentrification since, if housing is abundant and displacement is low, there's not much to distinguish "gentrification" from just "investing in the neighborhood".

>the critical need for direct public housing to serve low-income communities

This isn't a problem caused by YIMBYism, nor one whose solutions are obstructed by it. We could by that reason malign it for not solving heart palpitations or cancer too.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#566

Post by theptip »

nikanj wrote: post #438
imgabe wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every avenue of life has it’s weirdoes, but why have we as a society decided a single weirdo can stop a hundred homes from being built?

I don’t think a decision was made, we just fell down the slippery slope to Vetocracy.

It requires active energy to keep a thing alive and we haven’t been fighting hard for building things.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#567

Post by IggleSniggle »

bboygravity wrote: post #445
hamhock666 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't people already pay for things like the NYT? I guess local papers might be harder, they may have to demonstrate they can reveal the journalistic failures of other papers in local affairs.

It's fascinating to me that people would pay to read obvious political propaganda. I get that the state-sponsored "news" in many EU countries is heavily politically coloured, but why would something like NYT be if they have paying subscribers? I never did the research, but I'm guessing they must have huge additional streams of income besides payments from readers?

It's a form of tithing. You give to the propagandists providing the slant you align with, even if they're wealthy billionaires. It's been common for belief communities for centuries. Poor people do it for access to wealthy individuals or as a form of gambling on the promises of the propaganda, and wealthy individuals, when they give, are also doing so for influence (access to poor people en masse). Its propaganda all the way down.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#568

Post by munksbeer »

littlestymaar wrote: post #482
ghiculescu wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a housing specific crisis? Or is inflation impacting housing like it impacts everything?

Housing prices have skyrocketed in the developed world since the 90s, and it has nothing to do with inflation (as the inflation in the 90s — early 2000s was very limited).

> Housing prices have skyrocketed in the developed world since the 90s

And in many parts of what we might label as third world.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#569

Post by blisster138 »

api wrote: post #175
Animats wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporters used to start at something like the City News Bureau.[1] For a century, the City News Bureau covered local news for Chicago and sent it in to the local newspapers. Lasted until 2005. Young reporters started there, covering every police station, every major crime, every major fire, every major trial, and getting the facts right, or else. The bureau`s unsentimental motto: ”If your mother says she loves you, c…

The problem is that nobody would pay for it. People expect news to be free, and click bait and lazy copy paste or LLM journalism is cheaper and works just as well to get clicks for ad dollars. Would people pay for real journalism?

Surprised that no one has mentioned 404 media, a dedicated news sub I pay for annually. Good reporting is worth it to me, especially to get past all the b.s. marketing hype and influencer shilling. Maybe they’re unpopular here on HN but I stand by the sentiment: legit, good journalism is worth supporting financially.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#570

Post by potato3732842 »

regularization wrote: post #257
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…

> 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. Matthew Stoller called the people Derek Thompson called, and some said Derek had misrepresented their opinions. So shoe lea…

> and some said Derek had misrepresented their opinions

Because he did? Or because once the entire cumulative picture got painted they looked bad and needed to walk their opinions back?

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