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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

#631

Post by donatj »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #3
donatj wrote: post #2

The bigger problem, at least in my neck of the woods, is they're not building affordable housing. By-and-large they are building luxury apartments and luxury homes. We've torn down half the city to build luxury apartments that sit at 20-30% occupancy. Building luxury housing won't help the housing crisis until the sellers are on the brink of bankruptcy and forced to sell their properties at a reasonable price.

Asking why they don't build affordable housing is like asking why don't they build used cars

Because most people are out here driving used Ferraris and Koenigseggs and living in old mansions?

Your argument falls apart when you realize they manufacture and sell explicitly affordable cars. It's nearly half the market.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#632

Post by pitaj »

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.

> the slow and unproven trickle-down effect of market-rate housing

Slow and unproven? Supply and demand is the most reliable law of economics. Cities like Austin that are building market rate housing are actively seeing affordability improve.

Furthermore, even if it wasn't sufficient, abundance YIMBYism would still be helpful and necessary.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#633

Post by gboss »

dlcarrier wrote: post #475
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…

Legacy journalism has changed from a low-barrier-to-entry working man's occupation, with entry level reporting leading to high-paying punditry, into a high-barrier-to-entry ivy league occupation with new entrants to the field expecting prestigious positions from the start.

It’s also what’s called a high prestige low pay career which is by definition exclusionary of poor and middle income people, so the news makers are further and further detached from regular people.

https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/02/07/the-dangers-...

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#634

Post by LargeWu »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #507
nathan_compton wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is good, but the phrase "antitrust left" really turned me off. I am probably some kind of a leftist (I want higher taxes on rich people and a society much more welfare oriented with a substantial degree of labor and resource allocation performed democratically instead of by markets) but I don't know a single leftist who actually cares about this housing shit except to think that houses should be cheaper…

> resource allocation performed democratically instead of by markets The economy is too complex to be planned in details and such attempts at control have failed again and again. I think some people also miss that, crucially, the market is not an external force, it is just the aggregate of each individual's need, decision, and desires. SO in a way a working market is as free and democratic as can be.

I like to say the market is undefeated thoughout history.

You can add regulations or limitations that incentivize the market one way or another to achieve social goals, but these distortions add up. And when there are too many distortions in the market, it stops acting how you want it to act, and starts acting how it will. And usually, that means negative unintended consequences.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#635

Post by [deleted] »

joenot443 wrote: post #554
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…

It's a shame to let two words color your opinion on an entire piece like that; I found it to be really compelling. Your last paragraph is a bit confusing; is it your position that Derek's lying? Which quote did you think was inaccurate? Or are you specifically concerned with his rhetoric?

[deleted]

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#636

Post by daedrdev »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #558
energy123 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mamdani - rent control. Dean Preston - NIMBY. UK Greens Party - NIMBY. Australian Greens Party - NIMBY. Explain?

UK Greens aren't NIMBYs. They're against doing more of what's being done across UK cities already - which is building generic boxy blocks of cheap housing that look like they fell out of Minecraft, and selling them for unreasonable prices. Many of the flats end up in the hands of landlords, who charge even more unreasonable rents. There is no sense in which that's a workable long-term solution to the housing problem.…

Thats being a nimby in all but name. The UK does not build flats relative to its needs.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#637

Post by derbOac »

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…

> In California you can literally just claim a new highrise will block your sunlight and make you sad. That's enough to delay a construction

So what's the problem?

Land use should be regulated imho, just like air pollution and other commons phenomena.

I don't care what kind of towel you buy to dry yourself off with, but I do care if a developer affects the environment and housing around it.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#638

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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.

> gentrification

Gentrification isn't actually a problem if it doesn't force lower income residents to leave. They wouldn't be forced to leave if their housing wasn't some of the only options for higher income people to inhabit

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#639

Post by derbOac »

TFYS wrote: post #435
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…

> Here's how a rational market works. Might regulations be the result of these "rational markets"? After all, if I invest a lot of money to build apartments, I might want to protect that investment by lobbying for regulations to make it harder for competitors, increasing the value of my investment. Or if I buy an apartment, I might want to prevent others from ruining my view, prevent noise, etc. All completely ration…

I think this is the thing these types of arguments miss. Regulations are the result of another type of market, the vote market. That's the whole point, to counteract hidden failures of the market with another feedback mechanism.

For what it's worth, imho Thompson presents a strawman argument about oligopolies to avoid the real critiques. He even kinda contradicts himself at the end because it's convenient for his argument.

It's never really about oligopolies writ large, it's about the players in the local decision in the moment (which is all that matters) and who profits at whose expense with what consequences.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#640

Post by LargeWu »

davidw wrote: post #343
crooked-v wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in extremely liberal Portland, there are a huge number of people who genuinely believe that 'greedy developers' are the cause of the nationwide housing shortage, having talked themselves into the nonsense belief that building fewer homes makes people more money.

I have been doing YIMBY stuff for around 8 years now, and it does not map nicely onto any kind of left-right narrative. There was one conservative dude who ran for city council here who was all about 'private property' and 'get rid of government regulations', who also ran against the idea of liberalizing zoning. I've met left wing people who I agree with on many issues who will do the most spectacular, Olympic level…

It's dogmatic among the left that "market based solutions are bad". And because Abundance embraces market solutions, it must therefore be bad too.

Basically, all the arguments I've seen against Abundance tend either towards the ideological, or irrelevant. I tend to see very little empirical arguments.

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