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

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#651

Post by davidw » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

LargeWu wrote: post #640

davidw wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tons of the critics of the book haven't even read it, because large portions of it are about making the government work better, not just using market-based solutions for all our problems.

Housing, though, could definitely use a better market with less constraints like zoning.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#652

Post by potato3732842 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #637

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.

>So what's the problem?

That is not a sufficient justification to infringe upon property rights.

While I'm sympathetic to the whining about "well they're a big business interest they oughta be able to work around the constraints" we are at least nominally all equal under the law where those things trickle down and at the end of the day that type of garbage winds up most applying to the little guy who can't afford lawyers and convolution

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#653

Post by potato3732842 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

mjvmroz wrote: post #377

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.

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…

These people were only ever given credence as a pretext for whatever the entrenched interests wanted to do in the first place.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#654

Post by lanfeust6 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #297

Here's the political solution: Do both public housing and zoning reform. Unlike zero-sum political disputes where there is a winner and loser, this is a rare issue where both camps can win without impacting the other camp. What we should not do is give the left their worst ideas, like rent control or stopping AirBNB. Give them their best idea, which is public housing.

> Here's the political solution: Do both public housing and zoning reform.

You just described the Abundance agenda. Do whatever is politically viable to build more.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#655

Post by magicmicah85 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

talkingtab wrote: post #611

Fish Tank Thinking is where your thinking is so constrained by some artificial walls that you cannot actually ... well actually think. It is the wages stupid. Let me repeat that. It is the wages stupid. What happens when a society is so brain washed that it cannot even consider that if you don't pay people they can't afford housing. Or cars. Or medical care. Or food. If you actually have some desire to consider the p…

If wages go up, housing will assuredly go up as people outbid each other. Wage stagnation is a problem, but it's not the solution to the housing crisis. People would still be unable to afford homes as they get outbid by people who have slightly more than them.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#656

Post by antisthenes » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #495

antisthenes wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Property taxes are relatively independent from the absolute value of the property. In most places they are not. What would even compel you to write something like this? Property values are regularly re-assessed according to recent sales and a % of the property value is then levied as tax.

Ok, where does the percentage come from? It is an arbitrary number set by the municipality to collect enough money from the property owners. Basically, if the city needs $100 million/year to operate it is just going to tweak the tax rate to hit that income number. For example, in Vancouver the residential tax rate is around 0.15% and homes average around $2 million. Where I live which is a few hundred kilometres away…

That's a different question that I'm glad you were able to answer for yourself.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#657

Post by LargeWu » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #276

Schiendelman wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If it is just internal money the bubble will burst. If you have the entire world pouring cash to bid on us real estate it can really go to almost infinity

The main reasons that international cash comes in is either speculation or offshoring money.

If the housing supply actually matched demand, the housing market becomes unattractive for speculation.

If foreigners are buying houses just to park their money, building more housing to meet the demand helps to alleviate that. This situation feels like a case where regulations designed to prevent housing supply from sitting empty can make sense but I have no evidence or story on how would need to be implemented to achieve that goal without negative unintended consequences.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#658

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

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?

The underlying assumption is that of capitalism, that is, that things should be profitable or at least self-sustaining. But if you do that, things like the USPS donkey train [0] would be stripped, the US military would / should be reduced to a fraction of its current size or down to nothing, etc.

Independent news should be completely free from capitalist interests.

[0] https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#659

Post by whatever1 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #410

whatever1 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Your factual statements are wrong. The US population isn't flat over time, and housing (supply) decays over time. Prices aren't up everywhere, just the places people actually want to live.

Let’s see some data:

https://jabberwocking.com/we-dont-have-a-housing-shortage/

Housing construction exceeds the population growth for the past 20 years. But housing prices are skyrocketing especially the last 10 years.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#660

Post by dgb23 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 2:45 PM UTC

moneycantbuy wrote: post #385

Gary's Economics claims wealth inequality is at the root of housing unaffordability. Basically as wealth concentration grows, the ultra-rich bid up the assets. See the price of gold doubling in the past few years. Government stimulus is also captured by the richest. It's also a global phenomenon, i.e., every major city is now unaffordable for most people. https://youtu.be/BTlUyS-T-_4?si=P0mdHxtq1F7DV4jo

There's some truth in that, and I support the idea of shifting the tax burden from work to wealth. But I also think this is too simplistic. Remember that Gary was a financial trader, so he has a zero sum game perspective.

The UK had a decades long phase where they built a ton of affordable housing (council housing). This program was largely dismantled under Thatcher. Also over time, building regulations became more restrictive in the wrong ways, which makes supply more expensive.

Regulation plays a large role. But the right keyword is "reform". The right outcomes don't just happen magically if you deregulate.

There are places where housing got drastically increased in recent years, like in Paris under Hidalgo (7000 units/year).