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Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

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Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#411

Post by davidw »

wolfi1 wrote: post #398
pclowes wrote: post #176

Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just: Build more housing. Keep law and order. No it doesn’t need to be “affordable”. Yes rent control is a terrible idea. Just build more housing. Note: that the US already has plenty of housing and housing costs basically go up in areas of low crime relative to economic opportunity. If you build housing, but allow crime to rise, you have wasted everybody’s time.

Vienna built housing itself, with this housing it was possible to have cheap rents and keep rents from private investors down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Vienna

Unless you want to build more sprawl-oriented social housing, you'd still need, in most American cities, to reform zoning codes and building codes (single stair and elevator reform) to get Vienna style social housing.

It's a "yes, and" problem though, mostly. Let the market build what it can, and if you want to pursue social housing, do that too - just don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and delay the reforms while you try and put together all the social housing pieces.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#412

Post by slg »

pclowes wrote: post #352
slg wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In this case affordable housing nets out as a way to overcome policy barriers to market rate housing. So it actually makes the market freer. >Many other implementations of affordable housing further raise the barrier and thus even if any is built it doesn’t help widespread housing affordability issues. Can you be specific with what you mean here? Because this reads like a no true Scotsman argument that it doesn't co…

Affordable housing in a vacuum disincentivizes development and results in worse affordability. Affordable housing used as an incentive or way to overcome other barriers to housing (density limits, height limits, zoning etc) that makes the market more “free” net is will produce more development. You don’t need it for development but it can be used effectively depending on other policies. As with all things it depends…

>Affordable housing used as an incentive or way to overcome other barriers to housing (density limits, height limits, zoning etc)

I'm not sure what type of affordable housing program doesn't meet this definition. They are almost always tied to incentives for developers, including sometimes in the form of a removal of other housing restrictions. Or are you specifically objecting to financial assistance on the renter/buyer side? Because I assumed the “it” in “it doesn’t need to be “affordable”” was referencing the new development.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#413

Post by 7speter »

triceratops wrote: post #302
mmooss wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for whom? If it's good for the residents, that's great. If it's bad for the residents, who get driven out, but good for some developers and outside rich people - that's what gentrification is.

Unless all of the housing is owned by non-residents prior to gentrification, some residents always benefit from their neighborhood going upscale. Either through increased home values, allowing them to sell and improve their lives. Or because it's now a more pleasant area to live in. Even renters in gentrifying areas may profit if housing construction outpaces population growth. Yes, they may have to move, but also th…

When people in NYC are driven out of their neighborhoods because of gentrification, they generally move down south. There isn’t some magical part of town that they can afford with their “current budget”

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#414

Post by FarmerPotato »

KPGv2 wrote: post #267
triceratops wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid bad parts of town ever get good.

That's not what gentrification is. Relevant to this article, I lived through the gentrification of large parts of Austin in the early 00s. What happened was that good housing full of artists and musicians and other self-employed creatives began gentrifying, driving up property values, which drove up property taxes, which became unaffordable to the existing residents (who had owned their homes for a long time). Many (…

Let's talk about the East Side.

https://www.austinmonthly.com/in-photos-what-gentrification-...

I don't think many home owners got a price for their land that allowed them to buy a similar house elsewhere.

The world is far from an ideal model where what you get is what you deserve.

Note the history of the East Side power plant, which depressed property prices. Ditto, I-35 construction plans. The article says the plant will become a park now. After the new developers locked in purchases.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#415

Post by idiotsecant »

sgc wrote: post #337
adrianN wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the possibility that the government builds housing, since the government doesn't have to care about direct profits and can include the overall economic effects of affordable housing in its calculations. We don't expect much direct profits from roads either, but we keep building more and more of them.

That is a good idea that requires careful attention to make sure it has near-perfect execution. Because we do that, and they are called 'the projects'.

There are multiple city and state housing facilities in my area that are perfectly fine. They are not huge or luxurious but they're safe, clean, and well maintained.

When the options ar homelessness or subsidized housing, subsidized housing is absolutely the best option, which is backed up by decades of data.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#416

Post by rconti »

estearum wrote: post #221
pclowes wrote: post #176

Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just: Build more housing. Keep law and order. No it doesn’t need to be “affordable”. Yes rent control is a terrible idea. Just build more housing. Note: that the US already has plenty of housing and housing costs basically go up in areas of low crime relative to economic opportunity. If you build housing, but allow crime to rise, you have wasted everybody’s time.

New construction has already decelerated in Austin due to falling prices, which compresses already-near-zero margin on real estate development. So yes, it really is "just build more housing." The problem is: why would you build more housing as prices fall?

As long as the cost to build housing is less than the revenue from selling it, why wouldn't you?

It's not like homebuilders in Austin flee for North Carolina when the margins shift slightly.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#417

Post by ttul »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #184
wcfrobert wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYism has never been about preserving neighborhood characteristic, or noise and traffic concerns. Menlo Park is not Big Sur. Sure, some concerns are reasonable and should be investigated, but most of the time they're bureaucratic distractions that's been weaponized by people who want to delay progress and protect their investment. For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and p…

It’s going to take a SCOTUS decision overturning Ambler vs Euclid in my opinion. We certainly will not see zoning reform until the Boomers die.

Case in point: my parents. Built a house in 1988 and they still live there. Two people in 3500 square feet. Four bathrooms and five bedrooms. Meanwhile, you need a family income of 3x the median to rent a townhouse 1/3rd the size nearby.

This is beyond ridiculous and it’s totally unsustainable.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#418

Post by wiradikusuma »

idiotsecant wrote: post #406
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this objection, if you draw a stereotypical supply and demand curve, you can see how prices settle to an equilibrium point. Of course reality has more complications, but I think your objection is 95% answered by a supply and demand curve. You keep building houses when it is profitable. You stop when it is not. This naturally keeps everything in balance.

What do you do when that equilibrium point is hopelessly above what the average person can afford?

Won't the market fill the gap? For example, in Indonesia, "standard size" houses are mostly out of reach for new buyers (young generations), so they build houses farther away and/or smaller.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#419

Post by rconti »

wcfrobert wrote: post #169
rconti wrote: post #11

Meanwhile, California is also trying to build housing near transit, but Menlo Park wants to preserve the character of downtown by preserving dirty, cracked, flat, surface-level parking lots like it's 1950.

NIMBYism has never been about preserving neighborhood characteristic, or noise and traffic concerns. Menlo Park is not Big Sur. Sure, some concerns are reasonable and should be investigated, but most of the time they're bureaucratic distractions that's been weaponized by people who want to delay progress and protect their investment. For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and p…

I've never seen the evidence where density increases drive down existing land/home values.

Re: Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

#420

Post by pclowes »

mmooss wrote: post #273
pclowes wrote: post #176

Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just: Build more housing. Keep law and order. No it doesn’t need to be “affordable”. Yes rent control is a terrible idea. Just build more housing. Note: that the US already has plenty of housing and housing costs basically go up in areas of low crime relative to economic opportunity. If you build housing, but allow crime to rise, you have wasted everybody’s time.

> Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just: > Build more housing. Keep law and order. Safety (law and order) increases housing costs, as you say. It's desireable on its own, but it does not solve housing cost. NYC is very safe and very expensive. Crime is way down in most of the US, and housing costs are much higher.

NYC is fairly high density. Has stopped building massive new skyscrapers and has water on two sides. It is also a tier 1 global city culturally AND economically. Its not really reasonable to expect to be affordable.
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