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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

#441

Post by raybb »

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…

A paper came out about this recently: The City as an Anti- Growth Machine.

> Logan and Molotch's “urban growth machine” remains foundational in urban theory, describing how coalitions of landowners, developers, and politicians promote urban growth to raise land values. This paper argues that under financialized capitalism, the dynamics have inverted: asset appreciation now outweighs productive investment, and urban land is increasingly treated as a speculative asset.

https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70145

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

#442

Post by barry-cotter »

slg wrote: post #306
cuuupid wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordable housing = housing that regular people can afford The only silly thing here is that "low income housing" got rebranded as "affordable housing" and absolutely everything else got rebranded as "luxury homes" for political reasons. "Market-rate housing" is even sillier given that it is literally the opposite of what "affordable housing" policies dictate

I'm not going to debate what the definitions should be, I'll just say I don't think it is productive to join an existing conversation using terms with different definitions than everyone else uses. Defining all housing as inherently "affordable" makes the term meaningless and even if you disagree with the motivations behind the desire for "affordable housing", at least the term has meaning in the way it's typically u…

It is productive to decline to use propaganda terms. If, every time someone says they support affirmative action they are asked if they support having higher standards for Asian applicants to medical school than for white applicants that’s good because forcing people to defend their support of racist policies reduces support for them. By the same token pointing out that affordable housing doesn’t mean housing people can afford, it means politician allocated housing paid for by the general taxpayer, reduces support. Reducing support for bad things is good.

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

#443

Post by bps4484 »

rconti wrote: post #419
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…

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

it's not that density per se drives down existing costs, but density almost always brings more housing stock to the market (unless they are simultanously tearing down housing elsewhere) and housing stock drives down the cost of housing, which is the point of the original article.

So if we take it as an assumption that density increases housing stock, there is lots of evidence that density drives down prices of existing land/home values.

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

#444

Post by pclowes »

slg wrote: post #412
pclowes wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/b…

See San Francisco. Also generally anywhere else where prices are rising and developers can’t develop and yet there are a lot of affordable housing policies. CA as a whole has mismanaged this so badly they have a net migration outflow.

Also removing other housing restrictions that ostensibly were put in there by constituents is a valid reason for constituents to oppose AH. They get called NIMBYs for this but if the local populace wanted more high density development then the density limits wouldnt be there to be excepted by AH

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

#445

Post by ghufran_syed »

nsnzjznzbx wrote: post #399
vasco wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the government knows better how to identify land that is profitable than private builders? Why? Or is this one of those opinions based on "is OK for the state to pay for it because there's infinite money for my pet project"?

Because I grew up in the UK and there is a fuckton of government housing from 60s and 70s. It is ugly but it is housing people. Government doesn't need to make a profit due to taxation.

[flagged]

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

#446

Post by nodesocket »

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.

And yet, if you dig through the various comments on HN over the years regarding SF housing costs the overwhelming conesus is more rent control. Sometimes, the most common sense solution turns out to be the correct one.

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

#447

Post by Capricorn2481 »

manlymuppet wrote: post #373
slg wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it didn't reference anything, it stated political opinions like they were confirmed facts, provided zero evidence to support those assertions, and completely ignored the ways in which the article provides counterevidence.

They aren't saying affordable housing isn't needed. Just that the method for making housing affordable shouldn't be trying to make the current housing supply cheaper. And from this is where you get "rent-control is a terrible idea". Essentially: trying to artificially drive down housing prices in any way is generally inadvisable if you can just build more housing. Sure that's technically an opinion, but it's one base…

That's a pretty generous interpretation that requires you to believe rent control and building housing are diametrically opposed to each other.

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

#448

Post by jmyeet »

bluegatty wrote: post #409
jmyeet wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control is the wrong solution to the right problem (ie affordable housing). It creates all sorts of problems that wouldn't exist otherwise. For example, if you've been in a rent control house or apartment for 10+ years and are paying significantly less, what happens if you want to move? Or just need a bigger place? It's a huge impeediment to mobility and flexibility. Also, you have an adversarial relationship wi…

The problems that rent control creates are far smaller than the problems that exist without it. To start - your 'very first example' is not even really 'a problem'. 'Without rent control' - you get kicked out of your abode every few years if your salary doesn't keep up with housing inflation. With rent control, you have the option of 'having a home; you decide when you want to leave (for the most part). The answer to…

> To start - your 'very first example' is not even really 'a problem'.

Yes, it is. Anywhere with significant and strong rent control results in a large number of people who simply cannot move. Look, rent control is better than no rent control but it address the symptom not the problem. The real problem is that rents shouldn't significantly outpace inflation. In a better world, you should be able to easily move because you're not locked in to a below-market rent that you don't want to lose. And rents get more expensive because a whole bunch of people make sure that housing is an appreciating asset. It should be a depreciating asset.

> The answer to the 'second example', 'adversarial tenant/landlord' is that the theory doesn't line up with reality for the most part. Again - in most rent controlled areas this kind of stuff does not happen

You will not find in any American city, especially one with rent control, where tenants do not absolutely hate their landlords as the general rule. What are you smoking?

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

#449

Post by rayiner »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #437
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.

Sure, so long as the balance involves not housing people which is pretty sick and twisted

I don’t understand your sentence. What’s the subject of the verb “housing.”

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

#450

Post by vasco »

nsnzjznzbx wrote: post #399
vasco wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the government knows better how to identify land that is profitable than private builders? Why? Or is this one of those opinions based on "is OK for the state to pay for it because there's infinite money for my pet project"?

Because I grew up in the UK and there is a fuckton of government housing from 60s and 70s. It is ugly but it is housing people. Government doesn't need to make a profit due to taxation.

Hello https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=1...

UK public housing is widely known for being shit. Unsafe, puts all the poor people together in a block. There's bunch of crime, and your kids will be likely to stay stuck there or go to jail due to bad influences.

Social housing should be sprinkled around it has been found. So nice example of what I was saying.

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