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New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#311

Post by the_sleaze_ »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #169
repeekad wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does being in a city “naturally” mean less home ownership? More demand and higher prices yes, but you also should be earning more and dense housing projects should be trivial to justify. It’s legislation all the way down, politicians protect the interests of the wealthy who want to rent seek regardless of location. Look at how mamdani got a common sense luxury home tax in NYC, before that ultra wealthy owned mult…

One thing soviet commies did right was housing builds. Build factory for city blocks, then just pop them up, constantly, keeping the line busy. It should really be city that is building the new housing (even if in the end it gets subcontracted, at least the top level have vested interest in keeping the quality and cost in check). Maybe even offer some rent-to-own programs where part of rent gets put into savings that…

> One thing soviet commies did right was housing builds

I disagree. I have yet to see a nice-place-to-live low-income project. In USA Russia Brazil or Southeast Asia.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#312

Post by ziofill »

jgeada wrote: post #222
mchusma wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not investment at all, we want more investment into housing. But you are absolutely correct you cannot both want housing to be a good investment (increase in value faster than inflation) and an affordable (drop in price lower than inflation). Don’t subsidize demand. Allow more supply. Private homeowners, big developers, all of the above. Build.

And stop allowing people who view their house(s) as an investment from being able to veto any and all building. While that incentive is present, there will be massive hurdles to being able to build the amount of housing that is necessary.

The problem will keep persisting as long as the politicians who have the power to change the rules of the game have the opposite incentive to do so.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#313

Post by AngryData »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #292
profdevloper wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is immigration always absent from these discussions on HN? the US has absorbed millions of people through immigration (both legal and illegal) which puts pressure on housing supply which drives up prices since supply is relatively inelastic. Enforcement of immigration policy would increase housing supply without needing to build more capacity in the short term and would lower prices.

We need immigration because there’s a construction worker shortage. No immigrants = even more expensive to build new homes

The only shortage is in pay. I and many other people left trades becauses wages were crap for jobs that take 20 years of your life away. Despite the memes about trades, the majority of trade workers are not making bank unless they have an unusual specialty and a union. 1 plumber in Manhatten doing making bank doesn't make the plumbers all across the rest of the nation wealthy.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#314

Post by AnnikaL »

shipman05 wrote: post #185
Xirdus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the first half of those 50 years, but over the second half (2001-today), transportation - or at least cars - got significantly more expensive. Disappearance of cheap new cars + massive supply reduction of used cars + repair costs of old cars + gas prices.

Inflation has been high enough that it messes with our perception of things, but I believe the data shows otherwise (at least in the US). - Disappearance of cheap new cars: You can get entry level Chevys, Kias, and Hyundais for - Massive supply reduction of used cars: I actually don't have good data on this, but it seems like there's pipeline is still borked from COVID era irregularities. That said, cars these days h…

I wonder if some of this will reverse once more electric cars are available on the used market, which are cheaper to fuel and require less maintenance. Already some of the explosion of non-luxury EVs with >200 miles range around 2020ish are starting to be available used, albeit a bit more expensive than gas counterparts.

If battery degradation isn't too great, maybe in 10 years people can buy 15 year old EVs that are cheap to maintain and run (for those who can accept the tradeoffs of EVs - and that would reduce demand on ICEVs). We'll see.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#315

Post by HDThoreaun »

AngryData wrote: post #313
HDThoreaun wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need immigration because there’s a construction worker shortage. No immigrants = even more expensive to build new homes

The only shortage is in pay. I and many other people left trades becauses wages were crap for jobs that take 20 years of your life away. Despite the memes about trades, the majority of trade workers are not making bank unless they have an unusual specialty and a union. 1 plumber in Manhatten doing making bank doesn't make the plumbers all across the rest of the nation wealthy.

Ok? If you want natives to take these jobs construction prices will go up. So we need immigrants to affordably build things. If all construction workers are native going forward the vast majority of people will never be able to afford a home other than inheriting one.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#316

Post by HDThoreaun »

siriusastrebe wrote: post #299
HDThoreaun wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need immigration because there’s a construction worker shortage. No immigrants = even more expensive to build new homes

Why can't we train our own citizens to become construction workers? If you claim that people "don't want to work" for those wages, then isn't immigration keeping our wages down? Wouldn't business owners pay more for labor if there wasn't a stead supply of under the table illegal immigrants doing it for less?

Immigration is keeping wages down for jobs natives dont want. I dont see the issue.

> Wouldn't business owners pay more for labor if there wasn't a stead supply of under the table illegal immigrants doing it for less?

Maybe, or maybe they just employ less people and less things get built.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#317

Post by ch4s3 »

jltsiren wrote: post #290
ch4s3 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you don't see a major decline in population in many cases based on the archeology. Insofar as we can tell people would spread out a bit away from the cities. In the fertile crescent early city states attempted to corral people in to controlled zones of production. Absent coercion, people didn't die they just moved.

If you are basing your claims on Against the Grain, Scott focuses on early centralized states, which emerged thousands of years after agriculture and towns. Such states were by definition exceptional. Most of them were in regions, where rainfall alone was insufficient, and agriculture dependend on irrigation. Such a dependence on centralized infrastructure favored state formation, but it also made the communities fra…

I don’t think there’s a good basis for your claim. The earliest agricultural cultures all practiced flood retreat agriculture in alluvial plains.

If you look at the Americas you also only see intensive agriculture in coercive top down city states or small empires. Outside of that you see opportunistic plantings and forest agronomy mixed with foraging and hunting. Or in coastal regions you see marginal planting supplementing diets focused on fishing.

Settled agriculture was not spreading very frequently by choice. Why would anyone choose subsistence grain agriculture when literally anything else was available. On an individual level it’s strictly worse than foraging and hunting across almost all measures you’d care about.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#318

Post by marcusverus »

nisegami wrote: post #268
all2 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property tax is theft. By applying a tax to a _thing_ that someone owns, you are saying 'actually, this thing you have is mine, and if you don't pay me for the privilege of having it, I will take it away from you'.

Land ownership is theft. Why should people have a right in perpetuity to the land that we all share?

Motte: We all share the land!

Bailey: The state owns all land!

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#319

Post by Gormo »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #50
GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives. It's undeniably a little cool that luxuries got cheap, but it's severely un-cool that necessities got expensive. I'm glad to see a focus on pushing statistics to do a better job of reflecting that, but yeah, this is all downstream of structural incentives so fixes are only going to happen through legislative ch…

It's not a coincidence that the three sectors you mention are the three most heavily regulated and subject to political intervention in the US, all with schizophrenic policy frameworks that simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#320

Post by marcusverus »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #316
siriusastrebe wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we train our own citizens to become construction workers? If you claim that people "don't want to work" for those wages, then isn't immigration keeping our wages down? Wouldn't business owners pay more for labor if there wasn't a stead supply of under the table illegal immigrants doing it for less?

Immigration is keeping wages down for jobs natives dont want. I dont see the issue. > Wouldn't business owners pay more for labor if there wasn't a stead supply of under the table illegal immigrants doing it for less? Maybe, or maybe they just employ less people and less things get built.

There's no such thing as "jobs natives don't want", only "wages natives don't want".

> Maybe, or maybe they just employ less people and less things get built.

The foreign born population residing in the US fell from ~15% to ~5% from 1920-1970. It was one of the most prosperous and productive periods in human history.

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