A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
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Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#2When we have strong and not very elastic demand, increased supply will help? Never would have guessed.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#3If you stop thinking about prices and simply count people in houses, this result becomes more obvious. If N people want to live in SF but only K The only question is which N-K people have a problem - this will be determined by economic and political processes.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#4If you stop thinking about prices and simply count people in houses, this result becomes more obvious. If N people want to live in SF but only K The only question is which N-K people have a problem - this will be determined by economic and political processes.
> determined by ... political processes
Part of which is playing out here where people of privilege are working out a story that allows them to displace an older population dependent on rent control so that they can get that housing.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#5If you stop thinking about prices and simply count people in houses, this result becomes more obvious. If N people want to live in SF but only K The only question is which N-K people have a problem - this will be determined by economic and political processes.
> determined by ... political processes Part of which is playing out here where people of privilege are working out a story that allows them to displace an older population dependent on rent control so that they can get that housing.
Yes, if you believe that the political process is controlled by the wealthy and you oppose the wealthy, then allowing more construction is your best bet. My concern with the political process is the exact opposite - it doesn't favor the wealthy but it should.
In either case, eliminating the malthusian constraints on housing are a solution to the problem.
See also this article on moreright illustrating how your view and mine are not strongly in opposition: http://www.moreright.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-tyran...
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#6If you stop thinking about prices and simply count people in houses, this result becomes more obvious. If N people want to live in SF but only K The only question is which N-K people have a problem - this will be determined by economic and political processes.
> determined by ... political processes Part of which is playing out here where people of privilege are working out a story that allows them to displace an older population dependent on rent control so that they can get that housing.
I assume when you said "older population" you mean "people who have lived here longer." Because as you know, rent control applies to a housing unit regardless of the age of the person living in it.
But more importantly, I'm not sure what you mean by "people of privilege are working out a story that allows them to displace." As far as I can tell, what's happening is that landlords own property, and they see an opportunity to rent the property to someone who is willing to pay more. I'm not sure what "story" is being worked out by the new renter; by the time they find out about the property, it is already on the market.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#7This is fairly obvious once you think it trough and one of the few things were majority of academic economists agree.
Houses are not build to stand empty[1]. The number of houses available and the income level determine the prices. Even if you build luxury apartments, the end result is more affordable houses available to people with low income after the chain reaction where people move up to better housing ends.
[1]: If this happens in some market conditions, raising property taxes to empty apartments works miracles.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#8If you stop thinking about prices and simply count people in houses, this result becomes more obvious. If N people want to live in SF but only K The only question is which N-K people have a problem - this will be determined by economic and political processes.
> determined by ... political processes Part of which is playing out here where people of privilege are working out a story that allows them to displace an older population dependent on rent control so that they can get that housing.
> that housing
That's sort of the problem though - "that" housing. If there were more housing, if it were not the zero-sum game that it is in SF, then it would be less of a problem.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#9It's not only a problem in SF, exploding rents is a problem all over the world. But is "barriers to new construction" the problem? No one ever explains those, just blames politicians. But for a property owning corporation it is obviously a poor idea to invest in new apartments because that would reduce the value of the ones they already got. It's not much different from OPEC not wanting to flood the market with oil.
Re: A lot more market-rate construction helps low-income renters more than subsidies
#10And a lot more subsidy-rate construction helps low-income renters even more. Go figure.
If we have more market-rate construction, low-income renters would mostly have to pay market rate which would always be above subsidy rate. Because if the market rates are low there is less construction. If there are not enough housing units in the current high price market it is not the fault of subsidies. The return of investment in other markets is apparently even better.