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California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

nytimes.com

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Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#211

Post by riazrizvi »

logfromblammo wrote: post #175
riazrizvi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a renter but please, this is about families protecting the value of the primary asset that they hope to live on in retirement. Home assets don't skyrocket in value when there is lots of supply. If we frame this thing as reasonable-needs-of-renters vs unreasonable-wants-of-homeowners, then everyone is going to remain at loggerheads.

The house that the owner lives in is not an asset. It's a durable consumer good. Wanting your home to appreciate in value forever is like expecting your 20-year-old car to sell for more than its sticker price. It really only works for art installations, created by a collaboration of architect, engineer, and builder, with some living space inside. Framed in these terms, most families do not have any significant assets…

So you're saying that a house is not a good investment? That despite a trend in increasing property values over the long term, as we have seen in the data since .. the beginning of cities, that a price correction is coming where homes will return to ... prehistoric levels? I don't see it. Instead look at a sample of home prices in the last twenty years in the Bay Area for example, and graph it against the value of a sample of cars bought in 2000.

I suppose it's no surprise that tax laws everywhere do not classify homes as durable goods that depreciate in value.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#212

Post by stale2002 »

riantogo wrote: post #83
christiansakai wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home ownership generally slows growth for everything else around that area. Every home owner has this "not in my backyard" mentality and will veto any possible developments in their area.

You know why, right?

Of course I know why. People don't like competition.

Lower rents, and having more affordable housing is obviously something that a person who profits from higher rents, would want to prevent.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#213

Post by bovermyer »

logfromblammo wrote: post #191
nostrademons wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What movie? It sounds vaguely entertaining.

Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve. It involves Superman traveling at faster than c to save the day, rather than breaking a promise made under duress, which makes flunking ethical calculus into a super-vulnerability. Movies based on comic book characters have come a long way. And even movies based on DC characters have advanced slightly.

Maybe, but the music from that movie is still iconic; more so than most other DC movies', except perhaps Elfman's Batman theme.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#214

Post by darksaints »

exterrestrial wrote: post #204
davidw wrote: post #107

Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the best things you can do on several fronts: * It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out. * It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things. * It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might…

>It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job. Please cite at lease one example in which this has ever been the case. I do understand the theory behind your argument here, and I assume you are familiar with (leftist) counter-arguments, so this is not an attempt to open a debate. Ra…

Speaking as the SO of a major property management company exec operating in Portland, no it wasn't a policy that benefits landlords. Not in the slightest. More competition and lower prices are a landlord's and developer's worst nightmare.

And yes, due to the scale of development, rents are lower than they expected when they built. Your prices were gonna go up regardless, and the scale of development that happened actually kept prices down.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#215

Post by jellicle »

darksaints wrote: post #208
i_am_nomad wrote: post #115

YIMBY should more properly be called YITBY (yes in their back yards).

Fact: No YIMBY, no matter how powerful, can force you to put something in your back yard. They can allow your neighbor to put something in their back yard. You don't own your neighbor's back yard.

Civilization is a balancing of competing interests. Your rights in your property are enforced by the community, with limits and conditionally. The community which you are asking to enforce for you has interests too.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#216

Post by koboll »

pruneridge wrote: post #192

What happens when more people move into the area from the rest of the country and start driving to work from their newly built housing units? Silicon Valley has, at best, poor coverage of Caltrain and no coverage for BART in South Bay. If let’s say 10,000 more families move to San Jose into new housing units and they all need to commute to Palo Alto for work, how exactly would they do that without choking up the alre…

>What happens when more people move into the area from the rest of the country and start driving to work from their newly built housing units?

What happens is they congest traffic far less than they do now, driving from farther-flung places.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#217

Post by munificent »

notJim wrote: post #137
gdubs wrote: post #61

Honest question: how do we address the housing crisis in the Bay Area without turning it into Los Angeles?

What does "turning it into Los Angeles?" mean? Everyone replying seems to know what you're talking about, but it's totally baffling to me.

Huge sprawl and a massively car-focused infrastructure that requires long drive times on enormous multi-lane interstates to get anywhere.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#218

Post by jsharf »

rayiner wrote: post #102
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding extra lanes to a road just increases the amount of people driving on them, instead of easing traffic. So I would bet the same is true of public transit.

Yes, but it moves more people. Driving doesn’t need to compete with public transit for speed—transit is immensely slower than driving even in places with excellent transit.

This is actually a very American misconception of public transportation. If you're in an area with excellent public tranportation (London, Barcelona, Montreal), it's actually much faster (I've traveled to these places and tried it).

Even in SF, there's some places where public transportation is faster. But in very very limited situations because SF transportation is horrible. But an express Caltrain is often much faster than driving MTV-SF if there's any traffic. With all the (super delayed unfortunately) infrastructure projects going on (new SF subway being installed, Caltrain electrification), things will hopefully get better...

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#219

Post by Spooky23 »

davidw wrote: post #209
exterrestrial wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job. Please cite at lease one example in which this has ever been the case. I do understand the theory behind your argument here, and I assume you are familiar with (leftist) counter-arguments, so this is not an attempt to open a debate. Ra…

I think that if you're going to argue that supply and demand are not real for housing, you'd need to supply some good evidence of your own. There are a lot of ways to build more supply: https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-... I find the 'Montreal' example the most compelling in that it's fairly "human scale", but tastes vary.

Rental housing has price floor that distorts the market. Once a property diverges from the requirements of housing subsidy programs, it usually gets abandoned.

In most places new supply is high end and is making more housing available for people who don’t lack access.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#220

Post by lthornberry »

JamesBarney wrote: post #20
revscat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it doesn’t drive down prices.

I don't think housing is one of the few (if any) goods where increased supply drives up cost, nor do I think there is any evidence this is the case.

You are eliding two different kinds of goods here: units of housing, and land. The average price of the former would presumably decrease. The average price of the latter would presumably increase, since loosened restrictions on development would make it possible to build more units of housing on a given lot. For current owners of single family houses, it's likely that the land price effect would outweigh the unit effect, although there will be exceptions (the dynamics of exurbs will be different from those of central areas, for example).
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