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To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

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Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#271

Post by kelnos »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #182
marcell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, sirs and ma'ams, your home's price appreciation isn't a right Doesn't increased density help property values? If I can build a high rise on your 1 acre plot of land, its value should go up.

But if you do that, the value of my neighbor's property goes down.

And then you're back to the original argument: the appreciation of your neighbor's property isn't some kind of god-given right, no more than that of yours is.

Look, I don't want to destroy the value of the largest "asset"[0] most people will own. But... what's the alternative here? The incumbents just get to grow fat off riches that they absolutely lucked into and played minimal part in creating, while lower-income residents get forced out of their homes? We just give up on the bay area as a worthwhile economy, have all the tech companies pull out, and then home prices crash?

[0] People really really love to believe their primary residence is an asset/investment, because it cost them so much money to acquire it, that it just has to be. If they'd consider it just a cost of living, a liability even, we'd have such fewer financial issues in housing markets.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#272

Post by Robotbeat »

nerfhammer wrote: post #161
rb808 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If density increases the people who will benefit the most are current landowners. If you have single family home on a big lot, its value will go up many times if you can suddenly build an apartment building on it.

Only for the first few redevelopments, after that prices will go down across the board.

Even the first few help. You have rich people taking up houses and apartments made for middle class (or possibly even working class), as only rich people can now afford to live in them. If there’s more housing stock, even “luxury” units, they can vacate the lower end units, making room for middle class.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#273

Post by lightedman »

TomVDB wrote: post #229
hinkley wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much are your property taxes these days?

$25k per year. I don't see how that's relevant though.

This is a classic example of 'more money than sense.'

I bet that $25K you pay on your property taxes would be 1/5 that almost anywhere else, excepting maybe DC or New York.

You paid too much, continue to pay too much, and are thus directly contributing to part of the problem of affordable housing.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#274

Post by dgritsko »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #241
Cerium wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally Neal Stephenson describes vertically extruded nanotech buildings in "The Diamond Age".

I haven't read a sci-fi/cyberpunk book in a long time, I think I'm going to pick this up. Been meaning to read more of Stephenson's novels

One of my favorite authors! Reading The Diamond Age right now as a matter of fact. Favorite of his is probably Anathem or Seveneves.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#275

Post by matte_black »

Naritai wrote: post #244
matte_black wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point though can we declare the choice has been made and just lean in to whatever conclusion has been decided? It seems like we’re always stuck in an indecisive state of choosing between the interests of the wealthy and the interests of the struggling, and we can never get out unless we make the “right” choice (which is always implied to be the interests of the struggling) Maybe the choice has already been ma…

Clearly everybody who already owns a home is heavily leaning into the 'make housing as expensive as possible' conclusion. Where these sorts of articles comes from is observers who would like to change that narrative.

The homeowners aren’t selfish, they are motivated. Why would they act against something that would clearly devalue them?

If the roles were reversed I doubt these observers would be calling for a change in narrative.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#276

Post by api »

kelnos wrote: post #257
api wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think we should just go for the first one, which is why I didn't mention anything else. Proposition 13 limits should be for owner occupied residences only. This would go a long way to fixing the financialization of real estate problem, which is an often under-discussed contributing factor. You'd get a lot less resistance there. You're not messing with cost of living for owner occupied homes, just second…

As a renter, that would be very painful for me, as my landlord would simply pass the cost of higher property taxes directly to me. (My building isn't subject to rent control.) For buildings subject to rent control, I would expect this would just cause landlords to spend less on improvements to the properties.

Rents are set by market supply and demand, not arbitrarily.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#277

Post by kelnos »

dimva wrote: post #269
kelnos wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a renter, that would be very painful for me, as my landlord would simply pass the cost of higher property taxes directly to me. (My building isn't subject to rent control.) For buildings subject to rent control, I would expect this would just cause landlords to spend less on improvements to the properties.

If your landlord gets a property tax cut, would they pass on the savings to you? No. They are leasing you your place at market rate. The market rate is affected by supply / demand of rental units, not landlord costs. The only way they could pass the extra tax onto you is if you are not market rate and there is a law that allows them to do this, or if increasing property taxes on apartment buildings decreases the supp…

> The only way they could pass the extra tax onto you is if you are not market rate and there is a law that allows them to do this

Not sure what you mean by this: my landlord can raise my rent for whatever reason (or no reason), by any amount they desire.

I can choose whether or not I want to pay it, of course. But I imagine moderate increases to cover at least some (and maybe all?) of the cost of a property tax increase would be swallowed by most renters, given that moving is also a cost, and often a large one.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#278

Post by kelnos »

asimpletune wrote: post #261
kelnos wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit obtuse to suggest that someone who had the luck to be born a little earlier and move into an area somehow has some sort of a natural right to keep others out through obstructionist policies, and expecting them to act with compassion is somehow selfish. But I suppose that's par for the course for the US, where individual expression and selfishness is valued over collective good.

Not saying my opinion one way or another, but there is definitely a “natural right” just in the simple sense of physically being present before others.

How so? All "rights" are manufactured by humans. We would like to say that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are "natural rights", but they're not: a bunch of people just agree that they should be, so they are. (And imperfectly, at that! We wouldn't have capital punishment or prisons if we actually believed in these rights.)

And if we recognized "physically being present before others" as a natural right, I imagine the Native Americans would have a much better situation than they do. Thinking that's a right for some but not for others is the height of hypocrisy, but that seems to be what a lot of incumbent property owners here seem to believe.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#279

Post by lallysingh »

matte_black wrote: post #275
Naritai wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly everybody who already owns a home is heavily leaning into the 'make housing as expensive as possible' conclusion. Where these sorts of articles comes from is observers who would like to change that narrative.

The homeowners aren’t selfish, they are motivated. Why would they act against something that would clearly devalue them? If the roles were reversed I doubt these observers would be calling for a change in narrative.

It's a death spiral waiting to happen. Companies will move away from areas where their employees can't get hosting. Not many have to move before the rest start to follow, and the speculative part of the home valuations disappear.

Either they let the pressure out gradually or the thing is going to pop.

Re: To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

#280

Post by eanzenberg »

kelnos wrote: post #247
TomVDB wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ruining my city because I went to a bunch of open houses, choose a house that I like in a nice neighborhood and paid (a lot) for it? That's definitely an original kind of argument.

I think the parent was referring to: homelessness on the rise, lower-income residents being forced out, the need for many service workers to transport themselves to the city because they can't afford to live here anymore, housing speculation and foreign investment leaving units empty and driving up prices, etc. All of that "changes the character of the city", IMO for the worse. One reason (of many) for these changes…

Homelessness is rising here because SF is open to homelessness therefore it attracts it from the rest of the country.

Increasing housing supply by 50% will increase homelessness because you have 50% more people willing to financially support it.

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