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

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281–290 of 361 posts

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

#281
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Sorry, I didn't mean to say "right" as in the kind manufactured by humans. I just meant that two people can not be in the same place at once. It's a right in a very literal sense, I.e. it's "right".

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All of those have been in my kindle over a year. Need time to read.

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has that ever panned out in practice? I mean, has a city economy in the US or somewhere else in the world ever popped because of too high housing prices?

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

#284
post #265
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons Prop 13 happened was to go hand in hand with rent control and help offset the negative costs of rent control. (An advantage for the owner and renter). So I think you'd need to get rid of rent control to get rid of Prop 13 for a large group of people and that would be very hard.

Prop 13 preceded rent control in San Francisco and in most (maybe even all) California cities that have rent control.

That's how I heard it. Turns out Berkeley got rent control in 1972 while Prop 13 was passed in 1978. But generally you're right.

It's still my understanding that landlords of multiple units who have tenants in rent control would have a massive problem with the repeal of Prop 13. It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low. They would have a strong argument for being unable to maintain their buildings and run a business without Prop 13.

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

#285
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part where the person thinks they have some right to tell others what to do with their properly-zoned property while simultaneously refusing to pay for that right?

Woah. Someone said "all homeowners benefit from increased density in their neighborhood". Tom replied that as a homeowner he didn't feel he benefited from increased density, and explained why. He didn't tell anyone what to do. What are you so upset about?

* *

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's a death spiral waiting to happen.

Probably not.

> Companies will move away from areas where their employees can't get hosting.

And if that happens in even a small degree, housing prices will drop, relieving the problem. It's only a problem if their is a sharply threshold where below which no one moves out, but just above which lots of companies do. That's not entirely implausible, but it's not all that probable.

> Not many have to move before the rest start to follow

That right there is the highly speculative part; if it's true, you have an out of control positive feedback loop, but otherwise it's a self-controlling negative feedback loop.

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

#287
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah. Someone said "all homeowners benefit from increased density in their neighborhood". Tom replied that as a homeowner he didn't feel he benefited from increased density, and explained why. He didn't tell anyone what to do. What are you so upset about?

* *

> All homeowners benefit when the teachers, police officers, nurses, librarians, postal workers, garbage collectors, mechanics, plumbers, construction workers, retail clerks, gym trainers, restaurant servers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, artists, etc. etc. etc. can afford to live somewhere within a reasonable commute distance.

No, they don't. All homeowners don't have the same utility function. Not living near people of different socio-economic strata is a very important factor in some people's utility function.

> When the only people who can afford to live within 40 miles are senior software engineers, surgeons, hedge fund quants, corporate executives, and large landowners, the whole community becomes a fake and lifeless place.

The features you see as “fake and lifeless” are what many people actively desire and seek out. Aesthetics are highly subjective.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* *

> All homeowners benefit when the teachers, police officers, nurses, librarians, postal workers, garbage collectors, mechanics, plumbers, construction workers, retail clerks, gym trainers, restaurant servers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, artists, etc. etc. etc. can afford to live somewhere within a reasonable commute distance. No, they don't. All homeowners don't have the same utility function. Not living near people…

Edit: nevermind, this is a stupid conversation. I would delete it if I could.

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

#289
post #284
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 preceded rent control in San Francisco and in most (maybe even all) California cities that have rent control.

That's how I heard it. Turns out Berkeley got rent control in 1972 while Prop 13 was passed in 1978. But generally you're right. It's still my understanding that landlords of multiple units who have tenants in rent control would have a massive problem with the repeal of Prop 13. It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low. They would have a strong argument for being unable to main…

> It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low.

Prop 13 doesn't keep total costs low for landlords, it just shifts costs from property taxes to other things.

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All homeowners benefit when the teachers, police officers, nurses, librarians, postal workers, garbage collectors, mechanics, plumbers, construction workers, retail clerks, gym trainers, restaurant servers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, artists, etc. etc. etc. can afford to live somewhere within a reasonable commute distance. No, they don't. All homeowners don't have the same utility function. Not living near people…

Edit: nevermind, this is a stupid conversation. I would delete it if I could.

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