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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

#341

Post by s73v3r_ »

kelnos wrote: post #248
s73v3r_ wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. But I don't see why wanting things to stay similar to when you bought the house is any more selfish than wanting to barge yourself into an area that may not be able to absorb the additional population.

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.

You keep talking about "natural right", but nowhere did I mention that. I just said that I don't believe what they're doing is any more selfish than what the people moving in are doing.

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

#342

Post by swebs »

raldi wrote: post #331
swebs wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing they have in common is that they're both near a fault line. Tokyo has a foundation of solid bedrock so soil liquefaction is not an issue. Very little of the area surrounding downtown Tokyo is sea, compared to San Francisco, which is a peninsula around 10 km wide.

Most of SF actually has quite shallow bedrock. As for the part that doesn't, it already has subways and tall buildings (except for the part near Ocean Beach). But anyway, we wouldn't actually need any tall buildings to solve the housing crisis; 4-to-6-story apartments would do the trick. http://images.slideplayer.com/22/6340453/slides/slide_27.jpg If being surrounded by water is an insurmountable problem, how do you…

>If being surrounded by water is an insurmountable problem, how do you explain the tall buildings and subways in Manhattan?

I'm not saying the water inhibits construction. It just limits the area where you can expand. Look at New York on Google maps and zoom out a bit. The metropolitan area expands in all directions except the very south. Now look at Tokyo. It also expands in all directions except the south-east. Now look at San Fransisco. The north, west, and east are blocked by the Pacific Ocean. There are single long bridges to the north and Oakland, but they serve as choke points limiting movement. Much of the area to the north is also a national park.

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

#343

Post by stouset »

Spooky23 wrote: post #323
stouset wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? I appreciate your willingness to engage in this thread, but I have to say I really don’t care if it does or if it doesn’t. Making a real estate purchase is a risk. Making a huge one is a huge risk. Right now, the Bay Area is prioritizing rewarding the obscenely wealthy and rewarding massive risk-taking by the moderately wealthy. If those risks don’t pan out, but people can afford to live here, I’m not that…

The counter-point is that if I was a homeowner in the Bay Area, I want to protect my property as much as possible, and I'll use my political power to do that. People who are disrupted by this can build character by living in a van or move to any of the hundreds of metro areas that are more affordable -- it's not my problem. If you work for some tech company, you should appreciate that controlling a resource like a te…

> The counter-point is that if I was a homeowner in the Bay Area, I want to protect my property as much as possible, and I'll use my political power to do that.

I totally get that, but it's a) unfortunate that when one buys a home, their financial self-interest becomes immediately opposed to the needs of the overwhelming majority in this city who rent, and b) ridiculous that city politics safeguards the value of these risky bets by homeowners at the expense of literally everyone else.

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

#344

Post by beavisthegenius »

TomVDB wrote: post #228
beavisthegenius wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an SF resident, you people are ruining the city.

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.

You're an asshole for preventing development.

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

#345

Post by RestlessMind »

stouset wrote: post #266
TomVDB wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're being down voted. Is it really controversial to say that a regular single family house in a single family house neighborhood will go down in value when somebody decides to plant an apartment complex right next to do?

Honestly? I appreciate your willingness to engage in this thread, but I have to say I really don’t care if it does or if it doesn’t. Making a real estate purchase is a risk. Making a huge one is a huge risk. Right now, the Bay Area is prioritizing rewarding the obscenely wealthy and rewarding massive risk-taking by the moderately wealthy. If those risks don’t pan out, but people can afford to live here, I’m not that…

> If those risks don’t pan out...I'm not that upset.

But see, now you have introduced an "us vs them" mentality to this discussion with homeowners on one side and non-homeowners on the other. If I, a homeowner with 800K mortgage, is going to face people like you who want to act in a way that will reduce the price of my home below 800K thus wiping out my equity in my home and saddling me with an underwater mortgage, then I am going to fight tooth and nail against any new housing.

Figuring out how to add new housing without affecting the value of existing homes would go a long way towards getting buy-in from existing homeowners.

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

#346

Post by RestlessMind »

stouset wrote: post #343
Spooky23 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-point is that if I was a homeowner in the Bay Area, I want to protect my property as much as possible, and I'll use my political power to do that. People who are disrupted by this can build character by living in a van or move to any of the hundreds of metro areas that are more affordable -- it's not my problem. If you work for some tech company, you should appreciate that controlling a resource like a te…

> The counter-point is that if I was a homeowner in the Bay Area, I want to protect my property as much as possible, and I'll use my political power to do that. I totally get that, but it's a) unfortunate that when one buys a home, their financial self-interest becomes immediately opposed to the needs of the overwhelming majority in this city who rent, and b) ridiculous that city politics safeguards the value of thes…

> city politics safeguards the value of these risky bets by homeowners

Mainly because homeowners are more engaged in the city politics? If renters or would-be homeowners were more engaged, this would have been a totally different situation.

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

#347

Post by ScottBurson »

api wrote: post #276
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.

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

They are. The caveat here is that in the long run, the attractiveness of owning rental property is affected by the ROI, which is affected, to some extent, by property tax rates. A case could be made that Prop. 13 has expanded the rental supply by increasing the returns to property owners. So even though rents at any given time are determined by supply and demand, over time there should be some tendency for the system to self-correct.

The question, though, is the magnitude of this effect compared to the other forces acting on supply. I think it's small. The value appreciation being enjoyed by rental property owners greatly outweighs the small increase in property taxes they would pay without Prop. 13.

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

#348

Post by ScottBurson »

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…

> If your landlord gets a property tax cut, would they pass on the savings to you? No.

In fact, we have empirical evidence for this. The campaign for Prop. 13 claimed that landlords would pass on the savings, but after it was passed, no corresponding drop in rents was observed.

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

#349

Post by eanzenberg »

rspeer wrote: post #303
eanzenberg wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd think it wouldn't take so much effort to defend the claim "if you build enough housing, people won't be homeless", but it does. So let's go with a prominent example: Tokyo. Neighborhoods in Tokyo have no local control over zoning, and houses are widely understood to be a depreciating asset, not an investment. So Tokyo builds enough housing and homeowners can't pull up the ladder behind them. The homelessness ra…

Japan culture is very different than US. There is inherent respect obtained from having a job, any job, and dedicated yourself to it no matter how small. Being without a job or worse, homeless, brings much shame to that person and their family. There is strong social pressure to maintain your career and pour many many hours into it.

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

#350

Post by badminton1 »

cwkoss wrote: post #340
badminton1 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds dumb but consider the evolution of world population over time: - 1950: 2.5 billion - 2000: 6 billion - 2018: 7.6 billion

I don't mean to be dismissive of your general sentiment, I think we agree - I just think your example is a bit superlative. I think when viewing exponential trends we need to consider the maximum 'carrying capacity' - typically when something is growing exponentially there is some latent 'available energy' that is being consumed to fuel the growth. Once consumption reaches parity with that energy production - growth…

Except that in 2118 those wealthy residents may not need less wealthy residents because of automation.
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