> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. The problem with new housing development is that only large corporate investors are allowed to develop. I am very NIMBY as it relates to building apartments next-door, because I am prohibited from building apartments on my lot. I'm all for reducing land use restrictions, but i…
Why is it a problem for large corporate investors to develop? I've never understood this. New things are being built, who cares who builds them?
It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are…
I find it amusing that many folks here are ready to clap back at this comment about how "but people want single family homes" as if that weren't why we are in a housing crisis. Yes... people want single family homes, it's just not feasible to put 3M people into single family homes in a metro area without absorbing an unsustainable amount of costs. Here we are talking literally the cost of construction, but there is a…
That’s not the reason we have a housing crisis. If you look at cities like Houston, where housing is relatively affordable, the vast majority of people still have single family homes. The reason we have a housing crisis is because regulations make it too hard to build housing.
To Start: Zoning laws, land use restrictions, parking minimums, property covenants and restrictions, traffic flow requirements, and minimum offsets.
Do these laws serve no other purpose other than to prevent building? Which of these laws can be discarded to 'solve' the housing problem? Which should we keep?
Some of the housing regulations were legitimately put in place for safety reasons to protect people. Others were put in place to keep black and Asian people out. Especially after government initiatives to prevent discrimination in housing like the 1968 Fair Housing Act, efforts to keep out minorities became cloaked in the garb of "public safety", and minority-excluding regulations were sanitized into affordability-excluding regulations.
I agree. It's government policy at this point to bring in as many people as possible for some reason. My guess is to drive down wages, some others have guessed that it's due to a belief that global conflict is rising and the native population is unwilling to fight.
Then you should not have said 320,000 illegal immigrants brought in, since you agree they are not illegals.
This perspective seems to be missing the forest for the trees. Bribery isn't illegal for Congress, it's just called lobbying. Insider trading isn't illegal either.
Loose immigration policy and the lack of border enforcement obviously exerts downward pressure on wages for low skill workers. It also bids up rents since illegal immigrants are willing to pile into a 1 bedroom apartment. The elite own businesses and real estate, both of which benefit from illegal immigration reducing wages and increasing demand for rent. If you take a minute to think about the incentives, then see the effects in the world around you, it's pretty obvious what's going on.
I bet it's less expensive in the PNW and more expensive in the midwest and southwest. There is a LOT of timber here and a lot of mills to take advantage of plantation-grown trees that don't exist elsewhere.
If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we…
When a large chunk of the middle-class is counting on their home value to facilitate retirement, they're rightfully concerned about urbanization of their neighborhood. I personally believe they're mostly wrong - urbanization probably won't harm home values. And done well, might improve the values even more.
I agree. Nice cities are just attractive places to be. Even for people who live in the single family homes near them. An expensive city is expensive everywhere, regardless the type of housing, > they're rightfully concerned Yeah for sure. A lot of the pushback against development is a gut feel concern, the fear of losing something, it's not rational. The "rightfully" part I guess is because institutions groom people…
When our son moved out and we decided to right-size our home, we went looking for condos, but there was very little available in our area, at least nothing that was 3 bedroom + priced in our range + located near the subway. We found one condo that had size and location, and while the purchase price was less than a TH across the street, the monthly condo fees were somewhere near $1000/month. That ended up making the monthly expense >30% higher than the TH across the street (which is where we ended up).
I’ll admit that I merely skimmed the study, but as I read it states that local/municipal property taxes in many cases don’t cover the road infrastructure required to support those homes. To make the argument that they are subsidized you’d also have to factor in municipal and state income taxes.
They don't cover them to the tune of many tens of percentage points where I live. It's to the degree that the state basically has to redistribute wealth from the cities to the counties where the roads are built. If the communities served by a road had to pay the full price of the road you'd see a lot of little 8-10 house hamlets with 10 million dollar bridges pack up and leave.
long ago in the netherlands the road in front of your house was your responsibility. You could agree with your neighbors to a crappy road but with loss of status and probably the value of the home. (The last remnant was the requirement to remove weeds. That was how I found out.)
It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are…
I know it's hard to believe that many people are simply happier living in their own single family home and have little desire for the urban lifestyle.
It’s also possible it’s like that because the city and apartments they are familiar with suck. I used to live in a small, admittedly rich, city, and had all amenities within 7 minutes walk, park within 3 minute walk. The city policy is that there is a primary school within kids walking distance. We had 4 apartments in the city with these characteristics, and didn’t hear the neighbors (much) except for the above neighbors heels in one of them.
San Francisco, the densest city in the state, is 3/4 suburbia. There's no reason why it couldn't host 4 times the population without resorting to Hong Kong style urbanism (which would be great IMO, but that's a separate story). The infrastructure argument would make sense if homes in remote areas didn't also need that infrastructure, while suffering from lower efficiency in all measures.