351–360 of 550 posts
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Go tell that to Oklahomans and others still making a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour
If you can find a single person still getting paid that, please give me their info and I will have them making twice that by tomorrow.
I'm very interested in hearing the opportunity you can give someone who's willing to work for $14.50/hr though.
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New things do tend to cost more than old things, that's pretty much always the case! Where I live, people are blocking the construction of new apartments because the cost of the new ones is a bit higher, 10%-50%, than the average existing apartment. The idea behind blocking the new apartments is that "new expensive apartments don't help anybody" and people get very upset that the new housing is going to the type of p…
You gotta look at the motivations. Rich people and activists can both agree that affordable housing requirements are a good thing. The higher the better. This makes the project not pencil out so everybody is happy - the homeowners who don’t want new neighbors and the activists who think that everything is gentrification. The only people who get screwed are the only people who don’t have a vote, the non-residents. Whi…
They get displaced when rents rise, having to move away from their friends, family, their kids' schools, etc. All because "activists" convinced them that their enemies are the people able to pay slightly more, rather than the system that says "only the X wealthiest people can live here, oh and we won't change X even though it's trivial."
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>You cannot live in Musk's banking account. You have to have the actual physical structure, and current laws in hotspots like San Francisco and New York do their utmost to prevent new development. >Places like Austin, which are less restrictive, don't have this problem. Not really fair to compare 2 cities on the waterfront with no obvious space to build over to a city in the middle of Texas. San Francisco is even wor…
We've had the technology to build skyscrapers for over 100 years. They're illegal in 90% of the city
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> One main driver is that there's not being built enough new housing. I recently entertained the idea of building a new house. Not terribly surprising, but worth mentioning that the time and materials to put up the structure was going cost even more than buying a used house. If nobody can afford to buy a less expensive used house then naturally nobody is going to build the much more expensive new house either. Therei…
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I live in an apartment in Stockholm but I also own an old forest cabin. It’s perfectly legal for me to live in said cabin permanently, but it would be strictly illegal for me to build a new house to the same simple standard. The building codes are basically making it illegal to be poor. Similar patterns exist for student housing. The old style of student corridors wit…
(Not that it's all good, e.g. I don't like Washington's WAC 51-11R which just seems way overcomplicated.)
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This is at least 80% of the problem. The system is behaving exactly as you'd expect it to with even an Econ 102-level understanding. New supply isn't being built, or is being severely hamstrung, and more people want the supply and are willing to sacrifice (often too much) to get it. Add in rent-seeking behavior, both figuratively and literally, and prices quickly double in even mediocre areas with minimal long-term p…
Even if new stock were built, new homes in Houston start around $300k for a 3/2 configuration, but those are bought up nearly instantly because not many are built, and the remaining stock are $400-700k. I grew up with 6 family members in a 3/2 house that was 1250sqft. Houses today start at 2000+ square feet in the USA. We DON'T need that. On top of that, there is very limited stock of homes for people who no longer h…
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Even if new stock were built, new homes in Houston start around $300k for a 3/2 configuration, but those are bought up nearly instantly because not many are built, and the remaining stock are $400-700k. I grew up with 6 family members in a 3/2 house that was 1250sqft. Houses today start at 2000+ square feet in the USA. We DON'T need that. On top of that, there is very limited stock of homes for people who no longer h…
The answer is still build more (which you basically admit yourself in your first sentence). Homes skew larger and more expensive precisely because it's so hard to build them so developers need to make more money from each one. The fixed costs per unit are too high, so the ones that need to be lowered or eliminated should be. That will incentive building more units not just more expensive units. You'd see a lot more 1…
You do see them, but they are factory built. I could have a $75k manufactured home dropped onto a $20k slab, with $15k utility hookup, and have 3 beds and 2 baths and 1200sqft. It is viable outside of HOAs and "master planned communities" but it is hard to find places in the US that allow this in a "desirable" area.
I agree we need more, but we need smaller too. My parents right now have a 3600 sqft house they will die in, and can't maintain because they are in/approaching their 70s. They built it in 2008 for around $190k when there were still 2 kids at home, my grandmother still lived there, and my sister had a baby on the way.
Now their home is valued at $750k according to the county (after fighting and revising it down from $800k), and if it weren't for all the homestead exemptions and senior rates and whatever other tax breaks they were given, their property taxes would be over $25k/yr.
They've actually tried to sell it a number of times, but 0 bites even discounting it down to $500k, because the town they are in has no comps (single level 4 bed, 4bath on 3 acres).
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>I have yet to read a comprehensive overview of how this happened and how we get out of it Allow me to introduce you to Bryan Caplan - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1952223415
i would love to hear a YIMBY consider the market forces/how capitalism works and not just reduce it to regulation. aka when it costs over $500k to build a single apartment unit and most of those costs are construction with very little of the regulation burden driving up that cost.
What? What?
I dare anyone here who's simping for regulation to try to develop from scratch something that does not benefit from the myriad of exemptions that apply to 1-few family residential development (because there'd be no political will for the racket if the average homeowner was subject to it).
Those $500k costs include $100k of which is engineering for a SWPPP that any sane site planner who doesn't want shit to erode in no time flat would have gotten 95% of the same effect of anyway.
And the dirt work guy's bill includes god knows how many extra hours it takes to get it all spot on to meet the plans. He could've shot from the hip and done the job but there were plans and had to hit them.
And of course the lawyer has to go rounds with the town over what level of maintenance detail needs to be specified in the SWPP.
And of course the rent has to cover the landscaper who comes once a month to mow the ditch grass and stuff because that contract is how they cover their own ass.
The reason every goddamn modern property looks the same with the same shitty corporate bland sidewalks and same planters and same parking lot and entry way with the same five styles of door and the same light level and same everything is because every party involved if formulaically trying to meet the regulations related to their trade as cheaply as possible. And everyone knows this stupid. Every single party in the chain of developing a building from the initial survey to specing the lightbulbs knows they could, without even getting close to underperforming solutions, deliver infinitely more value if they could just exercise their goddamn professional discretion.
The guy delivering a rented trench box to a construction site that's chiseled out of bedrock knows what he's doing is wasteful and stupid just as much as the guy signing the check and the guys wasting their dime dropping it into the trench but hey, the rules are the rules and they're all billing the next guy down the line for it so it all goes on.
The problem is absolutley that housing is too expensive, which of course a bunch of realtors are not going to point out. Increasing wages will not fix the housing crisis, and will just drive prices higher. How convenient for a bunch of realtors...
for housing we need to replace zoning rules with a neighbor vote, put the community back in control instead of bureaucrats who block new apartments for dumb reasons or take bribes from developers to build luxury investment properties nobody wants. there should also probably be an escape hatch where anyone can build affordable/rent controlled apts without a vote but only if the location has high enough average rent. that would help balance out inequalities and break up exclusive rich neighborhoods, maybe even help against racism.
the other side is lower costs with less paperwork (removing zoning makes a big difference) and enforcing competition in the home building industry. make it easier to start a new business and break up corporate monopolies. create a safe path for undocumented immigrants to legalize themselves so they can have labor rights, make legal immigration cheaper and more predictable.
Like if a landlord wants to sell their building and someone comes along with an offer for $500k then the current tenants have an option to buy it at that price.
Certainly would be annoying for investors looking to buy quickly but potentially life changing for long term tenants about to get a new landlord.