391–400 of 1001 posts
Sadly this won't apply to San Francisco, which has made a very unlikely-sounding pinkie promise to allow 8,200 new housing units a year starting right now.
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> This has the real possibility to destroy wealth and land value. Good. Treating increasing unaffordability as a good thing is an insane part of American culture. We didn't celebrate car prices going through the roof during the pandemic, and neither does it make sense to celebrate skyrocketing housing prices. The ideal price of housing would be zero, same as other products.
No, not good. It doesn't make sense to destroy wealth. If you want to transfer wealth from one party (land owners) to another (renters) that's fine. The land itself has intrinsic value. It's fine to transfer that value from one party to another. But it's absolutely not fine to destroy it. Everyone is worse off. Your argument is basically that we should start salting farm land to decrease its value.
Destroying wealth because you've lowered the price of goods and make them more accessible, is not the same thing as destroying wealth by actually destroying the utility of something.
If I made a super food replicator that halved the price of food permanently, that would destroy much wealth in the agricultural sector, and it would still be a good thing for humanity as a whole.
Truth be told, the value of the land itself in these cities, I don't think will change very much. The value of the property on top of that land though, that'll probably change, as the total housing supply increases.
Looking at other countries like Japan with like barely any zoning laws, this looks great, I hope it leads to more mixed cities again and more walkable/liveable areas like before WW2. It is funny that America land of the free had so many restrictions, building up hundreds of zoning laws across the country did a lot of bad and led to a lot of urban sprawl leading to very poor cities and towns that literally cannot pay…
There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning. My neighbors are going to be pissed .
Good. Fuck your neighbors. The region is long overdue for more housing to fix the ridiculous situation that has formed down there. Hopefully the region will become more affordable as new housing floods the area and brings down prices and makes things generally more affordable.
Looking at other countries like Japan with like barely any zoning laws, this looks great, I hope it leads to more mixed cities again and more walkable/liveable areas like before WW2. It is funny that America land of the free had so many restrictions, building up hundreds of zoning laws across the country did a lot of bad and led to a lot of urban sprawl leading to very poor cities and towns that literally cannot pay…
I am not an expert in California but I don't love this concept in general. Here in New York, the Governor is attempting to drive higher housing density in certain places regardless of what the local people think and want. I think this is a sort of obvious effort at a form of gerrymandering - if the assumption is that the residents of higher-density dwellings are more likely to vote Democrat on average vs the current…
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And when your street starts looking like San Francisco? You just abandon ship after encouraging this nonsense?
San Francisco is a good case study in what happens when you don't build enough housing - people who were previously able to afford cheap apartments now can't and do all of their business out in the street. Other cities and states have worse problems with drug use but don't have problems with homelessness because housing is more affordable there.
There is a developer in Cupertino who has been fighting with the city for years, who got awfully quiet lately. Now I know why. I suspect they have a plan for an absolutely massive high rise behind my house that they will be submitting at 8am tomorrow morning. My neighbors are going to be pissed .
Vallco?
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No, that's not what I'm saying at all. "Destroy land value" doesn't mean lower housing prices, or at least lower in a productive way. Imagine you have some land and then the city builds a dump next to the land. That destroys the value of the land because no one wants to live there anymore. Housing prices are a second-order effect based off of the land value and the availability of housing units. The new policy in Cal…
Multifamily housing is not analogous to a garbage dump. "The study finds that the upzoning increased property values by 15-23%" http://theadvocatecornell.com/2022/02/03/does-upzoning-work/
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Where does this narrative about evil greedy developers come from? If the new housing represents a net increase in people, then the developers are filling unmet demand. It’s not that different from restricting the supply of milk and getting angry that milk producers will make more money when those restrictions are lifted. Yeah, they will, but only because there is more demand for their product than they were previousl…
People are looking for any scapegoat for the problems in their community so they don't have to look in the mirror. This is the same reason why there's a persistent myth that homeless are bused in from other states or whatever (when in reality, 70-90% of them were in homes in San Francisco before going on the street). It absolves people of blame
Do you have a citation for that? I could do with a decent source.