Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

cityobservatory.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 126 posts

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#41

Post by cle »

jldugger wrote: post #30
tmnvix wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about housing for a minute. Would you agree that a speculative boom can cause an increase in demand?

That's not the crazy part. The crazy part is arguing that building additional supply in response to that demand will _increase_ prices.

That's not all that crazy to me, I can imagine many scenarios where that could happen. The answer is, as always, "it depends". It depends on what you build, how you build it, where you build it, how it's perceived, the time interval across which you're measuring prices, etc. Price of stuff is way more nuanced than surface-level supply and demand. It all comes down to perception of value, and there are a LOT of factors that can affect perception of value outside of scarcity, and they're often very dependent on each other.

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#42

Post by sliverstorm »

davidw wrote: post #35
tmnvix wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...potentially degrading your urban environment in the process. My point is that, if a particular housing market is experiencing a shortage of supply due to a speculative boom, but has sufficient housing to actually house people, then you have two options: tackle the supply side by building more houses, or tackle the demand side by addressing the cause of the speculation (e.g. tax incentives could be encouraging this…

Part of the "degradation" happens because we forgot that we can build up, as well as out, in much of the US https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...

I don't think we "forget", I think developers are after the quick buck and buyers are after most-sqft-per-dollar. Building up or down is more expensive.

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#43

Post by seiferteric »

kevinburke wrote: post #23
hkmurakami wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it ever truly was a debate over supply effects. I think the true debate is whether people agree or disagree on the desirability of more housing, and the "more supply won't help" argument was coopted by those who needed a more palatable argument than straight NIMBYism.

I can tell you 100% there is a debate over supply effects. There are many people (Peter Cohen, Causa Justa, Calle 24, some folks with red roses on Twitter, others) who show up at public comment in SF who believe that more market rate housing increases displacement and causes even higher prices.

I see supply and demand like the Ohm's law of economics, it's always true, but can get a bit complicated when you see things like reactance and reluctance. Sure, there can be interesting discussions about housing, but ultimately supply and demand is always key, but can get complicated do to realities like lack of space (SF) and nimby's (also SF)

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#44

Post by acover »

kevinburke wrote: post #26
hkmurakami wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't renters also have votes? If so then it's a matter of ratio and willingness to mobilize/fund efforts.

Renters vote but tend to be under-represented on City Councils and such because they are a) younger, b) have less money, c) move more often than people with homes. Renters don't vote as regularly as homeowners.

Renters are the minority. 70% of households own their home in Canada.

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#45

Post by raldi »

quotemstr wrote: post #6

That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding. Economics has fuzzy areas, but basic principles of supply and demand are very well-established. It's clearly nonsensical to imagine that we can simultaneously lower prices, limit supply, and allow for demand growth. The longevity of this bizarre idea demonstrates how strongly political ideas of how the world ought to work blind us to how the world does work. We…

> That there was ever a debate at all is still astounding.

It's due to the unfortunate rhetorical coincidence that it's very easy to paint this belief as "trickle down economics" (even though it's absolutely not) and many, many voters will nonetheless be fooled.

Example: https://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/its-still-calle...

If you haven't registered to vote where you currently live, please do so now. In many states (including California) it takes just a couple minutes, you can do it entirely on the Internet, and you don't even need a local driver's license.

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#46

Post by santaclaus »

acover wrote: post #44
kevinburke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renters vote but tend to be under-represented on City Councils and such because they are a) younger, b) have less money, c) move more often than people with homes. Renters don't vote as regularly as homeowners.

Renters are the minority. 70% of households own their home in Canada.

Using the San Francisco example from the article, renters are 62.5% of all households [1].

[1] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty....

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#47

Post by bhauer »

iandanforth wrote: post #36

I live in a very interesting area, across the street from me is a different city with housing costs roughly 10x the costs of mine. I am daily confronted with the absurdity of pricing of housing. In addition as I've watched rents around me rise, and anticipated my own rent rising, I wonder at the expectation that we should continually get less for more. My house isn't getting any newer after all. If my employer decide…

> my house ... for which I have been paying consistently for years

If you are paying for it, not past-tense, then it's not technically your house.

The apparently uneven market for real estate is shocking to buyers because of the variability of supply constraints, caused by geography but also in great measure by zoning regulation. The hackneyed refrain of "location, location, location" as the chief determinant of the value of a property illustrates this point.

> I must admit that I have tolerated this behavior from my landlords.

You have tolerated it precisely because you actually know that the value of property is not fixed. As demand increases while supply does not, the value/price goes up. Clearly you like the location, so you've not moved away. You are part of the demand that is moving prices upward. Your willingness to pay more is precisely what sets the price, along with supply.

> A problem to be remedied by legislation if the governing societal expectations do not naturally lead to a different equilibrium.

As the article points out, legislation focused on remedying the problem would relax constraints on supply caused by zoning, regulatory hurdles, etc. But so often the people complaining about the cost of housing are the same people voting to keep supply constrained.

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#48

Post by alexasmyths »

Folks - please add immigration.

Why on earth people don't grasp that when population is increasing mostly due to newcomers it affects housing ... this bothers me - because it's politicized, nobody can talk about it it seems.

Immigration is just a reality, it's part of the equation - it has real effects on housing costs and wages, one can't ignore it because sometimes the answers might not jive with one's politics.

So, immigration (or rather, population change, which can include births etc.) - is an important driving factor.

Which includes migration between states/regions obviously.

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#49

Post by xcryogenicx »

IpV8 wrote: post #20
drawnwren wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you're commenting on is literally the citation for this. Here's his citation, http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...

This kind of mentality that someone's news article counts as a source is poisonous. People read these articles and think that because a few facts have hyperlinks then they must be valid. Half of those links on that page go to other blogs and news site. One even goes to Youtube. Blogs and news agencies don't count as citations to base an argument on. Policy needs to start at peer reviewed research and build up from th…

> This kind of mentality that someone's news article counts as a source is poisonous.

Most underrated comment in the world.

This coupled with for-profit journalism and the atrophy of critical thinking is giving rise to nonsense like anti-vax, chemtrails, and flat Earth.

In America, the public has been led so astray by both the media and the government about things like basic macronutrients that a recent report found 1/3 of Americans, 100 million people, are diabetic are prediabetic (will have type II diabetes in 5 years).

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics/statistics-repo...

Re: The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)

#50

Post by RangerScience »

So, it sounds like:

1) Building any kind of more housing is beneficial

2) Building subsidized housing is more beneficial than market-rate housing

This leaves me with two questions:

1) Does subsidized have double the effect because you can build twice as many?

2) Zoning laws seem to prevent cheap housing from being cost-effective for developers to build. If you made it possible to build cheap housing (in LA, maybe by reducing parking requirements), would developers be building cheap housing on their own, without prompting / subsidies?

Post reply on HN