The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#471

Post by dlcarrier » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:27 AM UTC

grafmax wrote: post #467

tptacek wrote: post #5

So much of the journalism we read is heavily processed and barely-reported and it's startling to see how much of a superpower simple shoe-leather reporting actually is. Derek Thompson's an incredibly sharp writer, but not really a subject matter expert on housing economics; all he did here was read papers and call up the authorities they cited, and the narrative behind those papers collapsed. We're often so down on j…

Abundance YIMBYism has many shortcomings. It doesn't address the risk of gentrification and displacement, the slow and unproven trickle-down effect of market-rate housing, or the critical need for direct public housing to serve low-income communities. Journalistic ideologues deserve little praise for dismantling the weakest counterarguments of their opponents while ignoring core criticisms.

Market rate housing doesn't need to trickle down. Most NIMBY regulations focus on the prevention of building low-value housing. Let developers flood the market with small, high density units, and they'll be cheap right away.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#472

Post by ozgrakkurt » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:29 AM UTC

munchler wrote: post #417

gboss wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the problem. We should not castigate people who want to build homes and earn a rightful profit from that endeavor. The problem is the undemocratic process that is the town hearing. It is unreasonable to expect working families and young adults to attend week day, day time hearings to state their position on the construction of new homes or anything else for that matter. The atrocities of urban renewal by…

You want to let rich outsiders make decisions about what happens to a community instead of the people who live there, because... town hearings are undemocratic. All those annoying old people are just going to die anyway, so it's really best to ignore them. I think I've heard everything now.

All these old people are going to die now so their incentives don’t really align with people from other demographics. This is factually true, same with how people that have more wealth generally have different incentives than poor people.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#473

Post by once_inc » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:30 AM UTC

dlcarrier wrote: post #422

moneycantbuy wrote: post #385

Gary's Economics claims wealth inequality is at the root of housing unaffordability. Basically as wealth concentration grows, the ultra-rich bid up the assets. See the price of gold doubling in the past few years. Government stimulus is also captured by the richest. It's also a global phenomenon, i.e., every major city is now unaffordable for most people. https://youtu.be/BTlUyS-T-_4?si=P0mdHxtq1F7DV4jo

Every metal, and really every commodity, has has recent price hikes above the official BLS CPI numbers. That says far more about official inflation numbers than it does commodity markets.

This! Since our money is being inflated away, hard assets like precious metals, bitcoin, and real estate get bid up because those with cash bleed out purchasing power.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#474

Post by Braxton1980 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:30 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #148

tptacek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a very wealthy, extraordinarily progressive muni (almost certainly in the top 5 nationally), and my primary political project is zoning reform, and I assure you that left-NIMBYism is a thing, and that the "we should make blue state governments perform better and increase supply of things people want" thesis of "Abundance" (Thompson and Klein's book) is a bête noire among those leftists. The argument isn't t…

Here in extremely liberal Portland, there are a huge number of people who genuinely believe that 'greedy developers' are the cause of the nationwide housing shortage, having talked themselves into the nonsense belief that building fewer homes makes people more money.

,"having talked themselves into the nonsense belief that building fewer homes makes people more money."

Can you show me an example of someone pushing this?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#475

Post by dlcarrier » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:32 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #130

tptacek wrote: post #5

So much of the journalism we read is heavily processed and barely-reported and it's startling to see how much of a superpower simple shoe-leather reporting actually is. Derek Thompson's an incredibly sharp writer, but not really a subject matter expert on housing economics; all he did here was read papers and call up the authorities they cited, and the narrative behind those papers collapsed. We're often so down on j…

Reporters used to start at something like the City News Bureau.[1] For a century, the City News Bureau covered local news for Chicago and sent it in to the local newspapers. Lasted until 2005. Young reporters started there, covering every police station, every major crime, every major fire, every major trial, and getting the facts right, or else. The bureau`s unsentimental motto: ”If your mother says she loves you, c…

Legacy journalism has changed from a low-barrier-to-entry working man's occupation, with entry level reporting leading to high-paying punditry, into a high-barrier-to-entry ivy league occupation with new entrants to the field expecting prestigious positions from the start.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#476

Post by gwd » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:35 AM UTC

shazbotter wrote: post #439

didibus wrote: post #287

I just couldn't keep reading with the constant "antitrust left" being refered to on every sentence. The issue, is that for me, the reader, it framed the piece as the author seemingly positioning themselves as the "the other side", the one that knows best and isn't those "antitrust left". It felt like it was creating a strawman and was engaging in tribal signaling. And when you consider the rest of the piece was them…

I'm about as far left as you can be, as a syndicalist anarchist, and I definitely perceived a bit of what you described. But I'm not super worried about it because he didn't say "the left", but rather a specific lefty position. But also, the left isn't uniform on housing policy. Some folks want anti trust and limited capital ownership. Some folks want to de commodify housing. Some folks want all housing to be governm…

Then why even bother calling it "left" at this point? Just say they're anti-monopoly. Is there really nobody on the right who are also anti-monopoly?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#477

Post by podgorniy » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:38 AM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #352

Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Here's how a rational market works. If I build an apartment complex, eventually those apartments will get older and more affordable. And even before that upper middle class folks will move in, freeing up their previous homes. But that's not how many in local governments see it. So you have affordable housing quotas on new developments. You have developers building units for the home…

> Excessive regulation is 90% of it.

Housing crisis is observed in almost all what is called "first world" (europe, japan, usa). I believe that 90% of the issue is more global than a regulation.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#478

Post by ghiculescu » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:45 AM UTC

podgorniy wrote: post #477

999900000999 wrote: post #352

Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Here's how a rational market works. If I build an apartment complex, eventually those apartments will get older and more affordable. And even before that upper middle class folks will move in, freeing up their previous homes. But that's not how many in local governments see it. So you have affordable housing quotas on new developments. You have developers building units for the home…

> Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Housing crisis is observed in almost all what is called "first world" (europe, japan, usa). I believe that 90% of the issue is more global than a regulation.

Is there a housing specific crisis? Or is inflation impacting housing like it impacts everything?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#479

Post by watwut » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:46 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #296

jordanb wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many leftists have a problem with zoning deregulation. I've been in leftist housing advocacy circles. I studied urban planning. 1) Every leftist I know who cares about housing hates euclidean zoning 2) Every leftist I know who cares about housing hates down-zoning 3) Every urban planning class I took said that euclidean zoning is bad Euclidean zoning is the principle land use regulation in the United States because…

I live and am politically active in a front-line municipality for these issues (Oak Park, IL --- the actual redlining bastion of the western suburbs, a 4.5 square mile gravity well for Cook County school funding so egregious it was one of the first examples in Johnny Harris's NYT "Blue States, You're The Problem video) and I'm telling you, straight out, leftist defenses of existing zoning rules are a very real thing.…

I think that conflating "blue state" with leftist is incorrect. "Blue state" confidently implies "centrist" and "not too much on the right". It does include also leftists, but not just them.

The parties are asymmetric. "Red state" implies very much on the right and is much more radicalized then democrats. But democrats themselves are centrists and unlike the republicans, tend to push away more radical parts.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#480

Post by grafmax » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 7:50 AM UTC

dlcarrier wrote: post #471

grafmax wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abundance YIMBYism has many shortcomings. It doesn't address the risk of gentrification and displacement, the slow and unproven trickle-down effect of market-rate housing, or the critical need for direct public housing to serve low-income communities. Journalistic ideologues deserve little praise for dismantling the weakest counterarguments of their opponents while ignoring core criticisms.

Market rate housing doesn't need to trickle down. Most NIMBY regulations focus on the prevention of building low-value housing. Let developers flood the market with small, high density units, and they'll be cheap right away.

Developers are incentivized to build whatever units are most profitable, not what lowest income people need. More expensive units make more money.

Besides that, land and construction are both limited resources that constrain developers ability to “flood the market with small, high density units.” For example in high-land-value urban areas, developers need to build expensive units to be able to make a profit.