How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality • Hacker News Board

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#51

Post by greeneggs » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 1:06 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #19

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is, everyone believes they should be able to become a stakeholder in a resource that is, by definition, naturally constrained. Only so many people get a say in a geographic area, and the stark reality is that once you reach a certain critical mass, you're incentivized to protect your quality of life over allowing for more people to join you. Strangely, its thought of as acceptable for tech workers (…

What's strange about this at all? The pro-growth mentality is consistent: anyone can come, if they can afford it. The anti-growth mentality is incoherent: it was fine for me to move here 20 years ago, but how dare tech workers try to do the same thing!

I'm not sure what is incoherent about the anti-growth mentality. You seem to be trying to make a rhetorical point instead of an argument.

There really are costs to current residents to allowing unfettered growth. Increased traffic, for example, materially reduces people's quality of life.

People vote for their own self interests, and calling someone "incoherent" simply because they were born in Boulder and love their home is not a productive argument.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#52

Post by morgante » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

greeneggs wrote: post #51

morgante wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's strange about this at all? The pro-growth mentality is consistent: anyone can come, if they can afford it. The anti-growth mentality is incoherent: it was fine for me to move here 20 years ago, but how dare tech workers try to do the same thing!

I'm not sure what is incoherent about the anti-growth mentality. You seem to be trying to make a rhetorical point instead of an argument. There really are costs to current residents to allowing unfettered growth. Increased traffic, for example, materially reduces people's quality of life. People vote for their own self interests, and calling someone "incoherent" simply because they were born in Boulder and love their…

Sorry, I should have been clearer that it's not all anti-growth advocates who are incoherent.

If you were born somewhere and are attached to the way of life you've known since you were born, it's certainly an argument. I don't agree with it, but it's not incoherent.

I'm referring to the people (particularly in SF) who moved there a decade or more ago yet are virulently opposed to "tech workers" doing the same thing.

And yes, I understand voting for self-interests. What's irritating is when people try to frame their self-interests as a moral crusade, as though tech immigration is somehow inherently evil.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#53

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

Dowwie wrote: post #48

In a realistic scenario, de-regulated zoning around San Francisco would benefit developers and lenders while worsening the financial burden of the middle class. If zoning were de-regulated around San Francisco, I doubt that many of you would pay much less than what you'd pay now for housing, assuming you're not making less than the AMI. San Francisco had an Area Median Income in 2014 of $83,222. Those who make below…

> If you were a developer, wouldn't you try to maximize profit for your investors?

Selling 1000 units at $2000 is more profitable than selling 500 units at $2500. Moreover, collusion is a) illegal, allowing us to smite them with the Hammer of Antitrust Enforcement, and b) assumes there are few enough developers that they can actually do that without anybody defecting, which seems unlikely.

> In a realistic scenario, de-regulated zoning around San Francisco would benefit developers and lenders while worsening the financial burden of the middle class.

Your proposed alternative to increasing supply once to reduce prices is to keep supply constrained and subsidize rents forever.

There is no way out of the fact that increasing the housing supply is the only real solution, and that requires zoning regulations to be relaxed so that it can actually be increased. If you then have other problems with increasing the housing supply, you fix them, because one way or another there needs to be a lot more housing.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#54

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #16

I feel that in many of these discussions, it's beneficial to see NIMBYism as a response to an incomplete insurance market, as described in [0]. This is not to say it is a complete or normative defense of NIMBYism, but rather that a lot of knee-jerk SJW sort of reaction is missing the point and failing to address, or even really attempt to understand, where NIMBYs are coming from. Part of me wonders if this could be s…

The problem is, it isn't an insurable problem if housing prices decrease when the new construction goes right. You would just put the insurance company on the opposing side of the development instead of the homeowners.

The source of the problem is that people started buying homes as investments, overpaying for them because there was insufficient supply, and now that they've got a mortgage and they don't want to end up underwater, so they have to make sure everybody else overpays too.

Probably the solution is inflation. Build more housing and at the same time print more money. Then real housing prices go down while nominal housing prices stay the same, so your house doesn't "lose value" compared to your mortgage but housing still becomes more affordable for new buyers. This would also help by devaluing everyone's student loans and other debt. Call it the banks' punishment for 2008.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#55

Post by raldi » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

Dowwie wrote: post #48

In a realistic scenario, de-regulated zoning around San Francisco would benefit developers and lenders while worsening the financial burden of the middle class. If zoning were de-regulated around San Francisco, I doubt that many of you would pay much less than what you'd pay now for housing, assuming you're not making less than the AMI. San Francisco had an Area Median Income in 2014 of $83,222. Those who make below…

But economic analysis indicates that building even market-rate housing drives down prices for everyone: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-18/want-chea...

For example, the thorough analysis above indicates that increasing San Francisco's housing supply by 30% would cut prices in half.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#56

Post by acveilleux » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #32

ars wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe people go to the park to have solitude with nature and go home to interact with people [on the street by the house]. In the US people go to the park to interact with people, and go home to have solitude [hopefully with nature in their backyard, but even if not they want a quiet apartment without lots of people near them, or at least the illusion of it]. Some people prefer the US way, some the European way.…

The European way, in many ways, was a consequence of geography and, to a lesser degree, climate. The US is a car-centric culture that is fueled by (relatively) cheap gasoline (energy prices). Take for instance shopping malls. Shopping malls in Asia (usually in urban centers) build up vertically while in the United States they are build out horizontally with acres and acres of parking spaces. Some of the best US citie…

Your point about cars is well-made. European cities, by and large, predate the automobile. Most american cities do not. Indeed all the dense cities and parts of cities predate the gasoline engine. Compare Vegas and San Francisco or Brooklyn and Stamford, CT. Very different density since Brooklyn mostly predates cars and Stamford's population exploded in the late 40s to mid-late 70s as a NYC well-to-do white suburb (95% white in 1950.)

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#57

Post by tim333 » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

There must be massive opportunities to manage these things in a smarter way as illustrated by the $1.5 trillion a year mentioned in the article. For example in SF they could build aesthetically appealing tall buildings with much of the profits going to the government rather than private developers and use some of that to build better accom for the homeless who clutter the streets. Everyone wins pretty much - you could give a bit of compensation to people next to the new buildings who might be a bit inconvenienced.

Maybe someone could do a startup to sort this stuff. I've been thinking about it but not cracked it.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#58

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

duncan_bayne wrote: post #46

morgante wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's strange about this at all? The pro-growth mentality is consistent: anyone can come, if they can afford it. The anti-growth mentality is incoherent: it was fine for me to move here 20 years ago, but how dare tech workers try to do the same thing!

Bryson made the same point about anti-immigration forces in the USA (and the same applies elsewhere, like Australia where I live). "Immigration was just fine for my grandparents, but now it's about time it stopped."

> "Immigration was just fine for my grandparents, but now it's about time it stopped."

That's a mischaracterization though. The fundamental equation for immigration is to make sure the immigrants don't bring down the average. When your grandparents came here the average was lower than it is now.

Which is why it's a lot easier to get a green card if you have a masters in engineering than if you're a farm hand. It fundamentally has to be that way if you want to have any sort of a social safety net, otherwise the majority of world population would take citizenship and become eligible for social assistance.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#59

Post by sandworm101 » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

rspeer wrote: post #25

sandworm101 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luxury has some scientific definitions. Top of the list is size for a single-family dwelling. My city has liberalized zoning for size, but kept limits on number of occupants and such for fear of impacting infrastructure. The result is ever-larger units. New houses seem less like houses and more like diagrams of local building codes. Property line minus ten feet, there's your wall. Luxury apartments can also be define…

If the problem is that overseas investors are buying the houses, sure, that's a problem that decreases the amount of living space. But how would restrictive zoning fix that problem? And I still don't think the flipping is relevant in the long run. It's pent-up demand sorting itself out. They can't keep flipping forever.

It's not so much the level of zoning, but its recent liberalization. Properties that are not living up to their zoning potential (ie you are now allowed to build something much bigger) are being pulled off the market for redevelopment. Then the new units are so geared towards ownership and investment, many being pre-sold individually, that they never return to the rental pool.

A more restrictive approach could discourage such redevelopment and sequestration, keeping rental units as rental units.

Re: How Anti-Growth Sentiment, Reflected in Zoning Laws, Thwarts Equality

#60

Post by madgar » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

Dowwie wrote: post #48

In a realistic scenario, de-regulated zoning around San Francisco would benefit developers and lenders while worsening the financial burden of the middle class. If zoning were de-regulated around San Francisco, I doubt that many of you would pay much less than what you'd pay now for housing, assuming you're not making less than the AMI. San Francisco had an Area Median Income in 2014 of $83,222. Those who make below…

> look to what the DelBlasio administration is doing

The man's name is Bill De Blasio.

And the AMI used for affordable housing is so high, it's a joke. They include Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland counties in the calculation as a blatant concession to the real estate industry.

The "Low Income" units are further broken down into 40%, 50% and 60% of AMI, and nearly all the Low Income units being built are for that "up to 60% of AMI" range. That ensures they have the largest possible pool of applicants, and since the units are awarded by lottery, the new affordable housing units will take just as long to get into as a decade-long public housing waitlist.

There is a lot to criticize about our actual implementation of the affordable housing - from both business interests and progressive interests. This suggests that this is one of those politically Hard Problems that most politicians will always avoid like the plague.