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

Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

city-journal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 326 posts

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#51

Post by sokoloff »

werfds wrote: post #30
arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

"We don't talk about the lack of affordable AAPL shares do we? That's insane, it's an investment, we want it to go up. The less affordable, the better!" I've always found our obsession with stock price amusing. It's the dividend that technically matters (and, with risk and growth potential, what ultimately should be setting the stock price). When you sell your stock at a gain it just means that, while you owned it, t…

At least four major discount brokerages have zero commissions on stock trades.

Many major mutual fund companies have had commission free trading of mutual funds for over a decade (probably more like 3+ decades.)

I’m not sure which fees are “very high” in this context.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#52

Post by dominotw »

arcticbull wrote: post #43
dominotw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the world simply increase population where this is still the case even if we build more housing though?

Tends to go the other way. Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement (1.8 births per woman), and relies heavily on immigration to maintain a steady population. There's a stark graph of page "4074" (page 4, figure 1-E in the PDF) of fertility rate vs HDI. [1] I bet if you build more housing you'd have fewer kids…

> Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement

Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ? Why are there endless articles in news that this isn't the case.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#53

Post by arcticbull »

sokoloff wrote: post #48
arcticbull wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Isn't a developer also making an investment when they build these high as hell micro-apartment apartment buildings? They are but they build and then sell off, developers develop, they tend not to own those units long-term. I believe this to be true regardless of market direction. Generally in the case of condos for sale, developers manage the complexes for a couple of years until enough units are sold off and the…

> You would just factor in that your rent would grow with inflation instead of geometrically when you're planning your building. Compounded growth at inflation is geometric growth.

Yeah, I bit my thumb as I wrote that haha, better-than-linear in constant-dollars instead of geometric in constant-dollars :P

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#54

Post by joking »

arcticbull wrote: post #25
manigandham wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of you are incorrect as it's about preferences, but the real problem is one of balance. A city needs all kinds of people. Affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.

> A city needs all kinds of people to function and affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. I don't necessarily see how one follows the other. So long as there's diversity in, for instance, bedroom count on units, what difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically? To be clear, I'd love…

4 - 5 floor is the sweet spot for balancing cost and price, if you go up from there the cost per sq meter increases. The places where economically is worth to go higher than that, is where the land is very expensive and you have to recover that cost having more units.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#55

Post by tardo99 »

arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

I actually disagree with you about shares of companies. They should accurately reflect the value of the underlying company. Wanting everything to "go up" all the time is part of the problem that we face throughout the economy, not just in housing. Just as city councils have conspired to rig the process for housing, forces like central banks have rigged the process for all types of investment assets (including housing!). This will become a problem as a generation of savers/investors is unable to generate positive returns on investments to fund their lifestyles and retirements.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#56

Post by arcticbull »

dominotw wrote: post #52
arcticbull wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tends to go the other way. Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement (1.8 births per woman), and relies heavily on immigration to maintain a steady population. There's a stark graph of page "4074" (page 4, figure 1-E in the PDF) of fertility rate vs HDI. [1] I bet if you build more housing you'd have fewer kids…

> Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ? Why are there endless articles in news that this isn't the case.

HDI is a composite score of which housing is an element. It includes all sorts of things like access to water, access to health care, etc, etc. I'm suggesting that continuing to develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly. I'm unaware of any studies which correlate specifically housing with fertility in isolation.

Maybe I confused you with two definitions of "development" in the same context -- developing houses, and human development / HDI of which housing is diffuse factor. See [1] for more info if you're curious.

[1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#57

Post by bluGill »

arcticbull wrote: post #25
manigandham wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of you are incorrect as it's about preferences, but the real problem is one of balance. A city needs all kinds of people. Affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.

> A city needs all kinds of people to function and affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. I don't necessarily see how one follows the other. So long as there's diversity in, for instance, bedroom count on units, what difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically? To be clear, I'd love…

Stacked vs horizontal makes differences for some uses and not others. If we are vertical I care is you start a kitchen fire as I have to evacuate just in case, Horizontal makes that need much less likely. There are a lot of hobbies that include large objects that are easier to have in horizontal development (any collector of large objects, a grand piano).

Though the number of people who do that is small in the scheme of things. Grand pianos are often moved via crane - if you only do it once in a lifetime the cost isn't much but if you move regularly it is expensive.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#58

Post by specialist »

huntertwo wrote: post #24
arcticbull wrote: post #5

The whole topic of conversation around housing affordability is backwards. Specifically, housing affordability is 100%, entirely, a problem of artificial constraints on supply by city councils. (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment. An investment is only an investment if you expect a positive return over time. We generally want that investment to match or exceed inflation. (2) That's antithetical to the…

Two thoughts 1) Isn't a developer also making an investment when they build these high as hell micro-apartment apartment buildings? 2) How do you avoid a race to the bottom in terms of housing quality when you allow said micro-apartments? Do we want a culture where the poor are living in barely livable wage slave pods while the rich are living in abundant villas? I'm all for affordable housing but it seems too nuance…

Please don't sour the discourse by providing a false choice.

There are a lot of options (opportunities) between residential zoned single family dwellings with huge setbacks and love hotels.

Simply progressively incrementally upzoning areas, on a fixed 30 year schedule, is The Correct Answer. So that (for instance) Seattle would go from 75% zoned residential today to 70% in 2050.

That kind of long term planning makes the market predictable and protects current owner's investment and plans. eg Maybe someone wants to stay in their house until their kids go off to college, or stay in their house during their golden years, and it'd be nice to know they can afford to stay.

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#59

Post by dominotw »

epistasis wrote: post #47
dominotw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You opinion on density is just that, your opinion, not everyone agrees. Sure but curious why that comment is downvoted and yours is not? Disagreeement != downvote.

It's not stated as opinion, and has some ridiculous statements like this in it: > The well being of the people is lost in the drive for infinite growth. There is no drive for infinite growth, that I have found. People are just trying to have enough housing for everyone, yet this "infinite growth might happen therefore we are going to impose housing austerity" is the attitude that has been prevalent in older suburban…

> There is no drive for infinite growth, that I have found.

What about Carbon emission projections. Isn't that proof of 'drive for infinite growth' ?

Re: Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes

#60

Post by bluGill »

sokoloff wrote: post #39
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re tone deaf. CA is in the midst of their worst homeless crisis ever. Density is a long ways behind my concerns for the middle-class homeless whom have been priced out of any meaningful housing options.

Is “middle-class homeless[ness]” a significant/common occurrence, absent mental illness or drug addiction as complicating factors (excluding those as changing housing supply/demand point is likely not the solution there)? That would indeed be depressing but also fairly surprising to me. What would “middle class” mean if it didn’t include secure housing as a significant part of the definition?

In San Francisco what the rest of the US considers middle class incomes are not enough to afford a place to live.
Post reply on HN