51–60 of 799 posts
I would argue that the mateiral is not the pinchpoint of the housing crisis. Its the lack of land, or permits to build on said land. Edit I should say _affordable_ land. Or land that isn't blocked by nimbys
49% of San Bernidino’s central city area is dedicated to parking.
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Raise prop taxes for non-rented vacation units by 150% Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350. Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500. Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes. And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's…
Couldn't agree more. I'm tired of the HN crowd that espouses the benefits of building more supply, yet consider the AirBNB and rental-afflicted homes to be totally untouchable. Even worse are the ones that seem to strongly believe in environmentalism, yet have no problem tearing down forests to build more supply on them...for AirBNBs and rentals.
There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs. If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.
You have this backwards, it's essentially physically impossible for this to not be the case. Past a certain point you just cannot squeeze more detached single family homes into a reasonable distance from a city. Single family homes, suburbs, and the required car-centric transit they require are massively space and transit inefficient. If you want there to be affordable detached single family homes within a reasonable distance to a desirable city your best bet is to push for increased density within and around the core of the city, with walkable streets and excellent public transportation. The increase in livability and affordability in the center encourages more people who might otherwise be pushed out to stay and leaves more single family homes for those who really want them.
There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs. If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.
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Owners holding vacant units is not a significant cause of the housing shortage. Overly restrictive zoning and subjective reviews exploited by NIMBYs explains almost all of it.
There are studies - there are more vacation units than homeless people in the United States - like double.
What do you even do with that information? Ship the homeless around the country?
Other studies should that the higher the vacancy rate the lower the homeless rate and the cheaper housing is. So we can just allow people to build where people want to live and solve both problems.
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Everybody will be paying more rent
If that happens, just raise prop taxes to 100k per year (for rental units).
"There are no coincidences..."
The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move.
This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer functions as intended.
To solve the housing crisis you have to build up like the Soviets and Chinese have. They housed a lot of people, quickly. It’s really not difficult; just takes some brave people to change the zoning laws and rethink some of the building codes combined with financing it.
But not like the UK and US social housing / projects. They need to be in master planned, well thought out and connected communities.
The UK's social housing scheme was/is a stonking success, right up until about 1980. it completely reset the minimum standard of housing from slums to actually decent. It wasn't all a success, skelmersdale and thamesmede sucked balls.
The problem with the uk's social housing came as follows:
1) the change from needing a job to have a council house to being a dumping ground for troubled families without support 2) removing the ability of councils to fund new housing 3) overly complex centralised funding of repairs and upkeep 4) selling off housing and then taking the money away that was needed to replace them
Thats very different to the "projects"
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There are studies - there are more vacation units than homeless people in the United States - like double.
Those studies are so often flawed will pieces. Houses begging sold or between tenants are counted as vacant. Vacancies in rural Pennsylvania and Kentucky don't matter much for the homeless in Oakland. What do you even do with that information? Ship the homeless around the country? Other studies should that the higher the vacancy rate the lower the homeless rate and the cheaper housing is. So we can just allow people…
Timber has many advantages compared to concrete, including longevity.
The housing shortage won’t last forever thanks to demography, but we’ll need to replace many badly aging buildings anyway, and it takes time to grow trees and build the whole infrastructure around this construction technique, we should try to not sit and wait for a change.