California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build • Hacker News Board

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#591

Post by Xelbair » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #107

Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the best things you can do on several fronts: * It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out. * It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things. * It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might…

>It's much easier to make a difference locally: in many places it's not hard to get to know your city councilors, [..]

I am not from USA, but over here i did have a 'pleasure' contacting them. They worked actively against communities they were supposed to represent. I am talking about both city councilors, and district ones.

You know whats the best part? you have like 3 options to pick, and they all are exactly the same(cozy job, with limited hours for appointments and ignoring your community)

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#592

Post by imtringued » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

tryitnow wrote: post #469

buss wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100% I'm very involved with YIMBY Action here in SF: I'm on the board of both YIMBY Action and YIMBY Law, and I'm also running for local office in the current election: https://buss2020.org If you have any questions about YIMBY, send them my way!

I used to be YIMBY, but I doubt more construction would lead to lower costs of living. When I researched this I couldn't find any strong evidence suggesting that more building would lead to more affordable housing. You would think that more construction would lead to more affordable housing, but it seems like more construction doesn't just increase supply, it also increases demand, which can offset any price effects…

>You would think that more construction would lead to more affordable housing, but it seems like more construction doesn't just increase supply, it also increases demand, which can offset any price effects from the increase in supply.

No shit sherlock. Do you even know where that additional drmand is coming from? It's coming from people in their 20s or even 30s who are forced to live with their parents. It is coming from all those migrants that live together with two other room mates. The pent up demand is so large after decades of stagnation that it will take at least 25 years of building to get where they should be today.

Remember every single constructed unit allows another person to live there. The market rent shouldn't even enter the equation as a policy goal.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#593

Post by Retric » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

buss wrote: post #306

davidw wrote: post #107

Getting involved with a local YIMBY group is pretty easy, fun, and one of the best things you can do on several fronts: * It's good for the economy, as "legitster" points out. * It's good for the environment if people can drive less (or even walk or bike!) because they live closer to things. * It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might…

Agreed 100% I'm very involved with YIMBY Action here in SF: I'm on the board of both YIMBY Action and YIMBY Law, and I'm also running for local office in the current election: https://buss2020.org If you have any questions about YIMBY, send them my way!

As much as building housing is promoted, if your adding jobs 1:1 with new housing it’s useless. Are you willing to limit new office space until housing catches up?

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#594

Post by imtringued » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

DataWorker wrote: post #582

ScottBurson wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I vigorously support more construction in the SF metro area, I think expectations need to be set correctly as to the amount of construction required to actually bring prices down, instead of just slowing their rate of increase. It's a lot . I don't recall all the numbers, but I believe I saw something suggesting that we need to increase the rate of housing starts by a factor of 4 just to stabilize prices. To ac…

You will just increase the number of unaffordable apartments. The added units will come with added traffic from the new wealthier residents, and higher prices on everything. It doesn’t seem like a win to me, unless you have very narrow goals.

These "wealthy residents" are poorer in their hometowns. They don't migrate out of fun. In middle of nowhere they may get 40k per year and in the bay area it may be 160k or more.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#595

Post by ericmay » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #592

tryitnow wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be YIMBY, but I doubt more construction would lead to lower costs of living. When I researched this I couldn't find any strong evidence suggesting that more building would lead to more affordable housing. You would think that more construction would lead to more affordable housing, but it seems like more construction doesn't just increase supply, it also increases demand, which can offset any price effects…

>You would think that more construction would lead to more affordable housing, but it seems like more construction doesn't just increase supply, it also increases demand, which can offset any price effects from the increase in supply. No shit sherlock. Do you even know where that additional drmand is coming from? It's coming from people in their 20s or even 30s who are forced to live with their parents. It is coming…

I’m not sure you really need to have an aggressive attitude when replying to someone. It’s rude.

The problem with SF is that even if you caught up to this 25 years of pent-up demand, you still have more demand from all over the world to move to the Bay Area. It’s an induced demand problem. Most other cities don’t have this, except in maybe a few areas in those cities.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#596

Post by bumby » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

buss wrote: post #546

ScottBurson wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I vigorously support more construction in the SF metro area, I think expectations need to be set correctly as to the amount of construction required to actually bring prices down, instead of just slowing their rate of increase. It's a lot . I don't recall all the numbers, but I believe I saw something suggesting that we need to increase the rate of housing starts by a factor of 4 just to stabilize prices. To ac…

Yes, I unironically want 4 million new homes in San Francisco. The housing shortage in the Bay Area might be the single largest drag on American prosperity.

>housing shortage in the Bay Area might be the single largest drag on American prosperity.

Obviously HN skews towards tech but let’s not fall into the trap that SV is either representative or the center of “American prosperity” for the average citizen

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#597

Post by komali2 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #234

komali2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wanted to halt immigration, why would they build a border wall? That would be a highly expensive and ineffective way to halt immigration, for fairly obvious reasons.

One could halt immigration--or at least the kind of immigration that most anti-immigration people complain about--in a naive and oversimplified fashion by raising the minimum hourly wage of noncitizen permanent residents to the median annual household income divided by 2000 (~$32/h), raising the minimum hourly wage for temporary residents with a work-permitting visa to 125% of that (~$40/h), and raising the minimum w…

Wait I don't get it, why wouldn't everyone just pretend they're undocumented immigrants to get the highest pay?

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#598

Post by usaar333 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #575

usaar333 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's absolutely zero evidence of "induced demand" for housing. There absolutely is. Here's a great paper studying the effect of removing rent control in Cambridge, MA ( https://economics.mit.edu/files/9760 ) which found that rent in non-rent controlled units went up as a result of the removal. The effect is similar to what GP stated -- gentrification causes a feedback loop that can affect all housing. All said,…

The fact that ending rent control increases prices does not support the claim that building more homes increases prices. They should have opposite effects according to basic supply and demand theory.

Ending rent control also should lead to lower prices in non rent controlled housing according to supply and demand.

The sequence of events that lead to a rise in prices are similar - that is there is evidence that more affluent people moving in to a local area can result in rents going up for others in that same area.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#599

Post by fortran77 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

masonic wrote: post #584

fortran77 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a registered republican, and I live in 94087

So you're the one!

To be honest, I'm a Democrat at heart. I just got tired of them taking my vote for granted. I know the Democrats will win, and I _usually_ vote for them.

Re: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

#600

Post by DataWorker » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #594

DataWorker wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will just increase the number of unaffordable apartments. The added units will come with added traffic from the new wealthier residents, and higher prices on everything. It doesn’t seem like a win to me, unless you have very narrow goals.

These "wealthy residents" are poorer in their hometowns. They don't migrate out of fun. In middle of nowhere they may get 40k per year and in the bay area it may be 160k or more.

Your point is the same one I’m making. People come here because FANG and tech generally subsidize that movement. It’s great for tech profits and great for that one guy from Russia or wherever who can make 140k salary, but it’s a net negative for society. The housing crisis is the result. A greedy growth at any cost business culture, not senior citizens trying to avoid displacement in their golden years; that’s what caused the crisis. If those businesses all went belly up like in the dot com bust, we’d have the opposite problem, a housing glut and falling prices. Yet, if you removed all forms of nimbyism, things would remain almost exactly where they are at now. The housing problem is a problem of demand- the whole world can’t move to San Francisco just because that’s what a bunch of tech companies want. Nor can the whole world move to Manhattan or Tokyo or any other place with high housing prices and too many people.