61–70 of 113 posts
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As far as I can tell, the model shown here doesn't seem to take supply and demand into account when calculating the price of the resulting housing.
What do you mean? The model is nothing but rent=demand/supply with an attempt to figure out what weights go on these parameters. What would you do differently? (Author of blog post here.)
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"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…
"... a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for." Which is totally reasonable . You or I may not like it, or disagree with it, or work against that idea, but it's incorrect to claim that incumbent property owners (anywhere) protecting their perceived…
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The entire concept of low income housing is a scam to keep market rate prices high. Build enough market rate housing that the price falls to what low income people can afford and you don't need any low income housing. If the government spent the money it spends subsidizing rents on subsidizing construction then the problem would be solved.
Government price controls do not fundamentally change the cost only the price. If the government is so efficient and can, somehow, make housing cheaper than it would be in a free market why shouldn't they also take control of the food supply? Computers? Software? All industry?
The bay area. The best, brightest, smartest, pedigreed, hardest working most motivated people on earth. And we cant solve the simplest problems in the Maslow's hierarchy. American Indians solved the housing problems with Teepees and Wigwams - so much for being "smart." There was an article recently where a google employee was living in a 24 ft truck in the google parking lot. This Bay Area mess is a self inflicted jo…
"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…
This pops up in every thread about housing.
The answer is that there's still a ton of value in being in the same place as other people. Stuff happens faster. Ideas are more easily shared. Spontaneous ideas are born.
Of course at a certain point, having to pay someone way more makes it just not worth it, but that seems to be a pretty high number for a lot of companies.
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Really appreciate the note on public transportation. Limited housing gets a lot of the press currently but other infrastructure including public transportation is pretty overwhelmed currently as well. The traffic is already the second worst in the nation [1], and existing major public transportation like bart[2] and caltrain[3] are also overloaded. It also seems like it would be a lot easier to fix as the current sys…
The Bay Area does not have the 2nd worst traffic - off the top of my head, NYC, LA, and DC are often ranked higher in most articles on worst traffic, and from experience, I at least know that NYC and DC have it far worse.
I just appreciate top comment bringing up this type of infrastructure as I think there is room for big improvement in Bay Area. We really need it to support any increase in housing which is also badly needed to ensure a diverse and prosperous economy going forward.
[1] http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/list [2] http://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Docum...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…
> You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck so tightly to SF when it's far more amenable to remote work than most industries. This pops up in every thread about housing. The answer is that there's still a ton of value in being in the same place as other people. Stuff happens faster. Ideas are more easily shared. Spontaneous ideas are born. Of course at a certain point, having to pay someo…
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The solution to buy-to-leave is surely extremely high taxation on properties left empty (and I'm talking "10% of market value" levels of taxation, enough to obliterate any possible returns on investment).
That would be either unreasonably punitive or easy to avoid. Properties needing renovation or structural work can't reasonably be penalised for not being occupied, so owners would simply arrange for unoccupied buildings to be permanently having work done on them. I'm sure there are plenty of builders that would help them out for moderate fees. I'm sure there are other ways round something like this too.
I really like this idea, except that "market value" is vague, and would require a bit of work to determine accurately. Maybe the best you could do would be to have a by-block square footage to value chart to be used for these purposes (and you would want a definitive source anyways, to prevent gaming the market value side).
This could also help quite a bit with the property owned in New York as a way to launder money[1].
1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/05/27/479717380/episo...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…
"... a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for." Which is totally reasonable . You or I may not like it, or disagree with it, or work against that idea, but it's incorrect to claim that incumbent property owners (anywhere) protecting their perceived…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…
We don't need to turn into Guangzhou. We could cut housing prices in half by increasing the supply by 30%, and we could do that by replacing 6% of the city's single family houses with six-story apartment buildings. The other 94% could be left alone, and we wouldn't have to build anything else. Details: https://reddit.com/comments/4lwg49/h/d3qnrsb
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What do you mean 'we', white man?" The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money. You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck s…
"... a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for." Which is totally reasonable . You or I may not like it, or disagree with it, or work against that idea, but it's incorrect to claim that incumbent property owners (anywhere) protecting their perceived…
Still, most people find these actions to be immoral, as they result in plenty of suffering and wasted potential. The mealymouthed excuses about preserving historical parking lots or not creating wind tunnels or whatever are easy to see through.