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What if public housing were for everyone?

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Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#61

Post by hellojesus »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #10
pydry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like single payer healthcare (which even a majority of Republicans are in favor of), the program is perfectly palatable to voters. The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. Extra supply reduces the price of existing supply. In order to win elections, you almost need those investors…

> the program is perfectly palatable to voters. [...] The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. I'm not sure that's largely true. I suspect that many property-owning voters are okay with the concept of public housing, but are less ken on the actuality that building public housing increas…

> There's also the weird conservative thinking that public housing provision somehow amounts to people getting "something for nothing".

Isn't this true though? You tax away peoples' purchasing power to give away free goods/services to a subset of the population excluding those that paid for it.

Why not instead make a private company that provides free housing conditional on those living there working X hours in a factory producing widgets? So long as both parties agree, that would be a better solution as it is pareto optimal.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#62

Post by Aurornis »

silvestrov wrote: post #59
jonfw wrote: post #14

public housing doesn't address the root of the problem. Housing prices are insane because it's expensive and difficult to acquire and develop land. There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market. This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have…

There is a 3rd reason: not (fast) enough transportation infrastructure. If you don't provide good transport infrastructure, then people must live close to work which will increase housing demand close to work, which then increase prices. You need to plan for high speed trains, subways and metros to provide enough transportation capacity, so people can live "far away, but short travel time". Cars are really bad at thi…

> Imagine there was multiple high speed rails lines going out from Silicon Valley: how far from SF can you get in 25 minutes using 300 km/h train versus how far can you get using a car in rush hour?

I think people who haven’t lived with such infrastructure don’t understand that it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Sure, the train may get you from point A to B very quickly, but you still have to get between your office and the train, then from the train to your housing. That’s three trips total, unless you’re lucky enough to live right next to the stop.

And it adds up: That's actually six trips total for a single day (round trip). If they don’t line up perfectly or you miss one, that’s four different places you have to sit and wait.

This is many why people still drive even when they have access to such transport: You spend so much time going through all the transitions and in-between transits that a long drive no longer sounds so bad.

I tried to use my laptop on the train, but the best I could do was answer a few emails before packing up for the next transit step. Better than nothing, but it’s much more complicated than the internet ideal version of taking a high-speed train straight from your apartment to the office.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#63

Post by hellojesus »

piva00 wrote: post #55
earthwalker99 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sweden built a million public housing homes (Miljonprogrammet) in a decade back in the 60s-70s, it has a freer market than the USA. Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War.

> Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War.

While the post's reference to communism may have been a bit hyperbolic, it's not too much off the mark. It would have likely been better to state that America is supposed to have a free market and not implement socialist policies to fix a problem created by the government: zoning and building restrictions as other comments in the thread have mentioned.

Nevertheless, communism is a valid threat to current-state America, as there seems to be a large push towards marxist ideologies that are corrupting long standing public institutions.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#64

Post by nradov »

silvestrov wrote: post #59
jonfw wrote: post #14

public housing doesn't address the root of the problem. Housing prices are insane because it's expensive and difficult to acquire and develop land. There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market. This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have…

There is a 3rd reason: not (fast) enough transportation infrastructure. If you don't provide good transport infrastructure, then people must live close to work which will increase housing demand close to work, which then increase prices. You need to plan for high speed trains, subways and metros to provide enough transportation capacity, so people can live "far away, but short travel time". Cars are really bad at thi…

A better alternative would be to set state policies that encourage economic development in Stockton rather than spending $100B on high-speed rail. It's really nonsensical to keep trying to cram more people and jobs into a geographically constrained region like the Silicon Valley. There's nothing special about Mountain View.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#65

Post by thworp »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #49
thworp wrote: post #39

I appreciate every single new housing unit being built and think public housing is generally a good idea. But recently there seems to be a trend of people wanting to fast-track zoning and permitting for public housing only, while keeping private builders stuck in the quicksand of permitting. This is not the way mainly because the state does not have the resources to satisfy all housing demand (but also because two-ti…

> If North American cities zoned a quarter of their area as 5-story midrises with large parks and mixed use and made permitting quick and easy we could really bankrupt the rent-seekers. I don’t believe that because it doesn’t happen in other countries that allow for 5 story midrises with large parks and mixed use and … the housing prices are often even more than North America in places that allow that in Europe and A…

Well yes, obviously there will be a price floor on housing in a wealthy country. My point is that in recent decades the entire developed world has absolutely strangled their housing markets. Anywhere people want to move to, the wages:home prices ratio has gotten to unprecedented levels.

In Europe the reasons are slightly different. A big one is marking entire buildings, their facades or even their ornamentation as historical landmarks on a large scale (sometimes entire neighbourhoods). Buildings codes are quite a bit stricter than in the US (in all aspects, especially energy efficiency and fire code) and permitting is just as slow and vulnerable to lawsuits-after-the-fact.

The reasons I suggested midrises is because that is the style of building that was built in Europe during the late 19th / early 20th century population boom and it still holds up today (people want to live there).

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#66

Post by freitzkriesler2 »

jonfw wrote: post #14

public housing doesn't address the root of the problem. Housing prices are insane because it's expensive and difficult to acquire and develop land. There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market. This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have…

The landlord problem has become so bad that in some cities the renter/owner ratio is hitting 50%.

These cities become prime picking grounds for anti landlord rules.

NYC is a unique case but cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco aren't. The future will be interesting.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#68

Post by ghaff »

Aurornis wrote: post #62
silvestrov wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 3rd reason: not (fast) enough transportation infrastructure. If you don't provide good transport infrastructure, then people must live close to work which will increase housing demand close to work, which then increase prices. You need to plan for high speed trains, subways and metros to provide enough transportation capacity, so people can live "far away, but short travel time". Cars are really bad at thi…

> Imagine there was multiple high speed rails lines going out from Silicon Valley: how far from SF can you get in 25 minutes using 300 km/h train versus how far can you get using a car in rush hour? I think people who haven’t lived with such infrastructure don’t understand that it’s not as easy as it sounds. Sure, the train may get you from point A to B very quickly, but you still have to get between your office and…

I have a fairly reasonable, if not especially fast (in part because lots of stops) commuter rail on the rare occasions I go into a city office. But, yeah, I have to drive to the station--only a 7 minute drive but not reasonably walkable--and then it's either about a 35 minute walk or a subway+shorter walk. It ends up being about 2 hours door to door--similar to driving.

It's more pleasant to take the train in but if I'm not sure what my schedule will be I'll still sometimes drive because the train isn't that frequent especially outside commuting hours and I can park right next to the office. And this is a city that most people, at least in the US, would consider to have a well above average transportation infrastructure---and, really, isn't bad by overall European standards.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#69

Post by silvestrov »

Aurornis wrote: post #62
silvestrov wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 3rd reason: not (fast) enough transportation infrastructure. If you don't provide good transport infrastructure, then people must live close to work which will increase housing demand close to work, which then increase prices. You need to plan for high speed trains, subways and metros to provide enough transportation capacity, so people can live "far away, but short travel time". Cars are really bad at thi…

> Imagine there was multiple high speed rails lines going out from Silicon Valley: how far from SF can you get in 25 minutes using 300 km/h train versus how far can you get using a car in rush hour? I think people who haven’t lived with such infrastructure don’t understand that it’s not as easy as it sounds. Sure, the train may get you from point A to B very quickly, but you still have to get between your office and…

Bikes and electric scooters are good at providing last_mile access.

In Copenhagen it's free to bring bike on subway trains. So a lot of people bike from home to subway station, take the subway, and then bike the last part from subway station to work.

Bikes work in Copenhagen because of all the seperate bike paths.

The metro also work very well as it is driverless trains which means it has very low marginal cost to run more trains in rush hours (and during night time) and when there is an unexpected high demand for trains.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#70

Post by pydry »

ejb999 wrote: post #53
pydry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is almost comical how you want to blame those evil 'conservatives' for this - I guess that makes it easy for democrats to have excuses about why they haven't solved the problem in places where they 100% control the statehouse and legislature and the purse strings. If liberals/democrats were truly in favor of public housing, then places like California would have a surplus of housing options available for everyone…

I thought I made it clear that Democrats were just as much a part of the problem as Republicans.

It's sad that American minds are so addled by their sports-team ("If you're not conservative you must be democrat!") politics that they literally can't see perceive the outside of it.

You think that Democrats don't need a powerful media propaganda machine on their side? That they don't need campaign financing? That the billionaires who own them don't own property?

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