The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#611

Post by talkingtab » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:41 PM UTC

Fish Tank Thinking is where your thinking is so constrained by some artificial walls that you cannot actually ... well actually think. It is the wages stupid. Let me repeat that. It is the wages stupid. What happens when a society is so brain washed that it cannot even consider that if you don't pay people they can't afford housing. Or cars. Or medical care. Or food.

If you actually have some desire to consider the problem rather than discuss how many angels can dance on a pin head, start with considering why "Inflation" is not a measure of anything thing, but rather the sound of one hand clapping. What is the other hand? Wages.

In this country rather than fixing wages we are discussing solutions that make things worse. Let us add tariffs so that people can buy less. Let's create tax incentives that create more housing people cannot afford, with the tax incentives coming out of the pockets of the people who cannot afford that housing.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#612

Post by preachermon » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #412

bnralt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're often so down on journalism on HN, and I believe a big part of that is we tend to read so much opinion and analysis and so little basic reporting. I think a large part of it is that major news organizations too often don't do this kind of reporting, and often just seem to chase the same hot button topics as the rest of the crowd over and over again. And even then, few really dive into the details. You're larg…

> I think a large part of it is that major news organizations too often don't do this kind of reporting, and often just seem to chase the same hot button topics as the rest of the crowd over and over again. And even then, few really dive into the details. The point of most media is to drive agendas, not uncover the truth. Doing proper reporting would create a problem and get in the way of what you want people to do.

or to sell ads

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#613

Post by HEmanZ » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:44 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #426

spicyusername wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about wealth inequality as the root cause of housing shortage? Keep building. Eventually there are more houses than people who want to be in them, regardless of whether or not they're being rented or owned. When that happens you'll see the prices fall. After all, if nobody wants to rent your house, you'll either rent it for lower or sell it. If nobody wants to buy it, you'll lower the price. Ad nauseum.

This only works if all those houses are on the market. Nothing is stopping today's rich people from buying up all new housing, and only letting a handful be on the market so as to not flood the market and not let prices go down.

What’s stopping rich people from buying up every car in existence and making you pay $1 million for an accord?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#614

Post by JohnPrine » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:46 PM UTC

sensanaty wrote: post #598

nikanj wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the classic investment strategy of eating up the cost of keeping a house empty, so that others who do accept renters would make more money ”The rich” aren’t that stupid, why would they take the losses to support someone else making a profit?

I recall an article on HN quite a while ago about one of those property management companies/websites in the Bay Area. The article was detailing that, while the majority of people looking to rent out their properties were individuals and not the ultra wealthy, the app "encouraged" price-fixing, including things such as keeping a certain % of lots vacant on purpose in order to drive up prices artificially. I put encou…

Seems like this article had a large impact on your understanding of the housing system. Could you post it so that others can read it too?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#615

Post by chiffre01 » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:46 PM UTC

api wrote: post #175

Animats wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporters used to start at something like the City News Bureau.[1] For a century, the City News Bureau covered local news for Chicago and sent it in to the local newspapers. Lasted until 2005. Young reporters started there, covering every police station, every major crime, every major fire, every major trial, and getting the facts right, or else. The bureau`s unsentimental motto: ”If your mother says she loves you, c…

The problem is that nobody would pay for it. People expect news to be free, and click bait and lazy copy paste or LLM journalism is cheaper and works just as well to get clicks for ad dollars. Would people pay for real journalism?

Lets be real here, in the past advertisers did pay for it, but all advertising spend has moved on to the clickbait-youtube/google/Facebook garbage heap.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#616

Post by simgt » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:49 PM UTC

forgotoldacc wrote: post #541

ramchip wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan doesn't have a housing crisis. I'm in a great location in Tokyo, the rent is under $750/month, and it's been the same for the decade+ I've been in this specific place. If there's a problem, it's too many empty homes in aging rural areas. Cities are doing just fine, even with a growing population in Tokyo.

It didn't. But it's entering one now. New apartment prices in Tokyo are double what they were a few years ago. [1] The reason is foreign investors buying up loads of properties and sitting on them or turning them into AirBNBs. Locals can't afford them because wages aren't increasing. The concept of buying a property to resell it also isn't a thing amongst locals, so it's clueless rich people and corporations buying u…

My shallow experience of Japan tells me that if there's one country that can regulate the shit of the airbnb problem, it's this one. We're so used in the west to see properties as an asset that only appreciates that we've lost sight of what homes are meant to be. Meanwhile the whole Mediterranean coast is being bought by foreigners with the help of greedy local fucks. I've been told the Portuguese have it much worse even.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#617

Post by LargeWu » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #581

grafmax wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abundance YIMBYism has many shortcomings. It doesn't address the risk of gentrification and displacement, the slow and unproven trickle-down effect of market-rate housing, or the critical need for direct public housing to serve low-income communities. Journalistic ideologues deserve little praise for dismantling the weakest counterarguments of their opponents while ignoring core criticisms.

What it doesn’t address is the role of finance and the financial sector in explaining why things are the way they are. It’s not just a missing detail it’s fatal to their entire argument. Which isn’t an accident, since the goal of the “abundance movement” is to stop the actual progressive movements that want to take on concentrated financial power.

This is a bad-faith description of the abundance movement.

The central thesis of the abundance movement is this: Every time we make a regulation, we are making a tradeoff. In the case of housing, an example would be "zoning only for single family housing". It's trading off affordability for quieter neighborhoods. Another might be "public housing contracts must favor minority-owned contractors". It trades off affordability for the development of a disadvantaged constituency.

Over time, many of these such regulations accumulate. Environmental reviews. Impact studies. Public comment periods. And while every individual regulation might be well meaning, the totality of them creates market distortions that disincentivize or even utterly prevent the very thing we're trying to accomplish.

So, the abundance movement looks at these and says we need to think about these in terms of tradeoffs, and pare back the regulations that have bad tradeoffs. This is often derided by critics as deregulation which makes developers more profitable. While that might be a side effect, it's not the main reason. It's deregulation to remove market distortions that, in the case of housing, constrain supply and therefore drive up housing costs.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#618

Post by ricree » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #519

shazbotter wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because anti monopoly right is much less common? Or because the anti monopoly right is concerned with different aspects of monopoly? If someone said they were anti monopoly, that the government should do something to prevent businesses from operating like that, I'd never expect them to be from the right to be honest.

> If someone said they were anti monopoly, that the government should do something to prevent businesses from operating like that, I'd never expect them to be from the right to be honest. So consider several perspectives: a. The government should be in charge of, or at least heavily involved in, planning and organizing most resources in a country. b. The market is a good way of solving most problems, and it works bes…

>My sense is actually that the reason he talks that way is to make sure that people who consider themselves "on the left" don't mistake him for being someone "on the right"

If so he has sorely missed the mark. I pretty heavily associate the phrasing "the $X left" with disengenuous right wing pundits. Knowing nothing else about the author, seeing that pop up repeatedly doesn't merely suggest that he's on the "right", but that he's writing the piece with a politically motivated axe to grind.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#619

Post by davidw » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #456

davidw wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been doing YIMBY stuff for around 8 years now, and it does not map nicely onto any kind of left-right narrative. There was one conservative dude who ran for city council here who was all about 'private property' and 'get rid of government regulations', who also ran against the idea of liberalizing zoning. I've met left wing people who I agree with on many issues who will do the most spectacular, Olympic level…

But you literally described the moderates being YIMBY and the more radical being NIMBY, which is left-right, but instead of left vs. right on pole ends opposing, it's the leftists and rights agreeing on NIMBY against the moderate centrists. Horseshoe theory strikes again. There is a growing populist frustration where citizens like both people like Tucker Carlson and Bernie but hate the moderate establishment. Low edu…

I also included a far left example who got it. I should have kept going with the examples because there are also plenty of moderates who do not want to rock the boat. The governor of CT vetoed their big housing bill this year.

It really does not map onto left-right.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#620

Post by carefulfungi » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

JackYoustra wrote: post #452

moneycantbuy wrote: post #385

Gary's Economics claims wealth inequality is at the root of housing unaffordability. Basically as wealth concentration grows, the ultra-rich bid up the assets. See the price of gold doubling in the past few years. Government stimulus is also captured by the richest. It's also a global phenomenon, i.e., every major city is now unaffordable for most people. https://youtu.be/BTlUyS-T-_4?si=P0mdHxtq1F7DV4jo

You have the causality backward - housing explains ~100% of the variation of inequality. If you liberalized zoning, excess inequality would more or less disappear: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

Where I live, housing cost is directly proportional to school district quality - and local school funding (vs. state-level funding) is a significant cause of inequality.

Rapid growth of cheaper housing in a town is a financial challenge for the town because it creates a larger student base without creating a meaningfully larger tax base. In towns with a commercial tax base, the costs increase more than the tax base; in towns without a commercial tax base, taxes typically increase on the oldest / most established residents - which drives fixed-income people from the homes and towns they supported for decades.

In my suburban area, there are two main arguments to anti-growth zoning: (1) people don't want the density increase; they built lives in a less-dense area by choice and want to see that choice preserved. (2) There are legitimate school funding issues and tax base issues that encourage controlling the rate of growth.

I'm dubious of _any_ argument that finds a singular cause for housing prices. It's an extremely tangled and complex issue that touches on taxation, local control vs. state control, education, property rights, politics, a cyclical capital-intensive industry, immigration and labor supply, interest rates...

Personally, I vote for denser housing and more liberal residential zoning. But I also understand and respect the opinions of my neighbors who disagree. Looser zoning gives control of land-use to capital and takes that control away from the people who built and sustained the town for, sometimes, generations.