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

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

#641

Post by spoontoeat » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #526

dv_dt wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a stretch, it doesn't increase the market price or the tax on the new property that the seller is acquiring, if anything it lets the owner save more money so they have more options to buy.

It does increase the tax on the new property that the seller is acquiring, because for a given level of government spending, if the government gets less tax revenue from long-term owners they have to get more from newer owners. It also increases the minimum price the seller is willing to accept for the property, because they won't sell unless the buyer offers enough to compensate them for the higher tax rate they'll…

I don't think you understand property ownership in CA. This is most definitely not what happens.

Also to add to this discussion is the various props and "tax treaties" between counties that allow old homeowners the ability to transfer tax basis from their old property to the new one they're buying. But this is a once or twice in a lifetime deal.

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

#642

Post by bbreier » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #627

bbreier wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've lived in both.

Ok. How do you think they are ‘far more affordable’ than tier 1 American cities? http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171119000242 [..] Purchasing a residence in Seoul is now roughly on the same playing field as New York City, where the median price is about 443.4 million won. However, because average income levels in both the United States and Japan surpass Korea, the report states Koreans take on average three…

It is true that purchasing a home in Seoul is very expensive, but renting continues to be more affordable than in e.g. Manhattan or San Francisco

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Seoul

A 1 bedroom apartment in the city center is about $742.84 USD per month, compared to $3,472.78 in San Francisco. That amounts to approximately ~33% of average net take home in Seoul vs about 50% in SF.

You are absolutely correct that their public transport is excellent, and not only does that parameter not apply to the Bay Area, it doesn't apply to any city in the United States. San Francisco also has a population density less than half that of Seoul. Population density and infrastructure such as public transportation to support it are a difficult chicken and egg problem, and I don't know how to thread that needle in the Bay Area, even if I strongly feel it is a needle which needs threading.

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

#643

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #639

bluGill wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming linear costs. However they are not. The system is good for 1 development at no extra cost, but the second goes over capacity and so they have to tear down the old system and build a bigger one. The new one is good for not 1 more development but 100 - which might or might not come. If it comes good, but if you just have the 1 development everybody is on the hook to pay it off, not that one development…

> but the second goes over capacity This is not how "capacity" works. It is not that there is some constant limit to something, and everything is 100% fine as long as you are under capacity, but breaks entirely when you go over capacity. Instead, capacity is flexible, and there are costs to it being flexible. Instead, capacity is something that you start bumping up against, and this starts to cause problems. And the…

Capacity of a water system is a big deal. You cannot go over capacity without serious health risks. There are a few temporary storage solutions that you can use cheaply, but if you cannot treat all the sewage that comes in over the course of a day you have to release raw sewage somehow.

For drinking water you can do lawn watering bans to get capacity. For roads rush hour lasts longer. However there are still limits that you may not to run up against. If your traffic is already bad you might not be able to build more roads where they need to be (either you tear down something historic, or you have to build overpasses). If you are a small city you may have traffic problems while not having enough population to get your transit system in shape.

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

#644

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #643

stale2002 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the second goes over capacity This is not how "capacity" works. It is not that there is some constant limit to something, and everything is 100% fine as long as you are under capacity, but breaks entirely when you go over capacity. Instead, capacity is flexible, and there are costs to it being flexible. Instead, capacity is something that you start bumping up against, and this starts to cause problems. And the…

Capacity of a water system is a big deal. You cannot go over capacity without serious health risks. There are a few temporary storage solutions that you can use cheaply, but if you cannot treat all the sewage that comes in over the course of a day you have to release raw sewage somehow. For drinking water you can do lawn watering bans to get capacity. For roads rush hour lasts longer. However there are still limits t…

The problems that you are talking about can be fairly linear, though.

For example, for things like water, a city can increase the price of water, to reduce demand, especially for commercial usage.

> However there are still limits that you may not to run up against.

The limits are much further out than you'd think. And systems are often build with a large buffer, to handle spikes and increases anyway.

By the time you get close to hitting the true limit, you would have enough pent up demand that you can just spend the money to upgrade the system.

And the people who are building the new buildings, can also just find it as well.

This stuff happens all the time. Cities run up against limits all the time, and the world does not fall apart.

Instead, they implement stop cap measures, that work, and builders fund upgrading the system as they build new things.

Stuff is also often planned out for a long time.

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

#645

Post by darkwizard42 » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #154

darkwizard42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t make any sense because owning stock in one company doesn’t prevent another from also rising or prevent ones own company stock from rising.

In theory perhaps but in practice a) it’s unreasonable to tell people for literally decades that homeownership is the path to security in retirement then move the goalposts and b) tech-driven wealth disparity is fully the root cause of this situation and if it were “corrected” through taxation we wouldn’t even have this problem

It's not unreasonable... it's slowly becoming necessary. Someone will have to eat the bill and it's probably a distributed cost that we have to spread across everyone.

It's not just tech-driven...housing is expensive across the nation and taxing RSUs may help in SF, but doesn't really get to the root of the problem which is zoning restriction, high development costs, increased homeowner rights enabling NIMBYism