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How Much Housing Will Be Built?

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Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#71

Post by ktothemc »

mickrussom wrote: post #18

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…

Tokyo has a couple things that the Bay Area does not.

1) Zoning happens at the national level in Japan, not the local level so there are no, or at least very weak political mechanisms for neighbors to block projects.

2) There is no Proposition 13, which caps property tax levels for incumbent homeowners. What this means is that transit providers can pay for infrastructure needs through increases in land value created by better connections to transportation. California can't do this because if it improves infrastructure or experiences an economic boom, the incumbent property owners basically get to appropriate all the increases in land value.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#72

Post by JoshTriplett »

enf wrote: post #49
JoshTriplett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It may be that it's just not obvious what the individual rent values are in the model, and that they do go down when the supply goes up. The only numbers visibly shown in the model are the number of units, the tax revenue, and the number of "affordable units"; the model doesn't display the expected distribution of rents, or the actual threshold for "affordable". As a result, it's hard to see how the parameters actually affect individual rents.

For the primary target audience (city planners), this makes sense.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#73

Post by njs12345 »

tsmffh wrote: post #8
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Government policy determines the price of land. Land is a major component of the cost of housing, so it stands to reason that government intervention in housing policy can make housing less expensive.

For instance, imposing a very high land value tax would reduce the value of land, which would in turn reduce the cost of housing.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#74

Post by jrockway »

This was a fun game!

I'm running for governor next whenever that happens. I really had to put myself in the shoes of a California voter to get the numbers to work out. I think for all new housing going forward, it's important that we enrich the state's coffers so that all y'all don't have to pay as much property tax -- as manded by the State Constitution. I'm therefore raising the fees per unit to the maximum this game allows (really not high enough but it's good as a working model). I also think the whole point of California is big open parking lots and lots of freeways; so I'm going to require that density be lowered by 40% and parking increased by 40%. I've noticed that there's no affordable housing in the entire state pretty much, so each new project will be required to set aside 40% of their units to qualified people-in-need-of-affordable-stuff. It's a real problem and these fat cat housing developers only care about themselves. Additionally, the banks going bust really fucked our economy a couple years ago, so I'm mandating that they charge no less than 10% per year of interest. Finally, as a show of good faith, the State of California is levying a tax on property development of 16% of the total project cost.

With this, there is a 0% chance of any new housing being built. You won the lottery when you happened to be alive 40 years ago to buy a house, and it's my job as the Governor of California to protect that asset for you and your children.

Vote for jrockway!

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#75

Post by kbenson »

mickrussom wrote: post #18

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 I find amazing is Tokyo. Tokyo, 1945, burned to the ground

Perhaps that's the reason why everything works? It was all rebuilt much more recently. Also, to my understanding the Japanese culture doesn't place the same value on historical structures[1][2]. It's much easier to secure right-of-way when there is less importance placed on the actual locations or buildings, or when it's expected it will be torn down at some point in the next 20-30 years anyway.

1: http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/26/why-are-japanese-homes-di...

2: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-japanese-shrin...

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#76

Post by ulfw »

kbenson wrote: post #75
mickrussom wrote: post #18

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 I find amazing is Tokyo. Tokyo, 1945, burned to the ground Perhaps that's the reason why everything works? It was all rebuilt much more recently. Also, to my understanding the Japanese culture doesn't place the same value on historical structures [1][2]. It's much easier to secure right-of-way when there is less importance placed on the actual locations or buildings, or when it's expected it will be torn down…

What 'historical structures' are there in Silicon Valley? The place was a bunch of orchards that were later burned down to make place for random ugly office parks. Let's be honest here.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#77

Post by jrockway »

Bahamut wrote: post #54
chuckcode wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, traffic is so bad in New York that we have to have three different rail systems to bring commuters into the city! Even investment bankers from Greenwich have to commute with the peasants, what a infrastructural tragedy!

I personally take my helicopter to work to avoid all that, but it's pretty expensive.

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#78

Post by dragonwriter »

njs12345 wrote: post #73
tsmffh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Government policy determines the price of land. Land is a major component of the cost of housing, so it stands to reason that government intervention in housing policy can make housing less expensive. For instance, imposing a very high land value tax would reduce the value of land, which would in turn reduce the cost of housing.

> For instance, imposing a very high land value tax would reduce the value of land, which would in turn reduce the cost of housing.

It would only potentially reduce the tax-exclusive cost of housing. It would not reduce the tax-inclusive cost. (In fact, the rational expectation would be that it would radically increase the tax-inclusive cost.)

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#79

Post by mickrussom »

pjc50 wrote: post #25
mickrussom wrote: post #18

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…

Japan is in the worst earthquake zone. How are 2 million dollar 4:2 "homes" and stressed and strained schools a good thing? Where are your kids going to live? Do even consider planning for the future?

Re: How Much Housing Will Be Built?

#80

Post by st3v3r »

davidw wrote: post #64
pjc50 wrote: post #25

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…

And because of that, people who were already living there should have to move away?
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