991–1000 of 1001 posts
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> Free markets for housing are likely to settle into an "optimum" where some percentage of people cannot afford housing at all, because while construction/rental of housing for them would net a return, it's not worth the opportunity cost You provide no basis for the idea that the returns on housing have to drop below the point at which its financially viable to build before housing becomes affordable. You just say "b…
"Not worth the opportunity cost" is not the same as "not financially viable". It means that there are lower risk/higher return investment opportunities than creating that housing. More simply stated "Why would I want to turn my $100 into $110 +/- 20% if I could turn them into $130 +/- 20% instead?"
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It's not a common problems in Austin at least. You (a property developer) buy a single home in bad shape on a big lot in the city. Then you redevelop the single home into 20 apartments, greasing the wheel appropriately (of the local government) to get the needed rezoning and permits. No one else can do this because they don't have the connections and monetary resources you do. You pocket the increase in value of that…
The article we are commenting on is literally about this happening in Austin.
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>But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far to get where they're going. QED. You are conflating things, adding more people to an area increases congestion, period. Having dense housing vs not dense housing is better…
> adding more people to an area increases congestion, period Yes, but so what? That's tautological. "Adding more people" isn't an independent variable, it's the economic ground truth over which we're trying to optimize. The point is that if you need to build N units of housing to match your M added economic activity, building them denser leads to less congestion. I mean, duh. This really isn't a complicated idea. Aga…
no.... it's not... what an incredibly naive take. Why don't you just leave out every nice small town in a beautiful location. "Who cares about keeping thing beautiful amiright??"
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"Not worth the opportunity cost" is not the same as "not financially viable". It means that there are lower risk/higher return investment opportunities than creating that housing. More simply stated "Why would I want to turn my $100 into $110 +/- 20% if I could turn them into $130 +/- 20% instead?"
"I lost a foot" is not the same as "diabetes caused me to need my left leg amputated below the knee", but if you're talking about whether or not you can make it to the store a few blocks away without assistance the distinction isn't really important.
Relevant: I just listened to an interview with Max Buchholz, US Berkeley assistant professor and the lead author of a new working paper titled "Inequality, Not Regulation, Drives America's Housing Affordability Crisis." He says that building housing does bring prices down, but not very much. In his paper they argue that income inequality is a big driver of making housing unaffordable. (Not billionaires, but more thos…
This is nonsense. In every material good, the buying power of nearly everyone has increased in real terms over time, regardless of inequality. It's only in housing, with constrained supply, that inequality can drive up prices; and even in that case, it doesn't actually change the housing supply- if prices are high, that just means a lot of people who want to live there! Inequality doesn't reduce the number of houses.…
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It’s worth noting that a major confounding factor is that, unlike most cities with a housing crisis, Vienna is well below its population peak and so does not need to build nearly as much housing
During that peak Vienna’s housing situation was infamously bad though. You’d have single rooms shared by multiple families and beds being used by multiple people on a timetable.
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It’s worth noting that a major confounding factor is that, unlike most cities with a housing crisis, Vienna is well below its population peak and so does not need to build nearly as much housing
Technically yes, but lol no. Population is about the same as at its peak and density (person/m2) was about four times that of today. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlafg%C3%A4nger https://www.demokratiezentrum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10...
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The number of Tech people moving from SF to Austin and back is going to have negligible influence on the average rent in the entire city.
You mean the folk with highest purchasing power (2-3x median wages of the average person in the city) moving in and out of the city have negligible impact on the average rent in the entire city? I guess the 20% increase in rent in 2021 in Austin was just vibes.
Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more common to simply.. start a new city. Especially in countries like Australia where property prices are sky high and alternative places for setting up a new city are abundant. Maybe internet connectivity was previously a barrier, but now.. starlink. I put this quest…