Comment by CullingTheHerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CullingTheHerd | Hacker News Reader

As has been stated in other comments, it's not that we don't have enough homes or that we don't have affordable homes.

Perhaps the "free-market" is not the optimal distribution system for housing. Said another way, perhaps the manner in which we meet our most basic needs of shelter, security, and stability should not be left to the free market.

A corollary then might be, perhaps if social and political frameworks had priority over (but not to the exclusion of) economic frameworks runaway real-estate prices might not so inevitably lead to the unnecessary but unyielding march of the unwilding of our environment (when there are massive tracts of dilapidated real-estate crying out for redevelopment), gentrification of communities and the concomitant loss the cultures of those pushed out into either the diaspora or relocated into projects, and the hand-to-mouth existence that many of us experience, even full-time and well paid persons.

$600 houses are a red-herring to the real issues, not a solution to anything.

We don't have anything remotely close to a free market in housing, though - I would be much, much more apt to lay the blame for the current housing crisis at the feet of misguided zoning and NIMBYism (often dressed up in pseudo-leftist rhetoric). We need to build more houses, for anyone, as quickly as possible and as much as possible if we want to shift the curve of rental pricing. Right now, the market wants to build - we should let it. If the state wants to step in and build more housing too, great, but first it should get out of the way.

I agree that tiny houses are a feel-good distraction.

I'll cede the floor to the well know investor, with impeccable credentials, Warren Buffett.

In 2010, during the Great Recession, he said: ...After a few years of such imbalances, the country unsurprisingly ended up with far too many houses. There were three ways to cure this overhang: (1) blow up a lot of houses, a tactic similar to the destruction of autos that occurred with the ‘cash-for-clunkers’ program; (2) speed up household formations by, say, encouraging teenagers to cohabitate, a program not likely to suffer from a lack of volunteers or; (3) reduce new housing starts to a number far below the rate of household formations.

So, unless you're arguing that between 2010 and now either we blew up a lot of houses or Buffett doesn't know what he is talking about, then I still don't an argument for tiny houses as compelling.

The macro economic issues (massive capital accumulation by the 1%, stagnant wages for the majority of workers, etc) are more in play than NIMBYism and zoning. I'd be interested whether or not you're active in zoning issues in your community or how it is that you came to the conclusion that zoning boards everywhere are responsible for unfordable housing.

The problem is that there's a massive disconnect between where houses exist and where they're demanded.

In the desirable places, every terrible house is used and potentially worth millions. Due to NIMBYism, there are restrictions on development.

In contrast, other less-desirable places have made it very easy to build houses (and often even provided tax incentives), leading to over-building. But without corresponding jobs, those houses lie vacant.

You can simultaneously have housing shortages and housing excesses.

> The macro economic issues (massive capital accumulation by the 1%, stagnant wages for the majority of workers, etc) are more in play than NIMBYism and zoning.

To take an example relevent to HN, do you really think the reason that even well-paid developers can't buy houses in the Bay area is "stagnant wages?" Wages have increased massively over the past 5 years, but NIMBYism prevents the addition of new houses to meet the demand.

The problem is more the 5-10% of older people who got lucky with real estate than a conspiracy by the 1%.

> I'd be interested whether or not you're active in zoning issues in your community or how it is that you came to the conclusion that zoning boards everywhere are responsible for unfordable housing.

My mother is on the selectboard of a small Vermont town and she sees this all the time. There's a decent amount of demand for new affordable housing, but the existing power base of voters overwhelmingly demands that there be hard limits on how much new construction there is every year. They're particularly opposed to apartments. The end result is that housing is rather expensive despite there being an abundance of available land and the young families who would like to move to the area are priced out.

( >We don't have anything remotely close to a free market in housing, though...

+

>Right now, the market wants to build - we should let it. )

vs

( >I would be much, much more apt to lay the blame for the current housing crisis at the feet of misguided zoning and NIMBYism [and I'm going to leave this alone, since it's basically trolling (often dressed up in pseudo-leftist rhetoric)]

&

>If the state wants to step in and build more housing too, great, but first it should get out of the way.) =(?) ( >We need to build more houses, for anyone, as quickly as possible and as much as possible if we want to shift the curve of rental pricing.) & ( >I agree that tiny houses are a feel-good distraction.)

I'm first going to say, my initial response was semi-simplistic/not point-by-point, because your comment doesn't exactly unpack or follow too neatly. But, since you've taking my comment apart seemingly point by painful-point, I simply want to go back to point out that your argument is inconsistent.

Do you think that the "market" is omniscient and will not error? No, it is just a bunch of people and companies doing business within economic, business, and political environments. So before you go writing off government from being able to contribute anything to the solution, remember that all those houses that weren't built where people want to live in them...

>The problem is that there's a massive disconnect between where houses exist and where they're demanded.

...yeah, the market made that cluster fuuuu possible in coordination with our government.

so my mother is a partner at the largest private developer in the state and my dad recently wrapped working as city manager for one of the fastest growing towns in the state. zoning, private vs public land use, eminent domain, affordable housing are conversations i'm familiar with. i was on the board of habitat for humanity in a smallish town during my first years out of college, even.

i'll leave it with this. it's a mess of issues. that's clearly not a "thesis" level argument, i just say it to mean, it's not nimbyism. it's not simply zoning. housing is central to being human. it is where we return and reset daily, and by virtue of that it is intertwined with our personal, professional, and political lives. cheap housing won't fix it. smaller houses won't fix it. more housing won't fix it.

if you ran a race, every day, restarting every day, and every day you lost that race, just in a different way, and then someone said, "sprint faster when you start", you'd probably say something like "eff you, clearly there are other things going on besides my start". because you can fix your start, but three days ago you lost because of your pacing. and a week ago you lost because of endurance. and a month ago you lost because of shin splints... well, maybe, you think, maybe you're running the wrong race. or maybe you're not supposed to race. or, who the eff knows.

that's what i mean. yeah. it's a mess of issues. but that doesn't mean we need to solve each issue. maybe we need to back up and, get some perspective, and re-frame the problem.

The housing boom built lots of houses in places many people don't want to live. Sure, there's lots of housing in suburban Stockton, but that doesn't do a lot to address the ridiculous lack of housing on the peninsula. Those places didn't see massive construction booms because NIMBY's feel they have the right to disallow home construction on land they do not own.

Another option is to actually make it a free market by reintroducing homesteading. Undeveloped or unused land, after a period of abandonment, would effectively become open game for anyone to start developing and the previous owner would forfeit it.

Using real estate as a store of wealth, like gold, is incredibly toxic for society, because it basically takes money (and in the case of real estate, land) out of the economy to mitigate fiscal risk.

That's pretty much a non-starter. There's plenty of cheap, undeveloped land in the middle of the country for sale but there are few buyers. Out here where I live, it's not unusual for even very nice homes to be for sale for years before an offer comes in.

In the middle of a city? If you have someone sitting on land waiting for the price to go up and you threaten them with "not using it," then odds are they'll put a cheap building on it and sell storage space or something. What would that accomplish?

> In the middle of a city? If you have someone sitting on land waiting for the price to go up and you threaten them with "not using it," then odds are they'll put a cheap building on it and sell storage space or something. What would that accomplish?

I saw this in action. I wanted to buy an old firehouse for conversion to owner-occupied loft and workspace. Current owner had purchased it in the early 1980's for a few tens of thousands of dollars from the city and the neighborhood had declined-- only half-joking it was the corner of Crack and Stab just down from Needlestick Park. The owner had moved cross-country and left the property and it's value had declined but it was adjacent to a gentrifying neighborhood and a short walk to a city bus stop. When I tracked them down they never responded to calls or letters, the local attorney they had last used had no contact with them, and they had stopped paying taxes. The city finally declared that they would seize and auction it off not because of the back taxes but because the sidewalk was not being cleared of snow and the exterior was unmaintained. Suddenly the absentee owner paid up half his delinquent taxes and let a local guy who repairs cars park vehicles in the bays, etc. Great improvement, now there are beat up cars and junk and the roof has started to collapse but because the sidewalk is clear, it's good.

that's actually really interesting. that's local government at work for you, in the most real and annoying sense. people getting involved and trying to change things at the local level only to be stymied by some a-hole preventing a good change by satisfying the letter but not spirit of the law. gotta love local politics/government. such a beautiful mess.

Economically, this is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

Politically, it is not solved.

I feel that this sort of response (land value tax) is very political, in addition to being an economic response.

Taxes are at the heart of politics. Without taxes to raise revenue most governments would have no realistic power source.

Property tax, as already implemented many places in the U.S.A., already accomplish the l.v.t. to a lesser degree. And many people have a HUGE problem with it. The argument goes as thus: The government (in the U.S.A) does not have the right to unlawfully take my property. I paid for my property, so it is mine. Thus, the government can't take my property because I did nothing.

Basically, if you are a property owner you must have the resources to pay property tax or you will not be a property owner for long. If you are not a property owner it is getting progressively more difficult to stay in the city limits if you do not have a lease or rent an apartment, effectively making it illegal to be homeless.

If you are homeless, because of the U.S. Patriot Act, it is nearly impossible to get a bank account or a drivers license unless you register with a recognized homeless shelter. I volunteered at a homeless shelter for a few years; they aren't great places to hang around, even if you're desperate. And, get this, in some states if you own an R.V. and live in it legally and full time, you don't have a "physical" address. So guess what, you're homeless. In these states you actually have to lie on your drivers license application in order to get a drivers license or a bank account stating that your personal mailbox (like a post office box but private) is your "physical address". And when you do this (lie about your physical address) you're committing a felony. We're talking about retired people, full-time political consultants chasing campaigns, and people that just like to travel.

We don't even need the drastic change to property laws that entails.

Simply remove onerous restrictions on development and you'd see the free market react appropriately.

By and large, land isn't undeveloped because the owners stubbornly refuse to develop it. It's undeveloped because laws make developing it impossible or prohibitively expensive.

no. not true.

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