Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

So finding somewhere to live that cost less than $2K a month wasn't an option?

This specific case is perhaps not the best example, I personally had to choose to keep reading after he discussed how his own behavior greatly contributed to his dilemma.

That said, I'm glad I finished the article, because it seems to clearly describe the state of the overall affordable housing market in the country, which is pretty awful, and there were some eye-openers in there for me, such as one in five renters facing eviction. That's a ridiculous number.

I don't know the answer to this problem, because telling rich people they just can't buy in certain neighborhoods doesn't seem like a viable option to me, but we have to at least acknowledge it is a problem.

> his own behavior greatly contributed to his dilemma...

> ...the article...seems to clearly describe the state of the overall affordable housing market in the country

I'm not sure it does, because it leaves out a key piece of information: what percentage of the people facing eviction are facing it for the same kind of reason the author did? If most people facing eviction are facing it for that kind of reason, I don't think the problem is lack of "affordable housing"; I think it's some people's lack of ability to properly judge what they can afford.

The real solution is building lots and lots of buildings. To make that happen we need to massively relax regulations. It's not practical to build affordable housing right now because the fixed legal and planning costs are too high, so only higher end housing really makes sense to build.

New supply equivalent to the oldest and crappiest apartments on the market would still not be affordable, because they aren't either.

The positioning of new supply within the basic<->luxury spectrum is vastly overblown. The entire range of market rates needs to come down by thousands of dollars.

Sure, but at the end of the day it's still a supply/demand problem. If you flood a region with more housing, prices will go down as demand is satisfied.

There was an article posted on HN (sorry, I can't even remember the name of it, let alone the URL) that detailed a study that showed that, while building luxury or high-end housing is helpful in reducing overall prices, building mid-range and affordable housing is more helpful. I'm not saying that means that we should only be building mid-range and affordable housing, but focusing on high-end housing will solve the problem much slower than it could be solved otherwise.

If we don't solve the problem by building more, how is your ideal outcome going to look?

We must lower the overall market by building a ton more. The level of luxury that “more” is pitched at is irrelevant - the problem is that whole market is too high, not that it skews towards luxury.

Sounds like we are in violent agreement ;)

Edit: my crazy fantasy is to replace a huge portion of the avenues in SF with a massive arcology. That would solve the problem for Sf and set a great example for elsewhere. But of course that isn't going to happen.

> one in five renters facing eviction

I'm very skeptical of this number, especially since it actually said this was within the last three months. My guess is that the survey respondents were not a representative sample of renters.

> because it seems to clearly describe the state of the overall affordable housing market in the country

No it didn't. The article presents high rents as something that landlords create by fiat, or with construction equipment. It didn't begin to engage with the actual sources of high and rising demand in urban neighborhoods, i.e. concentration of economic growth into a few headquarters cities, migration to those cities, shifting preferences among the affluent away from McMansions and towards urban condos, etc.

You seem to have forgotten another big driver: anti-development NIMBYs who, in their best "got mine, FU" performance to date, refuse to allow supply to meet demand.

Regardless, I think the article was a bit unfair in pointing the entire problem at "greedy" landlords, but they certainly can't escape some amount of blame.

I was troubled by that also. I live just outside of DC, about 15 minutes, and rent is $1200 a month. I think this person had a cascading effect of bad luck, less so housing crisis

Many leases are for a set amount of time, and breaking the lease frequently requires a multiple of the monthly rent price.

I own property. I’ve evicted people, sadly. Exactly zero landlords anywhere would prefer that they’re forced to go through this entire eviction process vs. the tenant just disappearing one day and you never seeing a dime of what they owe. Eviction is expensive, stressful, and time-consuming. And even though I own rental property, I’m a human being and don’t like putting anyone in a bad position.

^ exactly this - evictions can be very stressful and overall very expensive. Although most contracts are written such that they make it seem that the landlord will go after you should you need to get out of a lease early - most smaller landlords would rather you part willingly as soon as possible and would rather turn the property around as quickly as possible without having to go through the eviction process.

I have seriously considered just paying bad tenants to leave. It’d be faster and cheaper. The problem is one of adverse selection though: don’t want a reputation as the landlord who pays bad tenants!

Fine, then why don't you write your leases in a way that reflects your preferences? Instead of saying that if they break the lease early, that they owe you 3 months rent, say that as long as they give you 30 days notice, and the apartment is clean and empty on the 1st, you call it even.

That's called a month to month agreement, they are widely available.

This would be the equivalent of a month to month lease, and many landlords will be open to that, although for a slightly higher price as they have to account for a potentially higher turnover. Additionally, many lease contracts have early termination clauses that leave a door way open to early termination by agreement of both parties, thus as long as the tenant and landlord are willing to work out something, what you suggest above is clearly attainable, and much preferred over an eviction - it just requires a conversation between the two parties. Now if either of the parties is unreasonable of course or unwilling to even entertain a conversation, no sort of contract will help.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com