Hacker News Reader

> we need to fight for BMR and other strategies to create and protect truly affordable housing.

The "BMR or nothing" thing that those low-income housing advocates do pisses me off so much (and I say this as someone whose current income qualifies them for BMR housing (the waitlists are many years long so it's not really an option though)) and it's so frustrating to see how effective the "displacement" concern-trolling is at preventing the right actions from being taken; namely "build enough dense/tall/small market-rate housing such that the market-rate becomes affordable for everyone, and remove bans on medium/high-rise buildings, and small apartments/SROs/rooming-houses".

Avoiding eroding/ending NIMBY-enabling zoning/planning/land-use laws because it'll cause disruption/displacement is the same sort of understandable-yet-suicidal decision as someone refusing to push the stick forwards in a stalled plane because they're afraid of causing the thing to pitch down and lose altitude. Doing the non-instinctive/unfamiliar/counterintuitive thing is terrifying and unpleasant; but if you don't wanna hit the ground you gotta point the nose at the ground to get airspeed.

I'm legitimately shocked how even amongst people who don't have anything to gain via artificially scarce housing, the mindset is disturbingly often isomorphic to "pulling back on the stick puts me farther from the ground, time to pull back!" and well, I really don't want to follow that trajectory to its sad, pancake-shaped end.

Induced demand in housing is a myth. Research confirms that building more housing reduces displacement.

UC Berkeley's Urban Displacement Project study covers this quite well: http://www.urbandisplacement.org/research#section-84

Key summary: "What we find largely supports the argument that building more housing, both market-rate and subsidized, will reduce displacement. However, we find that subsidized housing will have a much greater impact on reducing displacement than market-rate housing. We agree that market-rate development is important for many reasons, including reducing housing pressures at the regional scale and housing large segments of the population. However, our analysis strongly suggests that subsidized housing production is even more important when it comes to reducing displacement of low-income households."

You misinterpreted the summary. Reading the actual study, it confirms induced demand:

"At the local, neighborhood scale, however, new luxury buildings could change the perception of a neighborhood and send signals to the market that such neighborhoods are desirable and safer for wealthier residents, resulting in new demand. Given the unmet demand for real estate in certain neighborhoods, new construction could simply induce more in-moving."

"...What we find largely confirms this regional versus local argument;... This suggests that indeed in San Francisco, and by extension similar strong markets, the unmet need for housing is so severe that production alone cannot solve the displacement problem." (p7)

Note that the summary concerns the regional effect of new housing construction -- with a strong emphasis on subsidized housing. Exactly what low-income housing advocates are campaigning for.

The single solution to this is to massively build housing in places that are already deemed desirable and gentrified.

If a place is already expensive and unaffordable, then double the density in THAT place.

That’s what South Beach in San Francisco has become... the problem is that it’s seismically unsustainable.

This isn't the 70s anymore.

Places like Tokyo have figured out how to build tall buildings that are safe for earthquakes.

Tokyo has figured out a whole host of things, while America can't even tie its own shoes.

Tokyo presumably would not have allowed the Millennium Tower to be built without sinking pilings into bedrock.

You quoted the hypothesis and not the results. The study says that there is no clear correlation between building in a given neighborhood and displacement. In one area with new development, significant displacement occurred. In the other, no significant displacement occurred.

The study concludes that housing should be built. It can't be made to suggest otherwise.

> You quoted the hypothesis and not the results.

You're simply wrong. As cited, "What we find largely confirms this regional versus local argument". And again, the study emphasizes the need for subsidized housing and "investing in the preservation of housing affordability and stabilizing vulnerable communities." That's exactly why low-income housing activists fought against the original YIMBY-supported bill.

The paper doesn't say that market rate development has a negative effect on displacement at the local level. It says it has no effect on displacement. There is no support for the idea that building more market-rate housing causes displacement. Only anti-development ideologues like Tim Redmond claim that.

Tenants activists in the Bay Area are actually making the problem worse, contributing to displacement, and driving out the very vulnerable populations they claim to protect. It is unfortunate that these groups are putting anti-development ideology over real solutions.

> The paper doesn't say that market rate development has a negative effect on displacement at the local level.

Again, simply incorrect and a miscomprehension of the study:

"These two block groups illustrate the complex relationships between housing development and demographic change. While both neighborhoods have witnessed dramatic development in one of the fastest growing parts of San Francisco, and have similarly seen significant growth in housing prices, one may be classified as experiencing displacement of low-income households, while the other does not." [emphasis mine]

(The one that didn't maintains "high rates of crime and concentrated poverty which may be dampening the attractiveness of the neighborhood" and the majority of units are rent controlled.)

Your parenthetical seems to prove the other posters original point. It wasn't the development that caused the displacement, it was the relative appeal of the neighborhood.

Exactly.

It doesn’t. Poster was saying study doesn’t show local displacement due to development. That’s flat out wrong.

It shows one neighborhood with displacement where development “contributed to the ongoing transformation of the neighborhood.” The other that resisted displacement not only maintained high crime, it also had a higher proportion of rent controlled units (which you didn’t mention).

That demonstrates that development can cause local displacement, although there are many complex factors at play that can resist it. Like if you build right next to skid row, maybe your building is not enough to gentrify the neighborhood, plus rent control protects residents. Absent those, you’ll get displacement.

I didn't mention rent controlled units because I was responding to your parenthetical comment.

I think the source of displacement is change, not development. Development is a kind of change, but it's not the only change. Anyone can move into any neighborhood if they want. If they move into a poor neighborhood and change it so that it's more appealing to them and to people with more money, then those people with more money will be attracted to the neighborhood. What is your method to stop this cycle?

Tenants' groups and the DSA don't have a solution. They want to stop development everywhere, which caused this problem to begin with. That's why they opposed SB 827, despite the fact that SB 827 barely even touched the neighborhoods undergoing gentrification.

It's anti-development ideology, plain and simple. These groups start from the idea that development is bad and cherry-pick data to fit that narrative. This phenomenon is at work in this very thread, where a study that clearly suggests building more market-rate and subsidized housing everywhere is somehow twisted to imply the exact opposite.

"Ongoing transformation" being the key phrase. As in, gentrification was occurring regardless of the new development. It's not hard to see how this happens, either. Not building anything doesn't prevent wealthy people from moving in: it just reduces the number of units available in newly-desirable neighborhoods. If new buildings aren't available, buyers and landlords will just renovate old units and sell or rent them to wealthy newcomers. (Example: Casa de Dolores in the Mission, a rent controlled building that was Ellis'd, completely renovated into a TIC, and sold mostly to tech workers. Even Costa-Hawkins repeal wouldn't have done anything to prevent this! In fact, if it gets repealed and vacancy control is implemented, you can bet to see a whole lot more of this, something tenants' rights groups will never admit.)

You are cherry-picking phrases from the study to try to make it sound like it's stating the exact opposite of what it states. This is obviously a pointless game, similar to the one creationists play. If the authors of the study wanted to say "don't build anything", they would have said that in the conclusion. Instead, they said the opposite.

The solution is to build more everywhere. More market-rate housing, more subsidized housing. Subsidized housing is especially important, but both kinds help. That is precisely what SB 827 encouraged. That is why nonprofit housing developers supported it. Tenants' groups and the DSA were wrong to oppose it. It is frustrating to see tenants' rights groups refuse to admit responsibility for hurting the groups they claim to be helping.

> ”don't build anything”

Every one of your comments contains blatant misrepresentations and devolves into YIMBY talking points. I have clearly represented the study as supporting building. The issue is how much emphasis on BMR and how to protect vulnerable communities from local displacement. The study places strong emphasis on BMR, preserving housing affordability and protecting vulnerable communities — phrases “cherry picked” from its conclusion. Thus it supports the very issues that low income and minority activists have been fighting for against the original YIMBY-supported bill and the amendments that were added to better address their concerns.

they have a problem with low-income housing activists more so than actual low income people.

check the 2nd to last graph on this page: http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-and-housing-aff...

See, that's exactly what I mean. First, it's kind of condescending and dismissive, like low-income housing activists don't actually represent the populations they live with and fight for.

Second, you're misinterpreting the graph. It just says renters want more housing. But if you scroll up you'll note the kind of housing "strong majorities favor": "affordable housing projects" -- not market rate.

The debate here between YIMBYs and the low-income housing activists is not the same as it is with NIMBYs. Both want more housing. The issue is how much market rate to facilitate vs. how much BMR and other developer concessions to negotiate for.

Tenants' rights groups in California don't want new housing. That's why they opposed SB 827, and that's why they opposed SB 35 (even though some of them, for example MEDA, went and used it anyway to construct affordable housing, while still maintaining their opposition to save face).

People want more affordable housing by apartment count; activists will happily block large projects that would include sizable numbers of affordable units because they're not happy with the percentage of affordable units. The percentages that they want tend to be high enough that the projects would be unprofitable, so the end result is that 0 units get built, either at market rate or BMR.

Most YIMBYs are perfectly happy to add more affordable units, as long as the economics work out so that something gets built. Many (not all) activists would prefer to block everything than compromise.

It is frustrating when developers and activists can't come to an agreement. But some projects have gone through. Jane Kim successfully negotiated 40% BMR in a few cases.[1] The developers are not in the poor house as a result.

[1] https://www.janekim.org/2018/05/01/housing-that-works-for-sa...

That's because the "BMR" here is cross-subsidized by employment and much of it is for people making above the median income. This is not a solution to the housing shortage.

https://sf.curbed.com/2016/2/3/10942390/inside-the-fuzzy-mat...

Many (not all) activists would prefer to block everything than compromise.

And not everyone realizes that some of these (air quote) "activists" are really NIMBYs and are bad-actors, claiming to be really aggressive pro-affordable units but so aggressive that nothing is ever good enough. They claim to want to compromise on things like percentage BMR, and then haggle over that for years, knowing that the ratio BMR they want is economically infeasible so the other side won't go for it, but they get to claim a highground under the guise of "trying to work with the other side" that never reaches a compromise.

Meanwhile, they get what they really wanted: everything blocked and no building at all.

The good will and intent of true activists is actively exploited by NIMBYs to cause "delays" (because delays, such as environmental impact studies and community engagement, which take massive amounts of time, are enshrined in law). NIMBYs can claim to be concerned about a bunch of different things that all result in the same outcome: delays significant enough that nothing gets built for a long enough duration that the end result is indistinguishable from explicitly not building anything.

This is also exactly what I'm talking about. YIMBY is in such denial about this, some choose to believe that low income housing activists must be some sort of plants under the control of rich, home-owning puppetmasters. There's just this tremendous cognitive dissonance, denial and resistance to listening to minority and low income communities. That's the white privilege problem. It probably hurt the bill.

A family member of mine is, in fact, a low-income housing developer in SoCal.[1][2] She has built and maintains hundreds of units housing poor and working-class families and seniors.

She has to put up with all the same crap--the community input circus, being slow-walked by the zoning board (no matter that they were literally begging her for the housing only months earlier), endless CEQA litigation, etc.

Even though she's being given money by the state (as transferable tax credits) to build housing that is wholly, perpetually BMR and which municipalities are legally obligated to push through (because of the quota system), she's pretty much in the same position as any other developer. Even though she'll have all her ducks lined up and pretty much prepared to break ground the same day she submits her full proposal, it can still take years and ridiculous amounts of money (tax payer money!) before she can break ground. She has to swim up the same sh*t creek as for-profit developers because the situation is just... that... bad.

You ever wonder why it takes an eternity for the City of San Francisco to complete a housing project by itself and with fully allocated funds? Even though the mayor, zoning board, and every other involved official sincerely wants the project to succeed and doesn't perceive any serious impediment or harm? It's because the consequence of streamlining the process for themselves would be some marginal streamlining of the process for market developers. Somehow anti-development sentiment has become so pathological that politicians and activists will literally spite themselves. Except not really, because they're not the ones getting screwed. But at least they can feel good about themselves for standing up for the guy they just kicked to the curb.

[1] http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/... [2] http://www.thecoastnews.com/affordable-complex-gets-green-li...

YIMBYs advocate for building and removing the impediments to building. They consider this to be compatible with just about any and all activist and low income community goals (and they aren't necessarily wrong).

"We want housing to cost less". Start building and keep building.

"We want housing near public transportation". Build near public transit.

Their position is pretty straightforward: remove the barriers to building and build more. Input on the details isn't going to change their position. The sincere activists end up undermining their goals by being opposite, in any capacity, to the YIMBY position. The bad-actor activists get exactly what they want. To pin lack of seeing YIMBY progress solely on YIMBYs themselves is, IMO, a misrepresentation of the situation.

And what about “We want less traffic. Build more roads.” Macroeconomics rarely have such simple solutions.

I didn’t pin it on YIMBYs solely. I said they would do better to take seriously what minority and low income housing advocates are saying. You’ve articulated exactly the problem; YIMBYs have an over simplistic understanding of economics yet exhibit extreme confidence and authority. This leads them to be dismissive of and even paternalistic towards those who actually experience the direct effects of displacement and gentrification.

Well, "We want less traffic, build more roads" actually helps, in a way: all the additional people driving are doing so because it's more convenient than the next available option, so they're all getting real value out of the extra roads. They just don't reduce traffic as much as we'd expect. And sure, the plan results in more people driving, which is mostly a bad thing due to emissions, so it's not a great strategy, especially when alternatives like mass transit are available to invest in.

Housing is not the same. Besides the fact that it doesn't share the qualities that make traffic highly susceptible to induced demand (you've gotta sleep somewhere, whereas you can choose not to drive, or at least choose when to drive), even if the end result of building more housing is that prices stay the same, it's still a better situation. The externalities of "people sleeping indoors" are not nearly as bad as "people driving cars", there would be more people living where they want to live, less of them would have to travel to get to work, environmental impact is lower per person when they live at higher density, economic output is greater at higher density, etc.

I get that macroeconomics is not always simple, but that doesn't mean it's always counterintuitive. And let's be honest here: in the Bay Area we've been adding housing much slower than we've been adding jobs for many decades now, and the "over simplistic" econ 101 prediction that prices would go up as a result has been extremely accurate. One point for Occam's Razor.

Activists are implicitly making the argument "yeah, our counterintuitive 'build less to reduce prices' policy hasn't worked in the past, but that's only because we haven't been allowed to implement it fully and prevent any market rate housing from being built!", which is the same kind of bullshit all-or-nothing argument that hardcore anti-government types make when we point out situations where deregulation fails to produce great results. Sometimes we just need to accept that maybe there's nothing subtle going on, apply F = ma, and see if the simple solution works. Especially when we've already been trying the crazy out-of-the-box solution and it's been failing miserably.

And what about “We want less traffic. Build more roads.” Macroeconomics rarely have such simple solutions.

Sorry, I thought it was obvious that when I said "build" it was building housing, since that is the YIMBY platform were talking about. The simplicity or not of macroeconomics may or may not come into play, but citing roads as example when we're talking about housing is disingenuous.

In the context of housing, "We want less traffic" is equivalent to "We want housing near public transportation", to which the YIMBY solution is the same "Build [housing] near public transit". Attacking it from the other side, build more public transit, is entirely possible too, and is a problem worth tackling, and fits within the YIMBY platform in general, but it's not directly about housing. And YIMBYs have rightly realized that focusing on too many solutions at once spreads effort too thin and plays into the incessant delays that result in nothing getting done.

You’ve articulated exactly the problem; YIMBYs have an over simplistic understanding of economics yet exhibit extreme confidence and authority. This leads them to be dismissive of and even paternalistic towards those who actually experience the direct effects of displacement and gentrification.

So while we're here, your claim that YIMBYs are not listening to low income communities could use some substantiation. Which concerns are being ignored by the platform of build more? And you can't say "more below market rate housing" because driving down prices by encreasing supply is exactly the position that YIMBYs have.

Unless we're concerned that a protected class of people would disappear because housing would be affordable and there would be no need for a BMR classification to rally for.

have an over simplistic understanding of economics yet exhibit extreme confidence and authority

You can say this about pretty much EVERYONE on EVERY SIDE of this issue. This is really a debate about which economic solution is the best/most appropriate, which is why it makes no progress. Everyone and their dog can show up and spout off.

That being said, I find the refutations, refutations of well established and accepted supply-and-demand solutions, to this problem to be naive and unfounded. And part of the problem is that even trying to experiment is difficult because good ideas and compromises are shutdown. And those who prefer the status quo of no building get exactly what they want, so status quoers are incentivized to muck up the process and cause delays by whatever means necessary.

Part of the debate is if those who prefer the status quo should have as much voice or influence as they do.

Here are 25 concrete suggestions proffered by not just a YIMBY but a bone fide, for-profit housing developer: https://urbanize.la/post/25-solutions-builder%E2%80%99s-pers...

Which of those specific, concrete suggestions do you find objectionable? Like some other YIMBYs (myself included) he even admits that we may need to expand rent control.

NIMBYs can't shake their fingers at housing developers and will them into burning money on unprofitable projects. And even a city government as rich as San Francisco couldn't build a small fraction of the units necessary to relieve the pressure before it would bankrupt the city.

This is the cold, hard truth. Renters have exactly two choices: continue opposing (by action or inaction) new development while prices rise and the rent-controlled stock slowly disappears, or be part of the solution. But tacking on BMR requirements is not a solution--it's no different than saying, "you can build new housing, but you still need to jump through all the same hoops and, oh, yeah, you have to give it away". WTF!?

On top of all that, while NIMBYs complain about displacement and the depletion of rent-controlled housing, there's literally no organized movement on their part that I'm aware of that proposes mitigations as part of a grand bargain. All I hear is, "no, no, no; but, but but." Rather, it's the YIMBYs proposing comprehensive solutions, including expansion of rent control. The funny thing is, rent control and density go hand-in-hand. The more units in a building the greater the turnover and the less the burden on an individual landlord.

If by me you mean low-income renters.. then probably #10, where the bona fide for-profit developer explicitly opposes affordable housing fees. You offer no support for your assertion that BMR requirements of any kind are unprofitable.

The evidence was in the article:

  And yet SLSs are dying in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has run
  out of missing middle zoning, and they are not creating any
  more of it in plan updates. The city has recently looked to
  tighten rules on the development of SLSs. Recent increases
  in fees (See rule #10) has hit SLSs hard. Entitlement
  applications for SLS have dropped.

New developments increasingly skew toward luxury sky-rises precisely because smaller, mid-rise, middle-income projects have increasingly grown unprofitable. It's a vicious circle: the more exactions imposed on the developers the bigger and more expensive the units need to be in order for the project to be viable, which fuels resentment and political pressure for more exactions.

The problem with BMR requirements is that though they make politicians appear responsive to voters and tough on developers, the greater effect is that they permit politicians, voters, and developers alike to avoid difficult decisions. Such as, for example, expanding rent control, changing master zoning plans rather than relying on negotiated variances (a costly process), investing in transit, reducing parking requirements, etc.

> Quite simply, if cooks and teachers and artists can't afford to work here it's not going to be as desirable a place to live.

At the risk of sounding excessively cynical, I think the most exclusive cities are pretty able to foist this burden onto those workers by making them travel long distances.

Glad you brought that up. The bay area's unique geography (and/or inadequate regional mass transit to match it) make this a much greater problem here.

There was a really great map that I'm trying to find again, comparing how far you could travel from an affordable market-rate unit on mass transit in an hour in different metros. In NYC you could reach most of Manhattan from affordable neighborhoods in Brooklyn or Harlem. In SFBA, the vast majority of SF was unreachable. Just small areas around the BART stops basically.

This is a huge problem for the service industry, for example. It is getting very hard to hire restaurant and retail staff in SF without jacking up prices so high that the business fails. Not a lot of people want to commute 3 hours a day to a minimum wage job.

BART is pretty good... you can get from a cheap gang infested area of Richmond to downtown SF in an hour. It’s pretty expensive though, an hours pay for the round trip.

I heard a pretty memorable discussion on the radio about people walking all the way from Queens and Brooklyn to their jobs at the Manhattan McDonald's because their pay was too low to afford the subway fare.

If induced demand in housing was actually a thing, silicon valley wouldn't be overpriced because everybody would pack up and move to Indianapolis, Dallas, or Houston, where housing is plentiful and nobody is stopping more from being built.

The reason prices keep going up when you build more has nothing to do with inducing demand. The demand was already there and already growing, for a million reasons you have no control over. Prices keep going up because you're not building enough. And if you refuse to accommodate or allow growth, you're gonna get displacement. The reason San Francisco has become a displacement nightmare is exactly because of the stupid induced demand myth, that somehow by not accommodating new arrivals that they'll just stop coming. San Francisco's problems are only the fault of people like you who refuse to accept economic reality.

That’s not how induced demand works even in the classic example of traffic congestion. So you’re not really in a position to lecture on “economic reality”.

YIMBYs sometimes argue that we can solve the affordability crisis by simply building more market rate housing, because the law of supply and demand dictates it will bring prices down. But that is a simplistic understanding of supply and demand; even in Econ 101 we learn that the price change depends on the demand curve. So what’s the demand curve for housing in SF?

Induced demand is the phenomenon where lowering cost motivates people to change their behavior and start using the good. It shifts the curve. This counterintuitively keeps the cost high despite expanding supply. It’s why roads are always congested even after expanding them.

There are a lot of tech people in the world who would still like to move to SF. There are speculators too. Like adding lanes to a highway that never gets better, it’s possible that a purely market rate based approach will not result in prices low enough to address the affordable housing crisis for folks who are not making tech industry salaries. YIMBYs as a rule really do not like to admit that.

Adding lanes too a highway can help put more people on the road who can tolerate high (opportunity) costs, but you’ve got to look at other solutions too like protected lanes for qualified vehicles. The analogous things in housing would be things like BMR units for qualified residents.

You're conflating the demand curve with quantity demanded and the supply curve with quantity supplied. Even in Econ 101 we learn the difference.

Induced demand in traffic is also (mostly) a myth. The myth is perpetuated by the same ignorance of another government intervention: artificially low prices. Increasing capacity doesn't reduce congestion because the quantity demanded is so far beyond are ability to supply that it is impractical to meet it at those prices. To illustrate, consider Lamborghinis with prices capped at $1. At that price level, quantity demanded is so high that any increase in quantity supplied is immediately consumed. That doesn't mean that lamborghini is inducing demand by building more cars, because at market rates making more doesn't mean people consume more. And it can be demonstrated perfectly by the countries that do price their roads correctly: when they build more roads, it actually does reduce congestion.

Adding more supply doesn't change the demand curve, it changes the equilibrium price. In all cases, supplying more means more is consumed. That doesn't mean demand curve has shifted, it means the quantity demanded has changed to reflect the new equilibrium. The price still drops, even with a higher quantity demanded. That is not induced demand, that's the same fucking supply and demand curve doing exactly what it always has done.

Induced demand is where the demand curve changes in response to a change in quantity supplied. You have no evidence that that is happening, because it isn't, regardless of whether it is in Silicon Valley or Indianapolis. Demand curves for housing are largely the result of income factors: people can make more money in SV. If SV companies keep paying workers more and more, the demand curve is going to keep shifting. It's not caused by housing growth, that's idiotic. And because the demand shift is not caused by housing, restricting housing only makes it worse.

If "development-stimulated gentrification" and normal gentrification are our problems, then what's the solution? You are setting up a scenario where there is gentrification no matter what.

The problem with trying to get BMR units everywhere is that less units are created. Big picture, you're just helping two classes: those who qualify for BMR and those who are rich enough to buy the units that are subsidizing the BMR. What happened to the people in the middle?

Tenant activist groups want to return the Bay Area to the way it was in some romanticized time in the past, often the 1970s. They want nobody to move in and for tech to move out.

It's certainly true that magically freezing California in time would solve displacement and gentrification. (Of course, it's not possible to do so, and it would be deeply unfair for the same reason the Chinese hukou system is unfair, but that doesn't stop them.)

Which poor neighborhood in SF would SB 827 have lead to new development in?

>induced demand, where adding capacity can actually create more demand.

The timeline on induced demand for number of houses required has to be pretty long. Also, if you are worrying about induced demand from housebuilding, then you are attempting population control with homelessness.

Yes, "induced demand" for housing exists. But that extra demand is generated by the extra economic activity more people bring in. It's called having a growing, lively city.

The market isn't being ALLOWED to to solve the problem.

Allowing the market to solve the problem would happen if we significantly upzoned the land. (ie, we need to double the allowable density across SF).

The best way to produce more affordable housing isn't that build so many houses that the market price is BELOW the affordable housing price.

But if you really care about affordable housing, one thing that could be done is incentives.

IE, if you make 30% of your units affordable then in exchange, you can build you building to be 3 times the height of whatever it is currently zoned for.

YIMBY people would absolutely be in favor of an incentive like this, that triples density, in exchange for making 30% affordable.