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Comment by neocraftster | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that the article mentions why people would do this (much, much cheaper) but avoids talking about any possible solutions to rising rent costs in urban areas.

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That's because the city has no solutions.

So far they've only tried telling the universities to build more dorms and give up some of the housing they have.

I mean, there's plenty of new apartment buildings going up around Boston, but they're all luxury.

Live in the van hacking is on the rise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG4kJrhjzaY

Eh, there's plenty of videos on living inside storage units: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=living%20in%20s...

Most affordable housing today was once the luxury housing of the past. Since WWII we went from 1 billion people to over 7 and no one could plan for that. The housing crisis is a population crisis.

It's stronger than that. People moving into luxury housing are generally moving from mainstream housing, freeing up capacity downstream.

I see your point. However I don't agree that nobody could plan for the increase in population. They can absolutely plan for that. The failure is in planning modes of housing that nobody in the city wants(single-family detached housing with a 45 minute commute by car), and in blocking the increasing densification of neighborhoods in desirable areas. Because the density and housing type of a district is controlled by government, the zoning lags behind how people actually want to live. That's the source of the housing crisis.

It's shameful that our local governments continue to allow people to block the construction of housing when it's clear how much the NIMBYs contribute to the homelessness and impoverishment of their neighbors.

You have to remember that in the time when suburbs were being created, most people in the city did want to escape it. The white flight was a huge change. And once the whites left cities, cities drove out poor people and put them into Projects. For a while later, in the last century, downtowns were pretty much deserts with the wealthy living in pent houses and everyone else either suburbs or the streets. It is only in the last couple of decades that cities have become able to attract the grand-kids of the suburb generations back to the cities. Largely because that is where profitable work is located. It is a feedback loop.

Also humans don't work well on the larger scale. Nimbys exist because that is the scale human people can operate at. A million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is almost 32 years. Maybe IBM could use Watson to figure out the housing crisis. A few less variables there to work with than cancer.

There is a belief, with a number of associated caveats, that "Today's luxury apartment's are tomorrow's affordable housing" [1]. They are one piece of the puzzle, and I don't think it's helpful to block their construction. That said, they aren't the only thing that's necessary for affordable and equitable housing, but I've become less hostile towards the luxury condo/shopping complex projects near me, even if I can neither afford them nor have much interest in living in one.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/todays-luxury...

luxury units can create affordability immediately.

if 100 thousand luxury units suddenly came online at a cost of 1.5M each

Here are a few possible outcomes: 1) 100K people can afford them and decide to move from their current homes into the luxury homes. Homes that were 1.5m get downward pressure. As every level moves up it puts downward pricing pressure on the level below. Luxury housing will impact entry level housing if enough is built.

2) 100K people choose to not buy the new luxury housing a) the owners go bankrupt and the price of the luxury housing goes down. Then see 1) b) the owners lower the price of the new luxury housing. then see 1

The point is that any inventory puts downward pricing pressure on existing inventory.

You generally don't see the effect so obviously because the new supply of luxury housing rarely keeps up with demand in hot markets. You can see the impact in flat markets where new housing dries up demand for existing houses such that agents recommend you not buy existing homes in areas that are being actively developed.

I wish SF would listen to this way of thinking. I'm no urban development expert, but this seems pretty cut and dry to me. Unfortunately I've seen it being coupled with "trickle down economics"

Personally I would love to move into a more luxury (some call cookie cutter) apartment which would free up my existing dwelling and potentially lower housing costs.

Don't forget 3) Foreign oligarch parks questionable money in the entire building and then leaves it unoccuped for a decade in the hopes that he could sell it to another foreign investor at double the price

I hear this a lot in Brooklyn. First, the reality is these units aren't very big (in fact, they are often smaller than cheaper units in Brownstones), so they're not significantly less efficient than "non-luxury" housing. Second, it's not like if the luxury buildings didn't exist the people who live there would just pack up and leave New York. Instead they'd just be moving into that renovated postwar that a lower-income person might have been able to afford.

Unfortunately the belief is false, since it is easily demonstrated that an old luxury building has such high HOA fees to account for the increased needs in maintenance and upkeep that it is anything but affordable.

Inevitably the costs for the building's aging infrastructure upkeep will be pushed on its residents, so the costs going forward (aka the esoteric 'tomorrow') are unlikely to down if at all.

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