Comment by spyckie2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spyckie2 | Hacker News Reader

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Articles about ghost cities are a fascinating read - sometimes exploring un-intuitive facts, like having 50m empty homes in China, yields a surprising discovery of the underlying systems.

In this case, I think the system perfectly justifies having 50m homes empty. If you look at it another way, if San Francisco (arguably another booming localized economy) had the same initiative to build a 20% buffer for housing, it would be seen as a progressive, citizen minded effort to create affordable housing and a huge benefit to the community.

As China, I'd much rather face the problem of building empty homes (which is not really a problem?) than face the population revolting from huge spikes in cost of living due to not enough urban housing. SF is full of rich enough people to ignore the struggles of the working class - China probably isn't.

edit: I also don't think the rise in 2nd or 3rd home purchases is an issue, it's more of a symptom of the growing divide between rich and poor, especially in China.

That is actually quite a large difference. China deliberately build ghost towns and pull in lots of people into urbanisation. If they had build a 20% buffer zone in Shanghai, I don't know how many will try and rush to that places and causes all sort of problem.

The SF problem is a lot like HK. There are far too many parties invested in property, therefore it is their interest to keep property building low and push the price as far up as possible. Government being extremely slow to react and by the time they do, those parties will try to delay it for so they have time to offload their asset.

The only way to go about it, is to build Satellite cities and try to move people out of it. Which in US is easier said than done.

SF residents are nowhere near rich enough to afford the struggles. Even people in the top 2-5% struggle desperately to afford housing, renting out every bedroom in the house just to afford to stay there.

SF is not going to implode any time soon though, which is why I say it can 'afford' it. China is a different story.

i'd say a decade is pretty "soon" for a city.

SF residents are among the richest in the world.

SF housing is made extremely expensive by multi decade long anti housing policies, but that's completely artificial.

If the Chinese ran housing in SF, there would be housing for 5 million people there.

In fact, the earliest anti-housing policies were designed to harm Chinese residents of the city: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/demolishing-the-ca...

Rich is relative, depending on the cost of living. Right?

If you make minimum wage in the US and work 40 hours a week, you’re in the global top 10%.

  If the Chinese ran housing in SF, there would be housing for 5 million people there

...and enough water for about 900,000 of them.

Pretty sure there would be water.

Pretty sure not everyone would like how.

Yes, they'd have demolished all of the old housing and it would look very different.

yes, but they aren't, and that's why we're in this mess. not enough housing driving up the cost to the point where most can't afford it anymore or barely afford it.

> I'd much rather face the problem of building empty homes (which is not really a problem?)

Not in and of itself, but if you look at historical parallels, like the development of Brasilia, the consequences were devastating: over a decade of hyperinflation and a series of failed currencies until one stuck.

It seems like China is building hundreds of Brasilias all at once.

Maybe Beijing has figured this out, and this will lift more people out of poverty than ever in history? Or maybe this isn't different and the reckoning on the back end will be unimaginable?

Never in history has local economic policy affected so many, and it happens to be in a setting where you aren't really allowed to debate economic or government policies.

Maybe it will all work out but it's a scary ride.

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