Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Not being able to afford a house decreases quality of life infinitely more than some increased density.

Wouldn't the world simply increase population where this is still the case even if we build more housing though?

Tends to go the other way. Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement (1.8 births per woman), and relies heavily on immigration to maintain a steady population. There's a stark graph of page "4074" (page 4, figure 1-E in the PDF) of fertility rate vs HDI. [1] I bet if you build more housing you'd have fewer kids still. It's in a way counterintuitive, but very pronounced and well-studied.

[1] http://ijp.mums.ac.ir/article_7680_7828694c3909aa70d156fb9c8...

> Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement

Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ? Why are there endless articles in news that this isn't the case.

HDI is a composite score of which housing is an element. It includes all sorts of things like access to water, access to health care, etc, etc. I'm suggesting that continuing to develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly. I'm unaware of any studies which correlate specifically housing with fertility in isolation.

Maybe I confused you with two definitions of "development" in the same context -- developing houses, and human development / HDI of which housing is diffuse factor. See [1] for more info if you're curious.

[1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

> develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly.

That doesn't logically compute though.

Decrease in population is correlated with housing shortage in US.

Only conclusions we can draw from this is,

1. Housing is irrelevant to population growth

2. Decreasing housing will lead to further population shrinking.

3. Housing has unknown effects on population growth. In which case it can go either way.

I don't see how you it can lead to your conclusion.

Because most journalist jobs and thus journalists are in over demanded hip cities, instead of random rural flyover country, and thus write what they know.

> Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ?

America has plenty of affordable housing, but it's in places that are not experiencing significant economic and population growth.

The affordable housing crisis, as defined by a high price to income ratio, is specifically occurring in areas with growing economies and populations [1]. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest is simply the recent large scale internal migration to the booming metros.

1. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/price-to-income-ratios-are...

I don't think I've ever been linked to a site in Iran before. Odd.

Yea I don’t understand how urban activists can claim “induced demand” when discussing road supply but joy housing supply. There’s no obligation for any town or city to keep growing and accommodate continued population increases. That doesn’t serve the incumbent population, which is why those populations have chosen to enact zoning laws in the first place.

So your argument is to build less housing and force people to be homeless so they don't have kids?

If you can't afford a house there maybe you should consider moving somewhere more affordable.

Different strokes for different folks. Some people like living in dense cities. No reason not to build for them if they apparently enjoy it.

Which also has a human cost if you have social connections with the other humans around you.

This may not have occurred to you, but a lot of people simply can't afford to move and leave the safety net of friends and family. They may also lack skills that would help them secure employment elsewhere. There people are especially vulnerable.

With respect to quality of life, there are far denser cities with much higher quality of life.

Building more homes for the middle income families and individuals absolutely helps everyone, except landlords.

Right but there's no reason for that if you just allow developers to build up. You can live a few blocks from work, next to some nice allocated park land, and if you want to visit nature, take a train.

That's far more humane than demanding your fellow citizens commute hours from the outskirts every day so your real estate investment performs better. If you want to live somewhere greener perhaps consider the commute for yourself?

Having to move away from your family, friends, job and the life you know also decreases quality of life. A lot.

If you don't like the density, maybe consider moving somewhere with lower density?

Already did. I never realized how bad I had it.

Often times the density hawks are the newcomers, asking to be accommodated. This is true in the bay are and Seattle, for example. So I don’t think it’s fair to ask the incumbents who make up a community to leave.

If you don't like the increasing density then maybe you should consider moving somewhere less dense.

Neither of you are incorrect as it's about preferences, but the real problem is one of balance.

A city needs all kinds of people. Affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.

> A city needs all kinds of people to function and affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well.

I don't necessarily see how one follows the other. So long as there's diversity in, for instance, bedroom count on units, what difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically? To be clear, I'd love your thoughts, I'm not sure myself.

> Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.

Indeed because building up is expensive, so it requires demand. There's no demand in the middle of Idaho even comparable to what SF has.

Further, I'm proposing scrapping constraints on new development, not taking peoples 2 story Sunset units via eminent domain and throwing up SoMa style 50 story skyscrapers.

I think it's not an unreasonable place to start by doubling all height restrictions across all of SF. No more of this prime real estate on 17th and Brannan (the SFMTA bus lot redevelopment) getting wanged by a 4 story cap. That should be 20+ no question.

> What difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically?

One difference is how far things end up to be after. If they are spaced vertically, everything ends up far from everything.

Not enough people living in the geographic area means that stores wont be there, playgrounds will be empty, school will be far away. Visiting friends means longer drives, commute to work means longer drive.

4 - 5 floor is the sweet spot for balancing cost and price, if you go up from there the cost per sq meter increases. The places where economically is worth to go higher than that, is where the land is very expensive and you have to recover that cost having more units.

From what I have read, it's probably more like 4-8 floors. With 8 still being totally possible with with a podium floor or two and wood framing above that. (DC does this now)

Stacked vs horizontal makes differences for some uses and not others. If we are vertical I care is you start a kitchen fire as I have to evacuate just in case, Horizontal makes that need much less likely. There are a lot of hobbies that include large objects that are easier to have in horizontal development (any collector of large objects, a grand piano).

Though the number of people who do that is small in the scheme of things. Grand pianos are often moved via crane - if you only do it once in a lifetime the cost isn't much but if you move regularly it is expensive.

You actually can have both: dedicate some parts of the city for single-family homes for upper-middle class,other parts for high rise buildings. That's how many cities in Europe look like: high density central districts, then some suburbs. The choice is then: do you prefer short commute and living in apartment, or a bit longer commute, but your own big house.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com