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Comment by lrajlich | Hacker News Reader

Counter argument: SF has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country. https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18276227/vacancy-rate-san-jo... This article is promoting a bad faith argument used by anti development activists.

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I can see why somebody might view that as a counter argument intuitively, but as somebody who cares about the problem in a real, practical sense, it's immediately obvious to me that the point isn't to criticise the city's vacancy rate in a void, but to compare it to the potential waste. In a city where prices are disgustingly high and homelessness is appallingly common, the vacancy rate becomes much more sensitive to pragmatic criticism. Simply pointing out that other cities have a higher rate doesn't affect the criticism. Perhaps those other cities wouldn't benefit as much from lowering the vacancy rate. Perhaps those other cities would benefit a comparable amount, and we should hold them to the same criticism rather than declaring the criticism invalid.

> Simply pointing out that other cities have a higher rate doesn't affect the criticism.

Sure it does. Houston has a higher vacancy rate, and much more affordable housing than San Francisco. This strongly suggests that the vacancy rate is a red herring.

Yea, exactly. Housing price increases and low vacancy rates "should" be correlated (eg, not enough supply in the market) and in fact are, which the original article's argument completely ignores and instead implies that the right vacancy rate is 0. If those circumstances ever happen, good luck finding a place to live.

It's basically impossible to increase housing utilization to 100%. It's pointless to even try. 10% is a healthy vacancy rate. Build 110% of the housing your city needs.

Mathematical nitpick.

A vacancy rate of 10% is an occupancy rate of 90%. To house everyone with a 90% occupancy rate, you need to have 100 / 90 in available housing stock, which is 111.1% of occupation requirements.

If you only build 110% of what is needed, and no one is homeless, the vacancy rate would be 9.1%, or ( 1 - 100/110 ) .

The point still stands. Cities need more housing than strictly required for residents.

I perceived the error but I left it there so someone could gratify their pedantry. Congrats.

Thank you. Could you box up my discounted dopamine hit for carry-out, please? I might need some smug satisfaction later, possibly while driving, when it's not so easy to go online.

housing is a market so low vacancy == price increases. That's the actual story. This is the case in markets more generally (eg, wage increases tend to be higher when unemployment is low).

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