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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

The trick is:

* Introduce laws that make it harder to (legally) build housing. Note that much of New York would be illegal to build today, for instance.

* Use these laws to create scarcity. Ensure that there's never quite as much housing as people who need homes.

* Make massive amounts of debt available for said housing.

You now have an entire class of people who want to be sure their house only goes up in price, and that there is only just barely enough housing built to stop their region from collapsing. After all, who wants to be underwater on a mortgage?

I don't know how to break this on a policy level. Few people vote for the politician who says "I want your house to go down in price" so we get insane levels of rube-goldberg devices to make housing "more affordable" while also making it ever more expensive.

The more debt you make available, the more housing soaks it up. Sweden recently made the maximum mortgage length 105 years!

On the bright side, if you look at stuff that no bank will lend on (dilapidated structures, etc) there are some good deals to be had.

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Surely you're missing something about having highest paying jobs concentrated in a few cities where lots of people want to move to. Most of American has cheap housing, just many people would rather move to the most expensive places (which is why they're expensive).

cities have only been like that for the last 10,000 years or so. they're the engine of growth of civilization. the artificial housing shortage trap has only been going on in the west since starting around 1960 or so.

This position pretty brazenly ignores the reality that global population is, you know, maybe just a little bit higher than it was 10,000 years ago?

It's been a problem since industrialization. There was a mass migration in the 19th century to cities from small towns for work. It has caused the overcrowding you see today. Hopefully remote work, low orbit sat internet, solar efficiency, electric & autonomous cars will all lead to further decentralization.

I don't see why if you could both live green and have space you wouldn't choose to do so. It doesn't seem to be a popular opinion here.

All of the big city problems are caused by centralization. I certainly don't see why HN isn't embracing this perspective or at least entertaining it. I see cases brought against centralization of technologies every single day here.

Luckily it's not up to you guys and it will naturally happen as we advance in technologies that allow us to spread out.

Ironically y'all are developing it via Zoom, Slack, Figma, and any other collaboration tool that further allows us to asynchronously and remotely collaborate.

What's the alternative? Abandoning the people that already live there and all the progress we've made in transportation in the last century.

The writing is on the wall, the technologies and ideas are pointing in that direction. The current solutions are falling apart and covered in shit.

There was a golden age after the war and before the Interstate system, at least in the US.

Decentralization causes more issues than it solves; it's extremely inefficient both from an energy and tax perspective (lots more infrastructure to serve the same people) and it ruins farmlands and existing biospheres. Density is very environmentally friendly, both in terms of energy use per person and in the fact that it limits the impact of human development.

It really doesn’t. These cities already exist and are depopulating. It would be inefficient to not use these already existing metropolises, many of which were built pre-mass transit and are actually more energy efficient than the post-ww2 boomtowns.

Up until the 1980s, the variation in earnings and cost of living was around 20%. Meaning someone in rural Missouri could earn on average roughly 80% of a New Yorkers average wage. That wage premium has now skyrocketed, as has housing.

Allowing capital to concentrate in so few cities is why we have a few high performing metros and a ton of depopulated ones. And why we have Bay Area residents bidding six to seven figures for SFHs that would be condemned elsewhere.

Overall, I agree with your assessment, but the median household income in NYC is $57k; in Missouri, it's $53k.

I don't have access to a breakdown now, but I would guess the difference is < 50%.

It sounds like you get it, but comparing a city to a state is misleading, especially for cities with a huge metro area that contains a lot of the prosperity. St. Louis County's median income is $35k (61% of NYC avg), and Jackson County (main part of Kansas City) is $26k (46% of NYC).

The county median incomes NYC counties: Manhattan (New York County) is $67k, Brooklyn (Kings) is $25k, Queens is $26k, Bronx is $18k, and Staten Island (Richmond County) is $32k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counties...

On the other hand, centralization increases bureaucracy and corruption. Humans are still humans and their memory is limited, which means that they can still only pay attention to X number of politicians. If you increase the number of politicians far beyond X then they can get away with all kinds of things. This also leads to a decrease of the system handling people's specific needs since there's a larger disconnect between the ruling class and the people.

The same argument shows the superiority of the open office plan.

  Hopefully remote work, low orbit sat internet, solar efficiency, electric & autonomous cars will all lead to further

Technical solutions to people problems.

It's all people problems. To be fair, those technical solutions would address the people problems precipitated by the earlier technical solutions that drove people to cities in the first place, which were created to address earlier people problems, and so on....

Remote work: your career is where you base your life around. If you want true freedom, remote work is necessary.

Low orbit sat. internet: internet access should be a fundamental right to all humans, there are still areas all around the world, including the US where there's little to no service because it's not economically viable to put a tower up or run lines.

Solar panels: if the internet is a right, then electricity definitely is. The ability to generate your own energy doesn't only embrace green ideals, it embraces American ideals.

Electic & autonomous cars: America is huge, and we all want to be connected w/o being crowded. If we can travel and stay connected with each other in a clean and safe way we should do it. Trains are part of it, but let's not throwaway a century of progress.

Source: I live in a small town. I have fresh air, I can see the stardust, and I paid $75k for my 3 bedroom house.

Most people don't live in the states, many places don't get sun coverage and those that do are too poor to invest on solar or maintain it, there's better ways to get internet besides orbiting routers, what's "true freedom" and why is a career required to have it.

> Most people don't live in the states,

The thread I replied to referenced American housing so I chose that perspective both in terms of location and financial status.

> there's better ways to get internet besides orbiting routers

Carriers refuse to put up towers in low populated areas that won't make money.

Utility companies and ISPs will not run fiber for the same reasons.

Current satellite providers only offer geo-sat orbit and only have a couple satellites. This adds up to terrible latency and god awful bandwidth limits.

Starlink on the other hand has a potential to be faster than fiber in some scenarios.

Haven't heard from Loon. Facebook gave up. What's the way you suggest? Honestly satellites sound the most practical of those lol.

ISPs won't run fiber even when we give them money hand over fist to do it.

Or we could just make tall buildings legal to build again.

Plenty of tall buildings in some cities (like Toronto), with more being built. Prices are still stupid high.

This is an argument I see all the time from the supply & demand denier side of the housing argument, and I'm sorry but it's just so incredibly stupid.

It would be like if someone was dying of dehydration, they drink a couple drops of water but are still dehydrated, then conclude oh well, I guess water is not what I need.

If you're not going to address the quantities involved how can you possible conclude that it's not working? I know less about Toronto but to use San Francisco as an example, there were something like 150,000 new jobs added in the last decade and 20,000 new housing units built. Of course it's not solving the problem yet, it doesn't mean that we don't need more housing, exactly the opposite.

This wasn’t an argument for anything. I was just responding to the ability to build taller buildings, which isn’t an issue in many places facing rising housing costs. All I’m saying is being able to build taller buildings doesn’t solve the housing cost issue, so I agree with you.

If 1M people want to move to your city but you only build housing for 100k of them, it's not really going to move the needle very much on price, even if you built "a lot" of housing. The amount of housing built has to be considered in comparison to the demand for more housing. The absolute numbers matter much less than the relative ones.

Yes and it doesn’t matter much if those 100k are high rise or not, still not enough.

Because there is not enough of them!

Having 1000000 people being able to afford $1m flats is better than 1000 of them

It might be unfair to call a city “overcrowded” since the defining nature of a city is growth and people.

I didn't call cities overcrowded. There are many cities that are perfectly stable and have healthy housing markets and costs of living.

I said the migrations caused overcrowding, and it caused it only in specific cities.

I'd rather see fiber run anywhere that's electrified than satellite internet.

You'll see whatever is practical and economical. It'll be a combination of fiber/wireless in cities and low orbit satellites in rural areas.

This is a culture issue too. So much of work today that takes place in big cities can easily be done from home, but companies and managers are still stuck in a 20th century "butts in seats" mentality.

> So much of work today that takes place in big cities can easily be done from home

Not all that much - not everyone works in software, and not everyone who does will be most productive from home, and not every one of those will want to work from home.

My work can be done from home and my employer is quite flexible - I still gladly spend the time and pay for my commute because I'd rather not be at home all day.

I had a discussion with some people at a growing tech company looking to expand in one of their locations. I basically asked-/Cant more people just work from home? (Many already do.) they basically told me many of the younger employees would just up and quit if they couldn’t come into an office.

Looking back on my earlier career I can sympathize.

Perhaps let the portion work from home that wanted to.

That was pretty much the concept for any jobs that allowed it. In fact, the company was apparently taking away desks from people who weren't using them enough. (They could still hotdesk.) But the demand for desks was greater than the supply--even with a lot of office crowding.

I'm partial to staying at home Monday and Friday. Sometimes you have meetings, sometimes you just want to come in and shoot the shit.

Why would younger folks up and quit if they couldn't come to an office? This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Possibly they don't have calm or comfortable place for work at home. Possibly they would get lonely and demotivated over time. Possibly many people derive motivation from other people and would lack it absent personal contact - purely online classes have huge failure rates too.

When I had a WFH job, I would go days without talking to anybody. I literally started conversing with the cat and singing because my throat muscles began to atrophy. Once I got back into an office, I realized that my social skills had gone to shit.

There are some perks to WFH, but it can be bad for people who don't have a drive to seek human interaction with reasonable frequency.

If you're going to WFH, definitely get out and walk to lunch in the sunshine/fresh air. We're not meant to live in a cave 24/7.

During my early days, I looked for jobs that let me maximize my learning. I preferred onsite jobs so I can have stronger professional relationships with my co-workers and have high bandwidth visual and oral communication when I needed help.

Later in my career, now that I worked remotely, I am much more independent and don't have as much interest in synchronous communication with my co-workers.

If I lived in a 1100 ft apartment and had to work out of it every day I would legitimately probably never leave my apartment for anything other than food. It would drive me mad, and I would probably quit to work somewhere else.

So imagine this very common scenario. You've just graduated college where you had group activities of all sorts, lived with people, etc. Get a job offer. And you don't even need to go into an office!

So now you're working out of your small apartment. Maybe you have a housemate or two for better or worse. Besides maybe an onsite meeting or two, you only know your colleagues and manager by messaging and video call. There's no luncheon chit-chat. No softball league. No after-work beers. No random hallway conversations. No impromptu conversations with your manager.

I work pretty much fully remote now by choice and I'm very good with that. I can't really imagine having done it early in my career.

I live with two housemates. Some days they work from home, if I didn't have an office to work from, my house would become the office. Or more precisely my room as both my housemates work jobs that require lots of phone calls.

I currently sleep and relax in the same room. I do not want to add working to the list of things I do there.

Human contact.

I mean, your coworkers can drive you absolutely bonkers, but being alone all day can drive you crazy in a different way.

Loneliness.

For what it's worth, I don't know many developers who'd want to work 100% remote. I think the samples that one implicitly takes from online comments can be really skewed.

I do know lots of developers who'd like to work from home periodically, sometimes up to a few days a week. But they still like to be able to come into a physical office, have their own seat/desk, etc., the rest of the time.

Yeah I agree with that fo sho. I'd like 2-3 days/week WFH. I like seeing my co-workers, but commuting and being distracted sucks.

> Surely you're missing something about having highest paying jobs concentrated in a few cities where lots of people want to move to.

Nothing is missing, what you describe is the scarcity that the parent poster is talking about.

My hometown, rural midwestern location, has so many homes available and all of them are under $100,000. 1,500-2,000sqft and 0.5+ acre lots. Many could use a little TLC, but are in safe and livable condition. There are many factories trying to hire anyone with a pulse and clean saliva (drug test that is easy to beat). There are also many engineering jobs available (primarily mechanical and civil). My hometown isn’t sexy though. No hip coffee shops. No gigabit Internet. Few restaurants. Trump supporters everywhere. All of the educated young people, myself included, flee the area.

and how much do those jobs pay? I think that's the problem - you cannot attract people with low pay (it can't be justified by saying the cost of living there is low).

Depends on the job. My aunt is a recruiter for a factory in my hometown. Any human being with a pulse that can pass a drug test could walk in now and get a job paying $18-20/hr with only a high school degree. 1.5 weeks of vacation and health/vision/dental insurance (not the best ever, but better than many places) as well.

For people getting the engineering jobs, salary is $50-70k. The cost of living is hilariously low, so it’s a lot more money than it sounds like.

The problem isn't isolated though. We're at the point where people living in tech hubs are buying houses in Ohio every couple of months, simply because they can.

(owning) housing also isn't necessarily cheap relative to the jobs available in these areas.

> buying houses in Ohio every couple of months, simply because they can

I doubt that, and even if they are I'm not sure it's a wise choice. Housing is cheap here compared to other areas, but it's not that cheap (unless you're buying stuff I'm not sure you'd want to buy anyway).

You're doubting what? That there are people doing this?

It's not hard on a bay area L4+ salary to have a spare 40-50k several times a year (20% of a 200-250k property), especially if you are snowballing with profits from multiple other properties.

> You're doubting what? That there are people doing this?

> buying houses in Ohio every couple of months, simply because they can

Yes I am absolutely doubting this.

> Snowballing with profits from multiple other properties

Like, as in buying properties in Ohio then managing them? If it's in SF I can kind of see it since you can go to the property on short notice, but if you're in SF you aren't buying and maintaining rental properties in Ohio unless you have family here or someone to help out on the ground or unless you seriously enjoy throwing money in the trash. It's far too much work and rental property management companies don't really help except to find tenants. It's hard enough work when you're actually in the same location.

I'm sure there exists people who do it (I don't think I've doubted that it's possible or that somebody somewhere does it) but I'd challenge it as a smart investment choice for sure.

If you want to clarify here because I think that there's some ambiguity between your comment and the OP comment I responded to, please do and I'd love to chat about that.

> buying and maintaining rental properties in Ohio unless you have family here or someone to help out on the ground

I have an extended family member that at his peak time owned about 90 homes in NE Ohio. He lived there his entire life, knew everyone and knew their parents too.

A distant landlord from California will get eaten alive, with the help of the local government. You need to move mountains to get things done when you live in a neighboring town, let alone a coastal state.

> Introduce laws that make it harder to (legally) build housing. Note that much of New York would be illegal to build today, for instance.

This really, really bothers me. The fact that we let our elected officials blame everybody else except them is part of the problem.

They’re interesting in preserving their power (via ask-first permitting and other laws and red tape). They’re not at ALL interested in increasing the supply of housing. Don’t believe them and vote out every single one that lies to you.

One of the princes in Holland has over 500 properties in Amsterdam, fat chance anybody would propose something that would hurt that investment.

> The fact that we let our elected officials blame everybody else except them is part of the problem.

The fact that they're "elected" should be a clue as to why they act the way they do. They believe (rightly or wrongly) that acting any other way will lose them the next election.

> Few people vote for the politician who says "I want your house to go down in price"

A fair few might go for one who says "I want your kids to be able to afford a place of their own someday", though.

true. many folks vote for Green candidates for similar reasons.

I agree with most of your points, but I think the root of this problem is that most people will literally take out as much money as banks will approve them for. Once they lock in their mortgage and home, they'll fight for laws that keep the price of their homes high, even if that means artificially limiting the supply, or enacting zoning laws so no one can build buildings that might block their view, etc.

Yep. This "fuck you, I got mine, now get yours" mentality coupled with NIMBYism is definitely one reason we'll never get affordable housing.

You forgot one step: wait till a market crash and use your available liquidity to further dominate market.

Or...just let the free market create sprawl and reap the rewards of it reducing free space as population naturally grows. No government conspiracy needed.

The free market is not what is creating sprawl. Sprawl is created by policy effectively outlawing anything but cars. Also, cars are convenient when everything is designed for them and pretty much them alone.

The idea of a free market is a bit of a fantasy, but the market does influence policy significantly, which is why there's a lot of car-centric planning around. There are also car-unfriendly places are the world that also have extremely high property values, so it's not due to policy alone.

The car-centric planning came first, though; widespread development of suburbs would not have been possible without major highways being developed, for they would've choked on their own traffic pretty quickly.

The development of some suburbs was enabled by mass transit prior to widespread adoption of cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

Cars enable more suburban development, but their throughput on highways sucks compared to mass transit, which also minimizes their spread in some cases.

There definitely are, but all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head were created before cars and zoning came about.

Which modes of transport are explicitly being outlawed?

Not explicitly outlawed. However, cars are favored over everything. An example: when it snows, giant plow trucks come and clear the roads but the snow gets pushed to the side often covering the sidewalks so nobody can walk unless they walk in the road. Jaywalking is considered a crime in many places since the road is only for cars. Spending on infrastructure meaning 98% for cars and 2% for everything else. Scooters/lighter vehicles/bikes could be a bigger way to get around but made more dangerous and less practical because all of the money for transport is spent on cars and roads are often designed just to make cars go faster at the expense of everything else.

Any place that outlaws large apartment or condominium buildings is effectively outlawing public transportation, as there simply won't be a sufficient tax base to support it, nor will the distances between places be close enough to make the public transportation effective to use.

Imagine a city where specialized roads exist for last mile mobility like electric scooters etc., Where one parking spot per block is scooter/bike. Instead there are regulations on how many shared scooters can exist in a city, how many bike shares, etc.

There is a minimal critical mass to enabling them to be effective and we're not at it because laws.

The free market isn't what provides insanely cheap roads and parking though. If it did we wouldn't legislate minimums.

You could also let the free market create dense housing.

> I don't know how to break this on a policy level.

Berlin plans to freeze rent prices for 5 years in March [1]. But who knows, maybe that will push up prices long term.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/f2f1354e-30a8-11ea-9703-eea0cae3f...

Yeah, that just sounds like a short term punt.

I'd hate to see how much rents jump in February.

Great list, plus the part about it being tax advantageous.

Let's not forget the impact of immigration pushing up prices.

> to make housing "more affordable" while also making it ever more expensive.

This is a simple but excellent way of putting it

> I don't know how to break this on a policy level.

Let's just stop flocking to overpriced places.

It's that simple!

“Belling the cat”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat

The problem is that they are expensive unnaturally but /not/ overpriced odd as it sounds.

Every big company at hubs which tried to move to cheaper locales beyond at most the network's fringe has found it a failure. That is an empirical bit of evidence that there is real value to the location. Essentially it is more expensive than it could be if the city kept up with housing development but the willingness to pay and failure to substitute means the value is real. You personally may or may not get sufficient of worth from the value just like any other tool.

They are highly priced for a reason... because of the demand of people wanting to live there, so no it's not really that simple.

Exactly. I moved to Manhattan to work for Google. Housing is much more expensive here than where I came from but it was absolutely worth it.

Same here, I have an apt which is 30 min commute from downtown chicago and pay highly for it. But to me it's worth it over having a very long commute or finding a different job. Opportunities outside of the city are much more limited.

Chicago has got the metra though which goes out to the burbs. I grew up about 20 miles outside of downtown in the burbs and the rush hour metra would get you downtown in half an hour.

That's true, but there are other tradeoffs with living in the suburbs. I don't have a car and get along fine in the city with public transportation, plus the benefits of the city for a single young professional outweigh the suburbs in my personal opinion. Again it is highly priced, but it's also high in demand and for me it's worth it.

> single young professional

You didn't have to go further than that. Suburbs to me only make sense once you have kids. I'm planning on moving back to chicago this summer and my girlfriend and I are looking to move to a triplex (currently looking at around ukrainian village/wicker park, maybe lincoln park) for a few years until we have kids and then i still might put it off until we have a 3rd or one kid reaches kindergarten age.

So what are all the complaints about?

I'm not complaining?

And if others are complaining, well, they're probably not in the same situation I am.

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