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Comment by JohnWhigham | Hacker News Reader

This country is rapidly approaching a serious precipice. The decades of stagnating wage growth is catching up with the pace of modern life. Corporations run the country and governments don't give two shits. I've always been an optimist, living in the best days of civilization etc, but it gets harder and harder every day to continue thinking this.

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This is regarding the housing affordability of a small, isolated, mountain ski resort town 3 hours from the nearest big city (Boise) in the immediate aftermath of a global pandemic just so we’re clear.

“The plural of anecdote is not data” I repeat to myself after 4 of my 25-35 year old working/newly lower middle class (HVAC/RN/CBP) cousins have purchased homes over the past 6 months in an area where salaries, educational attainment, and life expectancy especially are still chugging along up the slopes.

There have been housing issues in the Wood River Valley for many years. Outside of Ketchum, these are working class towns that have been overtaken.

The good news is we have plenty of resources to solve the problem. In other countries, there is no money that can be poured into the govt, or legislation created, to solve their systemic issues. There's no way Greece could have fixed its economy. But with the US, it's literally just a matter of deciding to re-balance the budget or pass new laws, and the problems go away.

Start with some national protests/riots around wages, housing, etc. Then politicians will magically pass laws to require 50% of new development to be for public housing, for rents not to rise above 2x the median income, and for the cost of public housing not to exceed 2x the comparable cost of private development. Add in closing tax loopholes / taxing the rich more if needed. Corporations and the rich will bitch and moan, but it won't mean jack shit against passed legislation.

It has to happen everywhere at once, or the rich will just move development somewhere else. But they (should) also know the same shit will happen elsewhere.

NIMBYism is an overwhelmingly popular, bottoms-up policy and is pervasive because local governments are highly accountable to their engaged citizens. If corporations ran the country and governments didn’t give two shits, there would be adequate housing supply.

How many ISPs, and what speeds are offered in Ketchum? By that I mean what speeds will one actually achieve, at what hours of the day (or are they a 3AM exclusive), and how often will we hit that maximum?

I feel like most of these problems can be solved by increasing density and having fast transportation links. We are better off having Chinese ghost cities than low density superstar cities where the average worker has to commute hours thanks to a woke left fear of “gentrification”. Build, baby build.

Does a country really benefit from a majority of its people living in hyperdense incredibly urbanized cities, stacked on top of another in 200 sq. ft apartments? Gotta be a better solution - I of course don’t know what it is, but just my 2¢

You’re free to not live in cities. But even suburbs don’t build like they did in the 70s.

Can we compromise at 750 square feet?

If we thought it was worth forcing people to move the problem could be solved without creating a bunch of new ghost cities, there's already a LOT of undesirable cheap places.

But forced relocation is not something you're gonna get many people on board with.

Here's an example:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/can-infrastructure... "The housing stock is old, and much of it is dilapidated. (You can buy a single-family home for less than fifty thousand dollars.)"

Force some highly paid remote workers to move there and get some more money circulating somewhere that needs it instead of these trendy places.

Sure, you gotta trample all over what highly-paid people want, but no big deal, right? It's for the greater good? Not really any different from trampling over what poorer people currently living somewhere low-density want, if you drop a bunch of high-density development on them, right?

Not if you want to actually have a life and not be confined to a series of small boxes.

The main effect of NIMBY and low density development policy is to confine most Americans to the small boxes known as cars.

I want to have a life where I can walk places.

Most people want a life where they don't spend most of their waking hours in small boxes called apartments, where they actually raise their children and eat and sleep in. They even want a place called "outside" where they can let their kids play on surfaces that are green and not abrasive to the touch and on their own.

Most of European cities are people living in flats and these are known for pretty good quality of life. Shops, cafes, schools, all nearby this way. I don't quite get the American urge to own houses even in the most populous places

The problem is that American housing prices have very little to do with actual supply and demand, but are valued almost-exclusively by their proximity to density. (i.e, "location"). The density is the solution to the physics problem, but that same density is simultaneously the root cause of the cost problem. Americans can't just build empty cities and have people move into them, until America stops financially punishing people for moving into those buildings.

It's not a "woke fear" of gentrification. It's simple fact-of-life stuff. Most Americans are either poor, or are one-or-two minor mistakes away from becoming poor (the so-called 'middle class'). Regardless of whether they own or rent, they all rightfully fear the explosion in cost of living, and are doing anything they can to get the gross financialization of living away from their own lives.

And, as most policy exists in the US today, if you increase density anywhere in the US, all housing nearby instantly becomes more expensive (regardless of whether wages are rising or falling, regardless of whether the population is growing or shrinking, regardless of any actual human behaviour elsewhere). People, rightfully, are scared shitless this will happen to them.

And they can't directly fight it, because it's literally federal policy -- comparables are how all mortgages are underwritten, and comparables don't care who actually did what, and are trivial to game.

Oh, this building has rents that are completely unsustainable for the local population? Who cares, they're on the market, so they're part of the "market rate" now. Oh, some rich guy got mad that Americans got a trivial amount of emergency cash during the pandemic, and is now ranting about "Fiat Currencies" and "Hyper-inflation", so decided to convert his spare cash into property to sit on it? Guess Mom and Pop now have to compete against him when home shopping, that's "just the way things are". Oh, this building got purchased at 3x what it's actually worth, because an investment firm panicked over getting caught shorting GameStop stock earlier this year and has nowhere better to park it's spare cash with zero risk? Comparables don't give a shit, every real human has higher rents and higher housing prices, just to make those specific people happy.

In a neoliberal Econ-101-only world view, all that mess "counts as demand" and must be "serviced by supply", just as if they were all real people needing a real place to live.

So, someone who has only taken Econ 101, thinks the fix is always as simple as "build baby build, it's just supply and demand, duh". They usually get their way (in every place that's not SF/BayArea), and then they wonder incredulously why all the real people left and no one can afford to live there anymore.

"I don't understand why people making $36k/yr won't pay $2k/month for our studio micro-apartments. I guess we just didn't gentrify enough. We'll just keep ramping up the gentrification, because that's what Econ 101 theory says to do. ".

Density increases prices for sure in much of the US - all you have to do is look at Manhattan, SF, or the denser parts of LA to see that - but it's wrong to say it has nothing to do with supply and demand. The expensive places that are dense also have lots of high-paying jobs, so people who get those jobs want to live close to those. But then it spirals: that concentrated pool of talent encourages the creation of more jobs which bring in more people which pushes prices up which impacts a wider and wider radius. That's not a problem that can be solved through increasing density alone, though.

> The expensive places that are dense also have lots of high-paying jobs,

Yes, this is true of some of the places, but definitely not all of them. Just look at most of the Midwest for an abundance of density-driven explosion in cost-of-living, but without any abundance of "high-paying jobs" to match.

I get that most of Hacker News is experienced with major cities (NYC, Boston, DC, Phily, SF, LA, Seattle, Portland, etc). And so it's tempting to tie housing costs to the specifics of that cities economy. But that's not the scary part. The scary part is looking at cities with "boring"/"normal" economies, and seeing the exact same thing happening to CoL over there.

Seattle can at least point to Amazon and say, "see, look, any random fresh grad can be making over $120k/yr at Amazon HQ!" to justify their insane housing prices. Indianapolis, Cincinatti, Louisville, and many more are increasingly getting up to similar prices, without any similar wages to justify it.

This article, for example, is about Ketchum Idaho. The person interviewed works two jobs to make $60k/yr and still can't find housing, because (according to Zillow, anyway) today's average sale price is over half-a-million dollars each!. Surely, Ketchum did not suddenly get an abundance of "high-paying jobs" to justify these prices. And Ketchum's total population has been basically flat for 20 years now, and today's estimate is still lower than their peak population from the year 2000, so there's no magic huge influx of new residents to point to to justify the prices either.

What does someone who isn't a college grad get in Seattle? Those are the people make $60k in this story.

I want to understand what you're saying, but at first glance this is contradictory: housing prices are driven by density, and housing prices are increasing in Ketchum. But Ketchum didn't increase density, and neither did anywhere nearby as far as I can tell. So what is driving the increase there?

I've visited Ketchum and think I have an idea, but I'd like to hear your explanation.

We have the largest generation hitting retirement age who want to keep their largest source of value at peak levels. They're also the most active voters who can contribute the highest level to campaigns.

I'm not sure the "average worker" you're talking about is actually the average.

And "woke left fear" is more like "economic certainty". I mean, did you read the article? If the workers can't afford to live there, there's no workers. Gentrification leads to failure unless you just happen to have a pocket of your city dedicated to housing all the poor people you need to run your 50 Starbucks.

Fast transportation links are definitely useful. For example, in many densely populated cities, there are large, incredibly poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods on the outskirts of those cities, as that's where are the poor people were pushed by gentrification, redlining, etc. Even if there were jobs for them within a reasonable distance, public transportation would take them 3+ hours to get there, and not run late/early enough for many jobs. Faster and more transport links could help raise up huge swaths of oppressed people - though it has to be paired with increased access to education, food, small business loans, job programs, affordable childcare and healthcare, community outreach, etc.

Increasing density would only exacerbate the problems of poor communities if it doesn't come with solutions to all those other problems I mention. Unless your intention is to create favelas.

> it has to be paired with increased access to education

Maybe some sort of skills training cooperative? You teach me and I teach you?

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