California plans to turn the screws on NIMBY cities | Hacker News Reader

California plans to turn the screws on NIMBY cities

fullstackeconomics.com

201 pointsyedava544 comments

I watched the New York Times opinion piece "Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How." [0] recently. This quote sums it up perfectly:

>You cannot say you are against inequality in America, unless you are willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood.

Progressive cities should be leading by example, since they have legislative and executive control, but it's especially unsettling to see them take actions that indicate the opposite of the values that they espouse.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDgcjVGHIw

> willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood.

The problem here is that you can't really build "affordable housing" any more than you can build "affordable cars". At least, not in the way "affordable" is used by progressives.

You don't build affordable cars, you just build cars, which end up becoming "affordable" in the used car market. Ditto for housing.

There have been attempts at building affordable housing at large scale. We've spent the past 30 years tearing down those "projects". Similarly, plenty of countries have tried to build affordable cars, but they're only sustainable by limiting imports as market-rate cars end up being preferable, both new and used.

How about we just let real estate developers build housing. Full stop. We can use policy and public funding to fill in the cracks, but "building affordable housing" doesn't actually make any sense at scale. Not unless you do something like Singapore, which sells their affordable housing, permitting individual purchasers to leverage private market financing. You get significantly more bang for your buck that way as private finance markets have much more money than is available from the government.

Advocating for "affordable housing" is really just an excuse to oppose housing as you can always claim that a project isn't sufficiently "affordable". This is basically how most residential projects end up getting stonewalled.

> You don't build affordable cars, you just build cars

There. You've hit upon the crux of it.

Entirely too many areas of California are opposed to new housing developments because it's going to lower their property values. Period. End of story. They're too fucking cowardly to come right out and say it, which is why I not only have no respect for these people, it's why I call them out on their bullshit - to their face - every single chance I get.

"Doing good" requires sacrifice. Always. Because if it was fuckin' easy, everyone would be a do-gooder. Everyone would be rushing into burning buildings to save someone, diving into sub-zero temperature water through the ice to grab the person who fell in, sacrificing their wealth to make the world better, etc.

Most of these people want to feel good, they don't actually want to do good. Buying a Tesla, installing solar panels, recycling your paper and plastic, donating (usually just enough to offset tax burdens) to charities doesn't make you a good person. YOU have to personally suffer and give up something of significant value - in this case, your multi-million dollar valuations on your housing.

/rant

My feeling on this is similar, and I'd take it a step further.

Somebody wants to build some houses in Nimbyville. They developer stands to make money, and increasing the supply of housing will benefit those who want to move there[0] by (presumably) lowering the cost of housing overall.

This is fine, but there's a good chance the people in Nimbyville who own houses will see the value of those houses go down in the event these new ones are built. Or they may be hurt in some other less tangible way, the salient point is that they think it would be bad for them and are willing to expend some effort or forgo some utility in order to prevent the construction. Furthermore and importantly, they current residents have power over the new builds, via city councils and zoning and objections etc.

Hence the free market solution is to buy this privilege from them. The developers can offer to pay the people who stand to lose property value, until the proposition is profitable for the Nimbys. If the price gets too high then it might be worth it to go down another route like legislative change from a higher power like state government, or a PR guilt campaign. This seems to be what's happening now. I wonder though if you couldn't just pay people off? [1]

[0] Even if the housing isn't cheap, since it potentially frees up a cheaper house in the same area.

[1] You may argue that this constitutes rent seeking on behalf of the Nimbyvillians.

>"Doing good" requires sacrifice. Always.

Great rant! I never really boiled it down to the bare nubs like that, but you are right.

I am going to share that basic idea around some. More people need to internalize it.

Having not done that is likely why people love stories about other people doing good.

"Entirely too many areas of California are opposed to new housing developments because it's going to lower their property values. Period. End of story."

This explanation is commonly repeated, but it rings false, for a couple reasons.

One is that if you ever talk to a NIMBY boomer (or are related to one), you'll very rarely hear them talk about their home value, except in the context of lamenting how their kids can't live near them anymore. Instead, you'll hear them talk about how they'll lose their view if the high-rise goes up, or they'll be in shadow, or that it'll bring in the riff-raff, or the roads can't support more traffic, or how will the school systems cope, or it'll change the bucolic character of the town, or you won't be able to know your neighbors. It's all about preserving lifestyle, not money.

A second is that even if these are bullshit excuses for actually wanting money, their incentives don't add up. The worst NIMBYs are people who intend to die in their home and never move again. Economically, they shouldn't care about their home value, because by the time they can turn it into cash, they'll be dead. A lot of them are even childless, so the "leave an inheritance for the kids" argument doesn't apply.

A third reason is that development usually raises home values. 30 units on a half acre in the Bay Area goes for about $10M; 1 unit on a half acre in the Bay Area goes for about $3-4M. This is how developers profit, and how they can convince homeowners to sell to them in the first place. Upzone a 1/2 acre SFH and the homeowner can pocket a million or two over fair market value, and the developer pockets maybe $3M after construction costs.

A more likely explanation is to a.) take NIMBYs at their word when they say it's all about quality of life rather than finances and b.) understand that development privatizes gains among former and non-residents, socializes losses among current residents, and socializes gains among future residents. When a lot gets upzoned, the people who make a financial windfall are the developer (non-resident) and the seller (former resident). The people who enjoy a better quality of life are the new residents who move in and wouldn't otherwise have a home in a desirable community (future residents). The people who suffer a worse quality of life - for all the reasons listed above - are the existing homeowners (current residents). Guess who are the voters?

How do we choose who has to sacrifice? Isn’t one group bearing the brunt of sacrifice the very definition of inequality.

Often times it could be a rich person defending his property name but it could just add easily be a poor family.

I’m no NIMBY but often times the solution isn’t easy because it has to be fair.

We never seem to consider the downstream impacts of our regulatory dogooderism, the end result in my lifetime has been to make life worse for the poor.

In short, you can build affordable cars, by getting rid of the requirements for -

Active suspensions (conservatively an additional 1000 dollars)

Traction Control (though, this is potentially free if the car already has ABS, which should be required)

Side curtain airbags (500 dollars per airbag unit, and each car has multiple units)

Knee Airbags (500 dollars per airbag unit, and each car has multiple units)

Backup Cameras (this alone adds upwards of 1500 dollars to an economy car because of the systemic upgrades that need to be done to the infotainment system)

Eliminating these items would cause few excess deaths, yet would make cars much more affordable for poor people.

There is no reason the Chevy Spark should cost 13,000 dollars for what it is.

>Backup Cameras (this alone adds upwards of 1500 dollars to an economy car because of the systemic upgrades that need to be done to the infotainment system)

I'm sorry, but what?! A backup camera kit is $50 on Amazon[1].

Just because someone can charge you 30x that amount, doesn't mean it costs that amount, nor that it would contribute this much to the cost of the car.

>There is no reason the Chevy Spark should cost 13,000 dollars for what it is.

What's wrong with the Spark?

It competes with Honda Fit, which is better, but also pricier. And it's absolutely worth it.

I think that a new car being 13 laptops worth is pretty damn reasonable.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/LeeKooLuu-Monitor-Driving-Reversing-W...

Yeah, I don’t know about getting rid of those regulations for cars, but it is worthwhile to think about what happens when you get rid of a bunch of regulation for housing “safety.” A lot of housing regulation we have today is mostly to get rid of tenement housing. If cities got rid of minimum apartment sizes and we allowed dorms/flop houses where you get a tiny single room, or a slightly less tiny room for groups, more people could at least cram indoors in much safer spaces than they get out on the streets.

Laws in Californian cities go much further than just blocking tenements though. Just eliminating the cost of litigation and allowing constructions as-of-right would make a pretty big impact. But it politicians really do need to consider whether a law that is intended to help poorer people will actually put more of them out on the street.

>Active suspensions (conservatively an additional 1000 dollars)

Since when does the average car have an active suspension?

That's something that is generally associated with high end cars like the Audi A8 which costs 107k€.

https://youtu.be/Ocul-GV8284

That's a different story though. The mandates turn these into economy-of-scale problems that should drive the free market to greatly reduce the cost. There is no reason a backup camera should cost 1500.

You could safely get rid of most of those things if you made the car go no faster than say 25mph. Just put speed limiters on them and the crash speeds will go way down as will the design requirements.

You've succinctly listed many of my complaints.

You're head of the NHTSA if I ever become president

Amen. The purity tests that “Affordable Housing” is subjected to inevitably leads to failure.

Build housing. Build too much of it, to the point where it’s hard to sell and you have to lower the price to find buyers. That’s it. Housing is a supply problem. The housing crisis isn’t happening because houses cost $2,000,000, it’s happening because there are a dozen buyers ready to pay that amount for it.

I was going to come here to say this.

The only nit I have (and I think this is actually what you meant) is we must build more housing. I say this because often people think it's good to tear down an old house and build a new one. That isn't helping things (and I'd argue actively hurts things).

> Build housing. Build too much of it, to the point where it’s hard to sell

Why would someone build too much housing that makes it hard to sell? Government incentives? (I agree with the want, I don't know how the free market would do it on its own without incentive, when there's already lots of incentive to have not-enough-housing.)

This has been happening in China for over ten years, and housing has only been getting more expensive in the process -- even while much of it remains empty, waiting to be sold to a higher bidder.

Yes, it will all collapse someday, maybe soon. But as long as housing is treated as an investment, it can remain unaffordable in the face of supply surplus.

Investors will buy out everything, and outbid anyone else in the process.

In the wealthy suburbs of Texas with houses averaging 4000sqft with swimming pools @ $1+M you can find, right next to them, trailer parks where you can see mobile homes of $50k. You can also find huge apartment buildings (easily with 500 units each) with rents ranging from $600 to $1200 for a two bedroom.

The liberal states would never allow this to happen.

> In the wealthy suburbs of Texas with houses averaging 4000sqft with swimming pools @ $1+M you can find, right next to them, trailer parks where you can see mobile homes of $50k.

You literally described where I live - Keller, Texas.

I bought my home January of this year for $319,000. It's now appraised for about $400,000. Literally across the street from the exit of my subdivision is a trailer park. It's a damn nice trailer park, but it's still a trailer park.

Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and Fidelity moving near here and establishing their enormous campuses has been a godsend for property values, but there's already additional massive housing developments being built to support all the people that are moving into this area, which is obviously great, as you point out.

There are mobile home parks in silicon valley next, right next to houses worth way more than $1 million. Pretty sure you would find mobile homes next to $4 million houses. There is a mobile home park in walking distance to Google HQ.

Those are probably mostly for legacy reasons since land is so expensive now.

Where in Texas is this?

The worst part of this is that 'affordable housing' requirements in SF have turned into a tax on new housing that just prevents both from being built (e.g., 'Oh you want to build a 500 unit building that just barely pencils? Well, unless you can also build 75 affordable units, that lots just going to sit empty, isn't it?'. It's one of the greatest examples of perverse incentives in the history of time.

>How about we just let real estate developers build housing. Full stop. We can use policy and public funding to fill in the cracks, but "building affordable housing" doesn't actually make any sense at scale. Not unless you do something like Singapore, which sells their affordable housing, permitting individual purchasers to leverage private market financing. You get significantly more bang for your buck that way as private finance markets have much more money than is available from the government.

An excellent point.

This was successfully done with Mitchell-Lama[0] housing, which provided more than 100,000 housing units (both rental and cooperatives) in New York.

This program was begun nearly 70 years ago and has been quite successful.

Unfortunately, similar programs have not been implemented elsewhere and the rate of new Mitchell-Lama housing development has slowed to a standstill.

Revitalizing Mitchell-Lama and creating similar programs elsewhere could spur development of lots of "affordable" housing.

Sadly, governments in the US seem to be more interested in maximizing real estate values than in housing its residents.

I should have included mention of this type of development in my previous comment[1] about revitalizing small towns. I'd posit that such programs could be quite helpful in those types of efforts too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell%E2%80%93Lama_Housing_...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29223502

> Sadly, governments in the US seem to be more interested in maximizing real estate values than in housing its residents.

This is the real crux of it from what I've read. Housing can either be affordable, or an engine of wealth creation, but not both simultaneously. Guess which politicians and our laws pander to?

You can design affordable zones by allowing mixed use, allow "middle" housing with 2-12 units per building,removing parking minimums and giving buses dedicated lanes.

You can't reduce inequality if every house in an area is the same size. You need to mix single family houses with duplexes, quadplexes and buildings with more units.

In an area like that you can live without a car and don't have to giving up much freedom. This alone frees up a few 1000 Dollars per year. A bonus is that you don't bankrupt a city if you build like this.

Here is an example of a building with 8 units: https://www.weberhaus.ch/assets/haus/672/30490_1631114162.jp...

> You don't build affordable cars, you just build cars, which end up becoming "affordable" in the used car market. Ditto for housing.

The problem I see with this analogy is that housing is an investment (which is part of the problem when you want to build affordable housing), but cars are not. I don’t think anyone decides to buy a “used house” vs a “new house”. Houses are houses, you buy the one you can afford.

Houses do not go up in value. It is the land. Land should go up in value if the city or town develops. Housing prices can still remain stable if you are allowed to break it down and built something denser. Tokyo is an example where housing prices are far more stable compared to the west despite being the most populous metropolis on earth.

A house isn’t an investment, it’s a depreciating asset just like a car. Land is the investment. You can witness this phenomenon every day just by driving around residential neighbourhoods: people tearing down newly purchased houses and building new ones on the lot. What did they spend all that money on if they were planning to tear the house down from the outset? It wasn’t the building, that’s for sure.

The building itself, on an individual basis, depreciates over time. The investment component is about the land, or more accurately, the volume of space above (and to a certain extent below) the surface that is inescapably necessary for human existence, which can be enclosed by walls and a door for additional dignity.

It is a claim on the sky.

The problem is that people have confused speculation and investment frankly. An investment generates value over time. Speculation is based upon an asset's value appreciating. When dealing with "pures" look at how they would perform in a hypothetical long term stable priced market.

>I don’t think anyone decides to buy a “used house” vs a “new house”

You're correct that this distinction is minor to most native-born Americans, but is much more important to some other cultures.

I’m being annoying, but I know, but maybe there is some relevance here; my last 3 cars have been vintage and I’ve turned a profit on all of them.

What a weird analogy. We do build cheap and we do build expensive cars.. Just like houses you can build them big and expensive or small and cheap.

And unlike cars, houses aren't supposed to depreciate in value to become affordable, so you have to bake affordability into the initial planning requirements (or have those on lower incomes live a very long way away)

You can’t be serious? You analogy is very flawed. A better analogy is affordable house and affordable transportation. Guess what? It’s call mass transit. It’s called planned communities. And yes, affordable cars can be made. Americans bitched and moaned they couldn’t. The Japanese are their lunch.

Leaving something up to developers resulted in McMansions. This has been studied a lot and the results are clear.

One, directed policy is the fastest way to affordable housing.

Two, affordable doesn’t mean slums. This isn’t Section 8. This is the government setting policy that dense housing needs to be build near transit centers. Wow. What a concept. I would take it a step further and require certain building practices that increase the expected lifespan of the condo. It can be done without looking like a 70s prison.

Stop letting people build anywhere without penalty. Have defined city limits with dense housing and transit / walk ability to go with it.

So many things you can do we don’t do. More people should live aboard.

Quick note: right now, most of the high-cost areas being discussed have zoning rules prohibiting dense housing near transit centers. Defined city limits come with restrictions on how densely housing can be built.

So the starting point isn't introducing density requirements, it's simply removing density restrictions.

In a situation where housing supply is well below demand, obviously developers are going to prioritize the most profitable projects, i.e. “luxury” housing, as long as the imbalance persists. Since economists estimate the Bay Area needs to expand housing by 50% just to keep prices stable, that’s not happening anytime soon.

One of the most powerful tools is Scott Wiener’s SB35, which basically allows a developer to just ignore all the obstruction from NIMBYs and cities if the development has a certain proportion of affordable units (every building has its less desirable units, so they are it), as used here:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-p...

Obstructionism uses stalling tactics to make developers give up because their costs keep running while nothing happens. While a unit with 50% affordable housing may not be as profitable as a 100% market rate one, the option value of not having to deal with the red tape and rank hypocrisy is so high I expect it will be used increasingly, and there will probably be NIMBY efforts to overturn SB 35.

50% affordable housing in a single area is a model most cities have moved away from. There has been a substantial effort to distribute affordable housing geographically to reduce the clustering effects that lead to high crime and gang formation. This flies in the face of that.

You can let real estate developers build full-stop, but the town/city/state has to be prepared.

Schools need to handle capacity, traffic routes need to be reimagined, law enforcement and other public services need to be made larger.

Oh yes. And build code enforcement needs to be on top of things.

Something like duplexes are really good, though. Aside from the headaches inherent to condos/HOAs, they don’t really drag down the value of properties.

There is one issue with the developers - they have less incentive to build enough homes to actually drive down prices via market forces because it means less profit for them.

If all red tape were removed, it would take years and years to bring down prices if you are just relying on private developers. It would happen eventually, but would take a very long time.

One possible solution here is for the government themselves to get involved and build homes, this will bring down prices much more quickly. Not as welfare or "low income" housing, but as an actual market intervention. This happened in Australia in the mid 20th century and had good results.

Developers are not a unified cartel, in fact they can be very far from it.

The problem is that developable land supply in expensive metros has become so small that a few large developers can corner the market; however, historically a good portion of housing stock comes from conversions or developments built by small time landlords (to go from one units to three on a plot of land, as an example). There was an article recently on how a lot of the new ADU units recently are actually being built by the homeowners who currently live on that land. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/business/economy/californ...

> There is one issue with the developers - they have less incentive to build enough homes to actually drive down prices via market forces because it means less profit for them.

People were building their own homes for centuries before there were "developers". I would argue that over-regulation has made it extremely difficult for small builders or family builders to attempt to build their own homes. Only large corporations with a legal team can run that gauntlet.

If regulation were reduced, we'd probably see a lot more small time builders, or people taking classes to learn how to build their own homes, cooperatives being set up (possibly organized through Y Combinator startups dedicated to that) where people could Amish-style bring a community together to build homes.

> they have less incentive to build enough homes to actually drive down prices via market forces because it means less profit for them

If a developer can replace a $5mm house with a 30-unit tower of $500,000 apartments, that's good business. Of course, if you put ten years of planning commissions and environmental reviews in between, the cost might need to be $1mm. And if the neighborhood blocks the building because it changes the character of the neighborhood, the entry cost will remain $5mm.

Why would it take long?

Rich people in SF live in crappy homes today and would love to free them up and move to nicer homes.

The more rich people that move out of the older homes, the more affordable the older homes become.

You state "let real estate developers build housing. Full Stop."

Using your car example, if we allowed auto-makers to do anything they wanted, FULL STOP, well...fuel standards would be much lower and we'd have even more work to do on carbon emissions. Furthermore, when you look at most of the massive cars built today, the majority of trips will have on average maybe 1.2-1.5 people in it. Most people choose their cars selfishly, with little regard for local emissions, asthma, emphysema, or the broader climate.

Should automakers be making these huge cars, unregulated and unfettered? Wouldn't it be better for the untold billions of people not yet living, if we put into place guidelines and rules to limit the inefficiency of laissez-faire vehicle production?

Now, let's think of housing. Does it make sense in San Fran to build more single-family homes, when the footprint of where houses can be built is so limited? Or, does it make sense to have 3-5 family units, allowing less-rich or less fortunate individuals to still buy in to the market? Will the developers that you're "just letting" do whatever they want build these more useful domiciles? Or will they build luxury homes for the rich with higher profits based on higher prices?

I think individuals owning pieces of the city is a luxury. It makes more sense to me to have 3-5 family units, or small condo or townhouse buildings. Will those be built by the laissez-faire free market? The outlook is not good.

"You don't build affordable cars, you just build cars, which end up becoming "affordable" in the used car market. Ditto for housing."

???

No, you can absolutely build 'cheaper cars'. By opting out of fancy things, materials, add-on equipment.

"Ditto for housing."

No, because housing costs are a function mostly of the real estate, a function of exclusivity.

There is 'affordable housing' all over the USA - just not in Manhattan, SF, Santa Monica, DC etc..

You're both right.

The problem IMO is that "affordable housing" has become synonymous with "subsidized, below market rate housing". And of course that's extremely costly.

We're 1) not allowing ways to make housing cheaper and 2) not allowing building more. Which are the real ways to solve the problem sustainably.

There is such a thing as lot size and footprint in real estate and things are dramatically more affordable if they are built on 1/4 of the land. People used to live in small tenements but we’ve zoned such property out of existence. Just because people think 1500ft is a need these days doesn’t make it so.

> How about we just let real estate developers build housing.

Then you will end up with a situation like in Munich, where land is so expensive that the resulting housing is only affordable for the select few (20.000€ per m² in the former Paulaner brewery [1]).

The result of that is gentrification, aka low-wage employees getting priced out of the city - and the final result of that is effectively class warfare: the poor are stuck in substandard living situations (e.g. lower availability of public transport, lower available internet speed, lower availability of medical services, entertainment, ...) and have to waste hours each day on commuting on top of work, whereas the rich elites live a segregated life in luxury.

[1]: https://www.tz.de/muenchen/stadt/au-haidhausen-ort43334/prei...

You are right. I don’t think people mean Cabrini Green when they say affordable housing. They mean 1000-1500 square foot normal houses, condos, and apartments, built in sufficient quantity to satisfy demand.

As it stands many California cities do not allow anything to be built at all or make it so hard that it can only be profitable to build higher margin luxury housing.

Definitely. Either you need more supply or less demand, and as we are making more people, demand is only going up in the near to medium term.

That said, whenever social housing comes up, I hear a lot about social housing in Austria and how it could be a model to follow. But I don't know the details.

> and as we are making more people, demand is only going up in the near to medium term.

Birth rates are below replacement in the US (and basically every other high income nation). What's driving demand is rural to urban migration. The 20 or so major metro areas are where all the good jobs are, so that's where people are going. This is one of the most powerful forces in the US post WW2, and is driving many of our political and economic failures.

>How about we just let real estate developers build housing.

How about letting actual people do it.

Is it illegal for a regular person to build a house by themselves in California??

I wonder what percentage of USA used cars end up going overseas. I was in Tbilisi, Georgia (the country) a month ago and saw a car with a sticker for an auto dealer in Chattanooga, Tennessee (the US state).

Last I knew, Tennessee was one of the few states that does not do car inspections and didn't have mandatory insurance for a long time. Places like that encourage lots of beaters, of which I am a fan, being rather poor.

There's something else: all of what you say is true if and only if the governement doesn't do anything. In France we have subsidized HLMs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLM), and every city is supposed to have a certain percentage of habitation buildings be HLM, or pay a fine. I don't know if this system could be applied in the USA, though I could see progressives asking for it.

>How about we just let real estate developers build housing. Full stop.

I agree with the sentiment but you can't just let them flood in and completely remodel the neighborhood. Zoning has to be changed incrementally so that people get to adjust to the changes slowly otherwise they become full blown NIMBYs that reject everything.

> The problem here is that you can't really build "affordable housing" any more than you can build "affordable cars".

But you can? There wouldn’t be affordable taxis in Russia if there were no Kia Rio. You can’t just flood the market with government-mandated Mercedeses and expect good things to happen.

When I was in Russia I recall seeing "Chery" (Chinese car brand) as well at the very low end. I'm almost certain that one doesn't meet crash test or other requirements for the US market.

This seems overly simplistic.

The article talks about a new statewide law, that prevents local zoning from banning duplex homes where single family homes are built.

So in the car analogy, this is like forcing all family cars to be minivans. Minivans are great, but they're clearly an added expense for a singleton or smaller or poorer family that would otherwise buy something smaller.

So, you are fairly directly creating "affordable" (relatively) housing by passing this law.

But, you seem to be turning this around and fighting against such laws. Isn't this contradictory?

They aren't forcing any single property to be a duplex. Instead they are preventing a ban on allowing the property to be a duplex. The property owner can still choose to build a single family home at their discretion.

The comparable car example would be preventing a local ordnance that bans minivans. The car buyer can choose a car or minivan based on their discretion if such a ban is prevented. Some localities don't like minivans for whatever reason and would like to ban them, thereby forcing everyone to buy cars.

> The problem here is that you can't really build "affordable housing" any more than you can build "affordable cars"

Of course you can. Ever been inside a commieblock in a former Soviet Union country? They're actually pretty sustainable and efficient, and were relatively cheap to construct. They're also ugly and lack natural light, and the stairwells reek of cigarettes etc. etc..

We haven't been tearing housing projects in the US down because they aren't sustainable, but because people don't like living in them, and they tend to have high crime rates. Since the Reagan administration we've decided the market can provide better options, and essentially banned new public housing. But has it provided better options? Does it feel like this is working?

The argument of the YIMBY/"fix zoning" team is that our current regulatory environment restricts what the market is allowed to provide.

Based on what I've witnessed in my NEC metro neighborhood, this is correct: politicians gain favor with their constituents by fighting tooth and nail against anything that would add neighbors. I see two primary approaches: directly restrict the housing units allowed on a given property, or increase the minimum space allowed by requiring a dedicated parking spot. Since fewer units have to pay for the overall land and construction costs, unit prices go up.

The market is delivering exactly the results that the government requires of them.

I'm not sure you're using "affordable" the way it's used in California these days, though.

Affordable housing doesn't exclusively mean "the projects". It's also used to mean a certain percentage of units in a market-rate building will be designated as affordable. I believe in CA that means that renting/owning it can cost no more than 30% of household income for a renter/buyer that meets certain income requirements. It has nothing to do with the "used market". In many municipalities, there's a minimum affordable percent required by law for new development.

> You don't build affordable cars, you just build cars, which end up becoming "affordable" in the used car market. Ditto for housing.

This comparison is kinda weird, since nearly all cars depreciate in value, and quickly, while traditionally property values generally trend upward, modulo financial crises and large recessions.

> Not unless you do something like Singapore, which sells their affordable housing, permitting individual purchasers to leverage private market financing.

That's a thing in CA as well; it's called a Below Market Rate Ownership Program. If you poke around on Redfin or Zillow, you can often see listings that seem exceptionally low for the property and location, but when you read the description, they'll always mention "BMR" and "meeting income requirements".

> Advocating for "affordable housing" is really just an excuse to oppose housing as you can always claim that a project isn't sufficiently "affordable". This is basically how most residential projects end up getting stonewalled.

The developer and municipality negotiating the final count of affordable units sometimes does slow things down, but that is by no means the dominant cause of stonewalling here.

> How about we just let real estate developers build housing. Full stop.

That would help, certainly, but while studies have shown that just building market-rate housing does help relieve pressure off older & less-desirable housing stock, building both market-rate and affordable housing helps house lower-income folks a lot more, and faster. Consider that an affordable/BMR unit is available to a low-income household immediately after it goes on the market, while building solely market-rate units won't cause older homes to drop in price for some time, especially if the new market-rate housing doesn't cause all demand to be satisfied. (Consider that in places like SF it will take years [decades?] at the current new-building rate to satisfy even mid-pandemic demand.)

To summarize: we need to build a lot more, and we need to build it yesterday. Some of it should be designated "affordable" in order to add some equity to the equation while demand continues to outstrip supply. Existing property values will drop, but I (as a homeowner) will gladly take that hit if it means more people of all income levels can live here and feel secure in their housing.

Everyone’s for “affordable housing.” It isn’t allowed to exist except in rare synthetic occasions however, and nimbys often know that.

It's not so much about "affordable housing" as MORE housing, though, right? Build more housing and prices come down for everyone.

When I lived in London, I was always impressed that there were "projects" in neighborhoods like Chelsea (possibly the most affluent in all of the UK).

After noticing that striking example, I've begun to see that pattern (although more subtly) in a lot of cities, including my own (Madrid, Spain).

I'm all for building affordable housing, but it seems to me that the idea of building affordable housing close more premium housing has been around for some time, and I'm not really sure what it has accomplished for anyone.

Are there examples of success in doing this, and what can be learnt from past failures?

The main purpose as I understand it is that it allows poorer students to go to the nicer schools. In the US, the schools that are 'good' are all in expensive areas.

"to have affordable housing built" presupposes a statist solution. I am not willing to have affordable housing built as presently defined, due to the amount of tax dollar waste, and actual results that I can see (in Seattle); but I'm totally willing for 90% of all zoning and related (parking minimums/environmental/etc) rules to be abolished, and having the amount of housing increase dramatically via market forces.

Hypocrisy? Perhaps but everyone has their best interests.

I know progressive people who are very particular about choosing a school for their kids. Not too many immigrants or students from "complex" backgrounds. Everyone wants an inclusive society but nobody wants their child to suffer from it in a world where education is a life or death situation.

"nless you are willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood."

There is no need for housing to be built in any specific location, or even density.

NYC has tons of density and it jumps from poor to rich. So does London. So does Hong Kong. And it's generally 'unaffordable'.

Paradoxically Texas has no density, and it's cheap.

'NIMBYISM' is mostly an issue for aspirational workers who want to live in aspirational places, but can't afford it - and that's an inherent function of the system: 'aspirational' places are exclusive. There is no escaping that.

Stabilizing housing prices with rational interest rates, tweaking some zoning laws, possibly some subsidies here and there, working with industry, some state level rent control (like Ontario/Quebec it works well) etc..

FYI here are apartments in Ontario, CA, East of LA:

https://www.apartments.com/ontario-ca/under-1200/?bb=-_8771t...

If you want to live in Santa Monica, it's very expensive, it's not the governments job to provide you with that opportunity, it's their job to create a level playing field, to regulate smartly so that things don't get out of hand - not to make it so everyone gets to live exactly where they want.

Tell me more about these affordable parts of Austin, TX.

You can’t just compare major cities to vast states or nations, that makes no sense.

He said "Texas", not Austin, TX. Not sure why anyone would want to live there anyway... went there to help my nephew move in to his apartment at UT Austin four years ago. Went down there a few times to hang out with him, not fucking impressive. At all.

I'll stick with Fort Worth, and Dallas if I really must.

If you can't afford rent in Fort Worth, drive 20 minutes up the road to Denton. There are 800 sq. ft. apartments there for $695.

At any rate, my personal taste in cities aside, here's the sad truth no one wants to confront: not everyone is going to get to live where they want in life, because not everyone is valuable enough to the economy to make enough money to live in the exclusive places. A cashier at McDonald's will never be as valuable as a developer for a startup company. It's isn't "unfair", it's a function of which adds more value to the market economy.

I'm as left wing progressive as they come and I'm disgusted by the so called "liberal" municipal legislations in the Bay Area. Not only they are very conservative, they have an appalling lack of vision and imagination and display a total lack of leadership at every level.

This place with better leadership could be a paradise and we're stuck in a shitty suburb always stuck in traffic where there's nothing to do and bad architecture galore.

We can do better.

This unfortunately true in California. NIMBY moment is strong.

Another perspective.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o (Love this channel!)

I guess people just take it for granted, but can you state a fundamental reason why people should be forced to live next to affordable housing?

What if I pay extra money to live in a nice location, say with an unobstructed view to a lake or whatever. Why should there be a law that decides my neighborhood has to be destroyed for the sake of "equality"?

Does equality (or "non-inequality") mean nobody is allowed to have anything that somebody else doesn't have? Because that sounds like full blown socialism to me.

What about San Francisco - I hear they have many homeless and people defecating on the streets. Should everybody be forced to live on streets with defecating people? What if people pay extra to live in a ice neighborhood?

I think you have to look at that the other way around. Why would you have an inherent right to stop somebody else doing something with their own property just because it happens to be near you?

Ultimately there are no inherited rights, only guns. So I am not sure what argument you are making? I thought you could come up with some fundamental principle, like "human society would be better if we all adhered to this rule, because bla bla and so forth".

As I stated elsewhere, I think communities or governments sell land under certain premises. For example (possibly) that people buying become part of the community and get a vote in further developments. That would be a reason why they would have "the right" to interfere.

Is this particularly unique to inequality?

You cannot say you are against animal cruelty unless you are willing to stop eating factory-farmed meat?

You cannot say you are against fossil fuels unless you are willing to stop driving [gasoline-powered] automobiles

You cannot say you are against child labor unless you are willing to give up coffee/cocoa/textiles

...

You've listed personal actions. Allowing affordable housing to be built is a collective / political action. The equivalent would be something like "you cannot say you are against animal cruelty unless you support legislation against animal cruelty", and I think that's reasonable.

This doesn't really work. Nimby is "I want this, but not near me" but the examples you gave are "I want this but no one is selling this to me." The difference is that in the first scenario someone is presenting a solution and people are saying "no, not like that" and in the second scenario there's no solution presented and people would probably buy them if they existed (or were just as convenient).

I don’t drink coffee for other reasons but I do buy a lot of dark chocolate. Is it a known fact that cocoa is run by child labor? Even fair trade premium brands like Taza? I’m asking because I will give it up if so.

As for textiles, does this mean all/most brands? I think it is worth boycotting brands that have unethical business practices but I didn’t really realize this was still going on in 2021 to a large extent. I know that sounds ignorant but I guess I just never really looked into it and it definitely isn’t shared in my echo chamber.

Off-topic but the Taza Factory is a fun tour (in Somerville, MA)

I’m not willing to give up textiles all the time, but I always make an effort for No Pants Day. Do it for the children!

Or did I get your argument wrong?

Your analogies don't really track. It would be like saying:

You cannot say you're for affordable housing unless you're personally willing (and eligible) to live in an affordable unit.

(for the record, if I was eligible, I would love to).

One thing I don’t understand about the housing debate is why any specific area needs to be “affordable”

If I can’t afford to live in an area, it seems to me the solution is to live somewhere else.

Maybe I’m missing something. I’m open to new ideas here but I really don’t get it.

Because these restrictions are a net-negative on the entire economy of the United States. If no metro areas blocked housing between 1964 and 2009, GDP would be 50% higher than it is today. (https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medi...)

"The authors estimate that if New York, San Francisco, and San Jose had housing regulations—rules about where you can build, how tall you can build, how much parking you need, and so on—that didn’t protect cute houses and instead were equivalent to the median US city in the period between 1964 and 2009, the US economy would be 9.5% bigger right now, or grow 0.21% more annually. That’s would be a big deal for wages, for the public debt, and for prosperity in general." (https://qz.com/402763/new-york-and-san-fransiscos-insane-hou...)

The average worker's income would increase by $9,000 per year if the Bay Area and New York City relaxed their zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...)

The problem with this is that no matter how much you tell people that they need to live in tiny concrete boxes and like it because it'll make more money for Bezos and co, they're not going to like it, which is why attempts to push it anyway have to be so anti-democratic. Sure, people are all for economic growth if it improves their actual quality of life, but a huge part of that is actually having a decent home and the anti-NIMBY campaigns involve abandoning trying to give that to people in favour of "the economy" and more money for housing developers.

Rent prices in cities where building small apartments is legal indicate that a large number of people want to live in small apartments if it is in a desirable location. For example I share 55m^2 with my wife and we like it. Commutes are short, super markets, cinemas, etc are close by. We don't have a car.

That's a false dichotomy. The solution to "housing crisis in low/medium-density area" need not be "dystopian nightmare".

That is a stupid (as in based on lack of information and wrong assumptions) take. You can have denser, more vertical housing that is pleasant to live in and very beautiful. Think Paris, or any large Italian city. We have multi story tall buildings with commercial space at the street level, the buildings are usually very nice to look at (better than any single family home I've owned or seen in the Bay Area) and are more conducive to meeting your neighbors and generating a lively community.

They are also better for the environment as they are more energy efficient, produce neighborhood that don't require cars for every errand and reduce the need for expanding the city footprint which lead to public transport being more effective.

Oh cool. Go tell everyone in NYC with a chic loft that they don’t like their homes so it’ll free up some for me and everyone I know.

That’s been the mentality in SF for years — “we don’t want to become nyc”. And so what happens? Prices skyrocket, the people who made the city interesting and serve its needs are pushed out, and only the rich enjoy it. The young generation as a whole has little hope of home ownership, while the top who work in well paid jobs reap all the rewards. Those well paid jobs are where it’s expensive to live, so it’s a catch 22. It doesn’t create a balanced society, and in fact just further stresses the differences between the haves versus the have nots. At it’s worst the wealth inequality turns into tinder for moving beyond culture wars into actual war or revolution.

The really frustrating part being they don't need to become Manhattan to keep prices under control. If the areas zoned for single family in the Bay had been raised to 3-4 stories and multi-unit 30 years ago you could have tripled or quadrupled the number of people living in San Francisco without the need for any high rises. Human-scale neighbourhoods would still dominate the city. All the growth of the city could have been easily absorbed without high rises if mixed use mid rise development was allowed.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the next best time is now and California is finally deciding to plant some trees.

San Francisco would have a population of 1.8 million if it merely had the density of Brooklyn.

But the hilarious part about "Manhattanization" is that these people actually think they'll become the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world by accident.

Why do someone need to move to SFO in the first place? Jobs are plentiful nowadays everywhere. So it’s not that for tech jobs one need to move to SFO. Yes one may want to live in Hong Kong , Singapore , Dubai , Mumbai , Paris or SFO but like all over the world certain places have higher per square foot cost than other places.

Many people move half-way across the world to live in SF, and it's _only_ for the jobs. There is no other reason.

That's where a lot of very high paying jobs are

The youngsters are free to live elsewhere no? I just purchased my first home earlier this year. Obviously I had no choice but to purchase a home in a city/neighborhood I could afford. Why can’t others do the same?

A number of different factors that vary for people depending on circumstances. My wife is in nursing school. Sure, we could move to some rural town in Montana when she finishes, but its not reasonable if the closest hospital is 4 hours away. Some of the more affordable places just don't have good access to jobs people want or are qualified for.

I myself work full time and am going to school for Software Engineering. Right now job prospects in where I would like move don't look great since the last job fair I attended, I got the feeling most companies are planning to axe remote work ASAP. Which then limits my ability to move in the market place for jobs.

Others are free to do the same, except that they have to continue to commute to where the jobs are. If they're lucky they might live on the fringes of BART but increasingly people are just condemned to hours-long gridlocked freeway commutes to get to their $17/hr job in SF. To recover any kind of decent quality of life you're talking about moving to a different region/state.

You're a youngster that purchased your first home?

The question is not why others can't; the question is how did you do it.

Please elaborate about your background, education, geography, occupation, whether you have a partner, children, medical issues, and what kind of home you purchased (is this a tent you set up in the woods, or a single-family house), how far it is from work, and how you get there.

Also please include any assistance you got from your family before getting to that point, including contributions to the downpayment, owning property where you could live without paying rent (or allowing you to live comfortably rent-free at their place), co-signing on the mortgage and/or student loans, paying for your education, buying your first car, etc.

Usually, the answer to your question is "because not everyone's parents are well off"; but let's hear your success story.

Yes we're all free to live by market forces. We're also all free to decide if we want regulations. That's the discussion here.

Can you elaborate and explain this further to a curious non-american? So, sounds like the problem is in transportation: if train ride from a low-cost area to a high cost area would take minutes and cost almost nothing, then the problems you mentioned would not be an issue, right? So, why try to fight the laws of economics? Why not let the rich where they want, and let the poor commute to high-job areas by solving the transportation problem? Why there is so much ado and drama? What am I missing here?

- The basic geography of the Bay Area: it's big, it's polycentric, it's hilly, there's a huge body of water on the direct route between many origin/destination pairs. The train ride can take hours and can actually cost quite a bit.

- America's inability to build mass transit cost-effectively. At this point train rides along BART are mostly between high-cost areas, and discussions of expanding the system even a little more have price tags in the tens of billions, and timelines of a decade or more. Besides, the radius of BART is about as wide as it ought to be — it should be filling in, not sprawling out, and that requires upzoning the areas along the train to be effective.

Some of this is ancedotal from a coworker who has a friend who works in a "support role" in silicon valley. That being something like the guy who keeps the AC going, janitor or working in a FAANG coffee shop. While there is some transportation, the issue is, some of this friends in this role, have to take a 1-2 hour commute (using public transit) since they have been priced out that far.

Because of NIMBY. Basically the rich people at the city's center won't let regulations pass that would increase density and therefore more poor people living around them. They like the current status quo because "they got theirs". They limit what kind of housing can be built, how tall it can be, etc and price out all but the richest land developers who in turn charge ultra high rent for the limited housing. I don't even think they necessarily need to build "poor" housing as much as loosening regulations and allow other than historic buildings to exist.

> Why not let the rich where they want, and let the poor commute to high-job areas by solving the transportation problem? Why there is so much ado and drama? What am I missing here?

You're missing racism and greed.

"We don't want those people in our neighborhood" has been the reason for not allowing fast, dense, efficient, usable public transit to exist in the US.

As for the basic laws of economics, they explain that the benefits of public transit are a positive externality; and therefore, public transit has to be subsidized by the government to actually serve the needs of the people. "Not on my tax dime!", says the US. "Who would even use this, poor people? Of color, even? Not in my backyard, and not with my taxes!"

In the same breath, we pay for the ever-expanding highway systems which don't solve the problem, but without which all the Teslas and Porsches would not be of much use.

On top of it, the higher-paid peons (tech workers) can get to feel superior to the people they depend on for living (service workers) by wasting fewer hours of their lives in traffic each day.

See comments in this discussion saying "I don't believe anyone is entitled to live within a short commute from work".

San Mateo County rejected BART expansion when it was initially constructed, which means that essentially all suburban rail traffic into San Francisco goes through the same tunnel under the Bay, and trains are regularly packed to the gills already.

You are not missing much, it's a systemic issue of zero public transportation, constantly growing demand, broken housing market, zoning, and decades of scalability problems.

> Prices skyrocket

The world desperately needs a new metaphor. How about "prices zoom to the moon!"

Every city relies on a bunch of cheap labor. Dishwashers, janitors, cashiers, cleaners, landscapers, baristas, gig workers, and on and on. Is it healthy for a city to need all of these people while denying them a place in it? We have this gross dynamic of essentially telling large swaths of people that they're around only to be the help and that they don't belong.

There is a surplus of cheap labor in the United States (at least up until recently), for the amount of goods and services produced. You may not believe it, but it is true. We have people willing to take jobs at low wages (again, up until recently) because of the growth of automation, outsourcing of low wage jobs to countries with even more labor surplus, and immigration. All these things, I will say off the bat, being good things that are producing good for people. (aside from the question, how many people can our planet sustain)

"How can you tell people they are not welcome to live in the cities where they work" is a nice feel good thing to say, but those are feelings. Liberal city people seem to care a lot about feelings. But what matters, and how people actually behave, is what options and choices and reality people have to decide based on. And I might just point out, you probably don't care equally as much about the young families who are in the tech industry who "get told they can't afford to buy a house where they work". Anyway.

No public policy can escape the fundamental demographic truth that we have a surplus of labor, and as cruel as it may sound, as long as people are willing to take the job for less, people will be coming to work in the Bay Area and yet not be able to live there.

Liberal city policymakers believe that forcing cities to pay living wages or mandating housing will "make people feel welcome and that they belong" but there is no escaping these fundamental forces of wage depression due to labor surplus. Then trying to "fix it" by guaranteeing people housing or forcing affordable housing to be true through rent control etc. just creates more unintended side effects elsewhere. It creates housing shortages, sky high rents where not rent controlled, and protects the very NIMBYism that this article is about (where liberal people, believing their responsibility to be fulfilled through tampering with the market, now refuse to give on actual meaningful changes). And most of all, it makes those who had the good luck to get in, better off than those who weren't chosen to receive those benefits.

As much as good intentions are nice, they rarely lead to good outcomes when applied at that level of thinking.

GP posed a question about why affordable housing in any particular place should be a goal. I offered an answer.

The market price of labor, or of anything else, does not come to us as if handed down by God. It is the result of a social calculation reflecting the things our society values and how much it values them. The fact that MANGA engineers are paid more than teachers is informed by how much we've decided teachers are worth. If everybody woke up tomorrow and decided teachers were more important than we thought today, then teachers would probably get paid more. Our societal values feed into our prices. In this way, we are morally culpable for the consequences of this calculation, and it is incumbent upon us to change things of the results are unjust. For example, by taking a bunch of money from rich people and giving it to poor people. Or by creating conditions for widely-available affordable housing. And I'm not just saying we "guarantee" the housing. We have the state go in and build it.

By the way, I live in Seattle, which raised it's minimum wage to $15 a few years ago to much doomsaying. Research after the fact found no effect on unemployment. It begins to seem to me like the style of laissez-faire economics that have dominated politics for decades (which I recognize may not have much to do with academic economics) is full of shit.

And, yeah, you better believe I care about feelings. Feelings are the filter through which all human experience flows. The economy exists for us, not us for it What good is strong growth if the system that brings it about makes us all miserable?

I can't understand how this diatribe is related to housing. The NY times article mentioned by GP shows clearly "liberal cities" don't give a shit about mandating housing anymore than "conservatives cities" do; it's a false choice, Americans as whole want to preserve housing as an investment asset class. Every decision flows downward from there, and any other division is simply a distraction from the actual issue.

> "How can you tell people they are not welcome to live in the cities where they work" is a nice feel good thing to say, but those are feelings.

If you need it written in selfish then the issue is that eventually businesses will struggle to attract these sorts of workers and/or those workers will start living rough or sleeping in their car as a workaround. This causes hard to measure inefficiencies or other social problems and this all increases cost to business or other economic or social costs.

The wheels of the economy function much better if everybody has affordable, secure shelter with a reasonable commute. I don't see how its "feelings" state this, its just basic modelling.

>outsourcing of low wage jobs to countries with even more labor surplus,

I have to admit, globalization has winners and losers. The nation as a whole is winning but a small portion is losing out and the worst part is that we blame them for that.

This is still something you need to let the market sort out. Otherwise how do you decide who gets to live in CA by the beach, job lotteries?

Personally I'd say the problem is if someone is telling you that you are not allowed to build additional housing units on your property.

Zoning should allow for variety and growth. Japan, for example, does a much better job of this than the U.S. Basic residential zoning allows for multi-unit and mixed use buildings. This is more flexible over time. Cities evolve as the decades pass, they need room to breathe. Single family single use zoning doesn't allow this.

It's a major fail when a society can't provide housing for its people. Seems that a lot of Millennials are concerned about this.

Its something that sucks it has to be done a state level. I mean, that is how most decisions are. It sucks any decision sometimes has to be made at the national level. But NIMBYism has a strong influence in municipalities. I would argue, the people who have the time and resources to go to city council meetings and voice their opinions, are the people who are NIMYBYs. Kind of hard to go to city council meetings or have influence if you don't live in the city (think of an outlying town/city of San Fran), or you have to commute 2-4 hours a day to and from work, or your holding down two jobs to keep your head above water.

This is the best response I’ve gotten so far. It does seem a bit silly to me that I couldn’t build a duplex on my own property.

But then I wonder again if this is an issue that the state government should fix instead of the municipalities.

The problem is that the municipalities are beholden only to the people who live in them, and the people who live in them tend to be pretty selfish when it comes to housing policy. The state can take a bit of a broader view. If it were left up to the municipalities to fix, it wouldn't get fixed.

One could certainly argue that that's fine, and that property owners should get to decide every detail of housing policy for their municipality. I don't personally agree with that, but I can understand the argument.

I like the idea of the states doing something. Like the article mentions! Maybe that's what it takes to get past the local NIMBYs.

If the government was restricting the supply of cars / TVs / medicine, etc, causing the prices to be high, you could make a similar argument: why not buy the older car / smaller TV / medicine with more side-effects that you can afford?

That might not be bad advice at an individual level. But it still seems more optimal to allow people to produce more supply, so more people can get what they want and/or spend less of their income to do so.

For housing people generally want access to good jobs, shorter commutes, more space, and lower cost. Those all exist on a spectrum, but more supply would allow, overall, more people to get more of those things.

From a philosophical point of view, there's the question of who has a legitimate interest in what can be built... there's the property owner, the people who own houses in the neighborhood, and the people who work there but commute. There's the people who live in the general metro area, where the overall supply/demand will affect prices.

You could even consider the people left behind by "economic geography" - as fewer people are employed in agriculture etc, there are less jobs in rural areas, and as knowledge work becomes more important more jobs are created in large cities with liquid job markets (which can support greater labor specialization).

I think there's a case to be made that all these levels have some reasonable interest in the outcome and not just the local municipal level. And particularly at the local level there may be some bad incentives - approving more housing may generate local downsides like traffic, while not moving the needle too much on prices which may be determined more by the metro area as a whole.

Housing policy doesn't just affect the people who live in a place, but also the people who work in a place.

Those people still have skin in the game, but they aren't allowed to vote on that place's housing policy. Consider that the cashier at your grocery store might not be able to afford to live in your city, and has to drive an hour each way to work every day. They have no say in that matter.

(And no, they can't just get a job closer to home. There isn't enough demand for grocery store cashiers there for every cashier-commuter, more or less by definition.)

Cities are conducive to human flourishing. It is good for people to have access to them. They can't be made from whole cloth; only a few sites have the potential to grow as cities in the short or medium term. Many people prefer suburbia, and that's fine, but it's not fine that they insist on having their suburbia on the only possible city sites.

I could flip that question around. Almost the entire country is low density. Why does Palo Alto need to be?

I mean it doesn’t NEED to be expensive it just is. The folks living there don’t want to change their local zoning laws. I don’t really feel like I should have a say if I don’t live there.

The burden of proof for an argument should come from the side which is trying to make a change.

I think we take hyperlocalism too far. If Americans shouldn’t have a say in California and Californians shouldn’t have a say in Palo Alto, then why not have each block be sovereign? Or maybe each house?

My counter argument would be that the policies as they currently stand are policies that affect people who have less legal footing in committing change in that area. Someone who works in San Francisco as a janitor, but lives in San Jose, doesn't get a vote in San Francisco elections. The people who do get to vote are least affected. So now the local problem as external consequences, which kind of punches a hole in it is entirely a local problem. Depending on how far you want to go with considering something local.

EDIT: Another thought. And people the person works in SF, but lives elsewhere, who doesn't get to vote, but still have skin in the game for policy in SF.

If areas take federal or state funding than they input from both the federal and state levels should be considered

People have answered your question but I'll add another aspect: It creates positive feedback loops. The poor get poorer because they have to live where lower paying jobs are. The "rich" get richer because only they can live where the higher paying jobs are. This isn't a society we want.

There needs to be some sort of balance I think. There are limits to either extreme. Imagine if we forced, say, Hawaii to accommodate everyone who wanted to live there? There are limits on the carrying capacity of an area. I would love to let the market sort it out(sans all subsidies, property tax schemes(ahem, prop 13), etc), but I'm afraid the market will push things just to the south of being livable, and we'll build cities with poor quality of life.

That said, ecological concerns will drive more and more of us to the cities, and we need to accommodate those folks. I hope we figure out a way to do it while maximizing quality of life for everyone.

>Maybe I’m missing something. I’m open to new ideas here but I really don’t get it.

Is the concept of "it would take 3 hours one way to commute to work which isn't done remotely" really that hard to grasp?

Or is the concept of relocation being difficult, costing a lot of money, and sometimes not feasible because it means other family members losing jobs too hard to get?

I'm not even getting into the completely ephemeral ideas, like being priced out of the city you grew up in and have family + social connections in. The two above would be a good place to start.

I still say relocate. There’s literally not another option and that’s what I would do.

The alternative is what? Struggle and live in your car for years hoping that state legislation will magically build enough affordable units?

You can’t always legislate every problem away. Life is hard and filled with struggle. I do not buy the idea that anyone is entitled to live anywhere and be able to afford rent and have a short commute. We may as well just ask for a utopia.

>The alternative is what?

Sharing your living space with a dozen people. Either family or random roommates.

What kind of economic background do you have to be asking this kind of question?

> I do not buy the idea that anyone is entitled to live anywhere and be able to afford rent and have a short commute.

I don't buy the idea that anyone is entitled to enjoy the benefits of essential infrastructure (which includes groceries, deliveries, restaurants, stores, etc) if it requires the people that power it to spend hours each day in commute.

>We may as well just ask for a utopia.

High-density, mixed use walkable neighborhoods aren't "utopia", it's how the cities always have been. Suburban cars-first developments and residential-only zoning are not some sort of natural order.

Speaking of cars, without tax-funded highways, the suburban sprawl would not exist.

NYC is far from utopia, but you can rent a studio today within 8 miles of Wall Street for $1400, in a safe neighborhood, next to public transit that will get you there in under an hour, with groceries and restaurants and stores in walking distance.

>Life is hard and filled with struggle

And this is a justification for what exactly?

The issue really is about supply and demand, right? The US has artificially limited supply through restrictive zoning.

Better to fix the supply side than just say "move to texas".

> Better to fix the supply side than just say "move to texas".

but "move to texas" is a solution. The "fixing supply" hasn't worked, for a long time, so why are people lamenting that instead of making "move to texas" easier?

It's not that increasing the supply "hasn't worked"- we straight up don't do it at all. It's been illegal to build anything besides single-family homes in most of the USA since the ~1950s. See SF, LA, Seattle... hugely popular metro areas where most of the city can only legally be a house.

Single family homes are inefficient! Compare us to Japan or China where density is legal, the difference is night and day.

In addition, it's very exclusionary to tell the less well-off to move away. Why embrace exclusivity when we can build more housing?

"Move to Texas" is a solution in your head, not in real life.

Let's see what one needs to do to move:

You need to find a job in Texas. That means in-person interview for service workers. That means also losing current job, because you need to be away from your job for interviews, and those jobs don't have vacations.

So, to boot, you need:

* Enough money to keep your family afloat while you're looking for a job

* Money to pay for hotel while you're interviewing

* Money to pay for a deposit on a new lease in Texas

* Money to cover breaking the lease in your hometown

* Money to go back and forth and actually move your possessions and family (several thousand dollars to either move things or sell/buy everything)

Oh wait, your service job wasn't enough to provide for your family to begin with. Your spouse had to work too, and either or both of you had a "side gig", i.e. a second job to make ends meet.

New task:

* Have spouse find a job or two in the same area

* Find a second job for yourself in Texas that works with the hours and commute for your first job

* Have money to cover the deficit in the meantime

Oh wait, but you also have children. How do you have kids if you're both working?

* Have money to pay for childcare

Haha, of course not. You can't afford that; yours and your spouse's parents were helping out. New quest:

* Also move them to Texas, find places for them to live at, jobs to work at (retirement? Hahahaha), and so on.

But wait! Everyone in your family has health issues, because working those jobs isn't healthy. Your job was crappy, but at least it had health insurance.

* Have enough money to cover all medical expenses out of pocket while you were looking for jobs

Oh, and you're still paying out loans on your vehicle that you need to get to work (and maybe a degree that didn't pan out), plus credit card debt (because you never have enough money to pay it all off)

* Have enough money to cover all the debt that you have because you don't have the money to pay for things that you need to make money

Too bad though, it turns out that you took a risk looking for jobs in a different city that didn't work out. The jobs in Texas that you can find are available because they don't pay enough for the locals to take them. Go figure, minimum wage in Texas is half that of your home state.

Now you're out of money, out of work, without insurance, and with an employment gap what makes it harder to find work.

Having lost medical care, your health issues get worse, making it harder to find work.

So, what exactly should California do to make the above "move to Texas" easier?

No, real estate suffers from inelastic supply per area. It's not a market for bananas going by basic supply/demand equalization.

One problem is these areas are adding jobs but not housing. SF added 10 jobs for every house they built in the last decade, that gaurantees people want to live there and there wont be enough houses, ergo price increases.

Extreme example, but by pushing to the extreme we might illuminate something. Say you are born in Hawaii. One day you realize you can't afford to live in Hawaii. You're screwed.

Well you see at one time in history colonials came to America, killed and genocided the original land dwellers, kidnapped, raped and enslaved people to work on land furthering their profits, passed on their stolen land and wealth through generations while segregating various groups impacted by their transgressions, and to this day ask questions like you. All the while, many of them own multiple properties, have a plethora of unused land, continually abuse their positions as landlords, drive up housing prices to prices that are not affordable, and try to ensure that land is no longer available to settle for those who are simply looking for the basic necessities of safe shelter in life without trying to find ways to continue to exploit those they consider weak.

> passed on their stolen land and wealth through generations while segregating various groups impacted by their transgressions, and to this day ask questions like you.

Im a first generation American and my mother was a refugee. Get off your fucking high horse and go virtue signal somewhere else.

People like you have no idea how the world works. You so desperately need to be seen as a “good person” it’s pathetic.

> Im a first generation American and my mother was a refugee. Get off your fucking high horse and go virtue signal somewhere else

Im really glad it worked out for her, but that doesn't mean that problems don't exist nor that you or your family didn't contribute to the issue. Many people admire the same billionaires and are "happy" willful slaves. What seems to piss off the happy willful slave more than anything is truth.

> People like you have no idea how the world works.

Apparently you do? Care to explain it to me? Want to tell me that people don't get exploited and they should just change their attitude?

well if you want to dine in a fancy restaurant and shop and hang around in a plush suburb, how can you expect the blue collar workers keeping everything running to have to commute 2 hours for your convenience?

It's much less of a concern if there's good transit to work.

> It's much less of a concern if there's good transit to work.

Even good transit easily creates a 1hr commute each way.

And no city in the US has good transit. NYC has barely adequate transit[1], and even then, the ridership of NYC rail systems exceeds that of the entire West Coast and Midwest combined.

[1]Have fun taking the subway from Bay Ridge to Kings Highway and Ocean Ave. A century ago, streetcars were running across Brooklyn; they were replaced with buses, which sucked then, and suck now.

What even is "affordable" housing?

How many houses do you have to build in Palo Alto before you run out of rich people to pay insane prices?

You can build housing but the market decides if it's affordable.

An interesting story in the two most important Canadian cities in my life, Toronto and Montréal, tell is about density. Toronto is in a gas-fueled affordability crisis, real estate prices have left the solar system. Montréal is starting to heat up but by most metrics is still considered affordable. While there are several externalities (language barrier au Québec, higher paying jobs in Toronto), one of the biggest reasons I've seen cited is the extreme amount of rental apartments available in Montréal. A mass exodus 1980s-2000s with the FLQ crisis, parmis d'autres, freed up tons of buildings from the 60s and 70s which still have not been saturated 'til this day.

The huge selection of functional, old apartment buildings has a price-depressing effect on local real estate. Why would I buy a house for 700k ($3000 mortgage, etc) when I can get a 5 1/2 (3 bdrm) for $1200 a month within biking distance of downtown. Now, while this helps explain the current situation, the lord knows that nobody in their right mind would consider investing in non-luxury apartment/condo towers when they have so many other lodgings suppressing home values. But that's kind of what needs to happen in TO as well, IMO.

> mass exodus 1980s-2000s with the FLQ crisis

You have your timeline wrong. The October Crisis was in 1970. FLQ was active 1963–1971. They were long gone by the 80s, let alone 90s and 2000s.

You're right! I should've checked that before posting, thank you.

The reason why Toronto (and SW Ontario) has seen an increase of housing prices, especially since 2015, is immigration:

> The estimated number of families in the province grew considerably. Between 2010 and 2015, Ontario’s estimated number of families grew by less than 23,000 per year. In 2017, the province added over 50,000 families; in 2018 it added almost 70,000 in a single year.

> Despite this population growth, housing starts hadn’t increased all that much after 2016, staying well below the levels of the 1970s and 1980s:

> A closer view. Between the four years from the start of 2016 to the end of 2019, Ontario added almost 230,000 people to its population each year, over twice as many as in the four period that proceeded it. Despite this doubling, the number of housing units was only 9% greater in that 2016–19 period than in the four years that proceeded it:

* https://mikepmoffatt.medium.com/ontarians-on-the-move-2021-e...

Montreal used to have more people than Toronto, now Toronto has more. That shows Toronto is better at building new housing?

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20402/toronto/population

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20384/montreal/population

No, it shows that a lot of people left Montreal when the major financial and media institutions moved their HQs to Toronto after Bill 101 was passed in 1977.

Revoking Proposition 13 is best solution. If boomers had to pay 1% tax on the current value of their CA house they'd quickly downsize.

I say, revoke Proposition 13 and don't base property taxes on primary residence on value of the house.

Tax proportionately to the footprint of the property, growing non-linearly.

Tax non-primary-residence units at at least 5X the rate; tax unoccupied units at 10X the rate.

Then there's an incentive to build up, while not screwing over existing residents.

You should checkout a land value tax.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok2uR3btMrE

Land Value Tax is better than the current clusterfuck, but doesn't address the problem of existing residents being priced out.

Property tax / land value tax on primary residence is just rent collected by the government for living somewhere.

That rent shouldn't be higher in lucrative locations. Grocery store employees should be able to live where they work; we should not be pushing them away with higher taxes on top of the pressure the market puts on them.

Perhaps food and shelter shouldn't be taxed altogether. The government shouldn't be collecting a rent on people existing.

That would also make redlining of residential neighborhoods harder, as if will force decoupling of local infrastructure funding from property values.

It has many loopholes, such as assigning each of your 5 properties to your wife, daughter, aunt, shell company or a dog to avoid the 5x rate.

Still much better than status quo.

In the end it approximates land value tax, is more politically feasible, so it is likely a step in the right direction.

>It has many loopholes, such as assigning each of your 5 properties to your wife, daughter, aunt, shell company or a dog

Shell company of a dog doesn't have a primary residence.

As for the rest, either they'll have to live there (in which case, it's fair), or they'll go behind the bars for properly tax evasion.

And it doesn't take much to find out that a property listed as primary residence for tax purposes is being rented out. Add some reporting incentives, and hey, that loophole takes care of itself.

Absolutely. If the status quo was hurting NIMBYs a bit instead of lining their pockets they'd change their tune real quick.

So the solution to unaffordable housing is to make it less affordable? Like so you price boomers out of their homes with taxes. Then what?

Property taxes are a useful tool against property speculation (which is why China is desperately considering one). Likewise, the fact that property tax is "stepped up" on sale also makes people less willing to sell (because they lose their sweet property tax valuation if they buy something else) and so pushes up the prices on the remaining second houses on the market. Grandma isn't going to move out of her 4 bedroom house because she is paying much less on property taxes than if she downsized to a two bedroom condo in the same area.

as you mention China - the property prices are declining there 3rd year in a row. in lower tier cities more than in Tier A, but also there they decline or stopped climbing.

we will have to wait and see how the common prosperity laws that Xi proposed will further change the life of people - and if they actually work, we must start thinking why WE were not able to do that in the first place with our democratic system that is supposed to represent the people.

Your second point is moot with the passage of Prop 19 transferring property taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_19

Brings it into line with all other states in the country which have more sensibly priced housing market. Its crazy that someone who's owned a house in the bay area for 50 years pays a tiny fraction of the neighbor who bought just now. Its certainly one of the reasons CA housing is expensive. If I knew taxes were capped you can pay more.

I can understand you want to reward people who stay in the area for a long time, the reward is too great IMO.

You’d force a lot of older people like my parents out of their homes. Itll eventually generation out over the next 10-20 years by itself, with the exception of commercial properties like Disney. If you make them pay, there’s a chance they just straight up leave.

Good news! California has a system in place in place that addresses exactly this problem: https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html It allows taxes to be deferred and taken out of the estate. Removing Prop 13 would leave this system entirely unaffected.

Your parents, assuming they are old enough to be seniors, will be fine. Your well-founded concern has been heard and handled. You can rest easy, knowing that your parents and other homeowning elders in California will not be forced out of their homes by property taxes they cannot afford.

If it encourages them to downsize from their family home after their children have moved out, its a better outcome than having lots of older couples living in 5 bed houses mixed in with families in High Density buildings.

...Then these boomers suddenly start to think building more dense, affordable housing in their town makes a ton of sense?

Yeah, let’s kick old ladies out of their houses so we can get a piece.

If they wanted to stay in their neighborhood they should have made more money before retiring.

Sarcasm aside, I’d like to see an example of increasing taxes on a good or service somehow making it cheaper.

> Yeah, let’s kick old ladies out of their houses so we can get a piece.

If the problem is "kicking old ladies out", why not just allow seniors to defer their property tax, instead of what we have now, where even corporations pay the same fixed tax? Seems a little absurd to give the entire state a tax break for a problem that only effects 10% (at most).

The "old ladies" argument was just a cover for the real reason, and you've been duped.

> I’d like to see an example of increasing taxes on a good or service somehow making it cheaper.

It's fairly well known that a land value tax actually has negative deadweight loss, because it incentivizes more efficient land use. It definitely can't make housing more expensive, since the supply-demand curve remains the same (the supply of land is fixed).

Also: http://www.savingcommunities.org/issues/taxes/property/affor...

> The "old ladies" argument was just a cover for the real reason, and you've been duped.

The comment I replied to was literally about making old people pay more for the houses they already paid for.

I care less about the old person being pressured to sell their multimillion dollar house than a poor person stuck in an area with a poor job market because they can't afford to move to a better one. Of course, since the latter is the status quo, people don't think about it as much.

Increasing the property tax would allow California to cut their sales tax, which would benefit lower income people.

It's close. Last I looked California pulls in $50B per year in sales tax but Prop 13 is $30B on residential and $10B on commercial.

I think to actually eliminate sales tax you'd need to end reassessment immunity and the 1% limit.

Property is not a good or service - it is a finite resource with its own economics. You're making a false comparison and then asking for proof that cannot exist. Not a good look.

Here is an example specific to personal real estate: https://www.virtualcpaforyou.com/comparestatetaxrates

That’s not evidence.

You’d need to show a case where an increase in taxes caused a good’s total cost to become cheaper.

The NIMBY's are striking back though. They are working on a ballot proposition to revoke this law for the November 2022 election. Might even pass:

https://localcontrolca.com/

Thank you for the link. My mayor is on here which I'm very unhappy about.

Is there even the workers needed to build all these houses we need? We have in my city a plan for a >4000 houses to be built. I asked my brother who is a carpenter how could they do that. He said either a lot of workers and some time or fewer workers and a lot of time. The company he works for already struggles to find skilled workers to build houses so makes me wonder how can we build all these places when it seems the crews are already currently too busy.

There aren't. My fear with the current infrastructure bill is it's a really lousy time for it when there's already a shortage for construction workers. It's what should have been passed in 2010 when construction workers were out of work.

same thing in Germany; unis are flooded but nobody wants to do an apprenticeship anymore.

prices for even the smallest repairs in my flat that i rent have exploded and i have to wait for a long time until they even come.

migration doesn't solve this issue either. I'm volunteering at the local refugee center. while qualified "EU blue card" expats have an academic background and work in offices, the lower qualified migrants who came in 2015+ from Syria and Iraq are not interested in getting an apprenticeship in labor intensive jobs.

My brother, a carpenter, had left germany 5 years ago and migrated to Canada. Life is better there, he says.

To be fair, I'm not sure if the apprenticeship path is even available to immigrants, let alone known to them. They are still nebulous to me, and helping immigrants move here is my job.

Besides, the language requirements for apprenticeships is likely much stricter than for cushy office jobs.

Hey where about is your brother? I am Canadian on Vancouver Island. Come say hi some time.

I'm really excited about SB-9 to remove some of my town's ability to slow down and prevent me from merely fixing the house that I have. Unfortunately they're already coming up with ways to resist change - some probably-legal, some probably-not-legal.

I'm curious how they are doing so.

They're going to pass an ordinance that tries to apply maximally restrictive rules (e.g., limit homes built to 800 sqft and a single story) to any project they think benefits from SB-9. That's probably legal, even if against the spirit of the law.

They're also going to tack on deed restrictions to limit the newly created parcels to being affordable to the lowest levels of income possible. I'm not sure that's legal, nor how that works mechanically.

The super dumb thing, however, is that SB-9 applies to single unit projects just as much as to multi unit ones. Specifically it calls out "no more than two" units right in the first paragraph of the first section. One is no more than two. I think this hastily crafted ordinance will limit even the town's desired SFH footprint to 800 sqft on qualifying parcels - which is probably about 25-50% of the town. That's absolutely not the intended consequence, but what do you expect of a panicking NIMBY government?

Here's the memo from the interim planning director:

https://civicclerk.blob.core.windows.net/stream/LOSALTOSHILL...

What I don't get about arguments re: single family home prices benefiting from nimbyism, is that it seems plainly untrue. I do agree that that's the perception however.

Very simple example. Say I own a single family home in mountain view. Tomorrow, the zoning changes such that somebody can build a 10 story building on my plot. Obviously the value of the land goes up tremendously, and the incentive exists to sell to a developer to rebuild it.

So zoning for higher density should only improve value of homes.

Or put another way, say there were a SFH with a yard on a plot in the middle of Manhattan. How much is that home likely worth?

Increasing land use rights on a property can only increase the value of that property.

However, increasing land use rights on a neighboring property can decrease the value of the original property. For example, a neighbor might want to use their property to establish a brothel.

Nimbys want to control property that they don’t own. Seems like theft to me!

I think in isolation, allowing construction of a single apartment building in an other SFH neighborhood might push down nearby property values compared to a suburb without the apartment, particularly in places where apartments are stigmatized as being "too urban"

You are quite correct that upzoning everywhere only boosts the value of land by allowing better utilization of it. One possible exception might be that by solving the housing crisis by building enough units to satisfy the regions need, it might push down the value of land, especially in the less desirable periphery where you might have previously had folks paying a lot of money just to get a house somewhere.

And yet I doubt that we’ll see high density mixed use developments along the coast in Malibu.

There aren't many jobs in Malibu. I used to work for HRL, the largest employer there, and it wasn't a big place.

Unless the goal is Corsuscant I don't really see a reason to build up over there.

> Unless the goal is Corsuscant I don't really see a reason to build up over there.

You are aware there’s a housing shortage in California. Building high density mixed use projects in basically empty places like Malibu would be a great way to help alleviate that shortage. And development will create those jobs. Fundamentally there’s a dynamic feedback loop between population density and employment opportunities. Increasing population creates the need for jobs and those jobs drive further economic growth.

The way you keep your property price up is by not allowing others to build more property around you. When person days - i want to keep my property price up, what he really says is - i dont want more people to live near me.

It is very different from other kinds of values - for example car is getting more expensive if it is fancier/more unique, but its price does not change with production of way cheaper cars , which all can go same places.

This is why insisting on your house keeping same value is very harmful to other people - this can only be achieved by denying these people the place to stay in the same area.

So SFH in HOA neighborhoods in the Bay will get way more expensive.

As they should! If you want to make inefficient use of scarce land, you should have to pay more to do so.

So much for the American Dream, right? Let's dive headlong back into the communal longhouse that is the European continent, where only the wealthy deserve backyards.

The "American Dream" was coined when the population of the US was less than half what it is today, and when significantly more of the population was perfectly happy to live in small towns rather than in dense cities. The US changed; the dream needs to change, too.

I don't think "deserve" is an accurate representation of the situation. People with more money will have more means to increase their luxury. That's been the case as long as we've had money.

Regardless, you're presenting a false dichotomy. There are many great alternatives to single-family homes that need not be communal longhouses.

And if you want a good-sized plot of land, maybe don't move to an urban environment. You can't have everything.

All the new developments I’ve seen lately in CA are massive boxes with essentially zero yard. So it’s already like that.

They should try giving incentives to localities that build dense housing. I think NIMBY have a point that if we pick a specific place that place gets screwed with all the negatives of an influx of people, so we either give incentives or force development everywhere. The former just seems easier to do.

that will go well. Pulling out my pop corn.

They should start with Beverly Hills.

There is no reason to suggest increased availability will result in increased affordability. The only way to impact affordability is to lower values, the prices people will sell for.

I'm no economist, but I'm willing to bet in most markets, must of the time, an increase in supply is often followed by a decrease in cost.

Not always of course, and were talking about housing which has a bunch of other factors going on but it's usually helpful.

Housing is a special story. It doesn't behave according to the standard economic theory of equalizing supply and demand like yogurts or bananas.

Housing is strongly inelastic market, meaning you can't increase supply when there is demand easily

The market is essentially stalled. It doesn't 'clear'. People would rather keep it idle out of the market than rent or sell under price. On top of that it has entered a bubble territory recently in which people buy, not based on their value judgment of the property, but because they expect to offload it to someone else in the future with a profit.

Housing is not a 'supply and demand market dynamic, but a 'greater fool' market dynamic.

Housing in CA is also unique in that the combination of refinance rates and Prop 13 make selling your home for the same house right next door a losing proposition. Most long term owners are deeply incentivized by CA’s property tax cap to never sell and if anything take an equity loan / rent it out.

I can’t even imagine the total financial devastation if they suddenly ratcheted up the tax rates via reassessment. It’d be a fire sale for all but the top end of the income ladder.

> The market is essentially stalled. It doesn't 'clear'. People would rather keep it idle out of the market than rent or sell under price.

This theory fails to explain why housing prices in San Francisco fell during the dotcom bust. https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/3-recessions-2-bu...

Housing is not actually that special. It is true it doesn't behave according to the econ 101 model that most high schoolers learn in class, but in econ 201+ classes explain it.

The main difference is that land is the limiting factor or more accurately legally buildable land in this case with zoning.

The network effects of cities increase with density. The more people move there, the more incentive there is for people to move there. The cost of housing is a function of that marginal person who is on the verge of moving there. If I’m on the edge, then all my friends and all my employers move there, then I have even more reason to move there too. When you move there, I’m willing to pay more to move there too.

In other words demand isn’t constant.

As I understand it, it’s an open question as to whether more housing means lower prices via simple supply and demand, or higher prices via network effects.

Exactly. Every person living in a city is a positive externality for the businesses. And every business is a positive externality for the residents. It's a network effect. The more people in a city, the better it is. The people who own empty lots contribute nothing, and their empty lot keeps going up in value.

When you incentivize people to say no to housing because the more they say no, the higher the value of the house, they are going to say no. It doesn't matter how much the state demands. You don't want centralized forces creating a mess, you want decentralized forces. We need to stop swimming upstream.

The only way out of this is to tax the land equal to those positive externalities. The only way out is a Land Value Tax. When you under tax the land, the price of the house balloons. Once you have a Land Value Tax in place and increased housing supply means lower taxes, all the NIMBY's will quickly convert to YIMBY's - it will be a breeze to get new housing built.

Fix the incentives. Land Value Tax[0].

[0]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

On the flip side, though, we've already seen what limited new housing does: much, much higher prices, and people getting priced out of their homes. More housing might not solve everything, but less housing is what's causing these problems.

People won't stop wanting to move here just because housing growth is slow. While the prices are very high right now, there are still enough people who want to move in who can at least vaguely tolerate those prices. That doesn't mean the system is working, though. That just reminds me of the old stock market adage, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".

Supply/demand ratios don’t work against fixed assets. You can’t clone or replicate a geographic segment of Earth.

But you can build higher density housing which increases the overall number of living units in a region, thus increasing the supply.

I don't understand what this abstract terminology means. Do you believe it is impossible to build more housing in California? If so, why? If not, what are you talking about?

Suggestions for how a city might arbitrarily lower property values? People are willing to pay $750k for my condo. How does the city convince them they only want to pay $500k?

Well, increasing property taxes or interest rates (or anything else that increased the monthly cost) would reduce the sticker price, but it doesn't by itself make the housing more affordable except perhaps by reducing investment demand.

Increasing property taxes in tandem with larger homeowner's exemptions might be more effective in only reducing investor demand (but potentially might hurt renters to some extent, though renting is a more efficient market...).

But, building more densely is a better solution...

Bus in homeless people to do drugs and poop on your steps. That ought to take care of it.

Nope, that had zero success in lowering SF prices and only resulted in some well off people making very callous remarks at the plight of others.

Sure maybe it kept them from going even higher but we don’t have the counterfactual available to ever know.

Cut some purchasers out of the market. For eg disincentivise or ban using properties for investment, especially for corporate investors, hedge funds etc.

If there was more supply in your area you may have less success charging 750K and getting a sale in the timeframe you’re looking for. Right now landlords have too much power over renters.

This depends on demand, though. If there are 100,000 people wanting to move there you’d have to build more than 100,000 units which isn’t likely in any US city over a reasonable amount of time.

I mean, the suggestion that was made is that increasing supply doesn't work, so I'm asking what's the alternative plan to lower values without any new building?

If you need a case study Detroit successfully lowered values pretty dramatically more than 10 years ago.

Detroit had and continues to have an enormous amount of abandoned, decrepit housing that no one wants to buy. Maybe that's why they have low housing prices. I doubt that the city government had much to do with it.

Followed by an economic boom as people from around the country moved there for the cheap housing?

You reduce regulation to allow for more units of housing

Which increases supply temporarily, and demand will keep up because of network effects.

By allowing developers to build a lot more condos.

If you add enough housing+residents it will lower the values as the places become overcrowded metropolises less people want to live in.

But somewhere like the SF Bay Area has a loooooong way to go before it gets anywhere near that bad. Relative to most of the nation, it can get heaps worse in terms of crowding and QoL and still look exceptionally good. I don't see prices going down anytime soon, except if something like the homeless problem evolves into a continuous stream of violence and structure fires.

> If you add enough housing+residents it will lower the values as the places become overcrowded metropolises less people want to live in.

Maybe at some extremely high level it becomes untenable but both Manhattan and Paris are very desirable places to live and they have 3-4x the population density of sf.

Right, which means you can effectively ruin SF through the lens of many existing residents, by turning it into a Manhattan, and still not have affordable housing there.

So why do it?

It's fine to argue price elasticity but its silly to say there's "no reason to suggest."

How so?

Honestly, California deserves to fail here if they continue to repeat the same ineffectual things while ignoring data and inventing conclusions that have never proven true.

You can increase land value while decreasing housing value. Building high density housing you can build affordable housing on incredibly high land values

Have you never seen an order book? Do you not get how they work?

Cities and their existing residents have a right to protect the quality of life and neighborhood character they want. They are not obligated to accommodate newcomers and population influxes, nor should they be. Why does every attractive and desirable city have to be affordable or accessible? People need to stop being entitled and just move somewhere else where they can make ends meet, if they cannot cut it in a place that is in high-demand. No one is entitled to live wherever they want at whatever price they want.

> Cities and their existing residents have a right

Palo Alto is a charter city. As such, it has special rights only insofar as those rights are delegated to it by the state of California. California has every right, legally and morally, to change the current arrangement. As things stand today, Palo Alto enormously benefits from economic growth caused, not primarily by its residents and policies, but by the residents and policies of other portions of the state of California. As such, the residents of California have every right to tell the residents of Palo Alto that they must rezone to allow denser housing. The state has the upper hand both legally and morally.

Palo Alto is happy to see the economic benefits of increased commerce to the Bay Area, but it doesn't feel any responsibility to aid in housing the many thousands of new workers that increased commerce requires. A tiny minority of wealthy homeowners benefit at the expense of a great mass of residents. This is not a tenable situation long-term. Small municipalities in the Bay Area cannot internalize the benefits of economic growth while externalizing the costs indefinitely.

> California has every right, legally and morally, to change the current arrangement.

I am not knowledgeable enough to discuss the legal angle, so I’ll set that aside. I disagree on the right claimed from a moral standpoint. It’s dystopian to think that the rights exercised by individuals or individual cities are only delegated to them by higher powers. At best, a situation where local powers are overridden by others at the state level amounts to a tyranny of the majority. In my opinion, locality of power and decision making is important. Palo Alto is not the only city on this continent. People, and companies, can go elsewhere - including into the interior of the country outside of California.

> Palo Alto enormously benefits from economic growth caused, not primarily by its residents and policies, but by the residents and policies of other portions of the state of California.

Another way to look at it, is that residents of Palo Alto made a smart investment, or a lucky one - but that’s okay, and they’re allowed the spoils of that choice. Or maybe they don’t care about those economic benefits and economic change just happened to take place, around them.

> it doesn't feel any responsibility to aid in housing the many thousands of new workers that increased commerce requires.

Why do the residents have a responsibility to aid new workers? If those new workers don’t have a great situation with respect to cost of living in the Bay, they shouldn’t take those jobs. There are many open jobs across the country, in many different locations. If those other jobs don’t provide the same pay or other conditions - well, that’s just life. No one can be entitled to only have a specific job in a specific city.

> This is not a tenable situation long-term. Small municipalities in the Bay Area cannot internalize the benefits of economic growth while externalizing the costs indefinitely.

High prices discourage continued population growth. Companies looking to hire and expand can set up in communities that have room or that welcome growth. Workers will go there, home prices in the Bay will change, the economy will be more distributed, and things will rebalance accordingly.

> Why do the residents have a responsibility to aid new workers? If those new workers don’t have a great situation with respect to cost of living in the Bay, they shouldn’t take those jobs.

That would also work against local landowners' interests, though. If all the new (and potential new) workers decide they are getting a raw deal and live elsewhere, all the economic gains the locals have realized (including their inflated property values) will evaporate.

It seems like landowners want to have their cake and eat it too: reap the benefits of the economic expansion, but not take responsibility for its externalities.

> In my opinion, locality of power and decision making is important.

If you believe in locality of power, why stop at the town level? The property owner is the most hyperlocal possible unit, so they should have the right to build whatever they want on the land they own. They are local to their own property, their busybody neighbors are not.

In what world is a city deriving its charter from the state "dystopian?" Californian municipalities are wholly creatures of California state law. They derive their authority from the constitution of California, which grants them the power to enforce only "regulations not in conflict with general laws." If the California legislature wants to pass a law saying, "No more single-family zoning," the municipalities don't have a special constitutional right to ignore that, any more than they have the right to pass a law saying their residents can't sell a house to a disabled person, or that their citizens don't have to pay state tax.

There are some matters which are of enough interest to the entire state of California that the state narrowly prescribes how local institutions may interact with those resources. One existing example is the issue of water, which, as a scarce resource, is heavily regulated by article X of California's constitution [1]. Among other restrictions, article X straightforwardly makes water distribution a state concern: "The use of all water now appropriated... is hereby declared to be a public use, and subject to the regulation and control of the State." The consequence: if a city wants to pass its own particular water regulation, and the state of California disagrees, the city is out of luck.

Another issue the state might have a compelling interst in is the issue of housing. Like water, housing is a human necessity, and a scarce resource. This is especially true in the Bay Area, which is not contained in a single municipality, and which is thus subject to the rule of a number of governments whose competing and parochial interests naturally restrict housing supply in the entire region. Specifically, every locality wants to house the Bay Area's jobs, but it would prefer that neighboring localities house the Bay Area's people. The state of California is the only legal actor capable of fairly adjudicating this issue in such a way as to further the interests of residents of the entire region. This is why it would be perfectly legitimate for California to write laws forcing Bay Area cities to abandon overly restrictive zoning regulations.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...

"Tyranny of the majority" Sounds like something Louis XVI might have said before he was beheaded.

There is something as protecting minorities. But wealthy nimbys aren't a minority that needs to be protected.

Cities are not entitled to drain away a lot of state or regional tax money to get all the transportation and water infrastructure they want, but then refuse to let anyone live there. That's plainly unfair. Berkeley today has the same population it had in 1950, but in the interim we built all the freeways and subways that Berkeley needed to have a booming job economy. In 1950 Berkeley had zero subway stations and in 2021 it has three subway stations. If Berkeley had wanted to remain at this population level forever, the time to have decided that was half a century ago, before all the investments.

I agree with the sentiment but the Berkeley subway is not a great example. BART was planning to build above grade through Berkeley. Berkeley wanted a subway and had to make up the difference in cost.

The state or regional tax money is the taxpayers’ money - including individual residents and other entities like companies or cities. It’s a rhetorical trick to pretend the money somehow belongs to the benevolent and powerful state, who forcefully collected this money in the first place. As such, I don’t think a city “owes” something back to the state. If the state had certain expectations, the time to have decided that was half a century ago, in the form of contractual obligations.

Are you genuinely asking why people have a problem with necessities becoming unaffordably expensive?

There is no societal problem for which "just move away" is a solution.

I don't agree with the person you're replying to, but this is a bizarre take:

> There is no societal problem for which "just move away" is a solution.

Why make such an absolute?

Here are a collection of societal problems where "just move away" would be a great solution (some are dumb, but I think they're still valid):

* The local community has pushed towards street art in local parks. You strongly dislike street art.

* Your neighbours like to get drunk (in a non-violent way) every night. They're not overly noisy, but they have gross yards and you have a level of concern that the drunks will eventually make a terrible choice that impacts you (such as drunk driving into your bedroom).

* Lack of kids. You have a family of 4 and the local neighbourhood is filled with retired professionals with no kids. You want to live somewhere that enables your kids to socialise.

* Wayne, your long term neighbour, is using meth. He's managing his addiction very well, but he openly shoots up in the shed with his roller door open. You don't like seeing needle drug users shooting rock.

You can't tell the poor to "move away" from their place of residence. They mostly can't Even if their neighbor is a murderer.

The nimby situation is forcing the less fortunate people to commute beyond what is humane. A 2 hour commute is not healthy. And they CAN'T move away, mostly.

None of these are what I would call "societal problems".

2 and 4 are problems with individuals, not a society.

That 1 and 3 are, in your words, "dumb", really does affect their validity. These are things you can live with. Unaffordable rent, not as much.

The problem isn't "My rent is too high", the problem is "The rent is too high everywhere I'd want to live". It's affecting a whole population; that's what makes it societal.

> Cities and their existing residents have a right to protect the quality of life and neighborhood character they want. They are not obligated to accommodate newcomers and population influxes, nor should they be.

A right according to who? Since when is infringing on other people's freedoms and property rights by banning them from developing their own private land, in order to satisfy your own aesthetic preferences, at the expense of making millions people homeless, underhoused, or forcing them to move away from their social and economic networks, a fundamental right?

From a conservative perspective, private property rights reign supreme and you have no right to tell people what they can build on their land. From a progressive, social-welfare-maximizing viewpoint, other people's need for shelter where they want to live supersedes your aesthetic preferences. Regardless of your ideological underpinnings, your brand of NIMBYism is completely indefensible.

> People need to stop being entitled and just move somewhere else where they can make ends meet, if they cannot cut it in a place that is in high-demand. No one is entitled to live wherever they want at whatever price they want.

I'm sorry, who is being "entitled" here:

1. The person who wants to build a multifamily building on the land they paid for.

2. The person who wants to live in the same place they grew up, and where all their friends and family currently are, and who is willing to enter into a consensual commercial transaction with (1) to procure said housing.

3. The busybody who wants to dictate what other people can build and where they can live because they don't like seeing a two-story walk-up down the block from where they live?

You are so warped by your own sense of entitlement that you don't realize you are the one making unreasonable demands of other people, not the other way around, because you see those unreasonable demands as your god given right.

> Why does every attractive and desirable city have to be affordable or accessible?

The only reason why many people have no access to these desirable things is because of bad policy, not because these things are intrinsically scarce. If we can fix bad policy to allow more people to have desirable things, that is good for societal welfare. More good things for more people is good, actually.

So, "I got here first" is the way that we want to manage an increasing population, increasing costs of living, and a shortage of housing in the important cities that are an major source of our national prosperity?

That is how national borders work. The rich love borders.

Ah yes, "neighborhood character", that pervasive dog whistle.

For a practical consideration, California might look towards the future and seriously consider the population limits imposed by water scarcity. But even there, sufficient political will and investment could start desalinating out of the readily available ocean. Sure, it's horribly power inefficient, but it's there, and so is abundant solar power potential, meaning that the only final concerns are NIMBY and environmental concerns, of which the latter, at least, are serious (but in the face of water shortages, should be discounted, and if the current long-term drought trend holds, we should probably start assuming shortages and boiling some fish sooner than later).

It’s not a dog whistle - come on, that’s just an incredibly tired way to dismiss arguments one disagrees with by insinuating something sinister. People have a right to protect what they cherish and the communities they’ve helped build. The entitlement of others who want the same doesn’t justify weird and vague labels like “dog whistle”.

Also, NIMBY is a tired and dismissive pejorative. It’s just an ad hominem attack that is fashionable among “urbanists”.

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina. People used to openly oppose the county's (very limited) public transit and would outright say "we don't want n----rs bringing crime to our neighborhood".

Today, people don't say that because they know it'll get them put through the wringer on social media and/or immediately get their opinions discarded. Instead, you hear "keep out the riff-raff," "preserve our neighborhood's character," etc. from the exact same people who previously dropped the N-word like their salvation depended on it.

Same shit, different flavors. Personally, I prefer the former since you get to know exactly who to avoid associating with.

'Neighborhood character' usually means 'keep the minorities out'

Your argument is just as tired. It made sense in the boomer days when a good job and hard work guaranteed a home. My dad bought his first for about $6000.

Decades of under building, greed, nimbys and their needed character, have eliminated that guarantee, or even possibility. As well as any tears for incredibly rich obstructionists to progress.

That’s not an unreasonable opinion, but to answer your question “why”, the answer is because a democratically elected state legislature has decided it’s in the best interest of their constituents to make it this way. And state power supersedes municipal power.

Nobody’s upzoned a state over one nice expensive neighborhood but when the crisis starts harming the state economy, then the state legislature obviously cares.

And no one is entitled to continually live in an unchanging, ungrowing, ever-appreciating in value community that is the same as 1970. We all live in a society. Though I am sympathetic to your argument too. Not everyone can live in manhattan and it should be more expensive.

Then they can quit complaining about people who get priced out, can't afford to leave, and end up on the streets.

I think that’s unfair. First off, most people I know who are alarmed at the upzoning pushed by activists would also be sympathetic towards the situation you are describing, within limits. The problem is that homelessness activists purposely conflate two very different groups - those who are homeless due to bad luck and those who are simply irresponsible (permanent nomads, drug addicted vagrants, and so on). The latter group needs to face the rule of law and experience consequences, not be coddled and encouraged to live at others’ expense.

It's feels a bit weird to call "getting priced out of your home and out onto the streets due to bad housing policy" as "bad luck".

Sure, there are homeless people who moved here specifically because they know the homeless have a not-terrible deal here (not great, but often better than most other places), but I don't see the evidence that these people are in the majority.

Oh, and consider that a lot of the homeless people who are drug addicts or have mental health issues became addicts or developed mental health issues as a result of their homelessness. You have the causality backwards for a lot of folks.

> not be coddled and encouraged to live at others’ expense.

In SF at least, in many (most?) cases it'd be cheaper for the city to just pay to put people in permanent housing (and for mental health and addiction services), than it currently costs to keep them in temporary shelters, plus the cost to deal with disturbances, jail time, cleanups, drug use, violence, medical emergencies, and so on. But no, we can't have that... can't give people things they didn't work to deserve. We'd rather cut off our noses to spite our faces.

Drug addicts are not irresponsible. They are sick. They can't improve without help: treatment and accompainment. It is a mental health issue. Stop dehumanizing people.

If you push them too hard they will either kill themselves or kill you. It is not a choice.

"California" isn't going to do anything about NIMBY cities.

The California state govt is going to hose politically disfavored communities.

Atherton and Pacific Heights will NOT see any substantive changes.

So, high-rises in East Palo Alto.

Texas has low density, affordable home prices and a lot of growth.

NYC has high density, unaffordable pricing and little growth.

In the US, the most expensive places are generally the most dense i.e. urban areas.

I think the issue ought to be looked at from different angles.

It's a little weird to compare Texas to NYC.

Maybe compare Austin to NYC? Austin is starting to see a lot of the same problems; the main difference is that their growth is comparatively new.

At some point a city has a maximum density determined not only by housing but services, transportation and basic things like water.

Given forest fires and insufficient groundwater, I really wonder how this is going to go.

At some point high prices are a signal that a city is full.

Opting for low density make no sense if you are worried about forest fires or insufficient groundwater. Suburban houses use more water per person not less compared to urban dwellers.

The forest fires near houses are caused by the low density zoning forcing home builders to build closer and closer to forest fire prone areas.

> At some point high prices are a signal that a city is full. It can also be a sign of low supply

All I see in San Francisco are three story houses; not a proper subway in sight. People want to have a town house with a lawn in the middle of a city and this is the result.

Yup. And our pitiful excuse for a new subway has so far taken 11 years to build and won't be operational until next year... in theory.

> People want to have a town house with a lawn in the middle of a city and this is the result.

Not even a townhouse; a detached single-family home!

SF doesn't rely on groundwater. SF water is piped in from the mountains. And it isn't actually at risk of running out. City water needs are tiny compared to what the farms in California use.

SF water is piped in because their groundwater is depleted and they are using other areas water. This led to the shutter of several cities at the time (1900s ish).

While farms do use significantly more water, they also are not in the city and they produce food. Farmers generally feel they should be able to use their water instead of the city leeching it.

Farms use a huge percent of the water I think 85 or 90 percent which has increased over time and they basically get it for free.

We shouldn’t have to super-subsidize farms. If there is a water crisis, the farmer should also help.

Torture as a metaphor for state government interference with individual liberties over local land use? Sounds about right.

> individual liberties over local land use

The whole problem with NIMBYism is neighbors gaining political power to tell other property owners what they can do with their land. If you're actually for individual liberty over local land use you would be 100% against NIMBYism.

Your "individual liberty" to prevent people from building reasonable amounts of housing on their own land is a pretty shitty liberty that I'm fine with the state trampling. If local control is so important to you then the bluest state in the country is probably not a good fit, Dems generally are not local control maximalists.

I agree with the thrust of your statement, but "Dems generally are not local control maximalists" is true of both parties, who are more than happy to throw their general principles re: local control out the window when a locality passes a law they disagree with.

Just ask anyone in a major city in Texas, where it seems like half the laws passed by the state legislature are there to overturn bills passed by the Austin city council.

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