Alright, amigo, let's build some affordable housing
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Of course new construction is going to be expensive and full of bureaucracy. Many US cities have large stocks of older housing in moderate condition -- sure, it'd take some money to get them up to snuff, but nothing near what new construction would cost.
Basically all housing whatsoever is helpful. But the optics of it makes it difficult to understand.
If you don't build these things, you'll have to compete in a bidding war with rich people to rent an old, renovated shitbox. Guess who will win?
Didn't something similar happen in Cuba?
- 2020, new ~$4500
- 1990, renovated, ~$3500
- 1975, maintained, ~$2500
The only people that I've heard complain about luxury housing that's not adding more units are when YIMBYs gripe about single family zoning: it's perfectly legal to replace an existing single family home with a far more luxurious single family home without any community input or checkpoints. But more affordable "luxury" townhomes are blocked st every stage by legislative processes that enable single family homeowners to extract ever increasing land rents, when they enforce artificial scarcity. But YIMBYs have almost zero political sway in almost all jurisdictions, and their framing of single family homes as luxury is far from usual.
Why dont you compare houses to prices of 30 year old rotten piece of fruit, because thats what you are doing.
20 years ago my familt bought an apartment, is it now worth 3 times more. Our 20 year old BMW is worth approximately 5% of it's original price as scrap
To start with, 2.2 million cars get built per year in the US, while housing has consistently been under 200,000 new units per year for a long time.
I know a guy who lives in a 500 year old house, i know zero people who have a 30 year old car
Housing is a sorting and ranking problem: Everyone gets to pay the best house they can afford. The richest man in town gets the best house, the second gets the second best, and so on. When what you can afford is fixed, it doesn't really matter much which house gets built: Everyone underneath gets, for the price they can afford, a slightly superior house.
The one thing that throws a wrench into it is immigration, from the same country or a different one. I am not moving to SF for the current house prices, but I would think about it really seriously if the housing I can afford, coming from far away, was good enough. But in that case, it's not as if building affordable houses is going to work either, unless you just say "Sorry, you can't buy this house, it's going to go to someone poorer, even if you really want it, and would pay more".
And that's really the ultimate problem of affordable housing in a place that is extremely in demand: You either make it so unattractive that nobody wants to live in it, or your affordability is really handing a giant subsidy to a set of chosen people that get to live there, while many other people would be willing to pay more for the same dwelling, but they didn't win your lottery. You have to stop the affordable buyer from selling too, because otherwise all you did is to let someone pay, say, 200k for an apartment that in the open market would be worth 1 million, handing out 800k to a lucky winner.
If you can't see filtering where you live, that says either that you're not looking, or that it's a place where new housing stock is being severely restricted.
It varies by locale. In high rise condos, filtering may mean that the appliances are white, the floors haven't been refinished, and the bathrooms are original. In my hometown, it's houses without air conditioning; I can immediately recognize a house that has no A/C in my old neighborhood by its listing price, square feet, and bedrooms, which means that refraining from doing that retrofit keeps space open for lower income or lower net worth people.
The flippers (basically investors) are looking for those places that would have been a cheaper entry point into the housing market, and after they are done with their 1-2 month renovations, they are no longer cheap entry points.
And I sympathize, because I've seen horrible examples of renovations, like people on Facebook forums proudly showing off their renovated kitchens, which scream "usability nightmare" to anyone who has ever looked at design standards. When I lived in San Diego, I could always recognize the work of the flipper who did my house because they used identical kitchen materials and appliances every time.
Edit: why downvote with no reply? It seems this topic must be highly political with all the unexplained downvoting with no debate.
There’s even special fire insurance riders to cover this.
Why would the fire insurance be high for smaller homes? I thought that smaller homes would be cheaper to insure since the asset is cheaper than a larger house.
It's particularly striking in California, where they ended up passing multiple state law to outright override local zoning. (It will be interesting see what happens with San Francisco by 2025, when their inability to meet housing approval mandates will turn into developers getting free reign from the state to build dense housing anywhere in the city.)
It sounds great for all the states to solve their problems individually, but where do you draw the line and have the government step in to prevent problems from getting bigger in the first place?
That's the theory. The practice is that much of the "older housing" is by now 50 or 60 years old, twice the design life, and at some point renovation is just not economical any longer, you are looking at a teardown and rebuild.
That meme tells more about the profession of economics as taught in schools and universities. It doesn't tell you how the world works, but it provides support for the way things are. There's that old cartoon with a royal and a priest, and the royal turns to the priest saying "you keep them stupid, I keep them poor." That's applied economics.
Your point is good, but it turns out that a lot of really expensive parts of Manhattan aren't anywhere near as dense as they should be, such as:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.744212,-74.0017042,3a,90y,34...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.744212,-74.0017042,3a,90y,34...
I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
I live in the area (in fact, I grew up there too) covered by the link you posted and don't know what you mean about density.
Yes, many of the older buildings are only 12-15 stories tall, although a bunch are 20, 30 or even 40 stories tall.
And yes, there are many brownstones (usually 4 or 5 stories tall, with 1-2 apartments per floor) on side streets as well. And there are buildings like mine (5 stories tall with 4 apartments per floor with a lot size of ~4,000 sq ft.).
But there are zero single family homes.
Or are you suggesting that we bulldoze Central Park and build 500-600 60 story residential buildings because Central Park is wasted space?
As a Manhattanite, not having Central Park (or Riverside Park, or any of the other greenspace in Manhattan for that matter) would make upper Manhattan completely unlivable.
Please do elucidate on this. What mechanism could significantly increase the density of Manhattan housing?
This ought to be interesting.
I'd expect that the folks who actually live under overpasses would wholeheartedly disagree with you.
Have you ever been homeless? I'm guessing not. Because you have no idea what you're talking about.
It is amazing they were able to build like that three hundred years ago, only a few decades after the area was first settled.
Not sure where this is coming from. 60 years old is 1960s. Across the US, particularly in older cities, plenty of houses are that old and much older (family members living in a 1930's house). As long as owners maintain it over the years, it should easily last longer than 60 years. Even in my relatively younger city, there are plenty of 1960's houses that sell about the same as the 2000's houses.
Absolutely. The building where I live was built in 1920 -- 100 years ago. The apartments have (mostly, all but four out of 20 -- and not those four because the long-term tenants, myself included, haven't moved out) been gut renovated in the past ten years. All of the apartments were also renovated in the late 1980s-early 1990s as well.
I expect that they've been renovated many times previously too, but I've only been here for 25 years.
>there are plenty of 1960's houses that sell about the same as the 2000's houses.
Absolutely. The most recently renovated apartments are all at market rates, and those of us who have stayed have done so because our apartments are rent stabilized[0] (my upstairs neighbor is rent controlled[1], a different set of regulations.
[0] https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/...
you're forgetting the part where it is the older housing that is currently affordable that is getting demolished so that this new construction can use that land instead.
There's an easy way to do that - raise teachers' salaries, and let them choose whatever housing they want, not what you've arbitrarily designated as "affordable" (via a political process). This raises observable costs, but has plenty of less obviohs benefits.
That's $480k per class per year.
OUSD owns its buildings, so none of that money needs to go to rent.
Why isn't $480k per class per year enough?
Housing should be affordable for all, not just teachers.
There is affordable housing - just not where people want to live
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1128-Outwoods-Cir-Birming...
Also, if it’s cheap because there are no good jobs - then where there are good jobs it will be expensive
Throw in good weather, nice views, goods school- all of a sudden it’s really expensive
Note there is nothing in the twitter thread about jobs or amenities- it’s all about land and density
Thats like saying we should solve shortage of food by raising salaries.
Some people are so lost in wcobomic theory, sometimes they forget thw physical world exists.
I think there’s a good argument to be made that we shouldn’t do that: as it amounts to a government subsidy for that particular family or individual without solving the overall problem.
I think it makes much more sense for the government to build high quality housing, not sell it at all but rent it out, and use the income stream to fund further house building.
How about they outsource that to private industry professionals on an open, competitive basis, in exchange for a profit sharing arrangement? Hmm...
But that so conflicts with hyper-local (perceived, short-term) interests of the type of people who show up to community meetings who are concerned their home values will go down.
Gotta pass some laws to prevent investors from snatching them up to resell at a higher price like what's happening now. Or prevent them from just turning into AirBNBs
The lack of property taxes makes letting investment properties remain empty much more viable than in the states.
If everyone expects their housing to appreciate forever it’s no surprise that their appreciated homes will become unaffordable to most people. Housing ought to be a utility not an investment IMO. A Georgist-style land tax would probably do a lot to tip the balance.
Housing can either be a good investment that outpaces inflation, or affordable in the long run. Having both is not possible.
Setting aside some amount of housing units to remain affordable is not a good long term solution - we have it here, and it's basically ended up as a lottery with a side dish of corruption.
In order to really fix this, a lot of property investors will need to lost a lot of money on their investments. Problem is they tend to also be political donors, so not many politicians seem interested in doing this.
[1] https://www.ocregister.com/2019/10/23/nobodys-moving-califor...
Long-term, the trend in most built-out metro areas is that SFHs are going to become a luxury good for the well-to-do, and most of the general population will live in apartments or condos. This is simply because of land availability: if it's built-out, there's no more land available for new SFHs, so future population growth will depend upon suburban tracts getting converted to denser multi-family dwellings.
As long as these high cost of living areas continue adding jobs, particularly high income jobs, you continue to have a growing pool of knowledge workers who can afford these market rates that are unaffordable to the working class pool. Give this pool of workers a big enough carrot, maybe its a fitness center or a pool or some astroturf for the dog, and they will gladly move out of that 50 year old dingbat and into this new construction with the golf simulator in the basement and a garage parkng space, freeing up that 50 year old apartment (which in its time may have even been a luxury building in its own right) for someone who can't afford the above amenities.
To this end its essential to build housing as fast as possible and to create as many units as possible. When you mandate things like x% of units as 'affordable,' often times that leads to developers going back to the drawing board and chopping off entire stories from the build, and fewer units of housing being added to the local area than there would have been had the developer been allowed to build full bore and actually cover costs on a larger build. This ironically hurts the very class of people who would have benefited from those affordable units in the first place.
This is only partially true though. What you mean is some percentage of people will move into the new construction. But of course, some people will see that the unit they live in is becoming more affordable and decide that they would like to take advantage of relatively lower rent. Over time and on average you are correct - that building nice new homes will relieve pressure on somewhat less nice older ones, but it will take time.
Also, we aren't talking about mandating affordable units, which is a thing in some places, but rather a developer trying to apply for subsidies for building affordable units. I totally agree that we should not put up barriers to building market rate units, but it's also worthwhile to incentivize some artificially low cost units as well to help solve the problem for some people today instead of 10 years from now.
700 square foot condos in a fourplex or 2 story cottages in a cottage cluster or row houses could be built for a fraction of the cost at 4x the density. But in many areas they are prevented by setbacks, minimum lot sizes, coverage rules, parking requirements, and so on.
Internal material and design regulations similarly don't optimize for things that are safe/functional and affordable.
Yeah, I guess the angle with the sun or something for most of the year makes solar a little more difficult up here? Thankfully we've got a lot of hydro-electric.
Otherwise the builder can place the panels where they want. And if for some reason they don't want them anywhere near the site, they can also purchase shares of community solar projects elsewhere. (Which is often a good option for existing homeowners, too.)
You can't build a boring cheap brownstone anymore according to the law.
1. http://qcode.us/codes/westhollywood/view.php?topic=19-19_3-1...
Railing about having to provide common space which should be public space.
Railing about common space requirements being designed around forcing non detached dwellings to be expensive.
For some reason California is obsessed with the idea that housing is too expensive, so we need to force new construction to subsidize middle-middle class housing via a lottery system, which keeps housing expensive
This comment made me realize that maybe powerful people actually want to push lower income people out of the state, or metros at least.
Not sure about California, but in most places that would double or triple the value of the land. If you did everyone all at once, it probably wouldn't be so extreme but would still be an increase.
The principal is that someone should be free to build on their land as long as they don't create safety issues or significantly impose on someone else.
Democracy at worst can be mob rule. Principals are important.
Japan does a good with federal zoning regulations. It's not impossible.
I agree.
> existing near someone can have effects that are easy to justify in court
I had the impression this was a "mob rule" problem, that local voters were voting for zoning laws that limit the quality and quantity of new housing. I admit to not understanding the legal or moral justification. It just doesn't seem right to micromanage others to the extent that occurs today.
There are other countries that are much more flexible, like Japan [0]. Instead of single family single use zoning they start with three story multi-use housing. Some places in the U.S. are moving in this direction.
> decreasing or limiting increase on future land values
That can be flipped around. Someone who opposes new housing is taking value from the people who could have made use of that new housing, had it been allowed.
The recent lawsuit against UC Berkeley is a great example. A handful of cranks angry about UC Berkeley admissions abused an environmental review process to impose their will on their town. Not the will of the majority, but rather the tyranny of the most rich and petty.
0 - I prefer the term “tyranny of the majority”.
The fascinating thing about HOAs is that they’re all done under the guise that they “improve property values”, but I’ve never seen any evidence that this works. From my geographic location it seems like non-HOA factors drive prices (supply, demand, neighborhood location and nearby amenities like transit and shopping), not whether or not the neighbors flower bed matches the “neighborhood character”[0]. From what I see it just seems to let petty tyrants control their neighbors; the property value argument seems like a transparent excuse.
0 - You see this phrase a lot in zoning discussions and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. As if neighborhood character is a concrete thing that can be pointed to and protected, rather than a constantly changing and emergent result of the humans living in a place.
Some people like not worrying about stuff and having rules in place.
It’s all about the freedom to choose
For my house I decided not to buy in an HOA - missed out on some amenities for sure.
I'm not sure what to make of the choice part here. Once an area is under an HOA it's almost impossible to dissolve the HOA. Anecdotal evidence from my own HOA which my wife was president of for many years shows that only very few people get involved. The people who do get involved tend to be of the type who want to overreach. When my wife was president she probably spent more time trying to bring the other folks involved in the HOA back to what's reasonable. Fortunately management companies also help with this. I'm afraid that without management companies most HOAs would devolve into attempts to build a miniature fascist state that only would be stopped by prolonged court battles.
Also, depending on your state it can be very hard to avoid a HOA. If you're buying a home in California, Colorado, or Florida you've got a 2/3 chance of buying into a HOA, with the numbers getting worse over time. 2/3 new homes being made now have a HOA, so pretty soon you won't have an effective choice when buying.
Not all HOAs have infrastructure to maintain. I know a few people in neighborhoods with HOAs that don't have private roads or facilities for the HOA to manage, it's just purely there for property value.
Witness the lack of slurs for Nordics, I have no idea which they are. I'm sure they exist. I know more slurs for doctors than Nordics...wait I think I know one, "dumb blonde", and "rusio" is another one, in Chile..."gringo" in Chile..."borsch" I think is one for Germans though, it's really old, there's others, but not Nordic. "Honkey" comes from "Hungarian"...some Hungarians are very fair...I'd need like a slur dictionary to find a slur for Nordics.
These slurs must all be said at some point, it's irrelevant if I say G-R-I-N-G-O or "gringo", because putting it in writing and spelling it out is literally the same thing, you can read either just as well. For these particular slurs nobody can figure out what the hell I'm writing about if I don't write them in full. Similarly, History professors in Chilean universities can't tell their students about the "n-word" without actually saying it out loud, for real, at some point. They otherwise will never know what the professor is talking about.
Back to Nordic immigration. So yeah, if Swedes arrive next door and the women dress differently, and they recycle all kinds of things Americans don't recycle, like I guess if they yodeled that would piss people off...it would take some work. And white Americans surprise surprise are very tolerant of very different views if they like them. The big thing with the "poor" or "poors" (the worst slur in my whole comment) is the poverty is related to entropy. Same thing pretty much. So more entropy in their nervous system, more entropy in their bodies, more entropy in their housing, more entropy in how they communicate and their habits, more entropy in their relationships, more entropy in how they deal with neighbors ultimately. Reducing entropy in one thing means increasing it in another. On the other hand, if the poor who move in haven't always been poor, or have an excellent reason to be poor, or are rapidly moving up in society, or something else of that nature, they are not as entropic and are therefore welcome.
And that's why there was such a huge social movement to make education free and obligatory, because then you reduce the entropy in the minds of the poor, and that order (meaning strictly absence of entropy) radiates from there into everything else.
Well I suppose there's some moral hazard because the government is more tolerant than rent-seekers (I find the term "landlord" gross because of the "lord" part, no nobility in America, and the whole point of the endeavor is collecting rent, they're synonymous. If they don't want to be called rent-seekers all they have to do is stop seeking rent). Plus Section 8 costs IIRC either 30 or 33.33% of your income, so it's not that they pay nothing for housing, it's just limited to a very high but still feasible amount. You're objecting to exactly what I was talking about, entropy. In this case you're using the synonym "noise."
So you built your own house from scratch, no help from builders, mined your own iron, wrought your own steel, the copper and all, because surely "you" wouldn't be talking about "it" online if it weren't up to code. And claimed your own land...loaned yourself the mortgage, did it all on your very own. Society didn't do anything for you, after all.
> You're objecting to exactly what I was talking about, entropy. In this case you're using the synonym "noise."
I live in a neighborhood without section 8 now and, surprise, there is no entropy!
>So you built your own house from scratch, no help from builder
I am sorry, it might be some popular point on reddit but I need more context, what are you talking about? I bought my house and the land. Are you, by chance, saying that you are sincerely confused by my usage of the verb "to provide" and believe that I used it in a general way, only indicating that the society somehow made the housing available, and not given wholly or partially free?
For instance, I am by all means of the definition living in poverty right now; but I also have much more than even some middle class folk might have depending on their life style.
So poor is relative mostly to the compared 'true wealth' of each other person.
You might only make 1200 a month, but you own a house. Or you might only make 2k a month, but you have a vehicle and house and many luxury items with in it.
By our current standards if you made those amounts, you would be considered poor, like me. BUT, you will still be richer than someone who gets that same amount of money from some stipend, but without any where to live and all those basic things that should be an uncontested human right.
So again. It's all relative to the situation at hand.
If I sold everything I have and went back to just a laptop with bag, a duffle bag of clothes, a back pack full of my 'stuff', and a blow up mattress; I would have maybe 10k total in my account to reuse as a nest egg.
And that's if I don't get ripped off by everyone and their mother.
So one last time. Wealth, is relative.
The easiest way to have actual affordable housing is to change the "single-family home" zone limitations (this might have changed recently IIRC but it might not)
No government has ever been successful at repealing that law, but they sure keep trying.
The “fix older stock” strategy really only works in areas where people aren’t all that keen to live. Ex. It’s easy to do in Pittsburgh or Detroit. Not so easy in SF or Austin.
People also used to occupy far fewer square meters/feet of housing per person in the past so even though Berlin (or Pittsburgh) had a higher population in 1940 than today it doesn't necessarily mean there's a surplus of housing.
That sort of ownership of the land rents is exactly the problem, as it incentivizes the local land owners to use their political power to en chance their market power to charge high rents.
So what you’ve stated is effectively a tautology. Either ownership embues the owner with the right to rent their property, or you don’t believe in ownership at all.
You vote where you live, not where you own. The “local land owners using political power” is a trope posted here often, but I’m pretty sure it’s the renters who are electing the local politicians.
And what determines the price level of rents? Scarcity of housing determines how far up the demand-price curve the market clearing price will go.
> You vote where you live, not where you own. The “local land owners using political power” is a trope posted here often, but I’m pretty sure it’s the renters who are electing the local politicians.
This is a very astute observation! And you will find that places where the landlords live in their voting jurisdiction, like San Francisco and Palo Alto, tend to vote for far less housing-positive politicians than places where the landlords tend to live elsewhere, like Oakland or East Palo Alto.
Landlords and homeowners have more money, more free time to influence local politicians. Every time you go to a public comment section, homeowners tout their homeowners status as if it gives them more clout with politicians, and often it does.
There's significant academic work on this power dynamic. One sub-genre of it is the home-voter hypothesis:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674015951
But there's lots of other research too.
In many larger cities, older housing occupy prime location where the value of the land is twice the value of a new building you could build on it, so all these would never filter down to affordable levels.
But if we are talking city states, why not take the Singaporean approach? Just have the government build apartments and subsidize sale to citizens? Everyone gets a flat eventually.
IMO the HDB flats should not be saleable on the open market and can only be sold back to the government (subject to inflation and depreciation adjustments that no-one's going to agree to) but I'm an expat and not eligible to partake in the upside so I might be a bit biased.
All that being said they have done a better job than most of making government housing both accessible and appealing even if it means that I'm having to find a new place to live in the middle of an inflationary period (even as the country is seeing net emigration for the first time in decades, wth is going on??)
Only if you overthink it. An "open border" LVT+UBI system is self-balancing; a flood of immigrants would drive up demand for land, which drives up its value, which raises LVT revenue, which raises total UBI disbursement, which keeps each individual's UBI stable.
That said, it would work even better at a state level, and better still at a national/federal level.
> why not take the Singaporean approach?
The Singaporean approach (IIUC) includes land leases, which is in practice equivalent to a 100% LVT (assuming the government prices the lease at the land's full value).
Another factor contributing to the same thing is that cities aren't closed systems. Building new units at the top of the market doesn't mean that everyone in the city will move up one rung in quality leaving the cheapest unit now vacant. Many cities will have a latent demand for housing that is being suppressed by high prices. When that exists, someone from outside the city will move to the city to occupy the new construction or the newly vacated units at the top of the market. All that latent demand needs to be satisfied before the benefit of the new construction will trickle down to the bottom of the market.
Which is to say, what you've described is a signal to demolish and build higher intensity, while the filtering happens elsewhere.
For rental apartments, the most expensive ones are both renovated and in a prime location which is often still a centennial building. Brand new buildings are most of the time outside of these locations.
To get the market price for housing down; even a supply glut would not help as long as mortgages are subsidised, and defacto function as economic stimulus and retirement funds.
The question is what sort of housing you build. You have a piece of dirt ready to be developed or re-developed. You can put there a mansion which will house one family with enough garden to picnic a whole village and still have space to land a helicopter. Or you can build four detached homes with plenty of garden at the same place. Or you can build two 3-story buildings with 6 flats each and have space for a small comunal park between them.
And we can’t say that the market should figure out what kind of houses should be built, because we already have tax laws, and building codes, and etc which heavily influences what kind of building gets built. The question is not “should we put our finger on the scale” but “which direction should said finger push”?
It’s generally speaking not cheaper to refurbish something once you consider all of the factors. I’m on mobile so I can’t enumerate those but I’ll try to return on desktop where I can properly type and give an overview.
If you don't mind my asking, what is your main hustle?
The point is satisficing vs optimizing. An old house or apartment is already livable, in a supermajority of cases. It "needs" nothing, in the strictest sense of the word, and putting it through capital repairs will very likely put it in the red, possibly even compared to building a new house.
Sure, some repairs and improvements may be useful. A universal coat of paint is probably the lowest hanging fruit, mostly due to the broken window effect, and especially if it includes common spaces. Very cheap credits for stuff that will definitely pay itself in a few years, like thermal insulation or heat pumps, depending on climate. Regular checks to make sure it passes very very low safety standards. And that's about it.
Instead of actual brick and mortar?
We use spray foam insulation and good materials for flooring and trim that won’t wear out tomorrow.
We build for about the same as it would cost to take an existing house; demo out all the stuff that doesn’t meet code, make it meet code, then put back all the good materials that won’t wear out tomorrow.
Trust me your big line items are still there when you refurbish something to meet codes; and governments aren’t going to fund projects that don’t meet code. That is before you even get to the discussion of what people actually want their finishes to be.
I suppose the levels of grandfathering of old rules varies from place to place, no? Though for public financing I guess they want less "old" stuff?
and which is already occupied. In order for housing supply to keep up with demand, it needs to increase, hence new construction.
You can find houses for sale by a city where the asking price can be as low as four figures. Sometimes those houses even come with the full list of required repairs and an estimate of the costs.
Spending $20k to buy a house that needs $60k in repairs can work out for some situations.
But it's not enough, which is why even housing in poor condition is so expensive.
New high-density construction on lots that were previously low-density is better all around: It's more likely to be profitable for the developer, and it increases supply in a market that sorely needs it.
Do you live in a skyscraper? Does anyone want to live in a skyscraper? I don't.
To be fair, I think you are glossing over the fact that only handing out said vouchers to lower-income people will cause their buying power in the market to proportionally increase relative to wealthier buyers. However, you are absolutely right that this strategy will increase demand without increasing supply, and overall drive prices higher.
I should clarify that I don't think it's a good idea; in fact, I think it's an absolutely absurd idea for precisely this reason. How anyone can suggest making housing more affordable by taking actions that will obviously make it more expensive is beyond me. This sort of thing probably only makes sense in the eyes of wealthy urban "liberals" who want to appear virtuous while maintaining their property values, and from far-left perspectives with no qualms about making life worse for the middle class to achieve their social justice-oriented goals for a relatively small fraction of the population.
> Do you live in a skyscraper? Does anyone want to live in a skyscraper? I don't.
I'm not sure of the relevance here.
This tells me you haven’t been to China.
1. In the right location.
2. Dense enough.
3. Cheap enough.
4. In good condition and zoned properly.
The last bullet point is the real kicker. It’s very tempting to point at older real estate, often shuttered light industry or commercial, and ask about converting it. Unfortunately a lot of these buildings are illegal/hard to rezone as residential, or have an uncertain cost to convert them for habitation. And of course the financiers of any project hate uncertainty.
Also inexpensive housing is cheaper to build than high end housing so there’s more bang for the buck (more impact on the housing shortage/$) than building the same number of high end homes.
Think 50 acres, 10% will be an airbnb glamp-camp for some revenue, 20% farm area, 20% common buildings for work and storage and things, then the rest will be traditional 'tiny homes' or yurts or earth-bag homes, etc. Maybe dig a deep hole and bury a container home, dig out some holes for a sunroof, etc... Good insulation. Very affordable design and dev.
Not everything needs to be old-school housing, it just needs to get the job done: Warm in winter, cool in summer, decent access to utilities and esp. clean water. The more eco-friendly the better and solar panels would be nice.
How about an Amazon warehouse?
But yeah, to your point, building more housing in a supply constricted market requires like way more proof.
Or could be even easier to show that the lack of said units led to displacement for actual families.
I'm not saying it's easy peasy but if affordable unit advocates believe they are important then logically enforcing the regulations they fought for shouldn't be just shrugged off, at least as a signal to cities and developers.
Of course there are other metrics to consider than economic impact.
see also:
Having lived in downtown San Francisco for 7 years now, I can’t help but notice how all the new highrises and fancy apartments have pushed down the prices of the normal stuff.
My current landlord tried to sell his house before we moved in and couldn’t get “enough” money for it because why pay $1,000,000 for a house from 1906 when you could pay the same for new construction across the street? Instead he had to settle for renting (to us). 3 years later and similar apartments in the area are now selling for $800,000 because there’s even more new construction around.
Rents are down too. Why pay $4000/mo to live in an old house when you can pay $4200/mo to live in a luxury highrise across the street?
Those commercial and leisure entities you're talking about often push for these elements too, but they usually have to promise something in return, even so far as accepting clawback provisions and fines for failing to do so. Affordable Housing builders AFAIK never have these strings attached. If you'd counter to me with examples where this wasn't part of the agreement for commercial/leisure or where it was for affordable housing, I'd completely agree those are exceptions worth a closer look.
Agreed, but I wonder if the hurdles that are currently in place are even remotely optimal.
Would it be funny if they were not, and no one really cared?
these rules should be set and the application validated somewhere around state level. if the city wants to do their own thing, sure, they can set up their own separate system (to provide more funds for example in exchange for more/stricter rules), but that should be optional for the developer.
Not sure why you're complaining about this. You elected those those folks. If they aren't doing it right, then elect someone else.
It's what's called "representative democracy." I hear that it's been tried in a few places and has had some minor successes. /s
Me? I prefer a dictatorship. But, of course, only if I'm the dictator.
Beyond that, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."[0]
[0] often attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Winston Churchill
I made an observation that mixing local politics with getting approval for an already set rules seems ripe for conflicts of interest, inconsistency, arbitrariness, predictably bad optics when local special interest groups get favorable treatment compared to less special (ie. poorer) groups.
basically separation of powers is missing at the local level. the executive branch (ie. civil service) should be separate from the local "legislature"
>I made an observation that mixing local politics with getting approval for an already set rules seems ripe for conflicts of interest, inconsistency, arbitrariness, predictably bad optics when local special interest groups get favorable treatment compared to less special (ie. poorer) groups.
Fair enough. My apologies if it seems I pushed a little hard on that. It's just that far too many people seem to take every opportunity to metaphorically roll up their newspaper and take swipes while yelling "Gub'mint bad! Bad gub'mint!"
I'm emphatically not claiming that's what you were doing, but knee-jerk condemnation of "gub'mint" is far too common in the US these days, which makes me a little over sensitive on that topic.
That idea is, at least in the US (and other democracies), ridiculous in the extreme given that we are the government, or at least we elect the folks who run it.
I agree. There are many opportunities for conflicts of interest, arbitrariness and outright graft, especially in state and local government.
That said, I'll repeat my statement from the comment to which you replied:
You elected those those folks. If they aren't doing
it right, then elect someone else.
>basically separation of powers is missing at the local level. the executive branch (ie. civil service) should be separate from the local "legislature"
Not sure how it is where you are, but we have separate "branches" where I live in NYC[1]. The Mayor (and myriad city agencies) makes up the "executive" and the city council (as well as local community boards -- at least in an advisory capacity) makes up the "legislative" branch.
They are separate entities and, just as it is in the Federal government, no legislator can simultaneously serve in the executive branch or vice versa.
I know that many (most?) parliamentary democracies don't operate that way, with sitting legislators from the ruling party/coalition serving in executive roles.
That's just not the case where I am, or in most other state and local governments in the US AFAIK.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Manes#Downfall_and_suic...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_New_York_City
This kind of assumes that the system is actually/legitimately democratic, and overlooks that one vote has the consequence (in theory anyways) of determining decisions on thousands of sub-issues. We vote for people, not issues, and it's highly questionable the degree to which the people we vote for are sincere in their stated goals.
> It's what's called "representative democracy." I hear that it's been tried in a few places and has had some minor successes. /s
Depending on how one measures it, ignoring that we tend to measure such things heuristically, on a relative scale, and tend to not consider counterfactual causality.
> Beyond that, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."[0]
It is an extremely popular meme (particularly lately, perhaps in part due to an extremely successful guerilla marketing campaign), but it would be interesting to know what is actually true.
It's possible that I'm just tired, or that I'm just not so bright, but I don't really understand what you mean here, in the context of the discussion around housing inventories? To which system(s) are you referring?
>and overlooks that one vote has the consequence (in theory anyways) of determining decisions on thousands of sub-issues.
Again, I'm not at all clear on what, exactly you're talking about here. Are you advocating an Athenian-style form of democracy[0]? In case you're not familiar, that would be akin (although certainly not identical) to California's ballot proposition system.
Do you believe that all laws, from Constitutional amendments (or the US Constitution, for that matter) to local sidewalk width ordinances should be individually voted upon by every citizen affected by a specific measure?
>We vote for people, not issues, and it's highly questionable the degree to which the people we vote for are sincere in their stated goals.
Yes, we do. And yes, no one can really know the mind of anyone other than themself (and sometimes we don't even know our own minds).
That goes back to the statement you appear to be condemning -- [paraphrasing myself] that if your elected representative isn't doing their job or is untrustworthy, we have regularly scheduled elections to address such issues. What's more, we have mechanisms in place to remove elected (and unelected) officials who abuse their office or act in ways that are unacceptable to the voting public.
Is that insufficient in your mind? If so, how, specifically, would you change the system?
>> It's what's called "representative democracy." I hear that it's been tried in a few places and has had some minor successes. /s
>Depending on how one measures it, ignoring that we tend to measure such things heuristically, on a relative scale, and tend to not consider counterfactual causality.
I assume you're referring to this[1] sort of analysis. Unfortunately, while such an analysis is interesting, it doesn't provide real information. Rather, it only provides a platform for speculations that can't ever be proved. Stanislaw Lem made a similar "argument"[2] which demonstrates the (lack of) usefulness of such an analysis:
Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while
this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman,
it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The
School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly
unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the
banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated,
there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem
analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of
dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely
hypothetical. They were all, one might say,
nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely
different way.
>It is an extremely popular meme (particularly lately, perhaps in part due to an extremely successful guerilla marketing campaign), but it would be interesting to know what is actually true.
Then you're in luck. There has been quite a bit of research into this area. Perhaps you should learn more?
Here are a few links to get you started. N.B., these are just a few, semi-randomly (selected because they address your question) selected items from the first page of a web search for "measures of success between political systems." I'm sure you can find much more if you're actually interested (rather than trolling -- which would make me sad).
https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-system/Stable-pol...
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:663508/FULLTEXT0... [PDF]
https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/file... [PDF]
https://researchoutreach.org/articles/political-systems-econ...
In that context, what do you suggest as the least worst form of government? Or do you reject government completely (a la Anarcho-capitalism[3] or straight-up anarchism[4])?
I look forward to haviung a robust discussion of facts and logically consistent ideas around this with you.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1132401-everyone-knows-that...
Democracy - more specifically, the various implementations (both the abstract design and the comprehensive physical practice) that we use today, but most specifically American democracy.
> Again, I'm not at all clear on what, exactly you're talking about here. Are you advocating an Athenian-style form of democracy[0]? In case you're not familiar, that would be akin (although certainly not identical) to California's ballot proposition system.
I'm thinking more along the lines of some form of direct democracy - I am partial to this one, but am far from an expert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
And yes of course, there is no shortage of problems with simply implementing something like that.
> Do you believe that all laws, from Constitutional amendments (or the US Constitution, for that matter) to local sidewalk width ordinances should be individually voted upon by every citizen affected by a specific measure?
It's an idea worth considering imo.
> Yes, we do. And yes, no one can really know the mind of anyone other than themself (and sometimes we don't even know our own minds).
110% agree - hence, I prefer to think in terms of ~"plausible range of epistemically sound possibilities", since what is true is typically impossible to achieve, and is not necessary anyways.
> That goes back to the statement you appear to be condemning -- [paraphrasing myself] that if your elected representative isn't doing their job or is untrustworthy, we have regularly scheduled elections to address such issues. What's more, we have mechanisms in place to remove elected (and unelected) officials who abuse their office or act in ways that are unacceptable to the voting public.
Indeed we do - whether this design "works" as intended/perceived is another matter though.
> Is that insufficient in your mind? If so, how, specifically, would you change the system?
I think "we the people" would benefit in many ways from a serious first principles based investigation into a complete rewrite of democracy. At the very least, it would be an extremely educational and maybe even ~enlightening undertaking, depending on how one went about it of course (putting The Experts in charge might not be an ideal approach, for obvious reasons).
> I assume you're referring to this[1] sort of analysis.
Not really. I prefer something more along the lines of thinking in very strict (but dynamic / extremist) epistemology, ontological complexity, yadda yadda yadda. Perhaps some new styles of thinking will have to be developed along the way.
> Then you're in luck. There has been quite a bit of research into this area.
Has the truth been revealed?
> Perhaps you should learn more?
Surely! And perhaps you should as well.
> Here are a few links to get you started. N.B., these are just a few, semi-randomly (selected because they address your question) selected items from the first page of a web search for "measures of success between political systems."
This sounds like an investigation into that which exists - it's certainly useful, but I am also interested in that which does not yet exist.
> I'm sure you can find much more if you're actually interested (rather than trolling -- which would make me sad).
I think this touches on a very interesting phenomenon that can be observed: in internet discussions, it is not uncommon to encounter people shitting on the poor thinking of the members of their various outgroups and claiming that they should ~"think better". But what's interesting is that almost without exception (in my experience anyways), if a person is to engage with such people by doing the very thing they recommend, the typical response is: poor thinking (rhetoric, insults, memes, evasion, etc). It seems to me that all humans have an upper bound of ability to be serious, and an extreme aversion to discussing sacred cows.
> In that context, what do you suggest as the least worst form of government?
I consider such things to be unknown - if one would like knowledge, then there are no shortages of examples of how to go about acquiring it - this scenario is surely trickier than many, but human beings have demonstrated themselves to be quite clever, when they set their mind to something.
> Or do you reject government completely (a la Anarcho-capitalism[3] or straight-up anarchism[4])?
I am open to all ideas, but have a bias towards competent coordination in complex systems.
> I look forward to having a robust discussion of facts and logically consistent ideas around this with you.
Thank you for the kind words, and I look forward to it as well.
>Democracy - more specifically, the various implementations (both the abstract design and the comprehensive physical practice) that we use today, but most specifically American democracy.
What, specifically do you find illegitemate about American democracy?
Getting some specific thoughts about this would be nice. Much better than what you did say, which I interepreted (perhaps incorrectly -- but the lack of detail is pretty telling) as a metaphorical rolled-up newspaper along with "American democracy bad! Bad American democracy!"
I have specific issues with the American political system myself, including but not limited to, the pervasive impact of money in our political system, especially as to how it strongly reinforces the current two-party hegemony.
However, I don't see it as illegitemate as you appear to do. So I'll ask again. What specifically makes American democracy "illegitemate?"
>> Again, I'm not at all clear on what, exactly you're talking about here. Are you advocating an Athenian-style form of democracy[0]? In case you're not familiar, that would be akin (although certainly not identical) to California's ballot proposition system.
>I'm thinking more along the lines of some form of direct democracy - I am partial to this one, but am far from an expert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
>And yes of course, there is no shortage of problems with simply implementing something like that.
It's an interesting idea. And one that certainly deserves (and has/is getting) attention and investigation.
As you note, many issues with implementation of such a system including universal access, the role of money/moneyed interests and the time/capacity individuals have to investigate, comprehend and form opinions about the dozens (perhaps more?) of local, state and federal laws debated every single day.
That said, I support the idea of tweaking democratic processes to improve governance. Ranked Choice Voting[0] comes to mind.
>> Yes, we do. And yes, no one can really know the mind of anyone other than themself (and sometimes we don't even know our own minds).
>110% agree - hence, I prefer to think in terms of ~"plausible range of epistemically sound possibilities", since what is true is typically impossible to achieve, and is not necessary anyways.
I'm not really clear on what you mean here. I didn't say anything about "truth," which is irrelevant (as you note) to a person's state of mind/internal thought processes. As for what's "epistemically plausible," that's so broad as to be practically useless.
For example, it's "epistemically plausible" for someone to support the "decent, hard working people of this great nation." But such a statement is so vague that it's meaningless.
>>I assume you're referring to this[1] sort of analysis.
>Not really. I prefer something more along the lines of thinking in very strict (but dynamic / extremist) epistemology, ontological complexity, yadda yadda yadda. Perhaps some new styles of thinking will have to be developed along the way.
In that case, you shouldn't have used the term "counterfactual casuation[sic]" which has a well defined meaning.
I'm sorry, but that sentence is a word salad that doesn't describe, at least not in terms someone not living inside your head, what you "prefer." You make a statement about "strict epistemology" and "ontological complexity," but those must be employed in any reasonable discussion of just about anything beyond what I want to eat for dinner. What, specifically, is this "yadda, yadda, yadda" you mention, as it seems that's where some semblance of a reasonable argument might lie?
>> Here are a few links to get you started. N.B., these are just a few, semi-randomly (selected because they address your question) selected items from the first page of a web search for "measures of success between political systems."
>This sounds like an investigation into that which exists - it's certainly useful, but I am also interested in that which does not yet exist.
That's great! I'm glad you're interested. But you have made a whole raft of assertions which you haven't supported with any sort of data or even logical analysis, despite having the opportunity (and taking that opportunity -- twice) to elucidate your point of view.
What's more, understanding how current (and historical) systems (don't) work is critical to any attempt to tweak or rewrite the rules of any complex system.
That makes it really difficult to take you seriously.
>> I'm sure you can find much more if you're actually interested (rather than trolling -- which would make me sad).
>I think this touches on a very interesting phenomenon that can be observed: in internet discussions, it is not uncommon to encounter people shitting on the poor thinking of the members of their various outgroups and claiming that they should ~"think better". But what's interesting is that almost without exception (in my experience anyways), if a person is to engage with such people by doing the very thing they recommend, the typical response is: poor thinking (rhetoric, insults, memes, evasion, etc). It seems to me that all humans have an upper bound of ability to be serious, and an extreme aversion to discussing sacred cows.
I can't (and wouldn't try to) speak for anyone else, but in this particular case, I'm not doing any of the things you list here. As such, I have to ask why this is relevant, unless you're describing your own actions.
I don't insist that you "think better." I don't know what "group" (well, other than human -- and so am I. I guess we're in the same group huh?) to which you might belong, so I have no basis to class you (other than I noted parenthetically above) in any in/out group.
And I haven't engaged in any of the other things you mention. So I ask again: Why is that relevant here?
Or are you making the (unfounded) assumption that I understand you and what's in your mind (impossible, as we've already discussed) and am just baiting you. I assure you (the best I can do in this forum) that I am not. Rather, whether it's due to ignorance/stupidity on my part or poor communication on yours, you have not made yourself clear here at all.
That's what I'm asking for. Communicate clearly and provide detail as to what supports the ideas you're presenting. You have done neither. That's not intended to be an insult or reprobation, rather it's the minimum that's required to have a reasoned, fruitful discussion.
You go on at some length after this, but the low information density of your comments makes it difficult to discuss this stuff. You've layered vague ideas about governance on top of assertions that those ideas don't support.
I'm happy to continue this conversation with you, but I'm having a difficult time understanding what the hell you're talking about.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk that up to me being a native English speaker.
Should you choose to provide specific, relevant and supportable ideas, I will happily continue to engage.
I hope you have a good day.
Also: excuse spelling/grammar errors, I will try to do a cleanup pass a bit later.
> What, specifically do you find illegitimate about American democracy?
That it (at least implicitly) claims to be "Of the people, by the people, and for the people", that the projected and perceived as accurate narrative is that it exercises "the will of the people". When in fact, the will of the people is not known, because very little attempt has been made to determine what the will of the people is (and other things: "the people" are, generally speaking, "not too bright", and the causality behind this unfortunate circumstances is not known or well investigated, but if you were to dig into it, what you will typically find at the end of the strong is: the government).
I could go on and on and on, and based on extensive experience discussing such topics with a very wide range of people, I confidently predict that if we were to get into the fine-grained details, before long you would balk, you would accuse me of "overthinking", being "pedantic", start making various "ya well" style excuses, and so on and so forth.
Or another way of putting it might be something like:
select distinct behavior_type from human_activity where topic like '%government%' and reality_level='perception'
At this point, a typical cards that are typically played (by my counterpoint in the conversation, or dang if he was to encounter this thread) is something along the lines of "we can't know anything, nihilism", "you're talking metaphysical jibber jabber" "your words have no meaning", "HN is not the place for this sort of X", etc. This sort of thing, I propose to you, is your nature.
You want detail? I am at your disposal, and I suspect my willingness to discuss what is true (or may be, or not) can easily outlast your ability to remain curious about what is true.
> Getting some specific thoughts about this would be nice. Much better than what you did say, which I interpreted (perhaps incorrectly -- but the lack of detail is pretty telling) as a metaphorical rolled-up newspaper along with "American democracy bad! Bad American democracy!"
"the lack of detail is pretty telling" is an interesting (but not uncommon) phrase. When you say this, what are you referring to? I will take a guess: might it be ~reality?
> I have specific issues with the American political system myself, including but not limited to, the pervasive impact of money in our political system, especially as to how it strongly reinforces the current two-party hegemony.
To my style of thinking, this is one item (with an unknown epistemic status, and an unknown comprehensive-causality-weighted importance), in a set of utterly unknown (but perhaps imagined as known) size.
> However, I don't see it as illegitimate as you appear to do. So I'll ask again. What specifically makes American democracy "illegitimate?"
I propose that a highly optimal way to think about such things is as a tautological statement + question: "What makes American democracy illegitimate, is that which makes American democracy illegitimate. So then: what is it that makes American democracy illegitimate, accurately and comprehensively?"
Do you possess the answer to this question? Does it seem like you possess the answer to this question? Do you care what the answer to this questions is? And when considering such questions, be mindful if your mind is conceptualizing them as binaries (True/False) or a spectrum (the degree to which each "is" (or may be) True/False).
Do you like this sort of thinking? In my experience, most people not only do not like it, but they reject it outright, often with strong emotions and supreme confidence. I believe that this is our nature, at least for now. (Here it may be useful to consider the history of the aggregate conceptualization of (aka: ~reality) African Americans by the population of the USA, and elsewhere.) Sometimes humanity can modify the fabric of reality, but usually they seem unable (and unwilling).
(continued...)
This reminds me somewhat of this homeless senior I know that hangs out at the 7/11 by my house - he too "is" "getting attention", in that I bought him a coffee last week.
> As you note, many issues with implementation of such a system including universal access, the role of money/moneyed interests and the time/capacity individuals have to investigate, comprehend and form opinions about the dozens (perhaps more?) of local, state and federal laws debated every single day.
Indeed. There's a surprising amount of complexity in reality (although it tends to not seem that way).
> That said, I support the idea of tweaking democratic processes to improve governance. Ranked Choice Voting[0] comes to mind.
Why only tweak? Do you support the general notion of society having a serious(!), mainstream conversation (substantial MSM coverage) about the merits of a complete rewrite?
>>> Yes, we do. And yes, no one can really know the mind of anyone other than themself (and sometimes we don't even know our own minds).
>>110% agree - hence, I prefer to think in terms of ~"plausible range of epistemically sound possibilities", since what is true is typically impossible to achieve, and is not necessary anyways.
> I'm not really clear on what you mean here. I didn't say anything about "truth,"...
Is "one can really know the mind of anyone" not necessarily intertwined with truth: that which is(!) the state of a person's mind? (Assuming we care about it of course.)
> which is irrelevant (as you note) to a person's state of mind/internal thought processes.
I said Truth cannot be achieved, not that it is irrelevant. Although for the vast majority of instances of mind, I would agree that what is true does not matter (at the perceptual level) - but there are exceptions here and there (me, for instance).
> As for what's "epistemically plausible," that's so broad as to be practically useless.
By what means have you come to possess comprehensive knowledge about what "is" "useless"? Useless for what? To what end?
> For example, it's "epistemically plausible" for someone to support the "decent, hard working people of this great nation." But such a statement is so vague that it's meaningless.
Vagueness erases meaning? Perhaps in your mind, but this is definitely not how my mind works.
>>> I assume you're referring to this[1] sort of analysis.
>> Not really. I prefer something more along the lines of thinking in very strict (but dynamic / extremist) epistemology, ontological complexity, yadda yadda yadda. Perhaps some new styles of thinking will have to be developed along the way.
> In that case, you shouldn't have used the term "counterfactual casuation[sic]" which has a well defined meaning.
Can you explain why the "well defined" "meaning" of counterfactual causation is somehow incompatible with what I've said?
> I'm sorry, but that sentence is a word salad...
The theory of relativity and many other things are also word salad to those who lack the necessary background knowledge to understand it. (And if you have the urge to point out that because this is true, it does not prove that what I've said is also true, then don't bother, I well realize this.)
> ...that doesn't describe, at least not in terms someone not living inside your head, what you "prefer." You make a statement about "strict epistemology" and "ontological complexity," but those must be employed in any reasonable discussion of just about anything beyond what I want to eat for dinner. What, specifically, is this "yadda, yadda, yadda" you mention, as it seems that's where some semblance of a reasonable argument might lie?
Herein lies complexity that would take essay length writing to even begin to address it with any precision. I think there's more than enough here already to measure the quantity of curiosity you can muster and sustain, taking into consideration the ~"utterly shit" communication medium (platform, language, etc) we are using.
>> This sounds like an investigation into that which exists - it's certainly useful, but I am also interested in that which does not yet exist.
> That's great! I'm glad you're interested. But you have made a whole raft of assertions which you haven't supported with any sort of data or even logical analysis, despite having the opportunity (and taking that opportunity -- twice) to elucidate your point of view.
I propose that reality (and communication about) is highly contextual, and that humanity's current norm is ~"good enough". When writing this, did you consider the distinction (that exists somewhere) between haven't supported in my model and haven't supported in this conversation? I do realize you explicitly specified which one (in this conversation), but my question is whether you had the other one in working memory when composing the above.
> What's more, understanding how current (and historical) systems (don't) work is critical to any attempt to tweak or rewrite the rules of any complex system.
Indeed - we best have on our thinking caps!
(continued...)
Agreed - this does indeed seem to be the nature of the default mind, as it has been trained (mainly in the AI sense of the word, but also in the ~propaganda/culture sense). But to your credit, you are exerting substantially higher than average effort to discuss and understand - credit where credit is due and all that (gosh....have I committed a cultural faux pas here? If so, sincere apologies, but limited).
> I can't (and wouldn't try to) speak for anyone else, but in this particular case, I'm not doing any of the things you list here.
Not at all? If you had, would you necessarily know?
> As such, I have to ask why this is relevant, unless you're describing your own actions.
Roughly: https://www.vedanet.com/the-meaning-of-maya-the-illusion-of-...
> I don't insist that you "think better." I don't know what "group" (well, other than human -- and so am I. I guess we're in the same group huh?) to which you might belong, so I have no basis to class you (other than I noted parenthetically above) in any in/out group.
A basis to (subconsciously) classify someone is not necessary, much of that is performed for us automatically (thanks evolution!).
> And I haven't engaged in any of the other things you mention. So I ask again: Why is that relevant here?
In return I ask: what is it you are talking about here? Reality?
> Or are you making the (unfounded) assumption that I understand you and what's in your mind (impossible, as we've already discussed) and am just baiting you. I assure you (the best I can do in this forum) that I am not.
Very approximately, I would say what you are doing here is "humaning".
> Rather, whether it's due to ignorance/stupidity on my part or poor communication on yours, you have not made yourself clear here at all.
See "theory of relativity" above.
> That's what I'm asking for. Communicate clearly and provide detail as to what supports the ideas you're presenting. You have done neither. That's not intended to be an insult or reprobation, rather it's the minimum that's required to have a reasoned, fruitful discussion.
Which portion of the infinitely large, logically inconsistent/paradoxical/illusory/ virtual idea space would you like to discuss? And in what way? With English text on a forum? Houston, we have a problem.
> You go on at some length after this, but the low information density of your comments makes it difficult to discuss this stuff. You've layered vague ideas about governance on top of assertions that those ideas don't support.
You're not wrong!
You know what? I am starting to get the feeling that you may not have a proper understanding of the complexity of the problem space you are working in, it's composition and behavior, and so forth and so on. Nor do I, of course, but then understanding is not a binary.
> I'm happy to continue this conversation with you, but I'm having a difficult time understanding what the hell you're talking about.
Perhaps the complexity is beyond the capability of our tools. It seems to me that science has similar problems in a wide variety of ways...I wonder what they did to deal with this problem such that they could advance their field.
> I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk that up to me being a native English speaker.
As am I, although I am "on the spectrum" (to put it nicely and imprecisely), so I think a common language is only a small slice of the problems we are experiencing.
> Should you choose to provide specific, relevant and supportable ideas, I will happily continue to engage.
99% of the general population is focused on object level details, or some bastardized illusion of that, my interest is in where that comes from.
> I hope you have a good day.
Thanks, you as well. I realize that the way I write is hard to understand (and not only because of the subject matter), but be that as it may, I propose to you that despite this, "something" does indeed exist here, and that it is worth understanding (or at least trying to understand), assuming that you ~truly care about the things you seem to care about (generally: the well being of the people within overall humanity - now, and in the future).
PS: for some extra fun: what do you think I am "up to" "here" (and elsewhere)? I will give you a hint: I propose to you that there is a "level" of sorts that ~exists, that this level can be ~seen, and that you currently do not have the means to see it.
How's that for provocative (and hyper-confident, plausibly bordering on sheer delusion) rhetoric!!?? But then at the same time: what if it's ~true? Or maybe even more interesting: what if it scales?
https://genius.com/Dr-seuss-oh-the-places-youll-go-excerpt-a...
(It's an interesting site, this genius.com - I wonder if there may be some unrealized and unharvested value there. I sometimes wonder if the same is true of the one we are on.)
And now I can't get that time back. Oh well.
Peace out.
Peace to you as well, fellow traveler!
> usually in special variance of zoning that the rest of us have to abide by
The solution is to remove the zoning in the first place, not add more requirements to get an exception to it.
US/Canadian automobiles are also needlessly expensive, there are many awesome vehicles sold in Mexico etc., like the Hilux, and I don't see it as a conspiracy to keep poor people down, but an overabundance of caution from bureaucrats covering their ass and regulatory capture.
It's really hard to argue the libertarian point of view because you're always trying to point out the "unseen costs".
Having to track down whoever built the house to figure out what standards they followed is painful enough when the house is a few years old let alone decades.
Similarly vehicles safety isn't just about the driver (although that is very important) some of the safety changes have been made to minimize impact on others. While everyone bitches about easy to scratch bumpers those bumpers help almost accidents not result in terrible things for pedestrians.
Not to say there isn't regulatory capture or that the rules are the correct strictness. It is just it is less "unseen costs" and more "things people don't think about" of course the only reason they don't think about it is the bureaucracy.
You should be free to drive a car with friggin spikes on the front, and the insurance industry should be free to charge you accordingly for the liability risk. That's freedom.
Then I shouks be free to shoot your car on sight if it gets withing 100 meters of my children? You can't bring them back from the dead
After all the city gets a house for the supply and you get your money back when you sell. Statistically everyone sells on long time scales after all.
On the topic of cars: that is stupid. 16.5 people died per day in 2019 in the US from being hit by cars. It is in everyone's best interest to bring that number down. It was double that in 1979 and while no one thing necessarily explains a big change like that newer safety requirements have helped a lot.
To be clear while recently some vehicle safety tests that protect the passengers from weird impacts have come up nearly as many regulations are actually related to protecting pedestrians whenever possible. Obviously hitting someone at highway speeds can't be helped but you would be surprised how much technology can reduce injuries in more minor accidents (and by extension reduce deaths in the non-extreme cases).
Regulations are not the primary reason for safety in vehicular design. I know you'll never believe that, however, it probably goes counter to your entire world view, so don't bother responding.
Whether you like it or not, there is dollar number on the value of a human life, and liability insurance (and vehicle design and regulation) revolves around it. Safety has diminishing returns and there is a market clearing point. Brush guards are just as dangerous as spikes, for instance, would you like to ban them? Or would you make a government form to apply for an exception if the brush guard is for an approved acceptable use by you for someone who has a license for their proper use off-road by someone with an acceptable economic reason fitting the social and economic calculations for the current five year plan determined by your Ministry of Truth?
Huh? That isn't what I said. I said "there are benefits". You can totally build a log cabin in jurisdictions that require inspections you just need to do a little more than setup some logs... Additionally I bet the definition of "house" is more flexible than you imply from your offhand information.
> Regulations are not the primary reason for safety in vehicular design. I know you'll never believe that, however, it probably goes counter to your entire world view, so don't bother responding.
I mean I can point to regulation changes resulting in additional safety but you don't believe that at all. The reality is vehicle safety has trended very closely to regulations if you pay any attention. Some minimal amount of safety is provided but it isn't like consumers are asking what happens if you impact a another care at 55 MPH vs 35 MPH.
> Whether you like it or not, there is dollar number on the value of a human life, and liability insurance (and vehicle design and regulation) revolves around it.
That is an incorrect statement. California has a minimum liability for injury of $15,000. We do not as a society agree that a human life is worth that little.
> Safety has diminishing returns and there is a market clearing point. Brush guards are just as dangerous as spikes, for instance, would you like to ban them? Or would you make a government form to apply for an exception if the brush guard is for an approved acceptable use by you for someone who has a license for their proper use off-road by someone with an acceptable economic reason fitting the social and economic calculations for the current five year plan determined by your Ministry of Truth?
You are just making shit up now. Feel free to quote any sources rather than making up stuff.
These are one in the same. Regulation is a euphemism for corruption, market manipulation, favoritism, cronie "capitalism", and so on. The intention might not be to keep the status quo (e.g., poor remain as such) but that - time and again - is the result.
Given these are the facts. This is the tradition. It's not all that difficult to argue the libertarian pov because if nothing else it's obvious what is not working.
Experiments should have control groups! Where are the control group cities?
Why do experimental social regulations have to be universal? Would life without them be great? Would it be terrible? I doubt that mankind evolved to require so much micromanagement in all aspects of life.
Deed restrictions, density restrictions, lot size restrictions, buffering ordinances, tax incremental investment zones, history preservations, airport zoning, neighborhood petitioning, etc.
Whether "enough" means "a lot" or "each and every hurdle that is already in place" is precisely what's at issue here. But I suppose it's convenient to take the side of maximum administrative burden if your goal is to minimize the amount of housing that is built.
Citation please.
We know what the math is due to towns near the border of Los Angeles along the I-15 corridor. Thsoe suburbs that decided they wanted to not be a part of Los Angeles received a very rude awakening as to what stuff really costs.
As I said, the NIMBYs are already paying for all this stuff. The federal money is not a charity of some third parties, it’s what the very same people paid in taxes in the first place.
What's going to happen is that they will start voting for the most blatant grifters running for public office, because they're the ones who are going to lie to them about solving this without raising taxes.
An overly complicated process just encourages grifters because there’s more ways for them to create confusion and conceal what they’re doing.
I was born in a very small town in California. They didn't want to become just another highway stop for shopping. They wanted to keep their small town flavor/community/charm.
So of course they made TONS of rules and roadblocks to stop "The wrong people" from building there.
It's now a highway stop with a bestbuy and the like....because it turns out that the massive corporate chains can pay people to sit there and jump through your hoops, but the smaller well meaning community developer will just say fuck it and move.
Nothing wrong with that
People are free to choose what suits them best
The more arduous you make it, the more likely you price out people who actually do work.
The government contracting system in my experience and learning, all the way back to Boss Tweed, is a MAJOR source of corruption and theft. ALWAYS sold with the best of intentions.
basically this is the curse of the low density again. in denser cities where building a ~500 unit apartment complex takes the same approval more affordable units are going to enter the market.
What is this argument?
If you hire a lawyer to defend you in coirt, wikk you measure how goos he is by the amount of paperwork he submittes to the court?
I would draw a hard line at disparate arbitrary and capricious allowances, i.e., making an affordable housing developer in a poor area jump through a ton of hoops, but letting a polluting power plant developer sail right through.
But seeing as this process is an exception to equality under the law granted at the whim of a board that may not even be elected in some cases, I have no qualms with making it by default really hard.
You want to change zoning laws? Fair. Do it for everybody via the elected town council or state legislature where the public has input.
Make it less profitable to provide housing and my money goes somewhere else, could be anywhere, I don't care. Make providing affordable housing the most profitable thing I can do, and you will have affordable housing.
I'm not jumping through any hoops for you. Your choice.
What I want is an affordable housing market. If I have to pay you to put up units and then impose rules about who and how you sell or rent them, I’ve already lost.
Nothing.
You have nothing to offer me, other than taxation.
Have a nice night.
At least, that was my takeaway from your original comment describing the behavioral characteristics regarding the affordable housing market.
The conservative strategy is "fine, if we can't kill this social program, we'll just drown the whole process in paperwork to make people go away...under the excuse of preventing fraud and slash the funding of the agency that processes it, and do our best to stuff the agency full of conservative bench-warmers who will gleefully, but as slowly as possible, reject paperwork for the slightest infraction."
Getting WIC benefits (food stamps for pregnant or new mothers) involves multiple in-person interviews per year (which means taking off time from any work, and usually traveling to a regional office that isn't accessible via public transit)...those interviews seem singularly focused on making sure that the pregnant lady is still pregnant, then actually produced a child, and then later, still has the child under their care. Because, you know, there's all these women who file for WIC, get abortions but then keep claiming WIC benefits.
The government is very, very concerned about getting scammed out of a maximum benefit per month of: one gallon of juice, 6 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of cereal, 1lb of cheese, 2 dozen eggs, $11 for fruit and veg, 2lb of bread, 1lb of beans or other legumes, and 1 lb of peanut butter.
Affordable housing is simply developing new housing that serves the market you intend to serve. It might be more humble, etc., to make it affordable for that market.
Part of the equation is realizing that there are also poor people who simply don't have enough to pay the rent on any place at all that is built according to building codes. Developers can't solve that problem, even with some kind of tax credit bible and tax consultants.
So whenever you force a developer to build affordable housing by placing caps on price, they will always be doing so at a loss and making up for it by inflating all the other units, skewing the market further.
Sure, the poor elderly, the homeless, and those with mental health and addiction challenges need a place to stay too, but it can't be here. We don't have people like that around these parts.
I also wonder about the incentive that's created when artificially affordable housing is provided in an area that's expensive because of high demand: doesn't that prevent a shortage of low-skill labor that would otherwise be a limiting factor in that demand? That is, if it's too expensive for many people who might work low-paying service and manual jobs to live nearby, the rising cost of that sort of labor might begin to lessen other people's desire to live there and businesses' desire to locate there, mitigating the housing problem.
I am trying to build a two bedroom house in a small country township in Ohio. My upfront costs just to get county, state, and township approval are already at $15k with me doing all the work. No approval yet. The piece of land (1ac) I'm developing was held by various corporate builders for years until I bought it from another individual for $7k. This house is for myself but it could easily be built on speculation and sold but I would have to live in it for three years to avoid the $30k income tax on the sale. No way am I fighting through all this red tape and risk to hand over $30k in taxes. That $30k is another piece of land brought to shovel ready for another build...pissed away. Income taxes are a regression to solo builders that make each build a daunting risk. The government is not allowing profit on smaller single family homes...period.
Sure it’s possible. How often, statistically, will it happen when there is a complete lack of financial incentive to do so? Basically never. My question is, what evidence and metrics show that it is always a net negative when the government creates incentives for affordable housing?
Where exactly is the difference between those goods and housing? At first I thought land, because the same land could be used for expensive or cheap housing — but that's the case with the raw materials for those other products, and just as in the case of land for housing, not all raw material is equally desirable.
As to your question, we really can't have good evidence one way or the other, because there are too many variables. I'm attempting to reason about it, and am not really sure I have answers myself, but I'm not comfortable assuming that having government take care of a problem makes the problem go away.
The presence of the opposing force in numbers is what is damaging.
You can make cheap phones in China and sell them in the US
You can’t make cheap homes in Indiana and sell them in San Francisco
Why are there cheap homes in Indiana ? Look at the costs involved: land is cheaper. All the other components: materials and labor are the same
The first difference is elasticity of demand. Housing is relatively inelastic in the short term due to land availability, time to build, and government regulation. This simply means that as price increases, quantity demanded does not decrease as much as it would for another good. For example, cereal is pretty elastic with good substitutes. If the price of cereal goes up, a good portion of consumers will switch products. In the long term housing is more elastic as people build more.
So, demand isn't changing a lot with price. And the second difference is that housing is a basic need. Let's make the assumption that housing is a truly competitive market without government regulation. The market will settle at different prices for different qualities of housing. It will be incredibly efficient and maximize consumer and producer surplus (economic goodness). But, people will be left out of the market. A perfectly competitive market DOES NOT guarantee that everyone will be able to purchase the product. It will just maximize consumer and producer surplus.
Okay, so we as a society think that we should provide some government assistance for those that cannot afford housing in this market. We have some options. We could implement a rent ceiling. Unfortunately, and this is well proven, price ceilings create shortages and inequities. Most economist do not agree with price ceilings. https://www.factcheck.org/2009/02/when-economists-agree/
We could provide programs as detailed in this article which effects the supply. As this article highlights, all government intervention WILL create market inefficiencies. The pie will get smaller. I'm not saying that the government should not act, I am simply saying that government interaction is a tradeoff between equity and efficiency in a competitive market without market failures.
I am a proponent of a voucher based system to give a credit towards rent for those in need. This reduces the government intervention on the supplier side. To be clear, these vouchers will slightly raise housing prices, likely not be implemented without exploitation, and make the overall economy slightly less efficient due to the tax. But the vouchers will also reduce inequity and provide people in need with a basic good.
I think a lot of the problem is from too much government intervention. For example, people get a lot of tax breaks as a landlord. This makes it more desirable to buy and then rent out a house. This shifts the demand curve right raising prices and removing some people from the market (it reduces home ownership rates). I think those tax breaks should be removed, especially if the house is not your primary residence or is your second or third home. People will make the argument that this hurts the poor because people won't build for them. But then the discussions above about a competitive market and the voucher system are better in my opinion than giving tax breaks to companies that own hundreds of homes.
As a landlord that is wrong. You get to deduct the expenses you have for running the property against the rental income, but that's just how business works. Landlords have enormous deductions because operating a property is really expensive.
In fact, you pay higher taxes in a lot of cases. It is very common to give people a property tax deduction/reduction if it's a person's primary residence. Landlords don't get that. Many places also impose direct revenue taxes. So your city/county/state will take several percent of your revenue off the top.
Finally, after higher input taxes, paying all those business expenses, you get to pay income tax on what's left over.
Also, primary residences are subject to a $250k/$500k capital gains exclusion that rental properties do not get.
About the direct revenue tax. Government can impose a tax on a producer or consumer, but that doesn’t matter. The proportion of who pays that tax is purely based on the elasticities of both the demand and supply curve. Because demand is inelastic, that tax probably is paid mostly by the consumer through rent prices. I don’t live in a place where there is a direct revenue tax on rental income.
There are still breaks landlords get like the 20% pass-through deduction, 1031 exchanges, and interest rate deductions (similar to small business loans - which the government also wants to promote). Keep in mind that if some of these tax breaks apply to other types of businesses, they are still tax breaks for landlords incentivizing people to be landlords vs deciding not to enter the market. That is not a normative statement. I kept deductions for depreciation (which is huge), repairs, employee fees, etc out of the list since they are the expenses you mention.
Bini-shell homes can withstand hurricane force winds and earthquakes and maybe even lava-flows assuming your door is shut and you don't get completely blocked in and suffocate.
Tiny homes cost about 50k to get and are portable. Yurts can make nice homes too. There's a TON of youtube videos on alternative housing 'ideas' beyond normal builds.
If I had a million dollars I'd build an intentional community with some glamping spots for revenue, and charge like $100/month/family member hoa fee or something, put whatever home you want on it. Camper, tent, yurt, earthbag, earthship, etc. Have to work out some legalities of ownership when people move/etc.
- Put some common buildings and share a lot of things like lawnmowers, 4-wheelers, power tools, etc. Things everybody owns but is really a waste of space when you could just have a community library of these things to checkout when needed. - Outdoor games like horseshoes, frisbie golf, rockclimbing walls, movie screen. - Locate it near Zion national park, or Grand Canyon. - Glamping camp for additional revenue while building things out. - Farming area and rain-capture tech to get the most use of our rainwater. - Solar array. - Commercial Kitchens, with weekly potlucks and volunteer-chef-supplied dinners (maybe tip your chef). ...etc
that's not the only condition, but it is a necessary one, to create affordable housing without shoveling piles of tax money at developers. the market must also be made fair and competitive in other ways, and there must be enough volume for prices to equilibriate to new information quickly (which also requires new information to spread widely to consumers, as in the first condition above).
> 300-500k in upfront costs.
So before building anything just the application process will cost you up to half a million, that's an enormous hurdle.
First, it allowed the building of suburbs, which just wasn't feasible before. This in turn led people to push zoning laws such that building anything other than a SFH became illegal.
Second, it contributed to the dismantling of street cars and other forms of public transportation.
Third, all these cars new housing developments needed roads and this typically led to the destruction of poorer and usually more ethnic neighbours.
Fourth, driving everywhere is like living in an insulated bubble. You don't have to deal with your fellow man. Things like Skid Row (LA) or the Tenderloin (SF) don't touch you because you can just drive around them in an airconditioned bubble. I honestly think this contributed to making people care less about the plight of their fellow man.
Fifth, voters routinely complain about the cost and taxes of public transportation but think nothing of all the subsidies governments provide for driving (eg building roads, having gas stations, building so much parking, having cheap or free street parking even in densely populated cities with good public transportation like NYC). Yes there are fuel taxes. No they don't pay all these costs.
Lastly, we seem to be comoletely comfortable with the cost in death and crime of car ownership because of the personal convenience. Tens of thousands die in motor vehicle accidents every year. There are crimes like being a serial killer or kidnapping that almost require having a car. Do we really wonder why such things exploded post-WWII?
The affordable housing crisis is depressing because it's another stark reminder of just how little a fuck people give to people who aren't in their tribe. The many barriers erected are simply aimed at making poor people go away. That's it.
And the problems are at every level of government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/qrn9i7/in_wh...
This trope is repeated on HN almost every time any article resembling city planning comes up. It’s discussed here ad nauseam. Anyway, let’s do it again.
First, if you think cars are the problem, why is the housing crisis still persistent in NYC and Chicago?
Second, this is not a US-specific issue. Rent is just as bad in Europe and people just get by on much less space there that would be unacceptable to most people in the US who aren’t accustomed to paying $2k for an old 1-2br apartment in a transit friendly location in a city.
Finally, the reason car usage exploded was because it enabled people to have cheap housing and work in the city. All of the cheapest housing in the US is in small towns and exurbs where you can have a 3 bedroom house to yourself for $1300/mo. Houses with access to good public transit (not an hourly bus) cost significantly more.
On a square footage basis, the US has some of the cheapest housing for a developed nation.
It’s usually the best quick way to determine home valuation or reasonableness of price. Typically the scale will vary by metro area.
To visualize it, you’d need to control for different income tiers and local taxes. In my small city, a good condition average quality existing house is about $150/ft. The same house in a nearby suburb with fancy school district, etc is about $200/ft. That home in Queens, NY would be about $400-500/ft.
In most places, you need to build higher density as 3 decades of subsidized mortgage rates built out all of the usable space. Usually condos cost around 25% less per unit to build than a single/duplex home.
It's also hard to define "income" without going into all the direct and indirect subsidies and income, e.g. is it adjusted for US health car spending coming out of "income", which you'd get for "free" in universal health care countries. Ditto living in Paris and not needed a car. v.s. that being the case in the US.
Here's an example: one of the countries that looks more affordable to US is Italy. Let's take a look at the the top metro in Italy, Milan.
Milan is now at around 4800 EUR/square meter. Average individual income is around 32k EUR/year, so average household income will be probably under 60k EUR/year, i.e. 5k EUR/mo. That means that a 100 square meter (~1100 square feet) dwelling will cost you just under half a million euros, your monthly mortgage will be something like 2k EUR, so your mortgage will be 40% of your before-tax household income. If you're unmarried, and making average wage, your chances of affording anything bigger than a one-bedroom are extremely slim, and even that will stretch your finances a lot.
The above is by no means extraordinary. Try doing the same for Rome or Florence, they are just as unaffordable as Milan. Bologna is slightly more affordable than that, but still less than NYC. And Italy is relatively affordable as far as Europe goes! Do the same for Netherlands, or UK metros, or France, or Germany. Truly, urban housing in US is very affordable all across the board.
At the same time, prolonged living with parents, and multi generational households have, for many past centuries, been rather common in southern Europe, much more so than in the western, or, especially, northern Europe. Very high rates of living with parents is not necessarily indicative of economic situation, one also needs to consider cultural patterns.
But what about the people who actually can't drive? Epilepsy, vision, etc. There are a ton of reasons. But like what do these people do? There are so few places you can live without a car in the US compared to any other country on Earth.
If you’re too poor to own a car with a $300/mo payment you certainly aren’t going to pay $1800 for a studio in the city.
The only people who “hate the poor” more than those who suggest people drive are the ones who suggest people move into dense cities.
While it legalized residential towers in DUMBO and other areas that have since gentrified, that also meant that the amount of redevelopable lots shrank. This increased the value of the remaining developable lots and made it harder for small developers to compete to get the remaining lots.
I can't find these links because they're from years ago and Google isn't great about looking up older links, but because of these policies the small-scale (<10 unit) developments did not recover their previous figures after the Great Recession, when traditionally that is how a good chunk of new housing gets built. (They also tend to be more affordable, because building a small building has a lower capital cost than building a large one and so more people can compete.)
---
As far as the square footage concern goes, I think that's valid, but I think the distinction is that the housing that people would find "unacceptable" in the US is also illegal. This raises the bar on what the minimum you need to rent any space is, and increasingly we are seeing ever larger segments of the population struggling to meet that bar. At some point we're going to have to ask if we dislike SROs so much we would rather have people on the streets.
Addendum: here's a direct citation for Harlem rent hikes precipitated by subway construction in 1904 making the neighborhood more accessible to low-income would-be-renters: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-end-of-the-african-ame...
"A few years after the 1900 riot [in which whites attacked blacks in midtown following the stabbing of an undercover police officer by a black man], as Harlem land values increased with the first subway line nearing completion in 1904, the black residents, once sought as renters in Harlem, became the targets of an organized removal effort by some white Harlem property owners."
"The [New York Herald] article also suggested that a rent increase “which the parlor car porters could pay, but their colored inferiors could not,” had previously been used as a strategy to remove the undesirable tenants."
This is a deep topic.
Homelessness is just one metric for an affordable housing crisis. I see estimates that there are ~80,000 homeless in NYC, being roughly 1% of the population. That's a lot and unacceptable but there's also a far bigger segment of the working poor and low-income.
I would argue that these people are less worse off in NYC than Chicago and certainly LA or SF simply because there is that transit system. Put another way: the homelessness situation would (IMHO) be significantly worse without that system.
For cities you need to consider a number of factors that play into this:
1. Minorities typically didn't have the option of moving to the suburbs post-WWII because they were excluded from purchasing or borrowing for homes;
2. Affordable neighbourhoods were demolished at a disproportionate rate to make way for freeways and interstates;
3. This all snowballed into the Great White Flight that lowered average incomes in cities, which diminished the tax base of those cities (among other things); and
4. When it suddenly became fashionable to live in cities again, those who had previously been abandoned there effectively were priced out or otherwise pushed out of their homes.
> Second, this is not a US-specific issue. Rent is just as bad in Europe and people just get by on much less space there
European countries have more of a social safety net. Some quick googling claims there are 10-11,000 homeless in London out of almost 9 million people, a rate roughly 1/8th that of NYC or LA.
But "Americans just want more space" is propaganda. We don't know that because it's extremely rare for Americans to have that choice due to almost all population centers only allowing single-family homes to be built. Low-density apartments, high-density apartments, row houses and multi-family dwellings are incredibly rare in the US because it's illegal to build them almost everywhere with exceptions confined to very narrow areas.
> Finally, the reason car usage exploded was because it enabled people to have cheap housing and work in the city
It enabled some people to do that, which is kind of the point.
Unfortunately, we need to build affordable housing in the cities we have, not in the cities in some magical world where the car didn’t take over.
Unless, of course, you want to wait a couple of decades for good public transportation to show up before housing the underserved.
Talking about how society should have done something different and casting blame moves the ball forward exactly zero steps, and talking about it in this article is an utter waste of time.
The public transpiration problem needs to be solved, but won’t be solved in the even the medium term and is a distraction from solving other problems we have today.
step one would be to abolish mandatory parking minimums. if a developer wants to use their entire lot size for housing and not provide any parking, they should be able to. if the market demands parking, the market can build market-rate parking. it's ridiculous that we have legal requirements for how much housing there is for cars, but not how much housing there is for people.
7. While there is enough room on every street to build a row of houses.
Cars are a comfortable bubble and 100% in many high dense cities, useless or worthless, but necessary to get out of the cities sometimes (Tokyo is a large exception of course, but a car is def a nice option to experience while in Japan)
The thing is, outside of USA, zoning and such do not exist to the same extent so you do have much more owner consideration w/ whatever they want with their land which is good and bad, cheap housing across asia, but parking or getting around even outside your place to the main road is def tricky, open sewers, poorly closed sewers, no car parking (which is acceptable) no/minor motorcycle parking, no bike parking, the right of way of the road and the property ingress can be really close, and it's pretty amazing.
I agree 100% with your post, I just think many Americans do not know how things used to be, and never had the experience of going to places abroad which do not have many american problems. .
I'm not sure the car is to blame for this one.
When I'm driving a long drive with the same cars around me for an extended period of time, I think how in the past travelers would be able to chit chat and get to know each other. Cars prevent that. So why do I say it isn't the car's fault?
Because even in public transport, people isolate themselves from each other. Even when packed together so you are physically touching, you don't interact with others. People walk down sidewalks don't chat with each other unless they already know one another.
If cars were the problem, we wouldn't expect to see this behavior where there aren't cars, including in countries that don't have anything like the car culture the US does. But we do. Something else is at play. I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't seem fair to blame cars without some stronger evidence.
Many people simply can’t imagine a life without a car.
Many people gush about how they would love to drive less but suggest they walk anywhere or ride a bicycle and you’ll get a million excuses about why it won’t work for them.
Very few people are willing to put their money where their mouth is and choose to live a low or no-car life. Personally, I have. I grew up in the country, never learned to drive, managed with my feet and a bicycle, then rode the bus during college, and finally I moved to a city as an adult. Yes, I gave up a lot to do it, but it’s worth it to me.
Possibly, because blaming the car by taking a detour through a motivated political movement doesn't make sense to people? Suburbs would be impossible without cars, true, and airstrikes would be impossible without airplanes, but that seems like a poor case for blaming government policy on an inanimate object.
>Third, all these cars new housing developments needed roads
All economic activity needs roads. Those roads get wider because of cars, but their existence is felt most strongly in the wider economy because of trucks. Being able to transport goods anywhere with low latency makes a huge difference to the operation of thousands if not millions of businesses.
>Fourth, driving everywhere is like living in an insulated bubble. You don't have to deal with your fellow man.
Just earlier tonight I was driving and nearly got hit by some other driver who ran a red light.
>Things like Skid Row (LA) or the Tenderloin (SF) don't touch you
Liberals really need to work on not sounding like they want people to get robbed.
>I honestly think this contributed to making people care less about the plight of their fellow man.
Someone in Utah honestly believes that the reason Californians won't deal with the homeless problem is because they don't go to church. But neither of you gave me any evidence.
Solving housing is "easy", there are just tradeoffs, none of which to me seem like so bad. I typically only see NIMBYs on the other side.
The term “Affordable housing” is used in such different contexts, that it holds little meaning.
But I just want us to be building condos and simple homes geared that middle income families can afford at 30% of their annual income.
This idea of purpose-building one entire low-income/needful apartment building seems insane. Apportioning units from regular apartment blocks seems like a much better approach. At the very least, the investors aren’t holding their breath for the profit to come in.
If we want more affordable housing the answer is supply.
And if we (god forbid) decide we want the government involved in building it we should copy the one place with an inarguably successful project. That’s Vienna.
It astounds me we can be this bad at picking policies that lead to the outcomes we actually want.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/land-value-tax-housin...
On the other hand some managed to completely miss the point and mangle this whole scenario to the point where the effect is essentially reversed. Impressive really.
This could be a good opportunity to figure out why users prefer to stay on the same platform. Some interesting psychology must be at play.
Poor areas are prone to have more violence, and sharing intimacy will make the consequences of that dreadful.
It's already hard to be weak or a pray in the dangerous part of town. But if you have to be in close contact with aggressive groups for your daily living, it will turn into a nightmare.
Imagine a woman having the pee at night, how safe would she be if she had to exit her flat, cross the corridor and go to public toilets where people also sell drugs ?
Doorm rooms are fine in universities or back packers because people seeking education or travelling are usually not the same ones are those who will mug you.
But as someone who went to a poor high school: the rules are not the same there, and the law is going to help you.
In short, such proximity would allow a minority of destructive people to make the entire neighborhood hell.
Why ? Because indeed we realized that we could address those problems with design.
In this case, the good design is called a private appartment.
Honestly those things are so important that anybody stating they can create them differently should be forced to live in them for 10 years in the worst part of the city, like roman bridge builders were forced to sleep under their construction.
I agree that the problem is nuanced and need to carefully avoid the people making problems for one another. If France has solved the housing problem I’m sure the world is ready to listen.
It does depend on the area but you're always worrying about all sorts of overlapping regs.
Those calling for more and more of that same? You're part of the problem.
Solving the affordability crisis in the US will require a multifaceted approach involving radical changes in existing land zoning and building code; decoupling our city planning from roads + cars to alternative modes of transportation such as walking, biking, or public transportation; and having the O&G and auto industries pay their share for getting us into this mess.
Software engineers get this, politicians seem to not.
They just keep revising one line at a time. Putting another wrapper on the object so they can modify it without breaking anything else.
That’s how you get the ability to appoint privateers in 2022 xD
Hearing tales from my activist friends, this LIHTA tale most reminds me of the gauntlet exfelons brave to get their voting rights restored. My own state had 20+ steps. Like getting the original sentencing judge to signoff. For people who already have the legal right to vote, were it not for the paperwork.
My second thought is about the strategy of housing advocates. Instead of lobbying, maybe they should be underwriting. PKIs showing how many units got built would mosdef help with fund raising.
If you don’t have any money to build that’s one way to do it I guess
Recessions solve this in the long term, when the Fed allows them to happen.
It seems racist to call people who are concerned about the project racists. Some of them may be, but some of those people concerned about traffic may have legitimate concerns. I've seen it for fancy developments too.
Edit: why downvote?
There should be a single government body that deals with the hurdles in a timely, professional and affordable way.
Did I? You might want to read back. I said calling people racist for bringing up traffic issues could itself seem racist.
"The thread talks about hypothetical, rather than specific people who oppose development in bad faith using other reasons to hide their true, often racially- or class- tinged reasons."
Did I miss the part about classist people? I only saw NIMBY and race mentioned.
Are these hypothetical people? It seems the author is using real life experiences in this article, so in this context I assume they are talking about real, yet unnamed, examples they have witnessed. If not, it seems odd that they would offer up detailed, named, real examples for other parts, but not for this. Seems a bit hand wavy about it happening at any significant scale as well as in it's implication that people concerned about a traffic issue are all racists since there is no mention of the legitimate concern.
Please do read back because you have you're facts wrong. My comment mentioned the racist labeling issue. But it primarily was focused at bringing up the issue of how housing preferences are a big part of costs. It seems nobody wanted to talk about that part and instead chose to go after this other part.
I don't believe I violated any guidelines. My comment was intended to talk to the substance of the article (housing costs) and also call into question the validity of insinuating that people raising potentially valid issues in their communities is somehow racist. The author doesn't even address the traffic claims in detail. It's possible the person rasing the traffic issue isn't opposed to the project based on race but on another reason like cost to the community to re-engineering the intersection (it's quite common to make developers pay for the traffic modifications and allow the project to continue).
I don't see my comment as being flame bait. I had no intention of it spawning such extensive replies. I believe all of my comments have been high quality and served a valid point/correction/etc. If you can't see that, can you explain why? You claim I'm employing a horrid troupe, yet this seems to violate the HN guideline to be charitable. I'd much rather discuss the actual content than this discussion about each other's comments.
I don't believe I complained about downvoting. I merely asked why. To me this seems fair to ask as discourse can generate new knowledge and that curiosity is a big part of hacker culture. There are a lot of other users on this site who have seen downvotes abused and would like to see comments attached.
If you are enforcing the guidelines (no idea if you're a mod or someone else), can you remove the main post since it clearly violates guidelines for being a political topic that is not a new phenomenon, and also counsel the other individuals for violating the guidelines by misinterpreting my comments and calling my opinions/discussion and curiosity "shit"?
I try to abide by the guidelines. Would a better way to be curious be "why disagree without comments?". I would like to facilitate discussion in accordance with the hacking principle and HN guideline of being curious (it would really suck if I'm not allowed to be curious here). I'm not sure how we can facilitate this discussion without asking for additional clarification or reasoning. This should lead to discussion of the content, and maybe provide one or more parties with additional knowledge or clarify a misunderstanding. Certainly it provides more value than downvoting a comment just because one disagrees with it, as votes don't contribute to discussion nor curiosity.
I'm not a mod; all I can do is cajole.
My understanding was that downvotes without comments are appropriate/encouraged for specific types of comments, like bots, spam, comments without any substance, or violations of the guidelines. Essentially, comments in reply to those do not supply any additonal content or contribute to the discussion (hence the additional clarification in the guideline about boring reading in relation to comments on voting), and responding to them can just turn into a thread of comments that lack any substance. However, a comment that seeks to discuss various points related to the article and are downvoted simply because people disagree seem to violate the principle of curiosity and discussion.
Basically, I thought questions out of curiosity, even around downvotes were ok. Also that downvoting is more or less targeted at guideline violations and not just disagreement. But Maybe I'm taking dang out of context. Like I'm not trying to argue my downvotes and change their minds. I just want to know why I was downvoted so I can learn.
This thread is fulfilling the Guideline Prophecy now, so here's where I bow out.
"Allowing for (even encouraging) downvotes without comment or explanation is an explicit goal of the site, which was designed by someone who was irritated with the clutter of superficial negative comments."
Although, again, the guidelines are super-explicit about not going on about voting, not dingleberrypicking one thing that irritates you in a post, etc. And generally, you can just type author:dang [your topic of choice] into search and get a learned opinion. You'll find most of your interpretation of the guidelines above to be inaccurate.
I merely asked for additionally context for a conversation. Others have instigated this longer conversation. They don't seem super explicit if two guidelines conflict with each other, especially if it conflicts the core principles of curiosity and discussion.
"not dingleberrypicking one thing that irritates you in a post"
Again, if you read back you can see that it wasn't one thing in my comment, but that others decided to engage on one part of my comment and largely ignore the other.
"And generally, you can just type author:dang [your topic of choice] into search and get a learned opinion."
Which I did, and posted the previous link that seems to indicate that downvotes are more for comments breaking guidelines than for disagreeing without comment. However, I do see that the links posted by you have pg stating that downvoting is used for disagreement. Seems a little odd though, that it's purpose is for disagreement but we can't downvote replies that we disagree with. This logical issue seems to indicate that it's not just for disagreement, and that debate and discussion is also valued (as stated in the guidelines).
"You'll find most of your interpretation of the guidelines above to be inaccurate."
Or perhaps you are misapplying the guidelines because you misunderstand the facts of this scenario.
Recursion depth met >_<
If a development would greatly help members of a historically oppressed group and somewhat hinder members of a historically powerful group, and you knowingly argue against the development on those grounds, you're supporting a policy that has unjust racial consequences.
"A racist" is a useful shorthand for a person taking those actions in that context. It's not a permanent immutable judgement about the inner workings of their mind or motivations. Just an assessment of some of their actions.
Are they arguing against it on those grounds? The tweets don't go any further than calling people racists that bring up traffic or environmental issues.
Systems and policies that have disparate racial impacts are racist. Resisting changes to those policies that would narrow the impacts is somewhere on the wack-to-definitely-racist continuum, yes depending a lot on the specific details of the situation.
What matters here is the impact, not the intention. If someone is supporting a policy with a racist result, or resisting changes to them, I'm gonna call them racist too. If they don't like that assessment they can ignore it or stop those actions.
I don't believe my statement is looking for a narrow definition, just a valid one. I'd like some level of proof. It doesn't have to be high. The real problem here is the insinuation that people who bring up potentially valid issues related to a low income housing project are racist. Their concern could be a valid one with no racial basis.
"What matters here is the impact, not the intention."
Please, do show me a definition that shows intent is not a component. The dictionaries I looked at do not agree with you. Even then, would it be racist for you to assume a specific race is disproportionately affected by low income housing? If a race is affected disproportionately by lack of housing, are you inviting any of the affected people to share your home? Does that make you racist?
"Systems and policies that have disparate racial impacts are racist."
No, they have "disparate racial impacts".
By your definition, what system isn't racist? Every system has some disparity of racial impact, even if it is meritorious (take the recent posts on here about Harvard quotas and Asians). I firmly believe that without intent, a system is not racist, but could have racial disparities - there is a difference. The definition you're trying to push seems to be more worthy of the insults you're pushing at me.
You mention a racist policy. What policy is that? As there is not one mentioned in the context of sentence mentioning racism.
That's not racist, though. I mean, it can be, but that's just caring about your own property value more than caring about righting unjust racial consequences. It's still selfish and kinda shitty, but racist? C'mon... I feel like the term is getting watered down by everyone who likes to use it to shut down discussion of something they don't like.
> "A racist" is a useful shorthand for a person taking those actions in that context.
No, that's not what "racist" means.
lol nah I feel pretty good calling that racism sorry
There are a lot implicit assumptions in here of outcomes you cannot predict, and which I'm frankly a little dubious you can precisely define and measure in a falsifiable way.
> You'll meet some racist neighbors
I'm onboard with the notion that a significant amount of opposition to low-income housing in many areas stems both from racism and fear of racist stereotypes. That said, I think a lot of home owners are very defensive regarding their illiquid assets and generally just don't like things that affect their property values. Low-income housing is one of those things. Less wealthy folks moving in nearby is one of those things.
Put simply, I don't think you have to be a racist to be a classist. Whether that is any better, well, probably not, but call it what it is.
That is pretty much my thought. I do feel that the bulk is classist and not racist though.
Not where we live. Perception is they are voting for mostly high end, luxury housing at the behest of the developer who of course is trying to maximize profit.
Love thy neighbor?
Our previous landlord was an absolute nutjob (we found out later he'd been doing all sorts of strange/illegal things and had a ridiculously high tenant turnover; shame since it was a nice unit).
Eventually, his wife came on one of the inspections and decided we weren't fit to grace her property, so we were given 120 days to vacate. This is the minimum in Victoria for "without cause" eviction.
While incredibly stressful (and I still don't think the laws are strict enough; "without cause" eviction should be as difficult as "without cause" firing), it was long enough to find another suitable property to move to. I couldn't imagine how terrible it would be to only be given, say, a week's notice until we were homeless.
Apartment which we applied to but didn't rent:
- owner insisted that we follow her rules about living habits (e.g. get up/sleep times) or we wouldn't be allowed to rent (this was a large building of 20+ apartments)
- subtle hints during our tour that she profiled everyone and only rented to those people she considered to be "responsible" people
- threw a tantrum at us and returned our rental application when we asked for a few days to sort out the contract signing and then proceeded to lecture us on responsibility
- heating was controlled by her for the entire building (imagine what it would be like to live there)
Apartment 1:
- mouse/rat infestation which the landlord addressed by saying they put up traps instead of calling an exterminator
- rampant spider infestation which landlord refused to do anything about (seriously, I've never seen so many different colored spiders)
- landlord started arguing with us at our door when we threatened to report them to the city for above
- our downstairs neighbor's shower stopped working and still wasn't fixed by the time we moved out
Apartment 2:
- mold growing in the bathroom and sharp splinters coming out of what must have been 50 year old hardwood floors, no fix from landlord so we taped the floor where there were nails/splinters
- only 1 burner worked on the stove (no fix from landlord)
- power to the entire building would flip on and off at least once a month
You couldn't get out without paying for the rest of the lease. That's what made it so much worse than what you're describing. I would have gladly been evicted from these hellholes.
It ended up being the case that the corporate landlords in the area were actually much better behaved than the local ones.
In Canada the CMHC used to get affordable housing built on a massive scale, but now it’s mainly just mortgage backing for banks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_...
Add on the planning costs that the Twitter author goes on about, and your "affordable housing" is now near a million dollars. Is that really affordable?
but that was never actually an economically viable product, so it makes sense to simply not expect it to work.
for four to sixteen units that seems like it could be fine?
It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.
>for four to sixteen units that seems like it could be fine?
Those costs have also skyrocketed because now you have additional requirements like fire, egress, additional structural when going over two stories, etc.
It's why most new apartments are "luxury" apartments. The costs have grown so out of control that the only way to break even is to make them outrageously priced.
Only because they are the only thing that most zoning codes in the U.S permit to build. With U.S zoning being what it is, there's literally no honest discussion to be made on what type of housing is most economically viable.
So if we go back to smaller places it’s viable. The only reason it’s not viable in places like Europe is because there are so many people in a small space. In the USA we could get adequate population density with 1200 sq foot homes and 1/8 acre plots.
My father managed several factories in the LA area. Upgrading the electrical for new equipment in the close to downtown factory was going to cost something like a 6 to 7 figure sum. The factory in the boondocks upgrade was a quarter of the price.
A suburban neighborhood that hosts a few dozens of families requires more infrastructure, but can be replaced by a single 10 to 20-story building. An large apartment complex can serve hundreds of families.
Now, it doesn't have to be a dichotomy. It should be even more cost effective to build tall apartment buildings in the suburbs near the city. City-nations tend to expand capacity by creating new towns in suburban areas and extensive planning. That's much more efficient than US-style suburban sprawl.
It's the only legal product.
Very different.
If you ban shoes that aren't made of gold, everyone is going to have terrible, expensive shoes. This would not be evidence that gold shoes were economically viable. Especially if every locale that adopted this rule was deeply in debt.
Where’d this nonsense that the only thing you can build in the US is SFH come from? All over the US, in the same areas where there are SFH, there are apartment complexes, condos, and townhouses. The reason there’s so much SFH in the US is because, believe it or not, many people prefer living in a detached home with some semblance of a yard.
I walk into the bank and permit office for a loan to build a single family, and they barely even wake up before shoving the money at me.
If I dare to go above a duplex, all hell breaks loose.
Because it's very often true. Many neighborhoods that have apartments and townhomes mixed with SFH are full of grandfathered-in buildings that would be illegal to build under current zoning codes, due to setback/lot-fill/height/unit-count requirements etc. In fact, one reform idea I'm particularly fond of is allowing (e.g. at state level) any property to be rebuilt to the existing use (so that people aren't living in decaying, unhealthy buildings).
There are clearly lots of these buildings. And have been for decades. It may not work "forever" but it has worked.
Your argument reminds me of the economist who steps over the $100 bill on the ground since it couldn't possibly be there because if it was, someone would have picked it up by now.
Think I'm in the wrong profession, what on earth does a Californian electrician make per year? At that rate I'd guess 500K+
Wiring a simple / small home, it takes well over four electrician months, minimum.
Also, they have to pay licensing fees to the state, insurance premiums, etc, etc.
Of course, the $40-60K also includes materials, which are a small percentage of the cost, but non-zero.
My parents place was new, custom construction (not small, but only 3BR/3Ba) and there were 2 sparkies there for 1 day to set the temporary power, 4 or 5 days to rough the house in and, after drywall, they were back for 3 or 4 days to trim everything out.
One day we showed up, and all of the electrical had been done. Power, internet, pre-wired home alarm, panels, the whole kit. Plumbing was the same way. One day, plumbing. (It uses that flexible plastic tubing internally, that has to go up fast.)
Did I see it being done? No. For all I know 50 folks showed up and wired it in a day. "2 man months". But, I'm guessing that's not what happened.
The most interesting anecdote from this is that I actually met one of the guys that did the work. He did, at least part of, the internet wiring.
Know how I met him? He was driving a dump truck delivering landscaping material. He liked the work better, I guess his family owned the hauling business.
I don't know what he was getting paid to route CAT 6 cable, but, apparently, all told, driving a dump truck is better.
What exactly does the electrician spend all that time doing in California?
Amusingly enough you can add a separate 100 amp service arial if you convert to a duplex even if just on paper ...
It’s hard to take these numbers seriously - they don’t pass the sniff test for anyone who has had it done. Wiring a 1000sq ft home is a job that is measured in days, not months. While I only have experience of the UK, it is difficult to see any possible regulation which would mean installation being quite literally an order of magnitude slower.
But let’s use some Fermi estimation. California builds around 100,000 new houses a year, give or take. This suggests we’d need an absolute minimum of 400,000 electrician-months a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks there are 70,000 electricians in California in total. Assuming they have an availability of 90%, then we could say that California has about 750,000 available electrician-months a year in total.
This would mean that over half of all available electrician time in California would be spent wiring new-build houses, if we assumed they were all small properties. It seems clear this can’t be a credible result.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but it’s hard to swallow without some idea of what possible thing could cause this betone vague hints about “code being insane“
Recent example, upgrade to fire doors in corridors on 3 floors. Halfway into the job they realise each corridor is a different height and the doors they have already bought are the wrong size. Some levels of incompetance are hard to imagine until you see it happening in real time.
This was in Southern California.
What is your location?
This is an example that I just found. It’s almost ready and without internal decoration. Cost is $50k but keep in mind that it includes 1800 sq.m. of land. Electricity, water seems to be done. Internal decoration with good materials I’d estimate to $10-20k. House is 160 sq.m.
Still expensive.
Here’s the cheapest kit at Menards if you’d like to compare:
29551 - Tahoe Cabin Material List at Menards https://www.menards.com/main/p-1569392867885.htm
And that’s materials only. And would be considered quite small by US standards.
But hey 11% rebate.
It’s even cheaper if you do the laying yourself of course.
So yeah, concrete pouring is way cheaper.
Wood also maxes out at some point, and even poured concrete - which is why the tallest skyscrapers are glass on steel.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-age-of-the-wood-skyscr...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I32sMNktmKo
Unfortunately for most Americans who are building a house, a primary concern is the eventual sale, and anything that is not the standard house is a harder sell.
Which means that if you're willing to stray from the beaten path you can find some deals, and some disasters.
California is a whole other level of insanity for everything. NYC/DC prices and bureaucracy along with the busybody veto power of suburbia.
Even in UK it was shocking to find out that walls between apartments are just plaster, that's totally unacceptable in continental europe, When i tell my folks that I could break through to the neighboirs with a kitchen knife, their brain implodes (It would take a while)
Why is it absurdly expensive to build in the USA?
I don't think that's quite correct. It's the largest expense for almost everyone, but it's a huge source of income and wealth for a much smaller non-overlapping group. Also totally coincidentally I'm sure that same group is disproportionally represented in all seats of power.
Publish sets of acceptable plans, put together an expert committee to approve variances, make all the variance decisions published and binding precedent. Size the expert committee suitably for the workload. Then get the towns to specify where they want the housing to go and acquire the land. Pay contractors to execute the plans.
That's socialism, of course, so it won't work in America.
>Because you are pursuing 4% credits, you will also want to pair that with tax-exempt bond financing
>it's a rough ride that will take 9-12 months if you're hustling.
What is this BS. You have to be an idiot to burn 12months for 4%.
>A problem you will likely face, is that 4% credits, bonds, and traditional bank debt aren’t enough to close the funding gap.
What funding gap? How about you build what you can afford instead of burning time for some magical 4%?
>You need more subsidy to make this project viable.
Ah. So this isnt a story about bureaucratic hurdles when trying to build affordable housing. This is a story about people trying to milk subsidies/tax credits an complaining about the approval process.
It's better than it sounds. Only a portion of the project's units need to be affordable, so you're still making market rate on the remainder.
We don't need affordable housing. We need people to stop buying houses they don't live in-- especially if they are renting them out to others. We need to cut population growth. We need to stop subsidizing home buying.