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Comment by gongdzhauh | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a NIMBY. I thought small neighborhoods that have nice characteristics should never evolve or change, I thought places with tons of people were unpleasant to live in, I looked down on people who could afford market-rate new housing ("evil techies"), I thought new development increased rents (it doesn't).

20ish years later, seeing the homelessness, property crime, and housing crisis in the Bay Area, I am convinced I was wrong and wish that the area had built a ton more housing in the past. There used to be so many artists that were able to survive on a part-time cafe job back then. That's no longer possible and it's a bummer and makes the area so much more mundane.

I do still consider open space and parks important and valuable and don't support building new housing on a lot of those types of places.

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I read an article I found on HN about how housing regulations ensure there is a minimum price on housing. If you can only afford housing below the minimum required to meet the regulations then you go homeless.

We don't want people homeless but on the other hand, we don't want people producing unsafe housing just to keep costs down.

It's a particularly nasty problem that I've only seen discussed in that one article.

In this context "housing regulations" doesn't usually mean stuff like electrical standards[1]

It means stuff like "houses must be single story", "no apartments", "yards required", "minimum 2500 square feet", "setback from street".

[1] - Although I have seen a lot of threads about how the requirements for multiple exits in US apartment buildings is probably unjustified. See also elevator requirements.

This is a general economic argument against any government-mandated price control.

People see someone making $6/hour and think that passing a law that minimum wage must be $8 means that person will now make $8, but technically the law only says "it is now illegal to pay that person $6."

Some businesses may be able to afford the raise and still turn a profit, but for others, if that person's labor is worth $7/hour to your bottom line, it is suddenly no longer a good business decision to keep them employed.

It all depends on where their wage is on the cost/value curve. It's true that if the company is paying their employees close to their contributed value, increasing the minimum wage will put them out of a job, there often isn't a force that reliably pushes a wage near that point. Regardless of the value provided, if a company can get away with paying their employees less, then they will. The forces that determine wages have more to do with available supply of various skills than they do with the demand for the actual value provided.

not all companies of course, but as an aggregate, companies will follow this rule

It's worth noting that without a price floor, people will spend all of their time working just to eat. This can be seen all around the world in developing countries, for example where children shine shoes and scavenge trash to recycle for a quarter a day. Meanwhile the wealthy in those communities pay merely enough taxes to prevent a revolt.

So the minimum wage is really about deciding what type of society we want to live in. Do we want servants, or do we want opportunity? In developed countries, jobs below the minimum wage get automated or some form of government assistance pays for the jobs that can't be, for better or worse.

A better word for deregulation might be decivilization.

I don’t understand the connection you’re making between minimum wage and food prices

George Carlin presented another solution for housing development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSRCjG-VLk

(2:38min if you want to skip ahead)

Our homeless crisis is determined by factors unrelated to the amount of housing (though it used to be, and it’s important to build new housing in general) - nowadays we actually import homeless people to places like SF.

Basic supply and demand along with every study I've seen points to housing supply being one of and usually the main factor in the level of homelessness of a city.

As to San Francisco homeless coming from outside the Bay Area, that's true for only around 10% of the population. Most (70%) became homeless in San Francisco and many others became homeless in other parts of the Bay Area. See the `PLACE OF RESIDENCE` section from https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...

22% - out of county. 8% out of state.

If you'd like to learn more about this, here's an entire book that investigates the various factors involved: https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

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