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Comment by jamestimmins | Hacker News Reader

This is wrong.

Developers make money from developing, which they can't do in the majority of major cities due to regulations outright banning development and cost burdens that make most development unprofitable.

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Last time I checked, plenty of properties are developed in NYC and Los Angeles.

Also, although my day job is in tech I play a lobbyist on the side in my small Los Angeles county town. Development happens despite onerous and burdensome municipal code.

Exactly. Development absolutely happens in these places, but big capital is only interested in fat margins, thus virtually all of that development has been luxury condos (and in LA suburbs, McMansions).

Luxury condo development occurs because LA, and California as a whole, have onerous costs that make any other type of housing not pencil. The fixed costs for development are so enormous that it's often impossible to make any profit while building affordable housing.

Really? LA voters have passed literally billions of dollars in funding for affordable housing. California has passed bill after bill to overcome regulatory hurdles for approval of housing that includes even a tiny amount of affordable housing. Private developers simply aren't interested.

I think that's a common misconception. If you dig into those numbers you'll probably find a regulatory burden that is not actually gone, massive local pushback on development, or a cost structure that still doesn't work.

California refuses to learn the lesson that throwing money at a problem doesn't just mean it's fixed (see: the high speed rail).

Obviously money alone won't solve the problem. But when 95%+ of the proposals are NOT affordable housing, and those developers are actively bribing city officials, it's no surprise that most of what gets built are luxury condos, mostly downtown, the vast majority of which are uninhabited, serving as bank accounts for foreign "investors."

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-19/jose-hui...

Do you have data to back up your claim that the vast majority of new LA condo development is uninhabited and going to foreign investors?

Yeah, try taking a drive downtown after dark in any major city. See how many of the new units have lights on. Do that night after night, random times. Most are dark. Local/state governments don't actually collect data on this because they're in the pockets of real estate. Vancouver BC had the exact same problem, so they passed a massive vacancy tax, something California needs to implement ASAP.

By definition, there is not "plenty" of development in LA, because there is far, far, far too little of it occurring. This is evidenced by the increase in rental rates and the meteoric increase in homelessness, all while developers are trying and failing to build housing due to local regulations.

You are wrong.

You seem to think housing is the only thing that constitutes "development". You, indeed, are wrong.

If there isn't enough housing getting developed, then there isn't plenty of development

I would hazard an educated guess that you live in a luxury apartment building. Is your building the best use for the land it’s on with regards to affordable housing? If not, why do you financially support the developers/owners? How do you deal with the cognitive dissonance?

I do not live in a luxury apartment building.

But if I did, that would be fine. The reason there aren't affordable apartments in LA is because of the regulatory/cost burden. When neighbors can easily require a CEQA analysis that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, the only buildings that pencil are expensive ones. This is a well documented phenomena.

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