Hacker News Reader

Comment by zb1plus | Hacker News Reader

In places like the bay area with a housing crisis and limited space to expand, the state should seize office buildings (remote work is the future and would help alleviate the shortage while new housing is developed) by eminent domain and set up a scheme like Singapore's HDB system [1] to develop affordable housing.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board

View on HN

> places like the bay area with a housing crisis and limited space to expand

This is the most Californian response to the problem I’ve seen. Limited space? Even San Francisco has 190 acres of vacant land [1].

You want to emulate Singapore? Consider its relative lack of single-story structures. The Bay Area’s housing crisis is a political choice made by its voters.

[1] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5gc6w0vd/qt5gc6w0vd.pdf?t...

Yeah. There is this weird meme that there is no space to build in the bay. But at the density I’d say Hong Kong (which is an extreme) you could probably have 100 million people in there. Tokyo you could have 50 million. There’s only limited space when you assume the only thing you can build is suburban office parks, single story strip malls, and single family homes.

America is not Singapore. We have higher expectations around the amount of space than pretty much the whole rest of the world. And that's okay: we are also the world's wealthiest country.

I agree though, that the current housing crisis is entirely the work of people who own influencing city governments much much more than renters (who have no choice but to move out of expensive locales).

If we're going to say "Americans want and expect more space", then we also have to be honest about the consequences that people who can't afford that minimum of space will either have to move or be homeless.

> We have higher expectations around the amount of space than pretty much the whole rest of the world.

Many of these expectations helped lead us to this housing crisis. It may be time to reexamine them in the light of the life-ruining harm they encourage.

There's no need to seize any buildings: the issue is that building dense new housing is illegal. If cities allowed much higher density ("upzoning") then we'd see prices for new units fall to not much above the cost of construction.

I agree with the sentiment but it's legally and politically untenable in the US (edit: to use eminent domain)

Singapore was able to build out the HDB because it was a One Party State that didn't take kindly to activists.

For example, when the HDB program was being built out, there was massive resistance by the people living in the villages used to build those HDBs.

Those villagers often leaned socialist (Barisal Sosialis), and that party was largely neutered under emergency acts [0] with trade unionists and party activists being sent to Chaangi Jail indefinitely, along with protests and conspiracy theories about the ruling party burning down Kampongs/Villages to force residents to move into HDBs [1]

While this in hindsight was the right move, the cost is VERY HIGH.

The point is, redevelopment while caring for human rights and property laws is HARD. If you are a One Party State that can jail pesky activists willy nilly and owns all the newspapers, it's possible. But this is not how America works, and sure as hell not California.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Coldstore

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukit_Ho_Swee_fire

This seems a somewhat dramatised account? The Malayan emergency response had the solid backing of the west and was essentially just a continuation of the cold war across the region at the time, it's definitely a lot deeper than just zoning laws and is rooted in a decades long civil war with communist insurgents.

There's absolutely no reason we in the Anglosphere couldn't emulate the HDB system and bringing up cold war incidents from 60 years ago isn't really relevant at all to how it works on the ground today.

Tangentially: Singaporean HDB owners have been harping on about oversupply for years now and the government is foolishly listening to those with a clear vested bias for increasing their own asset prices: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/govt-careful-calibrati...

I'm responding to OP's comment on eminent domain.

Eminent Domain in the US is a de facto nonstarter based on past recent litigation.

The HDB programs in both SG and HK were able to succeed thanks to strong eminent domain laws by governments not immediately beholden to public sentiment.

It was the right call, but one that can't be done in the US circa 2023.

Also, Coldstone was after the Malayan Emergency and after SG was kicked out of the Malaysia, though this was also the era of Konfrontasi.

It was just after the insurgency ended but there was definitely a massive pushback on anything even slightly communist/socialist running through both countries that still exists to this day. Singapore was a very new country at the time and despite the split with Malaysia the two were pretty much in lockstep and highly integrated on issues like the emergency/civil war.

Both countries were basically expecting it to break out again for decades after.

Fair enough.

There's a huge amount of work required to convert offices into actual housing people would want. Biggest and most costly step is you have to completely change the plumbing to add in unit access to water and sewage. Even if you make it super low income housing and convince people to accept shared facilities like a dorm you're still missing showers and laundry.

Yes but what will they do with all the managers that need to see people in front of them to know they are working and all the workers that need to scuttlebutt? Those are difficult questions that need answering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com