You seem to be ignoring the main part of my statement - distribution and preferences matter. "NIMBYs" can't be a retort to that when NIMBY is by definition local - there are many other areas to build in across the country.
"Owners holding vacant units is not a significant cause of the housing shortage."
It may not be the biggest cause, but it is "significant". It is more pronounced in some markets and sectors (apartments).
So you admit there are markets that do not? That's my point - distribution of housing across the country.
Tell me where I could move where housing hasn't doubled in price in the last 5 years AND has employment for a family.
Great strawman.
"Tell me where I could move where housing hasn't doubled in price in the last 5 years AND has employment for a family."
In the vast majority of country housing cost has gone up but has not doubled in the past 5 years. Many medium sized cities and suburbs have employment to support a family while not being outrageously priced. You can even find lists made by various organizations for the most affordable cities. Also, if you care to read the context in this thread, I do acknowledge that a part of the problem is people wanting/needing to live in the same place.
What do you even do with that information? Ship the homeless around the country?
Other studies should that the higher the vacancy rate the lower the homeless rate and the cheaper housing is. So we can just allow people to build where people want to live and solve both problems.
Your gross take home from a minimum wage part time job is $145/week. Before all taxes and deductions.
You can’t afford a closet is crack hiuse on that “salary” even in the boonies.
Even in my LCOL areas places that were like $400/month 5 or 6 years ago are over $1000/month.
In case, if the market value drops, well, rich people will just buy them.
If you’re currently in a “$300k” home and can buy a “$400k” home for $100k… like how do any of these numbers make any sort of sense?
A person's friends, family, social support... and frankly, modern culture can make moving a sticky problem.
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/time-series/de...
The rate of people moving between states has dropped significantly.
https://www2.census.gov/library/visualizations/time-series/d...
The people moving within the same city has stayed rather constant, it is the distance moves that have dropped - https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
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I believe that if you offered homeless people in Oakland a job and a house in Kentucky that they could pay off in 10 years while working as a dish washer, you would have very few takers.
I would also suggest that the town that has the dishwashing job in Kentucky - that business is likely to close in 5 years and there won't be any more unskilled jobs in the town and they'll be out of a job and unable to pay the mortgage, get foreclosed and be homeless again -- they know that story.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't - homeless in California is known while a homeless in Kentucky is something else with even fewer opportunities out.
Also ignoring that many people who live in California would face non-trivial threats to their health and livelihood if they were move to a regressive Bible Belt state. That is not a theoretical concern, but one born out by numerous tragedies.
Sounds like when homeless people or people on various assistance sometimes turn down opportunities because they're afraid (sometimes rightfully do) that it will ruin one of their other assistance. How do you help people who don't want to be helped?
Gonna need some sources on this one.
> The Center for Immigration Studies found last year from January 2023 to December 2023, at least 320,000 illegal immigrants were allowed to fly into the U.S. from their home country through a controversial program of the Biden administration using the Customs and Border Patrol app, the CBP One app that was created to let migrants apply for parole into the US.
> The Parole program allows for two-year periods of legal status during which adults are eligible for work authorization.
https://nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/biden-admin-flew-hu...
The humanitarian parole program was created to allow 30,000 Cuban/Haitian/Nicaraguan/Venezuelan nationals in per month on a two year work visa as long as they have a US sponsor that will financially support them and pass background checks.
In return, Mexico is allowing the US to expel 30,000 illegal migrants per month from those countries to Mexico rather than their home countries.
That's 30,000 unhoused individuals per month being added, and unless the expelled offsets it, they still need housing.
The parole process has reduced the number of aliens from those countries entering the US and government spending and lets us do background checks, capture biometrics and cap how long they're allowed to be here.
There's a reason why the court tossed Texas' lawsuits against it this week. They couldn't find injury.
Loose immigration policy and the lack of border enforcement obviously exerts downward pressure on wages for low skill workers. It also bids up rents since illegal immigrants are willing to pile into a 1 bedroom apartment. The elite own businesses and real estate, both of which benefit from illegal immigration reducing wages and increasing demand for rent. If you take a minute to think about the incentives, then see the effects in the world around you, it's pretty obvious what's going on.
It's rarely ever too hot or too cold in costal California cities.
This would be equally true of other large cities in the southern half (including July for many), and none of them have anywhere near the same rate. Notwithstanding, northern cities have indoor shelters and if the cold mattered that much, the rates would be quite small, but they're not. In expensive cities like NY, homelessness rates are high.
See here https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
> Between the lines: The county is also trying to address other health factors that put people at increased risk for heat illness or death, including drug use and unsheltered homelessness, by embedding social workers at cooling centers to help with finding housing and harm-reduction strategies, Sunenshine says.
> More than half of last year's heat deaths were people experiencing homelessness and two-thirds involved substance use, she said.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/12/texas-heat-deaths-20...
> Green was among the 334 people in Texas who died from heat in 2023, according to data compiled by the Texas Department of State Health Services between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30.
> The heat killed more Texans in 2023 than any other year on record, according to the figures, which are not yet final. The state’s heat-related death records began in 1989.
> Heat-related deaths are typically associated with a secondary factor such as mobility problems, mental illness, drug and alcohol use or homelessness that prevents people from escaping extreme heat, Dwyer said. That’s one reason why elderly people have a higher risk of heat-related death, she said.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/heat-related-deaths-i...
California has 4.2 heat related deaths per million. (all of California - including Fresno).
Arizona has 71.9 heat related deaths per million.
Texas is 6.7.
San Francisco had the third lowest ER room encounters for heat related emergencies at 5.1 per 100,000 residents (it was behind Marin and Santa Clara).
While hot weather in San Francisco should not be ignored, it is no where near the mortality rate that is seen in other southern cities.
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You cannot have the same rates of unhoused people (note: using unhoused here because a person who is homeless living in a hotel room is homeless, but not unhoused) in northern cities because you will die in Minneapolis in the winter if you don't have a place to stay.
https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/2023%20Homele...
San Francisco has 887 homeless people per 100k residents. Boston has 657. Denver has 670. Minneapolis has 209. Chicago has 141. I'll also draw special attention to page 9 with the percent of the population that is unsheltered.
The unsheltered per 100,000 residents:
San Francisco 420
Denver 184
Boston 18
Chicago 46
Minneapolis 38
Specifically regarding mental illness and heat - https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interacti...
> Boston has 657.
This supports what I said. You also forgot NY.
And check the rankings by State. CA is second behind DC, and after that there is VT, OR, HI, NY, WA, ME.. and so on. Not exactly pristine weather year-round. The common factor is affordability.
The quality of the analysis and arguments are terrible. We can just ignore factors if they don't explain everything? And why is it missing a section on the biggest correlating factor - lack of employment? The severe mental health and substance abuse (with other factors like criminal records) greatly impact one's ability to get any job. Affordability is a moot point for people in these categories as without a job, you can't afford anything. It would be better to do more granular analysis on those who are employed but homeless. That is likely to be the marginal diffence explained in the housing cost section.
No, we just can't rely on them to explain everything! As you purport.
Only 33% of the homeless suffer from mental illness, and it certainly is not a strong predictor as to why rates are high in some cities but not others. That's the data.
> Affordability is a moot point for people in these categories
It matters to everyone, but even if we pretend it doesn't, that's 67% percent of the homeless.
The data does not support that. You cannot simply subtract 33 from 100 and claim affordability is the primary factor. Mental illness is not the only factor affecting employability. You have substance abuse, criminal records, etc that all prevent people from finding employment.
Those all respectively represent a small fraction of the whole, and there's usually overlap. You cannot add them all up as though they are completely separate parts of that 100%.
Ultimately affordability is the primary factor, it's indisputable.
"Ultimately affordability is the primary factor, it's indisputable."
What comprises affordability? It's cost and income. It does not matter what the cost is if you have no income because you have employability issues. Until you fix the employment aspect, the cost aspect is moot.
You can point to a poor quality blog post that doesn't examine all the factors all you want. Perhaps that makes it "indisputable" in your own mind, but thats not going to convince people who want to have real conversation about the root of the issue.
I just showed you elsewhere that this is wrong.
Vacancy is not the issue.
Vacancy is good - higher vacancy is related to lower prices. Vacancy rates are the lowest they've been in decades.
We just need to build.
Check the timeline and distribution though. Housing starts dropped in 2008. Measure the population from that point. From 2008 on, you're looking at .5% population growth and it's dropping. Housing starts are still reasonable at about .5M-1M units.
The problem is distribution. Population growth in certain cities has outpaced building in those cities. However, there are other cities where the inverse is true.
"Vacancy is good - higher vacancy is related to lower prices. Vacancy rates are the lowest they've been in decades."
Vacancy is only going to lead to lower prices if those vacant units are on the market. That's not necessarily the case with the corporate owners.
Check the vacancy rate in major cities.
> people wanting/needing to live in specific locations
Where the jobs are, yes.
> individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes
Mixed density and smaller builds are almost nowhere to be found, and small developers have incredible difficulty securing loans from banks to build them. The large developers focus on expensive projects that have more overhead and checks, and even there they don't build that much because they are few in number. People would opt for mixed density were it actually available.
Zoning and regs are actually among the factors that make certain projects riskier, so reform helps in this regard. Just see Minneapolis. Zoning reform works. It works so well that there is some push back from NIMBYs in those cities pissed off that their areas are changing fast.
What are the vacancy rates in the smaller cities and rural areas? What are we doing to utilize the vacant units by bringing jobs to those areas? Is it really more effiecnt to build new housing rather than take advantage of the existing housing? Should we just concentrate everything in a few major cities and leave everyone else behind?
Sure, reducing zoning will mean less rules and people can do more things, like build. The interesting thing is that building mfh was only a small part of the change - a change that CA also made state-wide but isnt seeing much benefit from. The change that made the real difference was increasing density for apartments and reducing parking requirements. The rents for apartments dropped, but sfh values have continued to climb as population declines. Bringing me back to the preferences and distribution part of my original comment -affordability is mostly driven by preferences and distribution.
Also not amazing. Many have fled the cities to purchase properties in rural areas, which drives up the prices there too. This is particularly pronounced in Canada.
> What are we doing to utilize the vacant units by bringing jobs to those areas?
Bringing what jobs? You're going to move a company HQ to the middle of nowhere? You're going to move manufacturing there? Be serious.
> Should we just concentrate everything in a few major cities and leave everyone else behind?
"We"? These are municipalities with their own policies, and people go where they want. If they want to make a life in the middle of nowhere with few prospects, they are welcome to, but you cannot force people and their businesses there to satisfy some notion that it would make their lives "affordable".
Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350.
Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500.
Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes. And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's are just landlords and other types of bottom feeders.
- Make it illegal for corporations to own residential homes / any property in residentially zone locations
- Generate policies to eliminate real estate parasites (illegal to have percentage profits off of sales, open data, low friction technological avenues to remove those jobs altogether)
- Marginally increasing second / third / fourth property taxes on individuals (first home untaxed, second taxed at 20% market-rate valuation per year, third taxed at 50%, fourth at 100%, etc).
- Create avenues to easily demolish HOAs when they go off the rails
- Multi-unit housing can no longer be owned or managed by a for-profit entity (rent goes exclusively towards building upgrades and paying works for upkeep & administration, all transparently visible
- Limit Big Lumber's ability to export Lumber outside of the US -- trees grown in the US should stay in it to house people.
This would be a start to fixing the issue. The objective being, of course, to utterly collapse the housing market, and make houses homes again.
Nobody is going to build houses and sell them at a loss or at break-even price, they need to cover their costs and make some profit as well to keep the business alive.
He also mentioned that new requirements going into effect this year were going to add $10-15k per house.
People tend to have a poor grasp on what building a new house actually costs. They cost a lot to build with no gouging whatsoever.
A lot of people in here arguing, bet there are very few of us that have actually built houses before :)
Remote work is solving the housing shortage already though, through opening up living to much wider geography (and locales that don't impede building, such as TX and FL). It will just take a decade or so to normalize.
In-person work forced people to compete over limited housing in small areas
All those cute picturesque towns in the Mountain West don’t have a large supply of homes to begin with, so it only takes a few wealthy Californians to seriously upend the local market with wages paid much higher than what locals can get for their skills.
Probably the most realistic thing to do is to simply implement rent control. "You can't legally collect more than $X/month in rent" fixes the problem of rent being too high. If that makes owning rental units unpopular, so be it.
But they won't. Landlords pass taxes on to the tenants.