Hacker News Reader

Comment by avidiax | Hacker News Reader

I think the author has it quite backwards, at least as it comes to housing.

Politicians are beholden to the members of their district, not would-be members. Sure, more affordable housing would benefit many people, but it wouldn't benefit the members of the district, particularly the wealthy and powerful, since more affordable housing is very nearly equivalent to real estate values decreasing (at the very least, as perceived by voters). Sure, renters would in theory benefit, but real estate prices aren't rental rates, and the renters have to move to capture the improvement in pricing, often outside of the district.

Essentially, the status quo of real estate pricing always increasing in a district serves everyone within the district well enough. Any change to that is a massive financial risk to property owners, so it will be vigorously opposed.

View on HN

>Politicians are beholden to the members of their district

In a perfect world with informed voters this would be the case. It is not. In America, you can get away with literally killing your constituents as long as you have the right party affiliation next to your name.

We live in a nation where grown-up children systematically are, in a way, turned into economic refugees fleeing the high-cost areas where they were born and their parents live. There are lots of people that care deeply about promoting housing abundance, more than enough to be a political force.

The real problem is-- this is a problem of a diffuse absence. There is, generally, no simple focused location to complain about, and the problem does not lend itself to a roll-up-our-sleeves-and-spend-some-money solution. Those are called "housing projects" and they are a tool of last resort.

In addition, this is a failed policy built on the shoulders of a failed transportation policy. Government is stuck on the developmental cul-de-sac of rubber tires and individual vehicles, and the housing crisis is intrinsically linked to this. The modern generation has demonstrated no profoundly increased enthusiasm for investment in mass transit, and instead prefer unproven technology fixes always just beyond the horizon.

My son has been trying to meet people his own age around Ithaca and struggling but has been overcoming from his own effort with some help from his friends like me and my fox [1]

Of course the early 20s demo is dominated by college students which has some positive but also negative effects. He found it was easy to meet boomers at rock concerts and poker tournaments but once he cracked the code of meeting people his own age he was told by townies that townies leave because they can’t afford the rent. It is one thing to move on to seek fame and fortune but if you’re going to be one of the people who construct and maintain housing (can’t outsource that work to India, won’t be replaced by LLMs) it is a step down to move to a blighted area where you can afford to live.

[1] shapeshifting lessons taught him how to be an ambivert like myself

I don't see how that contradicts what the author is saying?

More abundant housing would be better for society in general, in the long term. But it's definitely true that less abundant housing can be financially superior for existing landowners right now, I don't think anybody really disputes that.

Given that I'm not trying to sell my house, its market value is meaningless to me. Meanwhile, that house is in the midst of an growing group of increasingly desperate people. Desperation has very real consequences for the people living nearby.

The effect you're describing is not nothing, but I think you're overstating it. I'd rather see the homeless housed than see my property value go up by another 10k. It would be worth more in that case, market evaluation be damned.

Not for $10k? How about $100k?

That results in even more property tax I have to pay. People should want higher land prices due to growing incomes and business opportunities, not solely due to lack of housing supply. The former is sustainable, the latter is either a tourist trap or a short term game of musical chairs.

People are fooled to think it is OK to pay an inflated price for a house even if it means you struggle with the mortgage and taxes because you will sell to a greater fool…. But that perception is cracking.

Leftists in Ithaca have learned that high property taxes drive up the rent and voted down a bloated school budget because they realized that we all pay taxes.

Ok yeah, I'd consider moving if I could sell my house at $100k above market. But that's not how it works. Realistically, the whole market moves together, so I'd just end up paying $100k extra wherever I move into. It's not real.

Whether I get mugged while I'm walking home from the grocery store... that's real, and it's a function of whether there's affordable housing available.

Also, these are not independent variables. My house would be worth more if it were not in an area where you get mugged on the way home from the grocery store.

(author)

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, the polling says that members of every district are substantially more pro-housing than politicians believe they are. That's one of the points that I'm trying to make in this article: people in your district will reward pro-housing work and economic growth more than incubants believe they will.

On the other hand, 80% of the work we do at YIMBY Action is organizing visible constituencies in districts to incentivize politicians taking pro-housing positions. The phrase I always say is "politicians get to the heads of parades; we are building a parade."

And on a third hand, I do think we can build an ever-bigger parade by getting people who think they benefit from the status quo to realize they don't actually. Small businesses benefit from housing. Suburbanites complain that teachers can't afford to live in the school district and they're loosing people. etc etc etc. I think those arguments are permeating and softening a lot of housing-resistant districts.

I think there's approximately 0 voters that are NIMBY because they want to prop up their housing values by restricting supply. They are NIMBY because they like the way things are where they live and want them to stay the same.

> real estate prices aren't rental rates

Sure, but they are heavily correlated. Price changes in real estate are reflected in rental rates (not 1 to 1, but still reflected)

Also, many of those renters in each politician’s district would like to purchase a home in the same district if the prices came down enough, so the politicians should (in theory) be beholden to their interests, too.

Of course, in reality, real estate owners are a much more powerful (per capita) political force than renters are, so politicians are not automatically catering to the larger majority of their constituents that are not real estate owners.

The problem is the "pulling up the ladder" phenomena which seems to plague the US. My ancestors were allowed to come here and that was good but it would be better for me today if we stopped letting people come to the US. My house was affordable for me but it would be better for my wealth if housing in my neighborhood became unaffordable. In California Prop 13 limits taxes of long time property holders and businesses at the expense of new entrants.

That thinking works if you don't feel any obligation to the future or society, which has been the direction of US consumer / libertarian culture for decades. The impacts are obvious. The public school I went to now has to bus students in from different neighborhoods because the housing is so expensive few young families can afford to live their. It's become for wealthy people aging in place and people all over the US and the world investing in real estate.

It's also a culture of fear, for the young and the old. People are scared and they worry, but they are blind to how much they really have. For the young they worry about not being able to afford a car and a house in their thirties. This was never really possible for everyone, and when it was the houses and the cars were so much less than we would consider normal today. It's a feeling that the present that you know well isn't as good as a rose colored past.

So the simple answer here seems to be removing our focus from satisfying property owners, no? It's okay to abandon a system when it no longer works for the community. Constituents having to move to capture the improvement in pricing is not the ideal outcome, the ideal outcome is protecting constituents and meeting them where they are. In the worst case scenario, constituents might end up homeless rather than stable in another district where prices are lower, whereas land owners might see the line on a chart go down if the value of their real estate drops. I am much more inclined to help the constituents...

Perhaps politicians and property owners both needs to fear the status quo.

Tie minimum wage to the cost of housing on a per city or per zip code basis. When the middle class and wealthy are negatively impacted by their restaurants, grocery stores, etc becoming expensive (or shutting down) due to labor costs then they will relent. "I hate more housing, but I love to eat affordably." Connect labor prices to the cost of assets in some meaningful way.

I personally think people should not work for a wage less than they need to buy the crappiest home in their town which would negate this need, but the lower-classes haven't developed enough self-esteem or entitlement for that.

> people should not work for a wage less than they need to buy the crappiest home in their town which would negate this need, but the lower-classes haven't developed enough self-esteem or entitlement for that.

and do what to prevent themselves from going homeless in the meantime?

Change won't come from inside a district that's already comfortable... It has to come from broader coalitions that push past local veto points.

This is basically what owners and politicians think and act on, but ignores the fact that in many cases renters are already the people that make up their district, because the gulf between owning and renting is so vast, and nearly every owner subsidizes their mortgage or property taxes by renting their basement or something.

In my neighborhood, I'm quite sure that the overwhelming majority of the population are either renters and owner's kids. The minority have control over their shelter, many of those aren't even shy about asking for cash to dodge taxes while collecting pensions and old age security, and it's disgusting. Renters make up a significant enough voting segment, but no matter what we're voting for people who actively try to screw us in order to create more wealth for the wealthy.

It's more common than not in my social circle that anyone under the age of 40 is renting from an individual who owns a house on the comically, needlessly large plots that make up the neighborhood.

> Since more affordable housing is very nearly equivalent to real estate values decreasing (at the very least, as perceived by voters)

Wrong!!

Please get this right, because telling people they need to loose wealth to fix society is a horrible place to be in.

They own the land and the land will appreciate in value (unless your house as a shit location, but then you area poor-ass republican anyways, statistically speaking).

This is the great positive some outcome:

- Housing unit costs go down

- Land values go up

So long as it is economical to density by a greater ratio than the ratio land prices grow by, this works out.

> Please get this right, because telling people they need to loose wealth to fix society is a horrible place to be in.

This is often the reality. Massive wealth inequality won't be fixed by making everyone billionaires, it'll be fixed by getting rid of billionaires

Unless you tell the fed to run inflation at 20% for a few decades and tie everything else (wages, pensions, welfare, etc) to that rate. It is called fiscal repression and it has it's drawbacks, but it would serve to end inequality by making everyone billionaires. (The price of a coffee might end up at £1m though..)

Even if it is the reality in other ways, it is not the reality on housing in high-demand urban areas.

Does this preserve the land values of currently-economical exurban plots? It seems like some of this kind of policymaking, explicitly or not, involves the metro region as a whole, no? Would these putative land value increases accrue to individual property owners or to the developers that have the capital to build MFDs and rent them out?

I’m not sure how helpful a mental model of “shit location [of] poor-ass republicans” is: last I checked those suburban and exurban landholdings contribute a fair chunk to the state and county property tax bases. Though I’ll grant that I don’t know the nuances, and I don’t know how to think about how to tease out the housing component of urban-dwellers’ land-tax-related contributions, as distinct from those buildings’ commercial functions.

Anyway, your “shit” “poor-asses” certainly are able to muster political opposition to measures that devalue them, even if they are “poor-ass” relative to their, uh, “betters” like you. In fact, your “shit” “poor”s who have accepted an iffy location in order to invest in a home they can afford… those might be even more sensitive to losses affecting their life’s biggest investment, and more likely to think of it as the anchor of their financial security.

For that matter casually condescending attitudes like the one you display here seem to have a lot to do with those constituencies’ political potency, and their reflexive opposition to YIMBY sorts of ideas…

> Does this preserve the land values of currently-economical exurban plots?

Probably not, but those people are not powerful enough on their own to stop it.

The dense suburbs are vastly more powerful. Once they realize densifying makes them richer, it's game-over.

> For that matter casually condescending attitudes like the one you display here seem to have a lot to do with those constituencies’ political potency, and their reflexive opposition to YIMBY sorts of ideas…

A lot of people say shit like this, but how can you look at the last 15 years and think that pandering and fake-magnanimity wins elections? I'll be honest in my condescension that exurbs are bad, thank you.

Indeed, it seems the real work of politics is convincing someone that what they want is different from what they currently want.

That's not necessarily bad. That's leadership.

You can use leadership to do bad things, but you can also use leadership to do good things.

> That's not necessarily bad. That's leadership.

I don't think your parent said it was bad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com