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Comment by Forgeties79 | Hacker News Reader

Do you recall exactly what kind of housing they were opposing? Because that is a major piece of context we are missing here. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who simply said “no more housing.” It’s usually much more specific than that, such as opposition to house flipping and STR’s, or wasteful planned communities of McMansions and concrete.

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Generally these people oppose the building of "luxury housing" because they don't get how ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price. Also the idea of a developer building a kind of... predistressed property has never made any sense to me.

> ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price.

I can tell you firsthand that that is absolutely not true. The massive rush to renovate or build new short-term rentals in the 2010s had a disastrous impact on rental prices around my city, especially coupled with historically low interest rates that made these enterprises far less risky. It’s also incredibly disruptive to neighborhoods/communities, not just because of bad guests but because it can rapidly drive up value, leading landlords to sell and/or rapidly drive up rent which means kick out lower income tenants whether it’s intentional or not. Most of the STR’s in particular were also not being done by locals. 70%+ were out of town developers. Currently almost 90% of STR’s here are whole home which means not local owner/operators living there. It’s just hotels by a different name taking up housing in residential neighborhoods.

When interest rates and home insurance went up a few years ago, coupled with stricter rules for getting an STR license, a lot of people sold their properties (usually rentals/STR’s), and the price to buy as well as rent noticeably came down pretty rapidly. It’s still too high, but the drop was noticeable and quick. The purpose for construction absolutely factors in to these discussions.

Taxing short-term rentals would handily address these issues while still allowing people to derive some income from their otherwise vacant pieds-a-terre and vacation homes.

But that’s the thing, that’s not what these properties are generally here. These are homes bought in cash by developers in neighborhoods occupied by residents. People lived in these homes prior and somebody else would have likely bought and lived in it if they left.

When my wife and I were buying our first house we had two houses taken out from under us because somebody came in with an all cash bid tens of thousands higher than ours. Both are still Airbnb’s.

> These are homes bought in cash by developers in neighborhoods occupied by residents.

This happens because hotel accommodation is generally overpriced. But if you tax the airbnb rentals, it deters profit-minded developers from engaging in this practice, while still allowing it as a last resort for homes that cannot be rented long-term and would otherwise sit empty.

Maybe in theory but that’s not what happened here at the end of the day. That’s the entire issue. This type of construction and renovation is bad for housing. My city’s story is very common - it was especially in the 2010’s.

House-Hotels managed by companies based in other states (sometimes even other countries!) don’t belong in residential neighborhoods. We have zoning for a reason.

> Maybe in theory but that’s not what happened here at the end of the day.

If you mean that levying targeted taxes/fees to mitigate the bad side-effects of STR's has not been tried, I agree of course. I'm not denying that the detrimental side-effects exist.

I think my larger point here is that we can’t say “all construction is good” if we have to have a ton of qualifiers that ignore when it isn’t and/or expect all sorts of parameters and rules that aren’t being implemented. Tons of bad building goes on all the time, and it is reasonable of people to oppose it. Belittling them and accusing them of not understanding basic economics is not fair at all. There are plenty of examples of construction that should be opposed.

STRs reduced the supply of housing. You’re making my point.

I think we might be talking at cross purposes

The local subreddit for my area always has tons of negative comments about any new housing development.

Some people complain it is "luxury" or even just normal and not "affordable."

If it is single family housing then people complain about the lack of density. If is apartments or condos they complain that there is already so much traffic in that area and adding thousands of new people will make it even worse.

When small old houses are bought up, torn down, and a new apartment / condo complex goes in they complain about the lack of character and soulless new development that all looks the same.

I have to agree with some of the other comments that many people never learned supply and demand or are completely incapable of understanding a for profit business.

I've seen comments about memory / RAM prices going up. Gamers are now so anti-AI because it is making their GPUs more expensive and now memory, flash, and hard drive storage as well. I've seen comments that say the government should step in and force companies to make GPUs at affordable prices. We can argue over whether health care or clean water are a human right but some people seem to think cheap GPUs are a human right.

An ex of mine mentioned to me that she was going to join a local community group trying to prevent development on an empty lot near her apartment. I asked why she would want to do that? Her concerns, and the concerns of the people she was showing me on facebook, were:

1. "They didn't do an environmental review" 2. She didn't want to hear construction noise. 3. She didn't want the construction to cause rats to leave the lot and go to buildings. 4. She also said she didn't want her rent to go.

I believe it was this lot: https://web.archive.org/web/20250821002539/https://www.nytim...

I think it is common for people to organize, even in the most urban and educated areas in America, against their own interest.

Apartment complexes. Mostly "luxury" apartments, but including ones with some % of affordable units. Some were replacing houses, but mostly replacing parking lots, vacant lots, or even older, smaller apartment buildings -- in a neighborhood that was already almost entirely apartment buildings.

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