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Cugel the Clever posted:Urban cemeteries, too. Thousands of acres of prime land utterly wasted.
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Jun 8, 2019 22:08
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Are urban golf courses that bad? I'd rather have lots of medium-density housing and some public parks (which public golf courses basically are) than lots of low-density housing and no parks. I don't know anything about this topic, though, so I could easily be wrong.
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Jun 10, 2019 12:11
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nrook posted:Are urban golf courses that bad? I'd rather have lots of medium-density housing and some public parks (which public golf courses basically are) than lots of low-density housing and no parks. Golf is also extremely space inefficient. Back of the napkin math, if you compare 4 people per tennis court to 4 people per hole, golf takes up like 40x as much space (driving range might be okay though). For any city where land is at a premium, it really doesn't make any sense.
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Jun 10, 2019 12:43
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nrook posted:Are urban golf courses that bad? I'd rather have lots of medium-density housing and some public parks (which public golf courses basically are) than lots of low-density housing and no parks. there's an argument to be made for public golf courses, as in owned and operated by government entities and with low costs of entry for players. but golf as a sport consumes a huge amount of land which otherwise is not useful for public recreation (you can't really have concerts or festivals on fairways without having to repair them) so on the whole it is an inefficient use of recreational land
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Jun 10, 2019 13:26
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luxury handset posted:there's an argument to be made for public golf courses, as in owned and operated by government entities and with low costs of entry for players. but golf as a sport consumes a huge amount of land which otherwise is not useful for public recreation (you can't really have concerts or festivals on fairways without having to repair them) so on the whole it is an inefficient use of recreational land There is also the argument that when the guillotines come, golf courses make rich people really easy to find.
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Jun 10, 2019 13:35
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you could convert golf courses into frisbee golf courses and get more flexibility in land use that way, but people who play frisbee golf would also be just as happy with a box of free government provided hacky sacks or something so 
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Jun 10, 2019 13:36
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luxury handset posted:you could convert golf courses into frisbee golf courses and get more flexibility in land use that way, but people who play frisbee golf would also be just as happy with a box of free government provided hacky sacks or something so Thank you for this Luxury Handset, it make me cackle out loud in the office and I needed that today lol
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Jun 10, 2019 13:39
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luxury handset posted:you could convert golf courses into frisbee golf courses and get more flexibility in land use that way, but people who play frisbee golf would also be just as happy with a box of free government provided hacky sacks or something so Footgolf works too.
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Jun 10, 2019 15:39
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Also, don't forget the environmental costs associated with keeping those lush, non-native grounds green all year long. A handful of courses around the world let the grass die but it's really rare. But I loving hate lawns in general and I'm busy replacing mine with trees so there you go.
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Jun 10, 2019 15:52
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Definitely ban golf courses in drought-sensitive areas, imo. The average golfer can probably afford tickets to go to Scotland on the reg if they really need to pursue such a lame, tedious hobby.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:34
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StabbinHobo posted:what exactly is one bulldozing on a golf course? the trees? the little flags? I remember I visited a high-end community one of my friends lived at that had a huge golf course in the center of the development. Apparently, the property management company in charge had recently voted to convert the golf course into more housing units. The thought made me happy until I realized that they were just going to build more over-priced single-family detached McMansions.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:46
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Some very approximate calculations suggests that turning the maintained turf of an 18 hole golf course (about 30 ha) into housing at the same density of Kensington and Chelsea, a famously undesirable place to live, gives housing for about 4000 people per course. Seems like a good deal to me. LA country already owns 13 18-hole courses so they wouldn't even have to nationalise any land to get a long way towards housing some of the 59000 homeless people who live there.
distortion park fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 13:07
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Definitely ban golf courses in drought-sensitive areas, imo. My parents have this friend that hosed off to Arizona to live and play golf. Arizona is FILLED with golf courses and this fact never fails to piss me the gently caress off.
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Jun 11, 2019 14:32
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I'm surprised there's no bacterium that's no the rise that is able to munch on grasses.
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Jun 11, 2019 15:11
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This all makes sense, thanks everybody.
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Jun 12, 2019 02:23
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Sounds like we are all in agreement then, publich housing on gold courses, ban cars, housing AND climate crisis solved.
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Jun 12, 2019 14:59
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I know this poo poo is pretty unremarkable for people who pay a lot of attention, but this development replacing a former DIY space I was associated with seems so utterly obscene to me: https://t.co/EGaWsmlC7y quote:“We’re very focused on the millennial market,” Casaccio said. Every time I hear people talking about solving the housing crisis through expanding housing stock I think about buildings like this and feel like I'm going insane.
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Jun 12, 2019 15:57
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Flip Yr Wig posted:I know this poo poo is pretty unremarkable for people who pay a lot of attention, but this development replacing a former DIY space I was associated with seems so utterly obscene to me: sounds great, 100 more homes for people. it's only "luxury" because house prices are so high that any housing is a luxury - they probably can't make the apartments any smaller as the average size has to be at least 500sf in chicago. Sure it would be better if it was 200 units of public housing but the neighbours might not like that. The luxury amenities are a park, postboxes, a roof and a presumably commercial pet day care business (I would be surprised if it was paid for by people who aren't using it). distortion park fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 16:03
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Flip Yr Wig posted:I know this poo poo is pretty unremarkable for people who pay a lot of attention, but this development replacing a former DIY space I was associated with seems so utterly obscene to me: the problems are structural and decades in the making, developers producing small housing with extreme rents is a symptom of a larger disease. this is also why radical upzoning is not a solution, you're just unleashing the market to continue to make bad decisions. unfortunately without effective national resources to -provide a sustained framework to fund transit expansion across america -remove local control of school funding and decouple school funding from property taxes -return public housing in both direct provision and subsidy as a government mandate even just providing a tax subsidy for renters would be a good idea
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Jun 12, 2019 16:24
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luxury handset posted:the problems are structural and decades in the making, developers producing small housing with extreme rents is a symptom of a larger disease. this is also why radical upzoning is not a solution, you're just unleashing the market to continue to make bad decisions. unfortunately without effective national resources to tax subsidy for renters is fine since homeowners are also subsidised, but ultimately both just increase rents paid to landowners. radical upzoning lets those who don't need direct government support pay their own way, and makes it possible for the market to provide housing in places it currently can't. if we can't get market rate housing build in wealthy neighbourhoods then I don't see how public housing is going to get built there, not that we shouldn't try. Personally I think we should do all of your suggestions + upzoning (it goes particularly well with your first suggestion via value capture, third as a requirement)
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Jun 12, 2019 16:34
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And what about the people already renting at a much lower rate in that market before units like that start flooding in?
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Jun 12, 2019 16:38
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Flip Yr Wig posted:And what about the people already renting at a much lower rate in that market before units like that start flooding in? well in this case it was a diy centre so no units were lost - in general you are increasing the number of units so it should be possible to keep existing tenants to at least the extant that you could otherwise. displacement happens even if there is no new construction!
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Jun 12, 2019 16:44
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pointsofdata posted:radical upzoning lets those who don't need direct government support pay their own way, and makes it possible for the market to provide housing in places it currently can't. not really, because -radical upzoning is not a guarantee of adequate housing provision. even where zoning permits, developers trend towards what is optimally profitable given constraints on land, construction cost, and other non-zone related land use constraints (parking, congestion, amenities) such that relatively lower income people will still be out in the cold -radical upzoning is a solution to places where zoning is unnecessarily restrictive. there are plenty of places where zoning is permissive but housing supply is still inadequate due to flaws in free-market housing provision radical upzoning seems like a nice general solution but it's a somewhat simple idea which people like to apply as a blanket solution to all ills. it's also oddly libertarian which a lot of demsoc YIMBY types are in denial about, if only government was out of the picture then the free market would solve our problems (the free market IS the problem) Flip Yr Wig posted:And what about the people already renting at a much lower rate in that market before units like that start flooding in? they're hosed anyway, this is the long backlash of white flight and chronic urban underinvestment
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Jun 12, 2019 16:48
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luxury handset posted:radical upzoning seems like a nice general solution but it's a somewhat simple idea which people like to apply as a blanket solution to all ills. it's also oddly libertarian which a lot of demsoc YIMBY types are in denial about, if only government was out of the picture then the free market would solve our problems (the free market IS the problem) When I look at how this conversation plays out in public it strikes me that people really, really, don't want to talk about any changes that might involve spending money. Rent control and upzoning are both proposed "solutions" that don't require the government to raise taxes, and I think that's why so much of the debate revolves around those two changes. They are also both simple concepts and easy to grasp, whereas the minutiae of local tax policy is not. Unfortunately it's really hard to see anyway out of this pit we've dug that doesn't involve spending money somewhere. I have no idea how to make that argument politically, but there's clearly no one quick fix. At least cities are willing to spending money on public transit again. Even Phoenix is building out rail.
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Jun 12, 2019 17:15
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Squalid posted:Unfortunately it's really hard to see anyway out of this pit we've dug that doesn't involve spending money somewhere. I have no idea how to make that argument politically, but there's clearly no one quick fix. At least cities are willing to spending money on public transit again. Even Phoenix is building out rail. i completely agree. upzoning is a solution which is within the grasp of every local planning agency and it requires little political capital and practically no funding. however, if quick solutions performed via ordinance at the local level were capable of fixing our housing mess, then it would be fixed already. raising taxes is a hugely difficult fight, and even people who are in support of general tax increases recognize that incorporating that into fixes is a death sentence for policy proposals both rent control and upzoning are possible contributors to a larger solution, but by themselves they will have little meaningful impact and they are absolutely not solutions which are applicable in all contexts Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 17:26
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luxury handset posted:i completely agree. upzoning is a solution which is within the grasp of every local planning agency and it requires little political capital and practically no funding. however, if quick solutions performed via ordinance at the local level were capable of fixing our housing mess, then it would be fixed already. raising taxes is a hugely difficult fight, and even people who are in support of general tax increases recognize that incorporating that into fixes is a death sentence for policy proposals Honestly I don't see any real systemic solutions appearing in the near future, because they are not in the interests of the centers of power. However the housing crisis in places like California is now being pushed to such an extreme, in the next decade it almost seems like they must do something, the status quo is just unsustainable. I also don't like portraying rent control as contributing to a large solution, because systemically, it is guaranteed to make the housing crisis worse in the future. Whether or not you think the market is a the problem, it is also fundamentally how the vast majority of housing is provided in America. Rent control decreases the profit from rentals. Regardless of what you think about the morality of capitalism, or land lords, when you decrease profit in an industry, the result will be decreased investment in housing. The result is inevitably worse and less housing in the future. Rent control HAS to be paired with funding to compensate for the lost private investment, or else it will worsen the housing crisis. A rent subsidy could have a similar beneficial effect on renters as rent control, without locking people into a single apartment they can never afford to leave. That of course, would require spending money. So it might as well be a pipe dream.
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Jun 12, 2019 18:03
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Squalid posted:A rent subsidy could have a similar beneficial effect on renters as rent control, without locking people into a single apartment they can never afford to leave. That of course, would require spending money. So it might as well be a pipe dream. Couldn't this also result in a situation like what's happened with college prices, where the easy availability of student loans wound up massively increasing the cost of tuition? I'd worry that widespread rent subsidies would ultimately just make rent more expensive across the board.
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Jun 12, 2019 18:06
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politicians of today are more amenable towards urbanization and mass transit than politicans of yesterday were, if only because politicans of today are tasked with cleaning up the mess created by our collapsing, neglected infrastructure. even pro-business and conservative local politicians and governors can be persuaded into the merits of supporting livable city initiatives, the real problems imo are in a stubborn electorate sensitive to nimby canards like "my property values" and "transit causes crime" as well as a completely ineffective and paralyzed federal bureaucracy. so there's fertile ground for reform, at leastshowbiz_liz posted:Couldn't this also result in a situation like what's happened with college prices, where the easy availability of student loans wound up massively increasing the cost of tuition? I'd worry that widespread rent subsidies would ultimately just make rent more expensive across the board. rent is getting expensive without subsidy. student loans in this situation are analogous to housing vouchers (or more accurately subsidized mortgage loans, which have minimal impact on housing prices - but not provided to renters) where a subsidy for renters would be more like a national student stipend. some of that could raise tuition/rents, but more directly it's additional money in students/renters pockets Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 18:08
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luxury handset posted:not really, because I agree it doesn't solve every problem (in many cities it doesn't help at all), but in some of the most high profile regions with chronic housing shortages it makes a more level playing field between the very rich and the upper middle classes. Many other people need lots of government help!
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Jun 12, 2019 20:29
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implement rent control of 1 dollar per square foot. live small, pay small.
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Jun 13, 2019 03:37
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showbiz_liz posted:Couldn't this also result in a situation like what's happened with college prices, where the easy availability of student loans wound up massively increasing the cost of tuition? I'd worry that widespread rent subsidies would ultimately just make rent more expensive across the board. Yeah, I think problems like this could appear if a policy is implemented badly. I'm really just spit-balling ideas here. My main point though is that a lot of the time we refuse to talk and think about the systemic roots of these problems. People see a policy like rent control as means to reduce housing costs for free -- but it is not free. It's just that the cost of rent reductions today is reduced investment and development. It takes years for the results to manifest, but they inevitably will, in the form of shortages and lower quality housing stock. If you want to ameliorate these issues, you have to make up that reduction in private investment from somewhere else. Instead we have people deny that there is even a problem in the first place. People that deny there is even a housing shortage in places like California in the first place, or who claim that supply doesn't matter. Or they have hair-brained schemes that have no hope of addressing the underlying issues, like redistributing vacant apartments. One off policies like that might add supply this year, but what are you going to do next year? There's a deep unwillingness even just to acknowledge the full scale of the problem. I am not a free-market fundamentalist. I don't care at all if services are provisioned through the state or market. I am stunned though at the way so many people just refuse to acknowledge what seems like basic common sense. Just breaking the market isn't going to supply housing, you need to have an alternative.
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Jun 13, 2019 04:15
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Lotta people in this thread never been to a single loving rezoning hearing and it absolutely shows. "upzoning is easy and government could just do it" gently caress all the way off with that.
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Jun 13, 2019 04:26
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Squalid posted:Yeah, I think problems like this could appear if a policy is implemented badly. I'm really just spit-balling ideas here. My main point though is that a lot of the time we refuse to talk and think about the systemic roots of these problems. People see a policy like rent control as means to reduce housing costs for free -- but it is not free. It's just that the cost of rent reductions today is reduced investment and development. It takes years for the results to manifest, but they inevitably will, in the form of shortages and lower quality housing stock. If you want to ameliorate these issues, you have to make up that reduction in private investment from somewhere else.
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Jun 13, 2019 04:54
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Thanatosian posted:Rent control is also not means-tested, so rather than helping low-income people stay in housing, it helps whoever has been in their house the longest stay in housing. quote:When Patricia O’Grady moved into the top floor of a Greenwich Village walk-up in 1955, she and her three roommates helped sweep the hallway in exchange for a discounted rent of $16 a month. loving legend  
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Jun 13, 2019 05:15
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FISHMANPET posted:Lotta people in this thread never been to a single loving rezoning hearing and it absolutely shows. "upzoning is easy and government could just do it" gently caress all the way off with that. It isn't easy but neither are any of the other solutions, since they generally require spending money on poor people (rent control isn't a complete solution as it doesn't get you the additional units that we need/want). distortion park fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 08:31
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pointsofdata posted:It isn't easy but neither are any of the other solutions, since they generally require spending money on poor people (rent control isn't a complete solution as it doesn't get you the additional units that we need/want). No they just lack the political will to confront thier racist and classist voters. Incoming effort post on how to decommodify housing: My solution would be to first replace property taxes with land value taxes, and vacancy taxes. This encourages land to be developed to it's optimum useful level. Also it prevents housing as an investment that reduces housing supply. Next I would make it law that each municipality would be legally required to take whatever action needed to ensure the private housing market would produce net new housing units to meet the need of net new population and households. This can primarily be achieved through upzoning. The private housing market meets the needs of the 80% of AMI and up market by definition this is 60% of the total market. In general removing exclusionary SFH zoning should be the baseline. For those below 80% of AMI the population is divided into a few subgroups, but generally you have a population of low income people who are marginally employed or on fixed incomes and you have homeless people with little to no income. The solution for both groups is interrelated, since we have taken to lid of of new housing production you can now tax all the new housing produced to provide for the creation of "affordable housing" these populations need. The homeless population needs "Housing First" basically no cost housing with some real around services. Low income people need reduced rent (subsidized housing). In Seattle for example we have two programs MTFE (multifamily vtax exemption) and MHA (mandatory housing affordability). MTFE produces affordable housing for people who earn 60% to 80% of AMI, usually about 20% of the units. The city is basically trading property taxes for below market rate rents. Ironically this program can only be used on 16% of city land, and the city council doesn't like the idea of expanding it because it would "cost too much money" heaven forbid... MHA does something similar it requires all new buildings to include 7-9% affordable units or pay a equivalent tax, in return developers can make thier buildings slightly larger. This policy is again only applicable to 16% of city land. Paying the tax is actually better because the city taxes the MHA taxes and uses those funds to go secure 2 more dollars for every 1 paid in MHA taxes and then uses those 3 dollars to build affordable housing. Unfortunately the low income units cost about 500k to produce. The Land Value tax, and upzoning would reduce the land cost dramatically by increasing the supply of land that can be used for housing. So let's take a look at the scale of the problem. In Seattle we have about 12k homeless people and 50k people who pay 50% of thier income as rent. Additionally we are seeing about 12k people a year moving to the city. So that's about 62k units. So the solution is to allow upzoning to produce enough new housing units to absorb all of the net new population growth, and supply housing for 60% of the market. Those new buildings would all include affordable housing or contribute to it's construction. This will arrest the primary cause of the increase in rent cost, IE those with more money able to out bid those with less for the scare amount of housing in the city. Since we fail to produce enough units here it drives many thousands of poor people out of the city each year. The other major cause of rent going up is the shift in the demographics of the potential rebt payers IE if everyone new to city is rich it will raise the average price of rent, and creates an incentive for land lords to raise rents driving out the poor and renting to those more well off. However if sufficient market rate units are being produced the net new housing supply will absorb all of the net new population with high incomes and the incentive to raise rents for existing renters goes away. Recent research shows that for every 100 units of market rate housing produced, it prevents in 65 units of lower cost housing, causing them to be "preserved". This is the effect caused by allowing the market to produce enough new units to absorb new demand. Now let's say that after private developers have built all the housing they can profitably, can we harness these same forced to drive down the cost of rent to a socially preferred level? Why yes it does and here is where the city should take a more DIRECT ACTION. The cost of rent can further be driven down by adding additional housing supply to the market, and the city government has ability and obligation. Let's do some maths. Minimum Wage is $15 hr here, housing should cost no more than 30% of gross income. So 15*40*52 =31200. 31200*.3 /12 = 780, so $780 per month. So let's just say $700 a month. The city should produce multi family mixed income mixed use public housing towers at each light rail station / BRT bus lines until the cost of rent falls to this level. Ideally these would be 400+ foot towers in the walk/bike sheds. Just keep borrowing and building until rent is cheap and owning a single family homes are a terrible investment. KingFisher fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 10:33
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municipalities can't bond issue at a sustainable pace to provide direct housing tho, you have to have subsidies from the federal government
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Jun 13, 2019 12:29
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https://twitter.com/ewaldeng/status/1143539418621521921
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Jun 25, 2019 16:32
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These are great, need some here.
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Jun 25, 2019 20:21
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I'm personally very fond of "the honest moped"
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Jun 26, 2019 09:16
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