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gonger posted:I'm totally on board with this provided you can find the money for it, but right now for-profit development is currently a major source of subsidy for existing programs. Barring an unlikely political sea change, it's going to stay that way. With current costs, $2B will get you around 4000 units - enough to make up for a year's worth of housing production deficit in a single major city. The biggest binding factor to construction is capital. My house had multiple 3 week spans if no work completed because of a huge lack of subs who werent 6 months out for work. The GC made 300 loving GRAND in profit for my rebuild. But the whole time they were spacing subs out and delaying because they had no cashflow. This is a bonkers industry. Our best hope is to continue to build hybrid core houses and lower cost per unit down. A huge issue with hiusing is this: with the 300g my gc made he will go hookup with a developer and invest in housing to then resell and double or triple the 300g +other profits. It takes 20 years to repay yourself this 8 figure investment. Construction is a bubble by design it can only get so big. Newsoms 500k promise will not happen withiut a lot of red tape being buzzsawdd. Also gently caress planchecks
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Sep 7, 2019 00:06
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Cool, so we repeal Prop 13 I like "first, the revolution" fantasies as much as anyone, but in the meantime I think homelessness and displacement is more worthy of anger than the idea of somebody making money from building housing, the process which has resulted in the homes that nearly all of us live in
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Sep 7, 2019 00:11
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gonger posted:I like "first, the revolution" fantasies as much as anyone, but in the meantime I think homelessness and displacement is more worthy of anger than the idea of somebody making money from building housing, the process which has resulted in the homes that nearly all of us live in Except they are not building housing because they can't make money doing it
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Sep 7, 2019 00:22
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Cool, so we repeal Prop 13 The best part about this is that if you repeal Prop 13 or even simply only allow it to apply to the house you literally live in right this second, no second properties, no commercial, no inheritance transfer or "move to smaller house" exemptions, a big chunk of the problem will go away right there. 
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Sep 7, 2019 00:52
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Commercial property accounts for around 75% of the lost revenue IIRC. Really the problem is commercial.
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Sep 7, 2019 01:17
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A good baby step the completely repealing Prop 13 would be making it apply only to owner occupied single family residential properties.
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Sep 7, 2019 01:41
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Sundae posted:The best part about this is that if you repeal Prop 13 or even simply only allow it to apply to the house you literally live in right this second, no second properties, no commercial, no inheritance transfer or "move to smaller house" exemptions, a big chunk of the problem will go away right there. Ballot measure to remove commercial property protections and move to an every-3-year assessment is up for 2020 if you didn't know. https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Change-in-California-s-Prop-13-makes-2020-13314983.php
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Sep 7, 2019 02:01
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Jesus, how the hell are construction costs so loving high in the bay? The wife and I were looking at putting a grandma house in the back yard with full utilities for 100k in southern california.
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Sep 7, 2019 02:53
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Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.
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Aeka 2.0 posted:Jesus, how the hell are construction costs so loving high in the bay? The wife and I were looking at putting a grandma house in the back yard with full utilities for 100k in southern california. Materials are expensive and getting more expensive to source as local industries that used to supply em have been shutting down. It's getting harder to get suppliers and prices go up as their costs co up and as labor in all parts of the chain go up. A lot of the supplier places are like out in the far-east bay like Antioch and stuff. Also sending 10 cement trucks a day f(or a single project!) across the bay bridge everyday where they're stuck in 2 hr traffic there, then another 2 hr back, adds up to a ton of hourly expenses just on the road. Getting poo poo in and out of SF or Peninsula is a total additional nightmare. also permitting is just utterly stupid. here in berkeley there's like the zoning board which has to approve it and the city has to approve it and it can take years between the two to concur and if one disagrees and sends it back, its another long delay. there's some projects that have waited years to be approved by ZAB, then waited for city only to then be kicked off and told to go back through the process for some other nonsensical changes like add more parking! make it smaller!. Several high profile ones have been like in permitting for like 4+ years and getting jerked around by the city one telling them to do something and the other telling them to do something different. I'm working on Treasure Island and they're constructing a new ferry terminal, but 2 harbor seals were spotted and work has been partially shutdown because some random rear end higher up person came out with a proclamation they can't work 1000-ft with seals nearby, even if they haven't been spotted in 72 hrs. Even the actual environmental guy on staff is like that's utterly stupid and industry standard is like 100 ft. Pile driving sound in water drops off well before that but I guess gotta justify pretending to be Doing Something I'm Smart. This is two-three digit million job where they've spent over half a million bucks mobilizing a large pile driving barge and they can't even use it. I've been on sites where they had to shut the crane down and basically wait out a month because 2 birds nested in it over the weekend so now no one could work had to spend a lot of time and money mobing another crane (which you can't get on short-notice) so lots of manhours doing nothing racking up change-order costs. YBI retaining wall work for a new road got delayed for over 8 months because the existing drawings were off from the actual-location and so plans had some differing thing and it took 9 months for the city to re-approve a small modification. In the mean time because this was all planned months in advance and staffed up, a bunch of people basically were either laid off or paid minimally doing nothing and a bunch of rentals and other costs just going up and up and hoping that you can bill out the rear end in change orders to make up for it Xaris fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Sep 7, 2019 |
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Sep 7, 2019 05:55
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Except they are not building housing because they can't make money doing it But yes repealing or severely curtailing prop 13 would be great. If you're only targeting less sympathetic groupings (commercial, second homes, etc.) it's probably even viable, though I doubt you'd be able to specifically funnel money into public housing. Would be nice though.
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Sep 7, 2019 09:40
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gonger posted:Affordable housing developers building on free land can't get costs below like 500-600k per unit in the Bay Area - and I'm pretty sure that number is a couple years old at this point - which is already well beyond what area median income can afford. Labor is expensive, materials are expensive, compliance is expensive - any type of construction is going to face the same constraints, and you don't want to skimp on any of those. Do you have a source for this? Are the costs to build a, I don't know, new development of a bunch of townhomes really 500k per unit in the Bay Area? How is this number so high?
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Sep 7, 2019 12:29
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Cicero posted:That's a limiting factor but not the only one. If you upzoned a bunch of areas you'd still get more housing. is this what talking to YIMBYs is like? no wonder everyone hates them
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Sep 7, 2019 17:27
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silence_kit posted:Do you have a source for this? Are the costs to build a, I don't know, new development of a bunch of townhomes really 500k per unit in the Bay Area? How is this number so high? Xaris' post above sums up the broad strokes. Getting labor and materials to the build site in the first place is very expensive in the Bay Area for a variety of factors, and then once you get it all there you're almost certain to run into institutional roadblocks that drag the project out and costs up. Here's a 2018 article specifically focusing on SF that cites the cost at $700K per apartment.
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Sep 7, 2019 21:04
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Sydin posted:Xaris' post above sums up the broad strokes. Getting labor and materials to the build site in the first place is very expensive in the Bay Area for a variety of factors, and then once you get it all there you're almost certain to run into institutional roadblocks that drag the project out and costs up. And both of those are wildly exacerbated by the areas lack of good public transportation or public housing. If tons of workers could live right by the job site, it would be cheaper. If you could use a free train to get to work instead of having it dead-end a mile away from anything useful, traffic wouldn’t gently caress everything up so badly. If we had single-payer healthcare and a functioning social safety net, a lot of those worker costs would go way down. Its all connected, and it’s all poo poo.
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Sep 7, 2019 22:29
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Xaris posted:Labor is expensive because there aren't enough and also lots of them live far away because they can't afford it. It's not glamorous and not a lot of people going into it even though prevailing wage pays very well, like $35/hr minimum and $53/hr after 8 ontop of some minimum required other benefits that comes out to be $56/hr and $75/hr in OT. PW is extremely cool and good but it's something most other states don't have to pay. Thank you for sharing. This is absolutely horrifying.
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Sep 7, 2019 22:39
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So, the Bay Area has been so hypergentrified that blue collar people and their suppliers have to either leave the state or commute from Tracy, thus drastically reducing the supply of workers we desperately need to build more housing. Even if all the NIMBY red tape was magically cut, we would still have a massive labor problem to work around. The housing crisis is just flat out unfixable short of a literal political revolution, isn’t it? It just seems like we’re stuck no matter what we do.
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Sep 8, 2019 01:10
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It's not just labor: it's also materials. As one example, concrete doesn't last forever in a mixing truck: as soon as it's in the barrel the clock is ticking to get it to the construction site before it hardens. The time for this varies based on the mix but it can be as little as three hours. So if you're trying to build an apartment in SF and you have to budget ~2 hours at a minimum for your mixing trucks to get to the site because traffic into the peninsula is such a clusterfuck, then you can only source from close by plants - of which their are few, and who know this and thus charge way above market value because you have no other options.
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Sep 8, 2019 01:19
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yeah there's just lots of issues. if i had to wishlist from easiest to hardest: - State wide advertising campaign to encourage more construction work and can even advertise $32 minimum pay on prevailing wage projects with equipment operators going $45-65 and standard pay, and also advocating it's not physically demanding (although it certainly is physically exhausting). Free training and licensing programs for people looking to be operators and things like that. Create a state-wide registry of laborers looking for work to connect up with projects looking to staff-up. - More project-bid award or other incentive to hire at least 25% of project man-hours from within X miles. - Total revamp CEQA/EIR to be on an specific needed-basis based on mapped areas of potential impacts to waterways, removal/alteration of existing habited areas, or in areas of mapped endangered species and remove it as a weapon from NIMBYs to say 'no you can't build that granny unit or that or that because it'll cast shadows! and therefore birds don't like shadows, and increased traffic!". At this point it's done far far more to hurt the environment than to help - Create a State Permitting and Plan Check Department with a large staff that handles all submittals with goal of comments back/approval in <180 days and faster for turning around requested changes; checked to ensure state code requirements are met and removes this from local authority which may be chronically underfunded/slow (intentionally or otherwise). Development of standard plans for 4-7 story wood-frame structures over optional 1-2 story concrete podiums that can be adopted on a per-lot size with faster review and approval turn-around. - Abolishment of local zoning and requirements except in exonerating circumstances (i.e. historic areas could follow an historic aesthetic). If it meets building code, it can be built regardless of a city's demand that it must have 10 parking spaces per unit or demand nothing large than 1-story houses on 1 acre lots. (Scott Weiner is kind of trying on this front but it's not going anywhere even it's extremely watered-down form) - Consolidation of transit authorities into larger regional transit authorities and creation of large state-funding programs designed to improve and expand public transit immune to local interference, and while expanding transit also be converting more roads into public transit/bikes/ped/commercial vehicles only - Create California Housing Authority which creates a statewide supply of state-owned labor and large equipment yards with state-owned material supply chain that builds housing done Singapore/Vienna style and sold and leased at-cost or subsidized ,wherever the gently caress it wants to fund it all by abolishing prop 13 and adding capital gains tax
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Sep 8, 2019 02:42
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Except they are not building housing because they can't make money doing it The whining from rich real estate developers about "not ENOUGH profit" doesnt line up. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47847-us-housing-market-value-climbs-to-333-trillion-in-2018 quote:In 2018, the total value of the U.S. housing market increased $1.9 trillion, propelling its value to a whopping $33.3 trillion, according to new data from Zillow. There should be more places to build if the greedy sacks of poo poo werent able to just refuse because they want to build only the most expensive things possible. quote:“During the second half of the year, appreciation slowed sharply in the priciest corners of the country while it picked up in affordable hotspots,” Terrazas said. “Periods of stability often precede periods of instability, and the outlook for 2019 is certainly both cloudier and blurrier than the outlook a year ago.” The whiny people in the land selling swindles are also very entitled: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/real-estate-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,21.htm (I saw the statements about labor costs, but in general I find the complaints from the industry at-large to be suspicious. Its like when banks complain about "projected loss of profits". Not losses, just not the profits they dreamed of.) FRINGE fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 03:11
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ProperGanderPusher posted:So, the Bay Area has been so hypergentrified that blue collar people and their suppliers have to either leave the state or commute from Tracy, thus drastically reducing the supply of workers we desperately need to build more housing. Even if all the NIMBY red tape was magically cut, we would still have a massive labor problem to work around. There's also the very real effect that Silicon Valley is having everything. In the end you can only raise prices until people lose the ability to pay. If nobody can afford the thing then you can't sell the thing. One reason that living costs keep going up is that there's a shortage but software developers are expensive as gently caress to hire. That just keeps going up and more and more of them are moving to Silicon Valley for high paying tech jobs that just keep getting higher and higher paying. That's fine if you're a tech professional or own a house that you're paying taxes on based on the price that was paid for it 50 years ago but absolute dick for pretty much everybody else. Even then living spaces gets more and more cramped to the point where you hear stories like somebody paying $700 a month to pitch a tent in somebody's yard or $900 a month to live in a wooden crate in a house that already has 8 people living in it. So with the tech sector growing so much traffic just keeps getting worse. It's basically a perfect poo poo storm where every possible thing that can go wrong is going wrong. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 03:51
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FRINGE posted:The whining from rich real estate developers about "not ENOUGH profit" doesnt line up. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. The first quote describes the increase in value of real estate nationally and in California. Increase in the value of the housing market should be able to occur even if developers cannot gain profit, so I'm not sure what you expect me to take away. I do not understand the relevance of the second quote or bolded part either. I assume the "affordable hotspots" referred to are not areas of California, but probably in other sunbelt cities or maybe the midwest.
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Sep 8, 2019 04:02
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ProperGanderPusher posted:So, the Bay Area has been so hypergentrified that blue collar people and their suppliers have to either leave the state or commute from Tracy, thus drastically reducing the supply of workers we desperately need to build more housing. Even if all the NIMBY red tape was magically cut, we would still have a massive labor problem to work around. So gentrification can even be bad for the gentrifiers?  I'm sure the solution will be something like this: transport the construction workers and concrete trucks via a high speed underground AI-driven railway system, and you can reserve space on the train in advance via a bidding system to ensure that the richest people can guarantee that their concrete and construction workers will arrive on time. I hope your project had enough money to reserve space on the train or you're going to be stuck underground in a tunnel with insufficient ventilation for a long time.
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Sep 8, 2019 04:19
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Is there any sign that tech companies are starting to wise up to the fact that they can have offices or even headquarters outside Silicon Valley? I know that ~*tech ecosystems*~ are important and all, but other places have been catching up, and it seems to me that there are lots of people willing to live somewhere where they might encounter a Trump supporter now and then in exchange for being able to buy a nice house cash in hand.
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Sep 8, 2019 04:25
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Is there any sign that tech companies are starting to wise up to the fact that they can have offices or even headquarters outside Silicon Valley? I know that ~*tech ecosystems*~ are important and all, but other places have been catching up, and it seems to me that there are lots of people willing to live somewhere where they might encounter a Trump supporter now and then in exchange for being able to buy a nice house cash in hand.
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Sep 8, 2019 04:27
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Buttcoin purse posted:So gentrification can even be bad for the gentrifiers? That's an awful technocratic solution, but yeah, probably way more likely. Better solution, but way less likely: 1. 95% income & wealth taxes on anyone worth more than $10 million 2. bulldoze some mansions to make room for a cement plant in the middle of San Fran 3. keep bulldozing mansions and use said cement plant to build shitloads of public housing 4. give every single person ownership of an apartment, for free 5. build shitloads of free-to-ride public transportation & high-speed trains 6. repeal prop 13, don't tax a person's primary residence, rent is capped at $500/month
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Sep 8, 2019 04:54
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Labor is a struggle because of cashflowm you have 100 houses running your payroll alone will bankrupt you if a single client doesnt pay on time. And once yiu go down on payroll you are hosed.
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Sep 8, 2019 05:01
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Fly Molo posted:That's an awful technocratic solution, but yeah, probably way more likely. How do I vote for you
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Sep 8, 2019 05:01
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Is there any sign that tech companies are starting to wise up to the fact that they can have offices or even headquarters outside Silicon Valley? I know that ~*tech ecosystems*~ are important and all, but other places have been catching up, and it seems to me that there are lots of people willing to live somewhere where they might encounter a Trump supporter now and then in exchange for being able to buy a nice house cash in hand. Pittsburgh's tech sector is growing exponentially right now. Most of the biggest tech companies have offices in the city; some for years. CMU in particular keeps making GBS threads out companies like crazy. It also turns out that you can buy an old, abandoned brick warehouse/factory on the cheap, clean it out, slap a fresh coat of paint on it, and put a robot company in it.
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Sep 8, 2019 05:02
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CEMENT PLANT IN .... MY CITY?? your gonna get murdered by the nimby squad
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Sep 8, 2019 05:03
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Fly Molo posted:
why allow rent seeking scum, expropriate or guillotine as necessary
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Sep 8, 2019 05:05
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Fly Molo posted:That's an awful technocratic solution, but yeah, probably way more likely. Although, Japan is making a 70-story wood-frame skyscraper and we should be looking into doing that too so lets raze all the white-flight mcmansions turn them into carbon-sink forest-farms. i vote for taking out the entire tri-valley area Xaris fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 05:39
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Which of you are real estate agents or construction workers/contractors, and which of you are armchair generals?
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Sep 8, 2019 06:11
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how reliable is wood frame vs concrete for earthquake and fire resistance? carbon-neutral doesn't mean we emit no carbon
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Sep 8, 2019 06:18
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Cup Runneth Over posted:how reliable is wood frame vs concrete for earthquake and fire resistance? carbon-neutral doesn't mean we emit no carbon Still there is a use for large steel-frame skyscrapers and the like, i'm not so sure we really need concrete ones though, and not sure which is better emission wise vs mining, refining and smelting steel vs sourcing cement, sand and aggregate. I just think a lot more could be accomplished quicker, cheaper, and provide enough density on higher mid-rise wood-frame buildings Xaris fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 06:25
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Is there any sign that tech companies are starting to wise up to the fact that they can have offices or even headquarters outside Silicon Valley? I know that ~*tech ecosystems*~ are important and all, but other places have been catching up, and it seems to me that there are lots of people willing to live somewhere where they might encounter a Trump supporter now and then in exchange for being able to buy a nice house cash in hand. Also, progressive areas succeeding economically because people want to live there, and higher population densities are both good things for the left. It's something that should be embraced, not fought.
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Sep 8, 2019 09:48
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ntan1 posted:Which of you are real estate agents or construction workers/contractors, and which of you are armchair generals? I don't think it takes a real estate agent to say that the solution to a housing crisis is to build housing. Even better if you make housing access universal so nobody gets screwed and everyone gets housing access, instead of setting hyper-specific requirements (ie. earn between $30,000-$40,000/yr and live in exactly these spots) for a chance at one of a handful of affordable units. 
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Sep 8, 2019 11:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Pittsburgh's tech sector is growing exponentially right now. Most of the biggest tech companies have offices in the city; some for years. CMU in particular keeps making GBS threads out companies like crazy. It also turns out that you can buy an old, abandoned brick warehouse/factory on the cheap, clean it out, slap a fresh coat of paint on it, and put a robot company in it.
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Sep 8, 2019 15:24
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Everything old is new again! Not only did Pittsburgh, in the '80s, have the first workstation company (Three Rivers), but it was being pushed in the 90s as the new affordable Silicon Valley. It always made sense as a tech city due to location; I wonder why it didn't get its feet under it the way Austin did in the '90s. It’s only recently that a lot of people have learned that Pittsburgh is no longer a shithole full of steel mills and smog. My boomer parents still won’t believe it. Austin has long held a reputation for being a hip college town and liberal oasis.
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Sep 8, 2019 15:39
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Companies should be re-locating to Sacramento, but they won't because it's still "too expensive" because it's still in California and they can't treat their employees like poo poo like in Texass, and more importantly, the CEO's don't want to live here even though it's a moderate helicopter ride from Woodside/Los Altos Hills as well as on the way to their 3,500 sq foot "cabins" in North Lake Tahoe. I am running into more and more people that came to Sac like me because they get to telecommute a bit and only have to go back 1 or 2 days per week. I do not miss Sunnyvale at all except the weather. Also.....wood construction multi unit is awesome for hearing everyone's 15" subwoofers at 3am (as well as everything else.) Yes, I am old. My lawn, get off it! I'm just sayin'
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Sep 8, 2019 16:28
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Keyser_Soze posted:Also.....wood construction multi unit is awesome for hearing everyone's 15" subwoofers at 3am (as well as everything else.) Yes, I am old. My lawn, get off it! Xaris fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 20:53
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