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pointsofdata posted:Sure, but are they used anywhere for public housing? I went to a community meeting for a section 8 redevelopment project in my neighbord, and there was a tenant organization president. She did a good job swatting down comments by NIMBYs who had the usual objections based on traffic and density.
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Oct 7, 2019 01:51
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mass transit in florida is a big ask because rail systems generally require state backing, and florida has a weird curve in terms of urbanization and population growth. florida can't really fund all the transit that needs to get funded in all of florida's cities. the state of florida is, oddly, not as tight fisted as one would think - the problem really is scarcity of funding and a bunch of growing urban centers tampa, being relatively one of the oldest cities in florida, has a credible shot for actually implementing some kind of transit, so the major problem is funding. adding incrementally onto the existing TECO system and pushing for expansion of bus rapid transit in dedicated lanes along arterial roads would probably be the most pragmatic system to get implemented if you want to get involved in transit advocacy, find and support a group that pushes awareness of at least this level of transit enhancement. write letters to local politicians stating the same. see if you can do some research to put together a canned fact sheet about it that other people can use as a basis for their own letters. while it would be great to do elevated heavy rail or even at grade light rail, BRT would be an effective goal for a first phase of better transit
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Oct 7, 2019 01:56
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This is an odd question but what are the most used excel functions by traffic engineers / planners? I’d love a list please. Gotta study for a job interview exam. Vlookup? Index and match? Switch?
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Oct 12, 2019 00:16
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figured y'all might enjoy this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcxezjtw1Ak
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Oct 24, 2019 00:22
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Short and sweet. Exasperated commiseration from Boston. 
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Oct 24, 2019 18:05
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Insanite posted:Short and sweet. At least MBTA's near-collapse one winter saved us from the Olympics.
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Oct 24, 2019 18:52
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That's ok south coast rail is coming and will save us.
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Oct 27, 2019 13:46
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Those manmen are raising the 11'8" bridge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raptWPQbkMg
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Oct 28, 2019 21:25
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Boise is throwing a giant fit over turning into a real city, following in the same footsteps as the rest of urban PNW. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-10/go-back-to-california-wave-of-newcomers-fuels-backlash-in-boise
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Nov 12, 2019 22:42
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Boise is throwing a giant fit over turning into a real city, following in the same footsteps as the rest of urban PNW. My part of Idaho has been yelling about Californians since like 2005. Its wild though, used to take an hour to get into Boise from my home town at any time. Now you have to actually plan your trips around rush hours. It really does feel like it's turning into a Seattle esque nightmare a little more every time I go visit.
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Nov 14, 2019 15:13
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CongoJack posted:My part of Idaho has been yelling about Californians since like 2005. I mean, it’s gotta suck for those who moved to Idaho for a slower pace of life versus computer touchers who only care about finding the best bang for their buck in terms of COL and probably do things like complain they can’t get good burritos and play their boomboxes on hiking trails.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:30
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ProperGanderPusher posted:and probably do things like complain they can’t get good burritos and play their boomboxes on hiking trails. are you 140?
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Nov 14, 2019 16:39
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Not having access to good burritos is a legitimate complaint about a place OP.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:42
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Anyone who can't make a good burrito is basically disabled, and should have some kind of helper dog.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:44
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Anyone who can't make a good burrito is basically disabled, and should have some kind of helper dog.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:50
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Cicero posted:As a Californian living in Germany, it's downright impressive how bad most of the 'Mexican' food is here. Hope you like lots of sugar in your salsa! Now I think maybe it was a half measure.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:56
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Anyone who can't make a good burrito is basically disabled, and should have some kind of helper dog. It’s hard to find a good burrito in Boston.  The seasonings are always kinda bland
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Nov 14, 2019 17:29
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Cicero posted:As a Californian living in Germany, it's downright impressive how bad most of the 'Mexican' food is here. Hope you like lots of sugar in your salsa! Same with the PNW as a whole outside maybe Portland and Seattle. I still remember a chain called Senor Froggy that offered “Mexifries” (tater tots).
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Nov 14, 2019 17:33
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withak posted:Not having access to good burritos is a legitimate complaint about a place OP. Re: Germany. Döner Kebab is an okayish substitute.
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Nov 14, 2019 18:08
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Same with the PNW as a whole outside maybe Portland and Seattle. I still remember a chain called Senor Froggy that offered “Mexifries” (tater tots). Rent-A-Cop posted:Until today I would have said that the strategic bombing campaign was unjustified and inhumane.
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Nov 14, 2019 18:15
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Same with the PNW as a whole outside maybe Portland and Seattle. I still remember a chain called Senor Froggy that offered “Mexifries” (tater tots). Oh wow, there's another chain besides Taco Time that sells mexifries? lol (I kind of like taco time)
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Nov 14, 2019 19:50
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Same with the PNW as a whole outside maybe Portland and Seattle. I still remember a chain called Senor Froggy that offered “Mexifries” (tater tots). The teriyaki is awesome however.
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Nov 14, 2019 19:58
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No wonder nature is trying to burn the PNW.
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Nov 14, 2019 21:05
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Dameius posted:No wonder nature is trying to burn the PNW. Speaking of fire, we sure are having a fun time down here in Australia. The conservative government and most of the media are running with the line that bushfires have nothing to do with climate change, and it’s all because those darn environmentalists won’t let anyone do fuel reduction burns. This is ignoring the fact that: -we do still do fuel reduction and the major environmental party supports them explicitly -climate change is shortening the window where you can safely do them -of relevance to the thread, we have allowed development in really dumb places, which means fire services have to take an asset and life protection approach so smaller fires aren’t allowed to come through and clear poo poo out
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Nov 14, 2019 22:45
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I'd love to get some information, or discussion about how to balance building more affordable housing with building housing that is highly energy efficient/green (ie not affordable). Specifically my area has a law that allows developers to supersede local zoning restrictions if a portion of their development is affordable. However this means that those portions are just the cheapest, shoddiest, draftiest buildings you could imagine. I get that affordable housing is pretty important, but how do you square that with these structures that are going to stand for 40ish years being huge energy sinks. Also why doesn't affordable housing rules consider yearly energy costs as part of their affordability.
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Nov 14, 2019 22:46
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SpaceCadetBob posted:I'd love to get some information, or discussion about how to balance building more affordable housing with building housing that is highly energy efficient/green (ie not affordable). Couple of things I’m thinking of: Ideally you want a mandatory contribution with mechanisms in place that encourage going above that level. The contribution should be allowable in either delivered units or a cash equivalent so you can get more granular in what is a reasonable contribution (and smaller developments can collectively contribute to affordable housing in the area). Offering units at a discount to affordable housing providers runs into problems where local providers may not have the cash on hand to meet what the developer has provided. Need to be really careful about what trade offs you are willing to make to encourage affordable housing provision. Effectively you can either increase the potential yield (allowing higher density, built form exemptions etc) or you can decrease the risk (exempt from neighbour objections, streamlined pathway for approval etc). Maybe the de-risking pathway works better? Ideally you should sit down and list all the things in your power that you can use as levers to make the development more attractive, and work out which you’re willing to budge on to encourage affordable housing. Also it seems totally reasonable to me to explicitly require that any units delivered as part of an affordable housing contribution meet an X star energy standard. Running costs are a critical part of making housing affordable, including both efficiency and maintenance. A lot of that can be achieved by good design without that much in increased cost. Proper siting is a big contributor. But as you’ve noted all that can be undermined by shoddy materials. The other problem with your scenario is that it further stigmatises affordable housing in the rest of the community.
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Nov 14, 2019 23:26
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Affordable high-quality housing that's new seems like a historical aberration. Housing has usually been affordable when it's been old or poorly made, with the former being generally preferable. Not too different from the car market, nobody makes brand new cars for the poor, the poor just buy used cars. And you wouldn't want to force Ford to release a new car for $5k anyway, because that would be a disaster. So the answer is to stop trying to trick developers into going you this thing that they don't want to give and is actually quite hard to do even if they wanted*, and instead get affordable high-quality housing by raising taxes and building public housing. * I've seen reports of subsidized housing recently where the per-unit cost was still quite high even though they're weren't trying to go fancy or anything, especially in more expensive metros it's just hard to build cheaply
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Nov 14, 2019 23:36
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SpaceCadetBob posted:I'd love to get some information, or discussion about how to balance building more affordable housing with building housing that is highly energy efficient/green (ie not affordable). i don't think there's a conflict between housing which is affordable and energy efficient. in fact, a lot of the environmental problems with housing are resolved if you shift from single family structures to multifamily structures, which are by their nature much cheaper (so long as you aren't building like 4/3 condos with top of the line luxe furnishings) like, most new housing is going to be mostly energy efficient just from being built with new materials, new mechanicals. the difference is in you're devoting a half acre of land per unit or if you can squeeze that down to like 1/32 of an acre per unit
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Nov 14, 2019 23:41
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SpaceCadetBob posted:I'd love to get some information, or discussion about how to balance building more affordable housing with building housing that is highly energy efficient/green (ie not affordable). I think the easiest solution is to require the affordable units to be built as part of mixed-income structures. The market-rate tenants will have more leverage over insulation and build quality, and it's better from a social perspective as well. In my neighborhood, the affordable housing is disintegrating because it's reached its absolute end-of-life. Pretty much anything would be better. I don't like mandating environmental standards because the environmental benefits mostly come from density. Requiring all new construction to be net-zero (like one of our crazier city councilors wants) is just a backdoor way to oppose development.
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Nov 14, 2019 23:55
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Bubbacub posted:I think the easiest solution is to require the affordable units to be built as part of mixed-income structures. The market-rate tenants will have more leverage over insulation and build quality, and it's better from a social perspective as well. Im actually working on a fire protection install on this kind of building as we speak. 30 condo units in a single structure, below grade parking included. 10 units are rated as affordable, but yea like you said they are all getting the same quality insulation and hvac gear. My little town is having a roundtable which from the sounds of the memorandum is going to be developers vs nimbyers so I think ill go just to watch the fireworks.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:14
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Affordable housing is like the one thing developers and NIMBYs can agree on
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Nov 15, 2019 00:18
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Solemn Sloth posted:Affordable housing is like the one thing developers and NIMBYs can agree on Excuses as to why something shouldn't/can't be built?
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Nov 15, 2019 02:15
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Solemn Sloth posted:Affordable housing is like the one thing developers and NIMBYs can agree on “We can’t have it because it might ruin our investments”?
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Nov 15, 2019 02:23
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Solemn Sloth posted:Speaking of fire, we sure are having a fun time down here in Australia. That's interesting because conservatives are arguing the same thing about wildfires in California. Maybe Rupert Murdoch has something to do with this.
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Nov 18, 2019 21:51
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Bodhidharma posted:That's interesting because conservatives are arguing the same thing about wildfires in California. Maybe Rupert Murdoch has something to do with this. It’s definitely a big part, Murdoch owns like 60+% of print circulation in Australia, we’ve had years of conservatives stacking our public broadcaster with ex-Murdoch staff, and the commercial tv stations are no better. As an illustration of how dire Australian media is: today one of the people portrayed as a leading intellectual in our equivalent of the Democrats (nominally centre left mainstream party) wrote an article for one of the nominally centre left media company’s papers with the line “national socialism is resurgent - but so is international green socialism, a variant of white supremacism” as the pullout quote and the entire professional journalistic class are now competing on twitter to suck himself and each other off the hardest for a great take. Solemn Sloth fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 22:29
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what amount of rental income (average) is taken as profit, ie total rents minus upkeep, financing, etc? Could this be figured at the county or state level? Do estimates like this already exist?
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Dec 7, 2019 05:35
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:what amount of rental income (average) is taken as profit, ie total rents minus upkeep, financing, etc? Rental yields are normally in the 2-10% range although it depends heavily on the market. "Bubbly" markets (e.g. central London) tend to be on the lower end due to high property values, more depressed ones on the higher end. Local laws and regulations also matter a lot and can create quirks.
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Dec 7, 2019 23:08
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(Investments are normally highly leveraged but it makes more sense to consider the bank+landlord together than either in isolation)
distortion park fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 10:48
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pointsofdata posted:Rental yields are normally in the 2-10% range although it depends heavily on the market. "Bubbly" markets (e.g. central London) tend to be on the lower end due to high property values, more depressed ones on the higher end. Local laws and regulations also matter a lot and can create quirks. In the US in particular this is highly bound up with the historical exclusion of black people from homeownership and wealth building. It's all too easy, particularly if you have little hope of getting a mortgage and none of inheriting property, to get stuck in a cycle of perpetual renting. And should you end up with a mark on your record from a run in with the courts or falling behind on rent, background checks run by landlords in higher end markets will reject you, trapping you in the low end of the rental market. Those landlords have realized the high margins you can extract from their often minimally maintained properties, the rents for which really are not much less than comparable median-rent properties. In many localities they're enabled by local and state laws to extract further profits through filing frequent, cheap It's pretty hosed and basically constitutes a totally parallel rental market to the one the rest of the rental population inhabits. Quorum fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Dec 9, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 17:37
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Quorum posted:In the US in particular this is highly bound up with the historical exclusion of black people from homeownership and wealth building. It's all too easy, particularly if you have little hope of getting a mortgage and none of inheriting property, to get stuck in a cycle of perpetual renting. And should you end up with a mark on your record from a run in with the courts or falling behind on rent, background checks run by landlords in higher end markets will reject you, trapping you in the low end of the rental market. Those landlords have realized the high margins you can extract from their often minimally maintained properties, the rents for which really are not much less than comparable median-rent properties. In many localities they're enabled by local and state laws to extract further profits through filing frequent, cheap foreclosures and rapidly cycling through tenants. Don't forget there are states that allow you to gather first, lasts, and a security deposit basically forcing people come up with a mortgage payment for even modest housing.
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Dec 8, 2019 20:08
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