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RE: The recent posts on the availability of housing in rich neighborhoods driving rich people to gentrify poorer neighborhoods. There is some new data on that very subject quote:Our examination reveals that, in many [metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)], high housing costs—resulting from a lack of available housing—cause affluent buyers to look for homes in low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods. That means cities’ housing supply can determine how fast gentrification may occur. Boosting the supply of housing can slow the pace of new buyers moving into lower-income neighborhoods. I have only been able to glance at it.
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Jul 10, 2020 21:39
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The Oldest Man posted:How do you think about structuring incentives or mandates to avoid this outcome im a big dumbass irl so i dont see any way around direct federal involvement with fixed, guaranteed subsidy taken on as part of a popular mandate for equitable housing. once you climb that mountain then you can do things like block grants to construct certain kinds of housing, incentives to loosen zoning policy, provide regular operational funding for transit, greatly increase the scale of housing vouchers, directly administer or subsidize local administration of government owned housing, etc. The Oldest Man posted:what kind of housing should be subsidized? you need all kinds, from low rise family housing to ADA compliant towers for the elderly and people with disabilities, blocks of studios and 2/1s for small families and transitional living, really just a whole spectrum approach. you could even do rent-to-own and equity stake detached housing in appropriate areas. probably the most important immediate need is working poor single income families with children - providing a stable fixed address for kids to maintain consistency in their neighborhood and school zone has the most positive long term social investment
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Jul 10, 2020 22:22
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luxury handset posted:well, the free market has never provided adequate housing at any point in american history, so really public housing is the only option Public housing alone has never provided adequate housing at any point in US history.
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Jul 12, 2020 15:33
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that's a bit nonsensical - there's never been a public housing only, no free market housing scenario
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Jul 12, 2020 15:49
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Here in California we have an entire article in our state constitution that effectively bans the construction of public housing, by requiring it to be approved by local ballot measure. I believe there is a proposition on the statewide November ballot to repeal that article, and assuming a simple majority of the SF Board of Supervisors support it there will also be a local proposition to exempt the city from it and seek to "acquire, develop or construct 10,000 units of permanently affordable social housing," to be funded by raising the taxes on real estate sales over 10 million from 3 to 5.5 percent or something like that. We may be in a unique situation in SF, though. Last year we had three vacant units per unhoused resident, it's probably a lot higher now. There's a lot of fallow supply just waiting to be allocated properly, plenty of big houses that are yet to be subdivided, and soon a whole lot of crashing commercial real estate.
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Jul 12, 2020 18:13
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Doc Hawkins posted:Here in California we have an entire article in our state constitution that effectively bans the construction of public housing, by requiring it to be approved by local ballot measure. I believe there is a proposition on the statewide November ballot to repeal that article, and assuming a simple majority of the SF Board of Supervisors support it there will also be a local proposition to exempt the city from it and seek to "acquire, develop or construct 10,000 units of permanently affordable social housing," to be funded by raising the taxes on real estate sales over 10 million from 3 to 5.5 percent or something like that. Why aren’t those vacant units taxed to death? That ratio is absolutely insane.
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Jul 14, 2020 06:47
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Vacancy taxes face essentially the same political opposition that rent control does: you're limiting what property owners can do with their property, and what margins investors can get. The units are mostly vacant because they're investments, and their value as assets doesn't price in the cost of property management, or even if they do, the owners have decided to wait until rents go up again. An active political contingent will continue to tell you that the problem is supply and restrictions on construction of more market-rate units, and presumably will continue to say the same thing until the ending of the world.
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Jul 14, 2020 07:07
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Doc Hawkins posted:Vacancy taxes face essentially the same political opposition that rent control does: you're limiting what property owners can do with their property, and what margins investors can get. The units are mostly vacant because they're investments, and their value as assets doesn't price in the cost of property management, or even if they do, the owners have decided to wait until rents go up again. I had a boss once who was big into commercial property. In his collection included a few buildings on the main street of a small, seaside town that was trying to renovate their main street. He refused to use his buildings, not even to rent them out. He even told the newspaper that “he was just an investor, not a developer”, so the town was basically left with a bunch of holes in their main street. We tell people what to do with their land all the loving time. We tell them not to dump chemical waste or not operate open air night clubs or even not to build dense housing. I still don’t see a problem with making it really loving expensive to hold onto unused space.
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Jul 14, 2020 13:24
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If you take the # of vacancies in SF in this article https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/3/20993251/san-francisco-bay-area-vacant-homes-per-homeless-count and divide it by the # of housing units from page 13 of this report: https://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/2018_Housing_Inventory.pdf you get a number like 10% of housing units are vacant in SF. 10% seems like a really high vacancy rate for a booming city like SF, but then I found that that that stat includes things like pied-ŕ-terres (or maybe it is pieds-ŕ-terre? I don't know French). That makes more sense. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 13:44
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vacant units includes all airbnb and similar type short term rentals, so to tax vacancies more heavily would destroy that market. which i think is an extremely good thing overall. but if your idea of 'vacant unit' is like only units that are owned by offshore speculators then you're missing a lot of second homes/pseudohotels, as well as in a hot market you're going to end up with some number of long term vacancies naturally just as people who can afford to wait let an overpriced unit or structure sit on the market until a whale of a buyer comes along
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Jul 14, 2020 14:22
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luxury handset posted:there's plenty of housing being built, it's just not the kind of housing most people want (less than an hour commute to any sort of significant job cluster) I just wanted to point out that this statement is very, very wrong lol. There is not plenty of housing being built. Even the "luxury" condos are not being built enough.
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Jul 14, 2020 16:47
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Solkanar512 posted:I had a boss once who was big into commercial property. In his collection included a few buildings on the main street of a small, seaside town that was trying to renovate their main street. He refused to use his buildings, not even to rent them out. He even told the newspaper that “he was just an investor, not a developer”, so the town was basically left with a bunch of holes in their main street. obligatory 
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Jul 14, 2020 16:57
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I just wanted to point out that this statement is very, very wrong lol. There is not plenty of housing being built. Even the "luxury" condos are not being built enough. it may not be applicable to whatever jurisdiction you have in mind, but it's true in others. one of the difficulties of discussing urban planning topics on-line is that everyone contextualizes things in terms of their own local jurisdiction and assumes that to be universally true. i guarantee though that wherever you live, if you go far enough outside of that jurisdiction, new housing is being built. mentioning 'luxury condos' here makes me think that you have a specific city or market in mind, and if you take a look on zillow for new construction around that metro i am certain you would find something housing supply is not the issue in general. housing affordability is the issue, because people entirely lack the ability to pay for housing because income for the working poor is too low to subsist on, or there is some additional cost in time or lack of cultural access which people aren't willing to pay. we see this conversation all the time: "i can't afford a house" "there's always the suburbs" "lol who would want to live in a hellhole like that" so if you narrow your definition of housing to "walkable, affordable homes with access to mass transit in an area with a growing high-income jobs market" then yeah, there's not enough of that. that's not necessarily implied in the simple term "housing" though. there are plenty of metros in the united states with growing housing stock, but to a lot of folks who would prefer to live in one of very few cultural centers then you may as well ask them to move to siberia
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Jul 14, 2020 17:13
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Building more sprawl in the suburbs is climate arson at this point so I’m not sure “suck it up and move to the suburbs” is really a good solution on the housing issue. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to not want to commute 2 hours every day to work.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:19
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Badger of Basra posted:I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to not want to commute 2 hours every day to work. i agree with you! but it's necessary to say things like this if the claim is that "not enough housing is being constructed, period". especially not when the alternative solution is to open up land use regulations and let the market decide, because the market is going to decide to build more sprawl as it has for the last seventy years but, in the current conditions we have right now, and which are likely to continue going forwards, then if you want affordable housing you've pretty much got to move to the suburbs where the housing is being constructed. tons of middle class people suck it up and do this every day though it is awful, and suburbs are increasingly where lower income people are being pushed out to live due to gentrification
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Jul 14, 2020 17:21
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Solkanar512 posted:I had a boss once who was big into commercial property. In his collection included a few buildings on the main street of a small, seaside town that was trying to renovate their main street. He refused to use his buildings, not even to rent them out. He even told the newspaper that “he was just an investor, not a developer”, so the town was basically left with a bunch of holes in their main street. Yeah this is incredibly common. Sometimes the building on main street is a completely falling apart ruin and the city eventually offers to buy it from the owner at an insane rate just to get their prime commercial district back, or worse, they offer to renovate it for free for the absentee investor-owner.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:22
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El Mero Mero posted:Yeah this is incredibly common. Sometimes the building on main street is a completely falling apart ruin and the city eventually offers to buy it from the owner at an insane rate just to get their prime commercial district back, or worse, they offer to renovate it for free for the absentee investor-owner.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:32
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luxury handset posted:housing supply is not the issue in general. housing affordability is the issue, because people entirely lack the ability to pay for housing because income for the working poor is too low to subsist on, or there is some additional cost in time or lack of cultural access which people aren't willing to pay. in a market based system of housing production and allocation supply and affordability are not distinct issues. They should be highly correlated and this is exactly the conclusion drawn from observations of housing price increases in states like California. This relationship is strong enough that supply shortfalls were predicted decades in advance, and are predicted to continue indefinitely so long as policies do not drastically change. The point that there is housing being built somewhere else, so it's not really a supply problem, is a wrong headed way of looking at the issue. The supply constraint on housing in a state like California has been widely implicated in the mass out-migration of lower income Californians, who are steadily being priced out of the entire state. Sure they CAN move to Texas, but do we really want to live in an America where they HAVE to? Because that is both the status quo and the future, and it is clearly an undesirable outcome for most of the people involved. When its at the point where people have to choose between their job and social network or leaving it all to find housing somewhere else, I think it is obvious we can do better. Compounding the problem is that housing in many (all?) jurisdictions has an effective price floor. Legalizing granny flats and tiny houses and etc is one way to drop the floor and increase theoretical affordability, however if housing production remains insufficient that affordability will not be realized as demand pushes prices up.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:56
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Squalid posted:in a market based system of housing production and allocation supply and affordability are not distinct issues. they are distinct within the scope of my statement that "there's plenty of housing being built, it's just not the kind of housing most people want (less than an hour commute to any sort of significant job cluster)". this is a statement against the general provision of housing by the market as being inadequate to match what people find desirable in housing, which itself came from an argument about artificial restrictions on housing supply imposed by land use regulation. a much, much larger contributor to this mismatch is transportation infrastructure which makes affordable housing similarly inaccessible everyone posting itt agrees that the current housing market sucks, everything else is just miscommunication over the hows and whys
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Jul 14, 2020 18:05
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luxury handset posted:they are distinct within the scope of my statement that "there's plenty of housing being built, it's just not the kind of housing most people want (less than an hour commute to any sort of significant job cluster)". this is a statement against the general provision of housing by the market as being inadequate to match what people find desirable in housing, which itself came from an argument about artificial restrictions on housing supply imposed by land use regulation. a much, much larger contributor to this mismatch is transportation infrastructure which makes affordable housing similarly inaccessible Can we at least agree that upzoning around Metro stations/ areas of mass transit is a good idea so long as the housing built is mixed use (apartments, condos, duplexes, ect) and we guarantee that the units are mixed income and a certain % are dedicated towards rental assistance/housing subsidies/moderately priced units? People shouldn't be forced to commute two hours by car in traffic because the "affordable housing" is a whole county away. That's silly.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:19
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luxury handset posted:it may not be applicable to whatever jurisdiction you have in mind, but it's true in others. one of the difficulties of discussing urban planning topics on-line is that everyone contextualizes things in terms of their own local jurisdiction and assumes that to be universally true. i guarantee though that wherever you live, if you go far enough outside of that jurisdiction, new housing is being built. mentioning 'luxury condos' here makes me think that you have a specific city or market in mind, and if you take a look on zillow for new construction around that metro i am certain you would find something I really hate this last argument because when you say “cultural center”, you could easily mean “place where my family (and safety net) is”, “place where I won’t get hosed over because I’m disabled or LGBTQ” or “place where I can hold down a decent job with solid protections”. I hate this idea that everyone who can’t find housing should have to move hundreds to thousands of miles away from everything they know, start from scratch and have to deal with whatever bigoted bullshit and lack of services is currently popular in their new town. I still remember a goon a while back talking about how Charleston was just a good as anything on the West Coast literally two weeks before their bathroom bill passed. Those differences matter significantly.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:35
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Can we at least agree that upzoning around Metro stations/ areas of mass transit is a good idea so long as the housing built is mixed use (apartments, condos, duplexes, ect) and we guarantee that the units are mixed income and a certain % are dedicated towards rental assistance/housing subsidies/moderately priced units? forcing affordable unit setasides is incompatible with upzoning, full stop. if you loosen zoning restrictions, what leverage do you have to extract concessions from developers? if you give them the power to build midrise condos, then you no longer have a carrot to dangle to force some percentage of affordable units. forcing developers to set aside some units is a very inefficient and crappy method of housing provision, but it's one which can be entirely done within the zoning/permitting process aka can be done as a function of the planning and building department, without getting politicians involved (until developers lobby the politicians to sidestep whatever the planners are up to) i know you've mentioned that your local jurisdiction has this in place but that is a matter of county legislation, aka not something which unfolds as part of the minimal powers that planning departments can exert over local market developers. once politicians have the will to start passing legislation to mandate that developers play ball then you have a lot more options, but that's not often the case when planners grant variance to get token affordable housing otherwise what you describe already happens in a lot of places. look up overlay zones - it's easier than changing the base zoning map and agitating property owners to the point they storm your charrettes. you can have more than one zone in place at a time, and it's pretty common to say "actually in this area within 1 mile of the transit station the following variances from otherwise designated zoning are allowed" which would include things like permissible uses as well as lot size restrictions
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Jul 14, 2020 19:55
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luxury handset posted:forcing affordable unit setasides is incompatible with upzoning, full stop. if you loosen zoning restrictions, what leverage do you have to extract concessions from developers? if you give them the power to build midrise condos, then you no longer have a carrot to dangle to force some percentage of affordable units. forcing developers to set aside some units is a very inefficient and crappy method of housing provision, but it's one which can be entirely done within the zoning/permitting process aka can be done as a function of the planning and building department, without getting politicians involved (until developers lobby the politicians to sidestep whatever the planners are up to) Isn't he describing this kind of overlay exactly in his post, except they can chose the upzone with conditions by right? I don't know if this happens where you are but I feel like I read things every week about places that are trying to get a variance from the planning department by including affordable units but people in the neighborhood still hate it because it's not enough units, or it's too many units, or the units don't have enough bedrooms, or there's not enough parking, etc. etc.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:04
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Badger of Basra posted:Isn't he describing this kind of overlay exactly in his post, except they can chose the upzone with conditions by right? I don't know if this happens where you are but I feel like I read things every week about places that are trying to get a variance from the planning department by including affordable units but people in the neighborhood still hate it because it's not enough units, or it's too many units, or the units don't have enough bedrooms, or there's not enough parking, etc. etc. Exactly the problem is if people don't want development, they don't want it full stop. You could have the unit be 100% publicly funded and 100% subsidized rental assistance and people still wouldn't want it to be built. Honestly Luxury Handset I don't know what you want. Even if we get a huge federal building program to build 100% affordable units you would still need to change the zoning codes to get the housing built where it actually needs to be. Especially around transit centers and areas of walk ability. Building out in the suburbs is stupid, wasteful, and environmentally disastrous.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:14
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Badger of Basra posted:Isn't he describing this kind of overlay exactly in his post, except they can chose the upzone with conditions by right? it's splitting hairs over whether upzoning can be called overlay zoning or the other way round but, without trying to disparage or put words in Solaris 2.0's mouth, i think they want me to agree with them that upzoning has some positive sides because i've been fairly critical of the idea (and will remain so) but yeah, my argument is basically "something very similar to upzoning already happens all of the time, it's called overlay zoning" and while the implementation details (and political costs) are different, the outcome is mostly the same. overlay zoning is basically just very targeted upzoning Badger of Basra posted:I don't know if this happens where you are but I feel like I read things every week about places that are trying to get a variance from the planning department by including affordable units but people in the neighborhood still hate it because it's not enough units, or it's too many units, or the units don't have enough bedrooms, or there's not enough parking, etc. etc. granting variances to extract concessions like affordable unit subsidies or set asides or whatever is a really crappy method of providing affordable housing. it is popular because it is an interaction directly between the local planning and permitting authority, and the developers they regulate. this is what makes it widespread - since local elected officials are vulnerable to agitation from wealthy property owners who would have collective kittens if they felt like their property values were threatened, then local elected officials often don't back up planning departments or community activists who demand more affordable housing. so this is why the crappy solution is common - because it is one which doesn't require any new legislation to enact, it is a process of negotiation between land use regulators and land developers on each individual project that breaks ground it is not at all a process which makes anyone satisfied. it sucks. but it's the one which we can do right now and not four years from now after a period of study and continued support from the mayor's office, which might vanish overnight and the whole study put on a shelf to rot
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Jul 14, 2020 20:14
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Can we at least agree that upzoning around Metro stations/ areas of mass transit is a good idea so long as the housing built is mixed use (apartments, condos, duplexes, ect) and we guarantee that the units are mixed income and a certain % are dedicated towards rental assistance/housing subsidies/moderately priced units? You won't be able to guarantee that without vastly increasing the political leverage of renters, and many things which could do that would also strike directly and immediately at the problem of displacement. For example, we passed a measure in SF that gives everyone the right to trained representation in eviction court, and eviction proceedings suddenly dropped by 25%. But the big game is tenant organizing. quote:People shouldn't be forced to commute two hours by car in traffic because the "affordable housing" is a whole county away. That's silly. Well, people shouldn't be forced to commute in general, but I agree that housing outside of a city is not housing inside that city.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:14
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Honestly Luxury Handset I don't know what you want. Even if we get a huge federal building program to build 100% affordable units you would still need to change the zoning codes to get the housing built where it actually needs to be. Especially around transit centers and areas of walk ability. yes, you would need to change zoning codes. the thing i consistently say is that while changing zoning codes are a prerequisite to denser (and thus affordable) development, it does not logically follow that loosening zoning codes are themselves the thing that would stimulate affordable housing. it is my firm belief that you'd just end up with denser housing for wealthy people and the poor will continue to be left to make do from scraps the argument that "zoning codes are historically used to enforce exclusion and low density, thus change zoning and there will be less exclusion and higher density" is not an argument which i think works - because there are many more relevant factors influencing housing affordability than land use regulation. the two big ones - transportation infrastructure, and the lack of desire in the market to build housing directly for poor people Solaris 2.0 posted:Building out in the suburbs is stupid, wasteful, and environmentally disastrous. yes, it is, but that is what the market does, which is why it is always a bad idea to appeal to the market to build more housing instead of forcing it to build the kind of housing you want my read of your argument is that you want the regulation-heavy type of housing to be built by making regulation lighter somehow, or tampering with regulation somehow, and i just don't think you're going to get to your desired outcome through any sort of reform of zoning codes Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:17
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Doc Hawkins posted:You won't be able to guarantee that without vastly increasing the political leverage of renters, and many things which could do that would also strike directly and immediately at the problem of displacement. For example, we passed a measure in SF that gives everyone the right to trained representation in eviction court, and eviction proceedings suddenly dropped by 25%. But the big game is tenant organizing. One way to do that is to increase the number of renters. One reason renters in many jurisdictions don't have much power (other than the income/racial disparities) is the fact that they are vastly out-numbered by owners. In particularly, single family home owners. But I do agree you also need measures in place, at the federal and local levels, that explicitly protect renters. quote:yes, it is, but that is what the market does, which is why it is always a bad idea to appeal to the market to build more housing instead of forcing it to build the kind of housing you want "The Market" actually would love to build in the prime city real-estate and around metros/mass transit but is often prevented from doing so due to, among other things, zoning codes and efforts by Single Family Home associations. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:22
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luxury handset posted:it's splitting hairs over whether upzoning can be called overlay zoning or the other way round but, without trying to disparage or put words in Solaris 2.0's mouth, i think they want me to agree with them that upzoning has some positive sides because i've been fairly critical of the idea (and will remain so) The difference to me between “upzoning” and what you are describing is that it removes the need to have individual, years-long project fights because it applies to more than one lot. The fight is to get the “upzone” passed but after that the process would be administrative - if you build the % of affordable units required in the code, you get your extra FAR and that’s it. If your objection is that this is unlikely, sure. So is a massive program of federal public housing. Should we close the thread? luxury handset posted:yes, it is, but that is what the market does, which is why it is always a bad idea to appeal to the market to build more housing instead of forcing it to build the kind of housing you want I feel like we are still having two discussions about housing, generally, and affordable housing. If you allowed for increased density in central city single family neighborhoods, do you think any denser housing would be built there? I don't want to speak for Solaris but for me I do but that is obviously only part of the solution, as I have said before. It wouldn't create new, deeply affordable housing and you handle that in other ways such as public housing. However the upzoning is still good because what we have now is bad from other angles besides affordability, such as climate. Badger of Basra fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:23
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Badger of Basra posted:The difference to me between “upzoning” and what you are describing is that it removes the need to have individual, years-long project fights because it applies to more than one lot. upzoning is just allowing denser builds or uses on a lot. this requires a change to the zoning code. the other thing i'm describing, playing games with variances, is what planners do when it is not feasible to change the zoning code for whatever reason - political resistance, or the way the code is written already permits developers to build a large structure but one which might be a little larger if it had some handouts for low income renters, etc. Badger of Basra posted:The fight is to get the “upzone” passed but after that the process would be administrative - if you build the % of affordable units required in the code, you get your extra FAR and that’s it. putting in something like a blanket requirement for affordable or subsidized units is only dangerous because at any point the city council, generously donated to by developers, would veto any proposed alteration to the zoning code. you've got to have political buy-in at that point, and if you have that, then everything gets brighter for low income housing. this is even more true at the state and, blessed be, federal level in the absence of that political support though, you're left with very poor tools like variance games Badger of Basra posted:If your objection is that this is unlikely, sure. So is a massive program of federal public housing. Should we close the thread? i think it's worth talking about how upzoning is itself just a contributor to a larger policy package targeted at affordable housing, it is not itself a switch planners can flip from "solve problem: off" to "solve problem: on" Badger of Basra posted:If you allowed for increased density in central city single family neighborhoods, do you think any denser housing would be built there? I don't want to speak for Solaris but for me I do but that is obviously only part of the solution, as I have said before. It wouldn't create new, deeply affordable housing and you handle that in other ways such as public housing. However the upzoning is still good because what we have now is bad from other angles besides affordability, such as climate. it absolutely would create denser housing! it would just be market rate, aka for techbros and DINKs and other folks who are not the working poor this is the flipside to upzoning - while we can loosen zoning in some places for denser housing, what about the places that already have loose zoning and denser housing doesn't appear because the point of optimal profitable extraction is less than the legal maximum buildable space? in both cases we're going to have to grab developers by the collar and force them to make the kind of housing we want i can take R-1 quarter acre zoning and wave a wand and make it MFR-100 or something and permit 10 story condo towers to be built, but does that mean developers will build that high? or will they just build lowrise buildings with gold plated amenities and walk away with bulging wallets? keep in mind that as soon as i change the zoning designation that land becomes a lot more valuable, which is going to have big impacts on what the free market agents decide to build there Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:30
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Solaris 2.0 posted:One way to do that is to increase the number of renters. One reason renters in many jurisdictions don't have much power (other than the income/racial disparities) is the fact that they are vastly out-numbered by owners. In particularly, single family home owners. haha, uhh, i guess we were saying up-thread that we should couch our arguments in local conditions, so i'll admit i have never lived anywhere this was the case, and i thought rates of home-ownership have gone down from 2008. if you're talking about very-low-density areas, maybe those are the exurbs that you are saying new construction should not be centered on? but in SF we have a lot of homes which i lust to subdivide.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:40
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luxury handset posted:
This depends on the jurisdiction but in my area the developer would make more money with the 10 story condo than the "gold plated low rise" because more tenants = more rent. Also, at least for my area, the planning department / county council usually has a lot of say in what gets approved to be built.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:41
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Doc Hawkins posted:haha, uhh, i guess we were saying up-thread that we should couch our arguments in local conditions, so i'll admit i have never lived anywhere this was the case, and i thought rates of home-ownership have gone down from 2008. if you're talking about very-low-density areas, maybe those are the exurbs that you are saying new construction should not be centered on? but in SF we have a lot of homes which i lust to subdivide. Home owners by and large have over-whelming power in most local communities. I should say I'm talking hyper local here (Bethesda MD for example is a "city" but is extremely low density) so its not comparable to San Francisco. Still, even where renters do outnumber them home owners have vastly more political power and, well, the system was designed that way. One way to fix that of course is to provide better assistance to renters and write laws to protect them (rental assistance, eviction protections,ect). I would argue though that increasing the number of people who rent and giving them actual protections would increase their political clout.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:47
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luxury handset posted:putting in something like a blanket requirement for affordable or subsidized units is only dangerous because at any point the city council, generously donated to by developers, would veto any proposed alteration to the zoning code. you've got to have political buy-in at that point, and if you have that, then everything gets brighter for low income housing. this is even more true at the state and, blessed be, federal level Well right now we have the problem that at any point the city council (or the planning commission), generously whined at by homeowners, can veto any proposed variance. I can't find a good single article about it right now but I'm reminded of the mall in Cupertino that developers had been trying to turn into housing since 2014 and it only got approved like two months ago after the state passed a law in 2018 and then they had to litigate with homeowners about whether the mall was covered by the law after that. This obviously isn't good but I'm also not sure it's better than "you have to elect pro-affordable housing politicians." The people generously bribed and/or whined at wouldn't approve anything. If we assume they exist then nothing will get done. luxury handset posted:it absolutely would create denser housing! it would just be market rate, aka for techbros and DINKs and other folks who are not the working poor Of course they wouldn't build to the maximum allowable space in every place, but is that the point? If you upzoned the R-3 (SFH/two flat only) lots near the train station by me to 100 stories you would not get 100 story towers. But you might get 4 or 5 story buildings, which is better than a single family house. I am not saying this is going to solve every urban issue ever. 4 story apartment buildings near a train station will not end the housing crisis. But they will provide more units in more environmentally sustainable locations, which we need!
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Jul 14, 2020 20:47
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Solaris 2.0 posted:This depends on the jurisdiction but in my area the developer would make more money with the 10 story condo than the "gold plated low rise" because more tenants = more rent. i wouldn't assume this to be true in most cases - there are higher costs associated with higher buildings that would negatively impact your profit, unless there is some other constraint in place which makes this a better alternative than building fewer units for wealthier tenants. i'd point to exactly this scenario in san francisco, where scarce land is devoted far more to brand new higher income housing. one tenant who can pay $3k a month is a lot easier to deal with than three tenants who pay $1k a month, because the taller you build the more you have to invest in costly things like elevators and parking structures which eat away at the profit margin Badger of Basra posted:Well right now we have the problem that at any point the city council (or the planning commission), generously whined at by homeowners, can veto any proposed variance. I can't find a good single article about it right now but I'm reminded of the mall in Cupertino that developers had been trying to turn into housing since 2014 and it only got approved like two months ago after the state passed a law in 2018 and then they had to litigate with homeowners about whether the mall was covered by the law after that. This obviously isn't good but I'm also not sure it's better than "you have to elect pro-affordable housing politicians." The people generously bribed and/or whined at wouldn't approve anything. If we assume they exist then nothing will get done. i agree this is a major obstacle to overcome, but i think it is a necessary obstacle to overcome. in the context of this discussion about upzoning, i do not think it makes upzoning any more effective of a remedy for costly housing just because it is mostly a bureaucratic instead of political move. an easier solution is not necessarily an effective solution, is my claim Badger of Basra posted:Of course they wouldn't build to the maximum allowable space in every place, but is that the point? If you upzoned the R-3 (SFH/two flat only) lots near the train station by me to 100 stories you would not get 100 story towers. But you might get 4 or 5 story buildings, which is better than a single family house. I am not saying this is going to solve every urban issue ever. 4 story apartment buildings near a train station will not end the housing crisis. But they will provide more units in more environmentally sustainable locations, which we need! sure, but then we're talking about the environment and not affordability. trying to get more housing which is both affordable and green is a hell of a circle to square without political willpower Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:49
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a better summary from people who seem to spend all day every day arguing about this: https://twitter.com/BenFTeresa/status/1283125492292493313 Doc Hawkins fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:50
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luxury handset posted:i wouldn't assume this to be true in most cases - there are higher costs associated with higher buildings that would negatively impact your profit, unless there is some other constraint in place which makes this a better alternative than building fewer units for wealthier tenants. i'd point to exactly this scenario in san francisco, where scarce land is devoted far more to brand new higher income housing. one tenant who can pay $3k a month is a lot easier to deal with than three tenants who pay $1k a month, because the taller you build the more you have to invest in costly things like elevators and parking structures which eat away at the profit margin The point is even 3-4 story duplexes is far better than more single family housing in the suburbs and provides at least some housing to boot. The housing gets built dude, we're just trying to dictate where and how. I for one would like to see something other than Single Family home sprawl.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:53
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Doc Hawkins posted:a better summary from people who seem to spend all day every day arguing about this: https://twitter.com/peterjgowan/status/1283126842283757571?s=20 I am not confident about this, essentially. e: or that if they are like this at one level of government, they will be at all the necessary levels
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Jul 14, 2020 21:00
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Solaris 2.0 posted:The point is even 3-4 story duplexes is far better than more single family housing in the suburbs and provides at least some housing to boot. you're conceding some of your original point around upzoning being necessary for affordable housing. my specific argument is that tight zoning is not itself a direct contributor to housing affordability and upzoning is not a sufficient remedy to housing affordablility i agree very strongly that denser housing is a good thing! let's not lose focus on what kind of denser housing would be built if allowed, as in it is not likely to be denser housing for low income people if you want to shift to a different argument that detached single family housing has many negative externalities, then we can all agree that this is true. this may be the safest thread on the forums to seek agreement for that claim. but then we've drifted to a different argument entirely, one that is not an argument about whether or not restrictive land use regulation is a direct cause of housing unaffordability (in many cases, no) or if removing that regulation would stimulate the construction of more affordable housing (probably not) instead of just denser market-rate housing (yes) Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 21:04
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luxury handset posted:you're conceding some of your original point around upzoning being necessary for affordable housing. my specific argument is that tight zoning is not itself a direct contributor to housing affordability and upzoning is not a sufficient remedy to housing affordablility Yea I think it's ok for us to sometimes stand back and say we all want denser housing, more equitable housing, more affordable housing, stronger rights for renters, and less detached housing and remind ourselves we are all allies in this fight. The disagreements come in the particulars. But in politics the particulars are where you get the nastiest fights, and in my experience local politics gets every bit as nasty (if not more so) because of it. I realize I get a little heated. Climate change and housing/transportation policy are my personal biggest pet peeves and a major driver of income and racial inequality. I'll be honest I'm not beholden to any one solution or ideology. Whatever works to solve these things, is fine by me. Whether that be a heavily regulated market based approach, or a Green New Deal style massive federal housing/climate program.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:17
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