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Solaris 2.0 posted: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. it is very good to be a critic of the systems and policies which brought us to this state, and i applaud your interest it occured to me that my argument is similar to one centered around healthcare. i do not think it is possible to deregulate to a point of widespread affordable and adequate housing any more than it is possible to deregulate to a point of affordable and adequate health insurance. i think in both cases, the only real effective and equitable solution is through direct governmental intervention in the housing/healthcare market. from my perspective, a single payer/public option/M4A outcome is effectively the same as expansion of federal government grants and subsidies to local governments and renters, whether it is in the form of block grants or vouchers or whatever. i just don't see any other way around it i'm not an opponent of upzoning in theory. i am just deeply suspicious of widespread upzoning, especially when it is framed as an argument in favor of housing affordability, because such a thing is likely to advantage developers and other profit-seekers far more than it will advantage the poor. worse, it is easy to support upzoning on the basis that it counteracts past exclusionary and racist policies, which is true, but it can then just as easily go on to support further exclusionary outcomes. selective upzoning is part of a basket of policy changes which can have tremendously positive effect, but upzoning itself is, to me, not a singular policy change which would have any useful outcome Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 21:28
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luxury handset posted:it is very good to be a critic of the systems and policies which brought us to this state, and i applaud your interest I'm just tuning into this thread and have only read back a little bit, so forgive me if this was already discussed. But out of curiosity, would you think upzoning of a city in general is a good thing? Or only if it's paired with additional regulations specifically targeting low-income households? Or do you have other thoughts on that scale of upzoning? I'm just asking because I'm from Minneapolis and we recently upzoned the entire city to allow, at a minimum, triplexes. Most of the city, like others, was zoned for single family housing prior to this. I was definitely for this upzoning since it will increase our housing stock, which is desperately needed as our vacancy rate is among the lowest in the nation. I understand the advantaging developers aspect, but it's hard to figure out how to increase the housing stock without advantaging developers. Unless you mass build public, government funded housing of course. Which would be great, but we're no where close to that in our country.
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Jul 14, 2020 22:26
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Kalit posted:I'm just tuning into this thread and have only read back a little bit, so forgive me if this was already discussed. But out of curiosity, would you think upzoning of a city in general is a good thing? Or only if it's paired with additional regulations specifically targeting low-income households? Or do you have other thoughts on that scale of upzoning? i think it's a neutral thing. assuming a locality where restrictive zoning can be demonstrated as a direct cause of lack of housing, then if you upzone you're going to get more market rate housing. this is good for people who can afford it, but doesn't do anything useful for people who can't afford it. in a vacuum, more housing units drives down prices. in practice, there are more complicating factors at play - additional housing stock can be just as attractive to new migrants who can contribute to the displacement of existing residents Kalit posted:I'm just asking because I'm from Minneapolis and we recently upzoned the entire city to allow, at a minimum, triplexes. Most of the city, like others, was zoned for single family housing prior to this. I was definitely for this upzoning since it will increase our housing stock, which is desperately needed as our vacancy rate is among the lowest in the nation. minneapolis is like the poster child of wide scale upzoning (along with san francisco) and while i think there will be some impact on housing availability, i do not think this will at all alleviate housing affordability. i don't know much about minneapolis but poking around on google maps it looks like much of the historical development pattern in the city limits is mostly midcentury streetcar and pre-interstate automotive suburban development on a gridiron. dropping in on google streets shows that the housing stock is fairly well kept, i didn't see any noticable pockets of concentrated poverty. so i would expect scattered development of infill townhomes and ADUs and things of that nature - obviously a benefit, but nowhere near a solution to widespread housing unaffordability. minneapolis is a large upland metro though so probably a lot of the lower income minneapolitans? would be displaced to other parts of the metro which have less of this picturesque development pattern. i did try to grub around the highways to see if i could spot any remnants of 'urban renewal' but my general sense is that this upzoning will be to the primary benefit of people who already have some ability to pay e: i found a neighborhood, along lyndale ave between broadway and north 26th. there's a few things i see here that are typical of single family detached neighborhoods that are lower income, which make me thing that upzoning won't be of tremendous benefit. the first is obviously empty lots - there are gaps between houses, some reclaimed into community space, others just kept mown and vacant. why aren't developers building there? the other thing is a lot of DIY conversions of large homes into multi-unit structures. the best way to spot these are awkward additions to the facade of the home and multiple mailboxes (if you want to see how many units are in a structure converted from a detached home, count the mailboxes). if multi-unit conversions are permitted, why are they not more frequent in wealthier neighborhoods? what would happen if there were a stimulus of development in this neighborhood? the answer, i fear, is gentrification Kalit posted:I understand the advantaging developers aspect, but it's hard to figure out how to increase the housing stock without advantaging developers. Unless you mass build public, government funded housing of course. Which would be great, but we're no where close to that in our country. that's the problem. i just don't think loosening regulation is going to do the job if what you're looking to achieve is affordable housing Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 22:39
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[quote=] i think there will be some impact on housing availability, i do not think this will at all alleviate housing affordability. [/quote] I don’t think both of these statements can be true. Even if it’s not as simple as supply and demand, greater availability must have some impact on affordability.
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Jul 14, 2020 22:47
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Sri.Theo posted:I don’t think both of these statements can be true. Even if it’s not as simple as supply and demand, greater availability must have some impact on affordability. remember that population of a jurisdiction is not constant. if you build more housing, you could be attracting people who did not previously live in the neighborhood who have the means and desire to pay more for housing. if i knock down all the homes in a neighborhood and put up condos, i could sell those condos for more than the homes previously cost which would increase availability of housing (more units) while decreasing affordability (expensive units) we can assume that if a lot and the structure on it was previously worth $300k, and i redevelop that with a three unit building, the price of the units should be $100k each, right? but in rezoning the land, i've made it more valuable - especially if there is developer interest in rebuilding the place - and there's nothing stopping me from selling the new units for $300k or more each, depending on the build quality. if i'm trying to sell these units for as much as i think people will pay for them, then i have incentive to jack up the build quality to get a higher price at sale. or at least, the interior finish quality, with more of an eye towards immediate trendiness than durability
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Jul 14, 2020 22:53
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adding more luxury housing absolutely can make the housing around it more expensive. that's phase 2 or 3 of every gentrification plan.
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Jul 14, 2020 23:16
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Doc Hawkins posted:adding more luxury housing absolutely can make the housing around it more expensive. that's phase 2 or 3 of every gentrification plan. What defines luxury housing tho? A lot the times “luxury” is just a label and the units are expensive because, well, the market is expensive. Case in point washington DC has some of the lowest levels of new housing in the nation. It is incredibly difficult to build housing here. But that didn’t stop DC from A) Gentrifying and B) being really loving expensive. There is more to what causes Gentrification than “a luxury condo popped up” and if we don’t acknowledge that we cannot properly combat gentrification AND the housing crises.
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Jul 14, 2020 23:27
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This seems like a good juncture to point the counter-cyclical nature of housing production, and how that makes it difficult to “do right” and also easy to get the causality backwards. It’s cheapest (particularly in terms of construction material and labor) to build housing when demand is low, and most expensive to build it when demand is high. At the same time, most projects only pencil out as a worthwhile return on investment once demand has significantly outstripped supply. Why sink millions of dollars into a multiyear project that can be derailed for any number of reasons chasing a 1.5% ROI when you can just play the market instead? Particularly if you aren’t sure the demand will even exist in the future. In practice, this means that cranes don’t usually start going up until local rents have been trending upwards for some time due to demand outstripping supply AKA displacement and gentrification. Unless you really like nerding out on this stuff, it’s easy to get the causality flipped and assume that the new construction is driving gentrification and not the other way around. gonger fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 23:44
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luxury handset posted:everyone posting itt agrees that the current housing market sucks, everything else is just miscommunication over the hows and whys Yeah you and I definitely agree on the big issues. But I see so much confusing regarding the relationship of housing supply to affordability, which are so closely linked as to be the same thing in every practical scenario. It's something I wish more people would realize. We do have other concerns besides supply, we just always have to bear in mind what how a policy impacts it. For example, I believe mandating developments include mixed-income or low income housing will probably decrease the rate of profit for developers. Decreasing the rate of profit will result in a fall in investment, which will directly result into a decrease in future supply, and a commensurate increase in housing costs. It isn't complicated logic. However because producing mixed-income neighborhoods is so important, that's a cost that is reasonable to bear. Ideally, the government could make-up for the decrease in the rate of profit by providing low income households with a housing subsidy or something, so there isn't a fall off in investment.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:00
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Solaris 2.0 posted:What defines luxury housing tho? A lot the times “luxury” is just a label and the units are expensive because, well, the market is expensive. Margins. I should have just said "market-rate housing," since private developers will of course try to get the highest margins they can, using whatever architectural features and marketing labels they think will inflate prices to the highest they think they can get. All new construction in SF tries to be luxurious for its location, I don't know if business works differently elsewhere. Squalid posted:
Correct, which is why you need full government funding in order to have fully affordable construction. In California we've been pushing for public banks for that.
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Jul 15, 2020 02:29
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Doc Hawkins posted:All new construction in SF tries to be luxurious for its location, I don't know if business works differently elsewhere. you can go the other way and make everything clearly new but also very plainly decorated, to try to appeal to homebuyers that they're getting a solid deal and paying a fair price. this is more common where it's possible to build closer to a lower price point due to abundance of land, cheap building cost etc. like here's the kitchen on a brand new 3/3 $155k townhome that probably won't fall over in the next few decades  this housing format, the suburban townhome, is wildly popular in my metro because you can cram a shitload of units into weirdly shaped lots Squalid posted:Yeah you and I definitely agree on the big issues. But I see so much confusing regarding the relationship of housing supply to affordability, which are so closely linked as to be the same thing in every practical scenario. It's something I wish more people would realize. i think that the point of housing provision where the number of new units notably drives down prices is typically far higher than the number of units the market will produce naturally, given other resource constraints. like if the market adds 2k units per year but we need at least 3k to keep up with demand then we end up with an increase in supply and a decrease in affordability Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 02:50
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luxury handset posted:i think that the point of housing provision where the number of new units notably drives down prices is typically far higher than the number of units the market will produce naturally, given other resource constraints. like if the market adds 2k units per year but we need at least 3k to keep up with demand then we end up with an increase in supply and a decrease in affordability well i'm not sure what naturally means in this context but we just have to be cognizant of the effects of policy. Increasing housing supply requires investment, and if we know the market can't provide it then we have to line up government funding. What we don't want however, and this is the mistake made by anti-property tax people and most rent control advocates, is to end up in a situation where we unintentionally trigger a plunge and then find the political will to correct the imbalance doesn't exist. Then of course there is one alternative solution. If we can't increase supply we could instead decrease demand by making the neighborhood less desirable. I mean it's a dumb idea but it should work.
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Jul 15, 2020 03:20
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Squalid posted:
Where do people live then? What determines when a neighborhood becomes desirable? This is a slippery slope. Also you want investment and construction in "undesirable" neighborhoods (these tend to be majority minority...wonder why) because ideally you want to improve their lives. People like investment in their neighborhoods. You just want it without pricing out the people living there. How you do that however is a question policy makers still struggle with. *edit* Like white people get investment in their neighborhoods. New streets, good schools, solid amenities, retail, actual security aka cops not shooting them, ect. BUT they also get to determine who lives in their neighborhoods and what gets built, ect. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 04:09
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Squalid posted:Then of course there is one alternative solution. If we can't increase supply we could instead decrease demand by making the neighborhood less desirable. I mean it's a dumb idea but it should work. i don't think you can really decrease housing demand by deliberately making an area less desirable, you're really only creating sort of a desirability vacuum which will draw in the people least able to resist the economic pull, aka the very poor. so instead of decreasing demand you're just shifting the demand down the income scale. less desirable and neglected midcentury suburbs are a common place for poor folks to end up after gentrification is done pushing them around
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Jul 15, 2020 15:03
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Good news! https://mobile.twitter.com/Acosta/s...ber%3D3513pti28
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Jul 23, 2020 21:57
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i wish any of that were even close to happening but no, there is no basis in reality for any of trump's claims to be considered true
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Jul 23, 2020 22:11
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Good things coming out of Portland! https://www.sightline.org/2020/08/11/on-wednesday-portland-will-pass-the-best-low-density-zoning-reform-in-us-history/ quote:Portland’s new rules will also offer a “deeper affordability” option: four to six homes on any lot if at least half are available to low-income Portlanders at regulated, affordable prices. The measure will make it viable for nonprofits to intersperse below-market housing anywhere in the city for the first time in a century. quote:Portland’s reform will build on similar actions in Vancouver and Minneapolis, whose leaders voted in 2018 to re-legalize duplexes and triplexes, respectively; in Seattle, where a 2019 reform to accessory cottages resulted in something very close to citywide triplex legalization; and in Austin, whose council passed a very similar sixplex-with-affordability proposal in 2019.
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Aug 12, 2020 17:28
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scaling floor area ratio by number of units per lot is a pretty good idea but it feel like it would lead to tiny units. not that tiny units are bad thing mind you, childless young people and elderly empty nesters need housing too
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Aug 12, 2020 18:01
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Seems like a yet another small move but unambiguously positive. Hopefully we will keep seeing more and more reform like this.
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Aug 13, 2020 04:42
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When they say affordable, what sort of price range are they aiming for compared to current prices?
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Aug 13, 2020 18:51
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that's going to depend a ton on local cost of living but ballpark 1/3 of 40hrs minwage or 1/3 of the local household income in total monthly costs (bills, rent or mortgage/insurance/taxes), depending on who you are trying to make a home affordable for general rule of thumb is that you should be paying no more than a third of your income monthly on housing expenses if possible
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Aug 13, 2020 19:18
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The HUD standard is that anything above 30% of your income means you are "rent-burdened." It used to be 25%. A reasonable criticism I see online is that whatever number percentage you use, it should be applied to income minus everything else you need to live - groceries, clothing, childcare, schooling, healthcare, etc - since those are also more expensive in high COL areas.
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Aug 13, 2020 20:02
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Cool discussion with the co-founder of the City Repair Project about the horror of the us national Grid that weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. https://soundcloud.com/upstreampodcast/mark-lakeman TIL about the National Land Ordinance.
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Aug 14, 2020 00:57
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welp, here we have a good demonstration of what happens when you gently caress up urban planning https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/2020-San-Francisco-exodus-is-real-and-historic-15484785.php  vacancies have literally doubled in San Francisco since the start of the pandemic. Although on the otherhand, one reason vacancy rates were able to rise so fast in San Fran was because it was already extremely low at the start of the epidemic, but still.
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Aug 15, 2020 16:56
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oh monkey's paw, i wish sf would be a working class city again
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Aug 15, 2020 17:13
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Doc Hawkins posted:The HUD standard is that anything above 30% of your income means you are "rent-burdened." It used to be 25%. A reasonable criticism I see online is that whatever number percentage you use, it should be applied to income minus everything else you need to live - groceries, clothing, childcare, schooling, healthcare, etc - since those are also more expensive in high COL areas. That seems like a bad way to incorporate those factors. If those things eat up 85% if your income, it doesn't mean that your housing should cost 5%.
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Aug 15, 2020 18:53
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Squalid posted:welp, here we have a good demonstration of what happens when you gently caress up urban planning Interesting that Boston is saying its level since all the articles up here are saying landlords are scrambling the vacancies of missing college kids.
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Aug 15, 2020 21:01
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Every Bay NIMBY wishing for SF to be “cool and authentic again, before the techies came”, is about to get their wish, hope they enjoy the collapsing tax base! Although the people most vocal about opposing new housing are 9 times out of ten insulated enough from precarity that they unfortunately will not be the ones who suffer the most from the collapse of public services. Also, in other housing/planning related news: https://twitter.com/idothethinking/status/1295138301087641600 Honestly? Good. Let up-zoning and density become polarized partisan issues. It’ll probably make better planning harder in red and purple states, but many of the areas that need to densify the most are solid blue, and Trump saying the quiet part loud will make it harder for them to weave tales about how defending de facto segregation (both racial and economic) is somehow woke.
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Aug 17, 2020 00:40
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increasing density has been a partisan issue, it's just that most people who oppose it don't articulate it in the proper jargon instead of getting wigged out over paranoia theories like Agenda 21 e: having read the article it's more of the same, it's just boogeyman racism pretending to be based in concern over people's quality of life. depressing that most adult americans are complete idiots who fall for this poo poo Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 00:43
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There is a huge issue with mainly liberal homeowners blocking density in urban areas, in basically any state that touches the pacific ocean, as well as plenty in the east coast , the problem is by no means just chuds. Hopefully trump saying the quiet part louder will make it harder for these people to ignore the racist history of things like single family zoning. Fill Baptismal fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 00:50
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i was talking more about the generally vacant tone of the article, it's a random mismash of concepts that has no real clear point aside from trying to scare white suburbanites who are scared of poor or non-white americans. i don't think there's any sort of useful anti-nimby message in here, it's all just gibberish the westchester reference is probably referring to a case from the late aughts where westchester county in new york was caught accepting HUD payments while not following any HUD guidelines under the fair housing act for trying to provide affordable housing. so the feds forced them to build affordable housing and pony up the money which was fraudulently obtained. it's also got nothing to do with the obama expansion of AFFH which is trump's other punching bag and which hasn't been enforced during his administration anyway Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 00:56
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Still Dismal posted:There is a huge issue with mainly liberal homeowners blocking density in urban areas, in basically any state that touches the pacific ocean, as well as plenty in the east coast , the problem is by no means just chuds. It's a weird convergence of wealthy homeowners and idealistic lefties when they say "no, this new development won't actually add any affordable housing." https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1300820493319036928?s=20 https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1301607590732771328?s=20 https://twitter.com/YIMBYNeoliberal/status/1301329496130289669?s=20
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Sep 4, 2020 01:22
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The union between certain aspects of the left and million dollar single family home owners, all to prevent development at all costs, is infuriating on many levels.
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Sep 4, 2020 01:27
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the fact that people go at over each other's throats over such an ineffective and unimaginative solution speaks volumes as to how much power the left actually has in this country like going to rhetorical blows over just how much the market needs to be massaged to drop rents 7%. it's wild
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Sep 4, 2020 02:21
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Building more housing isn’t ineffective tho. I agree you cannot solely build your way out of a housing crises BUT you also cannot get people housing without, Well building it. So I get really irritated when leftists align with rich single family home owners to prevent ANY housing from being built because it isn’t the “right kind” of housing, whatever that means.
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Sep 4, 2020 02:39
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on the other hand, while more housing is better than not more housing, if the way we go about encouraging more housing is mostly a handout to developers and investors while wealthier income brackets get served over lower income brackets then it's not really a policy worth twitter warring over my concern is that when so much discourse happens in snappy punches on twitter then the snappy punches become the goal rather than the tactic. like a lot of folks questioning each other's leftist bonafides over marginal degrees of a pro-corporate policy. meanwhile folks get so committed to the ideological permutations of zoning board meetings that the ideas of public transit and public housing lose the spotlight they deserve like unquestionably, certainly, without any doubt at all, the policy change in question here around loosening housing regulations fits very squarely into the philosophy of trickle down economics. it's the biden of housing policy. hold your nose and support it if you think the short term gain is worth the long term opportunity cost, that is arguable, but it's really a wretchedly weak policy and support for it must come with the contextualization of "it sucks but it's the best we can do with the time and resources we have" Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Sep 4, 2020 |
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Sep 4, 2020 02:55
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We can argue all day about developer handouts or whatever, but if you don’t build it then no poo poo housing stays expensive. Which coincidentally single family home owners, which no one left of Biden seems to have an issue with, want! That is what pisses me off. We get so obsessed with “the evil capitalist developer” (and there are bad developers!) we allow ourselves to be aligned with >90% white rich historically redlined single family home neighborhoods.
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Sep 4, 2020 03:02
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it's possible to build more housing and for it to remain expensive, or even get more expensive. i'd say this is even likely in some of the most overpriced markets this isn't a binary argument, it's not simply for/against developers. imagine if the cops came out and said they would promise to beat 15% fewer people next calendar year. that's technically progress but not really!
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Sep 4, 2020 03:05
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luxury handset posted:it's possible to build more housing and for it to remain expensive, or even get more expensive. i'd say this is even likely in some of the most overpriced markets You and I keep having this argument so ill stop because it will go in circles add nausea but I bet if you look at those “overpriced markets “ you will also see how housing built has NOT kept up with demand or people moving into that city. Not. Even. Close. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/19/18256378/tech-worker-afford-buy-homes-san-francisco-facebook-google-uber-lyft-housing-crisis-programmers
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Sep 4, 2020 03:10
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I bet if you look at those “overpriced markets “ you will also see how housing built has NOT kept up with demand or people moving into that city. Not. Even. Close. this is entirely tautological, like of course demand hasn't kept up - it's overpriced! other reasons for being overpriced include cripplingly bad public transit, tremendous pull factors like job market, cultural access, or climate, latent demand associated with those pull factors, extra-local jurisdictions passing bonkers laws, rising cost of infill development once greenfield development is no longer viable, or even just natural friction in the market because there aren't many developers out there who are directly targeting people with less money when there are people with more money demanding housing. all these factors are going to keep ticking along after the zoning beast is slain let me put it this way, another burdensome land use regulation is protected greenspace and environmentally sensitive land. why shouldn't we build housing there? is it that the short term benefits aren't worth the long term cost?
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Sep 4, 2020 03:22
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