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EB Nulshit posted:It's not low-income housing. There is nothing that makes it low-income housing. It would probably take a decade before enough of it was built for it even middle-income people to afford it, let alone low-income people, since construction takes time and we auction off each condo as its building is completed. But then there is the problem of how you said it was meant to help low-income folks, and if middle-income folks will barely be able to afford it, I don't really see how that will solve the issue. You are still going to have low-income folks without housing. Also, building a high-value building while simultaneously expecting it to significantly drop in value within a decade does not seem like a good plan. quote:Solving problems is expensive. Buying cheap land and putting a bunch of cheap housing gets us to exactly the problem we're talking about now. If your idea of cost-effective is to spend a shitload of money just so that you can fail to solve a problem, then sure. That's more cost effective. I guess you don't mind wasting money like this, since you're spending someone else's money. I don't really see how creating new condos in super-rich neighborhoods will help out the poor when even you are stating that maybe not even the middle class will be able to afford to live there.
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Oct 19, 2014 16:43
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Once again I think Sweden's program in the 60s and 70s is useful. If the problem is too few apartment units, build more units. It doesn't need to be for low wage people, just construct large apartment complexes as good or better than privately developed ones and rent them for slightly below market rates. It doesn't have to be profitable, any more than police departments, healthcare or the military needs to turn a profit. You can set rates in such a way that they will apply some downward pressure to private sector rents but not drive them out of business immediately. If people are still too poor to pay for rent, raise wages. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 16:52
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Once again I think Sweden's program in the 60s and 70s is useful. If the problem is too few apartment units, build more units. It doesn't need to be for low wage people, just construct large apartment complexes as good or better than privately developed ones and rent them for slightly below market rates. It doesn't have to be profitable, any more than police departments, healthcare or the military needs to turn a profit. You can set rates in such a way that they will apply some downward pressure to private sector rents but not drive them out of business immediately. Why not just build more apartment units in areas that have a lower cost of living, and then encourage people to move there? Why spend $1400 for a studio apartment when you can spend $200 a month for the same thing somewhere else? The USA does in fact have a lot of real estate, and lots of undeveloped land. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 16:55
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lurker1981 posted:Why not just build more apartment units in areas that have a lower cost of living, and then encourage people to move there? Lower cost of living means either slums or rural areas. The latter you don't want to do for obvious reasons, the former means you have to clear out all of those slums first and displace a bunch of people.
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Oct 19, 2014 16:56
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lurker1981 posted:So they were upset that the law was not enforced, so they rioted and looted stores. I'm white and if my daughter assaulted a cop, and tried to steal his gun, I would not be happy, but I would not be surprised if she was shot and killed as a result. Every time we try to enforce the law by gunning down a black who'd grown too fierce and unemployable, the other blacks riot. (riot=singing in public gatherings) It's no wonder they have so much trouble paying rent. Sillies!
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Oct 19, 2014 17:00
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computer parts posted:Lower cost of living means either slums or rural areas. The latter you don't want to do for obvious reasons, the former means you have to clear out all of those slums first and displace a bunch of people. You could rebuild the slums and turn them into something that isn't quite so ghetto. It may be inconvenient for some, but in the long term, it could improve the quality of life for a lot of people. Do you really want some cities and towns to continue to exist as blights or crime havens? While it does fall into the realm of science fiction (Robocop 3, specifically), would it really be so bad if a corporation came into Detroit and rebuilt it? VVVVV - You could create bus routes, or create housing in areas where there are already jobs available, but not enough workers. Dunno about the politician thing, though. The only real solution to that is to become filthy rich and donate a couple million dollars to each of your favorite politicians every year. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:01
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lurker1981, I asked a bit about the public housing situation in Britain over in the UKMT, and one of the main problems they pointed out was the shift from public housing being for everyone to it being charity for the poorest of the poor. Warehousing thousands of poor people in areas of the city farther away from jobs is a great way to end up with very violent, run-down and hopeless housing projects. And, once everyone who lives in those apartments is a low-income or unemployed minority, it becomes very easy for politicians to slash funding without any real opposition.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:01
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lurker1981 posted:You could rebuild the slums and turn them into something that isn't quite so ghetto. Because when you rebuild you have to tear down, which means that people are displaced. Construction for complexes can take between a few months and a few years, even in the best case scenario people still have to live somewhere else and change their work/travel/grocery/school/etc habits. And this isn't taking into account that most new construction is usually made for middle to upper class people, and what isn't is usually not well maintained or is shoddily built in the first place. OwlBot 2000 posted:lurker1981, I asked a bit about the public housing situation in Britain over in the UKMT, and one of the main problems they pointed out was the shift from public housing being for everyone to it being charity for the poorest of the poor. Warehousing thousands of poor people in areas of the city farther away from jobs is a great way to end up with very violent, run-down and hopeless housing projects. And, once everyone who lives in those apartments is a low-income or unemployed minority, it becomes very easy for politicians to slash funding without any real opposition. The exact same thing happened in Chicago in the 50s, though that was more concentrated around race. I highly suggest this book for people who want a look into historical urban development: http://www.amazon.com/Brown-Windy-C...+the+windy+city
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Oct 19, 2014 17:04
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computer parts posted:Because when you rebuild you have to tear down, which means that people are displaced. And when you tear down, some times you don't ever rebuild and people are kept stranded for years despite promises of the right to return (Chicago, also.) Zoning is also an important issue that should be discussed in this thread. There are lots of stories of developers seeing "unprofitable" neighborhoods, then dropping in Targets and other stores right in the middle with the express purpose of pricing out the people currently living there, so that they can buy the properties up, gentrify it and start building more expensive complexes for higher-income people. Voila, a neighborhood that made landlords and property developers very little money has become highly profitable. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:07
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Stop treating rent control like an econ 101 textbook example. A better measure of rent control's success or failure is to look and see if politicians who support it get reelected.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:10
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lurker1981 posted:But then there is the problem of how you said it was meant to help low-income folks, and if middle-income folks will barely be able to afford it, I don't really see how that will solve the issue. You are still going to have low-income folks without housing. That's very interesting. Why do you feel that way?
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Oct 19, 2014 17:12
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OwlBot 2000 posted:And when you tear down, some times you don't ever rebuild and people are kept stranded for years despite promises of the right to return (Chicago, also.) I'm getting the feeling that there isn't an easy solution to this problem. quote:Zoning is also an important issue that should be discussed in this thread. There are lots of stories of developers seeing "unprofitable" neighborhoods, then dropping in Targets and other stores right in the middle with the express purpose of pricing out the people currently living there so they can buy the properties up, gentrify it and start building more expensive complexes for higher-income people. I understand that it is inconvenient for some, but unfortunately, in the USA most Americans have a saying: "Money talks, and bullshit walks." What incentive would some folks have to rent out properties if they weren't making some kind of profit? They probably have families to feed, too. EB Nulshit posted:That's very interesting. Why do you feel that way? My mommy was mean to me when I was a child. Sorry, but I can respond to specific questions better than extremely vague questions. I don't know how to answer your question because I do not know what you are taking issue with, or why. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:15
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How much does income inequality and inelasticity play a part? Just doing some quick numbers on home loans it seems that the greater the income gap becomes, the more wildly pricing for homes and housing would be. With people spread out much further in terms of income, you have a set value of housing that is trying to accommodate a wide spectrum of incomes it would seem to turn very unstable at the drop of a hat. If income fluctuates wildly but homes are already built, that seems like it would toss the system into chaos as you have a crazy amount of demand that is hard to fill despite ample supply. computer parts posted:Lower cost of living means either slums or rural areas. The latter you don't want to do for obvious reasons, the former means you have to clear out all of those slums first and displace a bunch of people. Also, the only 'cheap' part of rural areas is the housing cost to individual people, the price per person from a societal standpoint is relatively astronomical. Delivering road, electricity, communication infrastructure, entitled goods and services gets REALLY loving expensive once you're dealing with areas that have a great deal of distance from metro structures. mugrim fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:17
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Peven Stan posted:Stop treating rent control like an econ 101 textbook example. I'm not sure I agree with your overall point (care to explain further?) but obviously the people living in rent controlled apartments typically vote to continue it, and people who don't live in them are more likely to vote against it. In Mass. for example, rent control was repealed by a 51%-49% vote, but people living in the apartments voted in favor of it by a comfortable margin. So of course it depends on what you're trying to achieve: if you want people to not get priced out of their homes and keep neighborhoods intact it works [which is why it has again become a political issue in rapidly gentrifying high-tech cities], if you want to make sure there's plenty of affordable housing it doesn't usually work in the long term. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:18
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lurker1981 posted:My mommy was mean to me when I was a child. Whoah, no need to get nasty. I'm just asking questions. What makes you think it's a good idea to spend other people's money on something that doesn't work? Is it just because it's someone else's money?
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Oct 19, 2014 17:20
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EB Nulshit posted:Whoah, no need to get nasty. I'm just asking questions. What makes you think it's a good idea to spend other people's money on something that doesn't work? Is it just because it's someone else's money? I know it's hard to detect such things from the written word, but I was being sarcastic when I previously posted about spending other people's money on things that don't work. I don't have a solution, but at the same time, it is also possible to point out things that might not work as desired. Right now this appears to be a sort of brainstorming session where we are playfully bandying ideas for how we might solve this crisis. I'll be the first to admit that if I were a politician, I would pay someone else to figure this sort of thing out for me. And naturally, I would crucify them if they did something that might prevent me from getting re-elected. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:27
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lurker1981 posted:Why not just build more apartment units in areas that have a lower cost of living, and then encourage people to move there? This is the worst possible thinking. Undeveloped land and real estate is cheap. Building roads, hospitals that don't serve enough people to sustain their equipment, public trans that serves an extremely small amount of people, and entitlements are expensive. Believe it or not, places with expensive rent are often relatively cheap per capita in terms of total dollars spent compared to counties with like 8000 people. A lot of places are 'cheap' because they're not properly serviced and then people bitch about healthcare and roads and communication tech, etc.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:31
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Once again I think Sweden's program in the 60s and 70s is useful. If the problem is too few apartment units, build more units. It doesn't need to be for low wage people, just construct large apartment complexes as good or better than privately developed ones and rent them for slightly below market rates. It doesn't have to be profitable, any more than police departments, healthcare or the military needs to turn a profit. You can set rates in such a way that they will apply some downward pressure to private sector rents but not drive them out of business immediately. Ultimately, that would probably have to be the solution, the government regulates the market by providing a steady of housing that is needed. The government can also work in economies of scale that are much larger than private developers, and could at least regulate certain styles of housing using common materials (you could have various different exteriors and interior styles but use standard materials for everything else). Middle class people don't need free rent, they just need affordable rent and the government has the ability to regulate that cost. It doesn't mean you get rid of other public housing either or section 8, but if you get the middle class playing along then it is much easier to expand other public housing (look at Social Security or Medicare). That said it may not be quite affordable to build this housing in the most expensive parts of town, but if the city can do proper urban planning new communities could be built alongside mass transportation. The problem with allowing purchase of apartments, it is harder for the regulate properties it doesn't own. It the case of Britain they allowed purchases and drastically cut new construction which lead to a predictable crisis. mugrim posted:This is the worst possible thinking. Undeveloped land and real estate is cheap. Building roads, hospitals that don't serve enough people to sustain their equipment, public trans that serves an extremely small amount of people, and entitlements are expensive. Believe it or not, places with expensive rent are often relatively cheap per capita in terms of total dollars spent compared to counties with like 8000 people. A lot of places are 'cheap' because they're not properly serviced and then people bitch about healthcare and roads and communication tech, etc. It sounds like he basically wants to ship people off to wilderness where "they won't be a problem any more." Ardennes fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:32
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mugrim posted:This is the worst possible thinking. Undeveloped land and real estate is cheap. Building roads, hospitals that don't serve enough people to sustain their equipment, public trans that serves an extremely small amount of people, and entitlements are expensive. Believe it or not, places with expensive rent are often relatively cheap per capita in terms of total dollars spent compared to counties with like 8000 people. A lot of places are 'cheap' because they're not properly serviced and then people bitch about healthcare and roads and communication tech, etc. But then what would be the solution? Pay money you can't afford to spend to live with all of your services, or have fewer luxuries, and have more money that you can use to pay off debts, and maybe even put some money in the bank? Humans have survived for a least 600 years (or however long the bible says we've existed as a species), and it wasn't until the discovery of penicillin that we started having many of our modern conveniences. Some things, like the internet, are a luxury, and you will not die if you don't have access to it (if you didn't already know how to do a quintuple bypass, the internet won't help you with that). Ardennes posted:It sounds like he basically wants to ship people off to wilderness where "they won't be a problem any more." God no... that's what the British did with the American pilgrims back in the day, and that didn't work out too well for them. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:39
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lurker1981 posted:Humans have survived for a least 600 years (or however long the bible says we've existed as a species), and it wasn't until the discovery of penicillin that we started having many of our modern conveniences. Okay you are just trolling.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:46
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Ardennes posted:Okay you are just trolling. Seriously? You don't think it is possible to live without the internet? I feel old. (And technically, it is true that many of our modern conveniences did in fact arrive after the discovery of penicillin.)
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Oct 19, 2014 17:51
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lurker1981 posted:But then what would be the solution? Right, but some things like roads and hospitals and postal service and electricity are not considered luxuries and for good reason. Those things are hella expensive once you leave metro areas. It is dumb to save money on real estate to just then turn around and throw billions at medical services, roads, utilities, etc.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:55
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lurker1981 posted:Seriously? The world were created in the late Middle Ages? Also electricity, automobiles, airplanes and radio (and even early TV) existed before Penicillin. It is possible to live without the internet, but you shouldn't force people from modernity because of class especially since less access to infrastructure is going to keep them impoverished. You can bring up the third world if you want, but if anything the best thing the US could do to help is heavily regulate its financial industry, re-instated Glass-Steagall and punish abusive overseas corporate practices. Btw, we should want to give everyone internet access and we do have the ability to afford it
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Oct 19, 2014 18:00
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mugrim posted:Right, but some things like roads and hospitals and postal service and electricity are not considered luxuries and for good reason. Those things are hella expensive once you leave metro areas. It is dumb to save money on real estate to just then turn around and throw billions at medical services, roads, utilities, etc. But there are a lot of existing towns (with an infrastructure) that lie outside of metro areas that could probably be updated and made cost-efficient for less than the cost of creating an entirely new town or city. And honestly, I do think everyone should have access to the internet (with the possible exception of the Church of Scientology). You could probably even home school kids over the internet. I know some folks use it to do college courses. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 18:07
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lurker1981 posted:But there are a lot of existing towns (with an infrastructure) that lie outside of metro areas that could probably be updated and made cost-efficient for less than the cost of creating an entirely new town or city. There is still likely to be less job opportunity there and ultimately there won't be much for many people beyond cheap rent. There is a reason rural America is shrinking in population.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:11
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lurker1981 posted:But there are a lot of existing towns (with an infrastructure) that lie outside of metro areas that could probably be updated and made cost-efficient for less than the cost of creating an entirely new town or city. Those areas are also expensive. They cost billions in roads alone and support relatively few people. It would make more sense to try and eminant domain large relatively abandoned cities in the rust belt that already have services and and infrastructure.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:18
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In another fifty years I'd be cool with turning the interior of the country that's not used for farmland into a big wilderness preserve. Just let it return to grasslands and forests.
OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 18:21
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600 years?
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Oct 19, 2014 18:23
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OwlBot 2000 posted:In another fifty years I'd be cool with turning the interior of the country that's not used for farmland into a big wilderness preserve. Just let it return to grasslands and forests. That's what most of it already is (farm + ranch land anyway).
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Oct 19, 2014 18:30
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computer parts posted:That's what most of it already is (farm + ranch land anyway). I mean something more drastic, full ecosystem recovery with the planting of trees, native grasses and reintroducing megafauna.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:38
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Gentrification is a good thing for society, but a bad thing for individuals. It is indeed important to keep in mind that most gentrification takes the form of the children, grandchildren, and depending on the area the great-grandchildren of the people who were originally living in the place coming back. The people living there pre-gentrification tended to be people who were forced into living there due to some manner of the neighborhood becoming unfashionable or even destroyed, and thus ending up cheaper. It's also common that the area being gentrified had gone on for quite a while with many abandoned or perpetually low-occupancy buildings, since there weren't that many other people available to fill the void once the first population left. This in itself makes the area prone to having people start buying in at dirt cheap prices and often knock down the old buildings. Many of the new "up and coming" neighborhoods in Philadelphia are like that, the current population quite small compared to what the population was in say 1950 or so. And if the existing empty housing was refurbished, there'd be plenty of available housing for the city. Many cities have that issue, with private developers refusing to refurbish or rebuild existing but vacant housing while there's a shortage of current housing. OwlBot 2000 posted:I mean something more drastic, full ecosystem recovery with the planting of trees, native grasses and reintroducing megafauna. Er, you don't need to do that. And a lot of it isn't exactly suitable for trees. Lots of the rest spent several hundred to a few thousand years being kept mostly clear by native populations applying controlled burns.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:29
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I know. I mentioned native grasses to acknowledge that, in fact, much of the continental United States was a prairie ecosystem.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:33
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I know. I mentioned native grasses to acknowledge that, in fact, much of the continental United States was a prairie ecosystem. I mean that even replanting the trees intentionally in the areas that had trees and deliberately putting out large animals is pointless and unnecessary. It would be a reasonable thing to do if we needed to come up with a make work project if we ever ran out of other things that needed doing like infrastructure ongoing repair, upgrade, and maintenence; but little worth beyond that.
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Oct 19, 2014 21:36
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There are positive environmental impacts (even on a global scale) to be gained by reforestation and wetlands restoration. The former has significant effects for climate change mitigation, the latter has a role to play in reducing the damage done by hurricanes, and ecosystem restoration in New York allowed the state to save $6-8 billion dollars in water filtration. You are also assuming there is a) no inherent value in nature, which is another discussion; b) no psychosocial value to the humans who get to experience wilderness. This, again, is something to be considered in the long term if a large portion of the United States interior is indeed abandoned.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:20
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Ardennes posted:Responding to Typo's post about UK public housing turning into ghettos, some obviously did but it was predictably cramped high rise housing in poorer neighborhoods. There are ways to provide housing that are far more sustainable and at one time, even in the US, public housing was for people of mix ranges of income and could easily be so again. It was a genuine question about public housing, not an argument against it. Just because I'm against one form of government intervention doesn't mean I'm against it in all its forms.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:25
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Typo is a good poster and I like him or her.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:27
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EB Nulshit posted:Yes. Incidentally that seems to be exactly what China is doing. quote:Typo is a good poster and I like him or her.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:27
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OwlBot 2000 posted:There are positive environmental impacts (even on a global scale) to be gained by reforestation and wetlands restoration. The former has significant effects for climate change mitigation, the latter has a role to play in reducing the damage done by hurricanes, and ecosystem restoration in New York allowed the state to save $6-8 billion dollars in water filtration. You are also assuming there is a) no inherent value in nature, which is another discussion; b) no psychosocial value to the humans who get to experience wilderness. It is better, generally, to allow natural ecosystem evolution here than to try to immediately step in with an ideal that may not match conditions. Especially when we're talking about covering vast areas and where we truly don't know what the "real" native vegetation was, since we had a century plus of "us" changing what was there, and before that the natives were doing their own management of the environment - and often a gap in between from local native populations dying out or greatly diminishing so they couldn't keep up management and thus having their choices run wild for a bit. Wilderness doesn't need you to exist.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:28
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Of course you can take a more interventionist or hands-off approach depending upon what the relevant ecological experts think. Parts of the Scottish highlands are currently undergoing reforestation and beaver and wildcats and wolves are either being reintroduced or are scheduled for reintroduction. Short answer, it depends.
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Oct 20, 2014 00:06
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To encourage development I would first change zoning and permits to allow building high density (preferably mixed use) housing. Second I would change the property tax structure so that land itself was taxed much higher but the improvements/developments on the land weren't taxed on top of that. This would discourage speculators from just sitting on underdeveloped property waiting for prices to rise. Either develop it or sell it to someone who will. Just holding on to it wouldn't be worth the tax burden.
nelson fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Oct 20, 2014 |
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Oct 20, 2014 03:37
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