Rent control and housing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Rent control and housing

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Also the government needs to get back into constructing, but not managing housing. The primary reason for lack of affordable housing is that in high demand markets, developers chase the most lucrative customers.

It always seemed to me like this was because of how few total units they were allowed to make. If you're only allowed to produce a thousand cars a year, obviously you're going to go for the high end.

The D&D response was along the lines of, "even if you let developers build as much as they want, they would make nothing but luxury condos 24/7", which makes no sense to me. There's only so much demand for those condos, because not everyone can afford them. Developers can't manufacture demand for arbitrarily-priced properties out of thin air; if that was the case, how would you explain lower-priced housing in cheaper parts of the country? Are the developers in cheaper places like Texas or Georgia just huge morons who are physically incapable of making luxury properties? Yes, demand in places like SF is very high, but it's not infinite.

Anyway, I kind of like the idea of "you're allowed to build taller/denser if you're making middle-class/affordable housing". That means there's a natural tradeoff, where developers CAN build luxury condos if they want to, but they may also be able to make comparable profits on cheaper housing since they could build more on the same land.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 16, 2014

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 23:17

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 17:47

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Lyesh posted:

Eradicating World poverty is probably outside the US's power, but we could be trying literally thousands of times harder than we are to do so. Seven trillion dollars per year or whatever could pay for a whole lot of third-world infrastructure and feed a loving LOT of starving people.

Aside from that, there is absolutely no lack-of-money reason that the US has any homeless people. Let alone millions of them.

Millions? The numbers I'm finding put it more in the 600-700k range: http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessness

Still a lot of people though.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 20:22

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

OwlBot 2000 posted:

So what's different about Germany that makes rent control work quite well there?

I was reading about Germany a while back, and found out that they actually limit how much you can sell properties for too? Like, the amount you sell it for has to be approved by some agency; as an American the idea sounded absolutely bizarre, but also enticing since I've spent the last few years living in expensive areas.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 23:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Rent control and housing