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Boot and Rally posted:Anyway, I think this is an open source white paper of the aforementioned study on the Bay Area. It says essentially the same thing as the other Bay Area paper I mentioned. It is by the same people. I've had a chance to more than glance at this paper and I'm skeptical that ADUs will do much good in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Housing Market Area (SJHMA). The white paper says we can expect "municipalities that do not place onerous restrictions on secondary unit production can expect to see net additions at the rate of roughly one legal secondary unit per one thousand single family house lots per year" (page 4, white paper). Since the SJHMA has roughly 350k owner units (not just single family houses), we can reasonably expect 350 new secondary units per year as an upper estimate because not all owners own single family houses. The same HUD report shows that newly constructed rental housing for 3-years (2017-2020) is expected to be 3500 market rate units, whereas the total demand over the same period is expected to be 11,100 market rate units. So, we might expect that new secondary infill will provide 1050 new units over that same 3-year time period. That sounds sizable, but there are some significant exceptions and buts in that white paper about the secondary units. For example, "households without children and retirement-age households are more likely than other groups to prioritize decreased auto dependency and proximity to public transportation, work, and shopping" (page 5), so infill without public transport (a big problem in the SJHMA) isn't worth as much as infill in areas with public transport. There are also issues with older residents simply not wanting to build secondary units, while I don't have any data on the age distribution in the SJHMA, I'd guess the average single family house owner is older than the population because that is when housing was affordable. It is probably a crap shoot that we will get the 1050 units at all, especially considering that the NIMBY house owners fighting the ADU laws are the ones who have sole discretion about whether or not to build secondary units. Moreover, the cheapness of these units as a whole is partially due to friends and family moving in to do chores (along with racism, always racism): page 8 posted:Tenants who were relatives of their landowners accounted for 30 percent of secondary unit residents, and paid an average of 37 percent less in rent than those secondary unit tenants not related to their landlords. One side effect of this informality was a striking racial division: although African- Americans made up 20 percent of Babylon’s population, the survey found almost no African-Americans living in secondary units. Survey work in Connecticut and New York suggests that because secondary unit owners charge family members less, relatives occupying secondary units often perform chores and provide other forms of assistance to homeowners (Hare, 1989). Or you can become a helper monkey for an old person: page 6 posted:[S]econdary units benefit elderly homeowners by giving them the option to generate extra income by renting out a secondary unit, or even more income by moving into the secondary unit and renting out the main house to another household. In addition, according to this view, secondary units increase the possibility that elderly households will have helpful younger people, whether or not they are friends or family, living on their property and helping them with the daily tasks needed to allow them to continue to function in a mixed-age, residential community. I'd speculate then, that most of the cost savings will go to family and friends and the ones that don't will represent a modest increase (again, at most) in new market-rate housing, approximately 20% more than the 3500 units expected to be produced from 2017-2020. Based on all that, I'd further speculate that this change is going to do very little to improve the rental housing market in the SJHMA, because there is still a significant short fall between demand and supply. What's more interesting to me is a few sentences in the Research Gate paper: quote:Because secondary unit development is readily implementable inhigher-income neighborhoods, the strategy contributes to neighborhood diversity and helpsmeet fair housing goals. By adding small rental units to neighborhoods dominated by large,homeowner-occupied, units, the strategy providesflexibility. For instance, more familiesare able to age in place. This in turn leads to more ecological (and fiscal) sustainability by relying on existing infrastructure in places otherwise unlikely to redevelop. This appears to me to be saying that secondary unit construction is useful because superior redevelopment options are not available. My assessment of secondary units are that they are a boon for home owners who want to build them and their friends and family who are most likely to benefit, as well. But the effect of the housing market in the SJHMA is likely to be small, even in the event of average construction rate of secondary units and I am skeptical that those rates will be reached. But, as always, the light at the end of the tunnel is boomer death: white paper, page 5 posted:Myers and Ryu (2007) project that overall demand for housing will begin to contract by 2030 as the baby boomers age and home sellers start to exceed buyers in all 50 states.
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Oct 1, 2019 08:12
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Squalid posted:I appreciate the effort you put into this post and your points are good and interesting. However I don't think anyone believes the magnitude of the effect of this policy change will be large. It's just one small engagement in the battle against single use zoning. The fact that such a small reform engenders such bitter and nonsensical resistance is just symptomatic of the hosed up way Americans think about urbanism. To stretch your war metaphor a little further, the anti-NIMBY side appears to have expended resources (time, money, attention of legislators) and come back with a "small reform." Whereas the NIMBY side has come away with discretion over the implementation of that small reform and have fortified their position with a (bad faith) argument that they have already given ground on density that we should wait to see play out and a further argument that, if (I believe when, not if) a modest increase in secondary units does nothing to change the fundamentals of housing (in the SJHMA), density isn't the problem (also bad faith). This isn't a loss, but it also seems like a battle we (anti-NIMBYs) should not have fought. Maybe my analysis is off and this is the beginning of the end of NIMBY-ism in CA, but that doesn't seem likely. pointsofdata posted:Why should Boomer's dying prevent them influencing the way we live. After all, don't they have a legitimate interest in preserving the character of the areas surrounding their resting places and the heritage of the places they lived in? I'm sure that many would only feel comfortable having their cemetery mowed with a gas powered mower and be unable to rest if train lines were built nearby, or, god forbid, congestion increased due to bike lanes. While I approve of this level of cynicism a lawyer friend once explained to me that trusts are exist because the "dead aren't allowed to control the hands of the living" in US law. I dimly remember that point and I hope it is true here. Edit to include Cicero's post: Cicero posted:This 100%. I don't understand your point. I would just as eagerly be saying that installation of a single bike lane isn't going to help bike mode share or traffic or GHG emission. That isn't me being negative or disliking the additional bike lane, I'm just pointing out what everyone knows, it doesn't really matter. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 19:28
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Squalid posted:Your point about not shifting the fundamentals is valid, but I don't think this is a case of activists getting distracted and wasting effort on side issues. This line of discussion was originally inspired by this article regarding some bills making their way to Governor Newsom's desk. During the spring there was a push for much more wide reaching reforms which ended up failing amidst a horrible embarrassing spectacle. These bills are the consolation prize. Maybe next year we can get something more impactful. You can't let bad faith arguments dictate policy, regardless of what you do the NIMBYs will always come up with some other excuse to stall reform. I see. In your war metaphor, the battle was lost by the anti-NIMBY side. This is, as you clearly say here, unambiguously a loss. That it didn't end in a complete route is something to be cheery about, I guess. quote:Still, each blow against exclusionary zoning does matter, as does every bike line. The bike network is built one lane at a time after all. If you keep saying "it doesn't really matter" each you put down another piece of the puzzle after a while you start looking a bit silly. This metaphor is flawed. How many pieces does the puzzle have? At what rate are we placing pieces? If you see the puzzle as small and quickly being assembled, you'll assess the outcome here as good. If you see the puzzle as enormous and coming together slowly, such that it won't be finished in your children's lifetimes, you'll assess the outcome as meaningless. I don't think it is true that "[t]he bike network is built one lane at a time after all" except in the most infantile sense. Places with good bike networks put real effort in to building bike infrastructure (think Amsterdam) they didn't wait for individual bike lanes to appear when few enough people in proximity stopped complaining. More so because good infrastructure requires planning and allowing it to be done piecemeal will result in poorer results. luxury handset posted:the greater purpose is to demonstrate that you have identified a landlord and pointed out they are I updated this post to reflect the reality of secondary unit housing.
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Oct 2, 2019 06:06
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pointsofdata posted:You can totally build a bike network piecemeal just like you can increase housing availability in chunks. You don't have to bulldoze entire neighborhoods at once to make a city better (as attractive as that sounds for certain places). Cycling facilities in Amsterdam are still evolving now decades after they stopped demolishing neighborhoods to build roads. Your argument that you can expand a functioning biking system piecemeal is not persuasive for bike systems starting from scratch (or much smaller). There are network effects that make small changes to a big network far more valuable than small changes to a much smaller network. We need the “demolishing neighborhoods” part first and now and in decades we, too, can benefit from those network effects with piecemeal additions. Edit: this argument applies to housing and public transport as well
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Oct 2, 2019 09:27
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silence_kit posted:I didn’t think about item 2), which basically could be summarized as: government services need to expand to handle higher population density. It makes sense to me why this often is a more important constraint on ‘densification’ than zoning laws. Thanks again for your post. One of the strange conversations about housing is eliminating parking minimums. This can only be proposed by people who live in areas where street parking is plentiful, or more cynically, won't have to deal with it and don't care. I've lived most of my adult life in areas where street parking is somewhere between hard and impossible to find. In the place where there was relatively plentiful public transport, I didn't own a car. In the places where there was no public transport and I was a poor graduate student, I spent my time shuttling my car around to deal with parking regulations. In places where there was no public transport and I'm no longer poor, I just check the "must have a parking spot" box on apartment search engines. Because of that experience, it seems like reducing parking requirements isn't really going to do much, unless you spend a lot of money on making alternative transport work or just want to punish poor people with parking regulations. When I think about what I'd need to select a place without parking (which means no car) I can think of the following from my time in Italy: (1) a local selection of grocery stores and restaurants within 2 miles that I can walk to; (2) a more-or-less direct transport line to work with a total door-to-door time of less than 45 minutes (no changes, they always double or triple transit time); (3) less direct, but sub-1-hour transport to other places I want to go (think, downtown, the beach) that runs pretty much around the the clock. There are a lot of places where I can get 1, but 2 and 3 only exist in relatively large quantities in New York and Chicago, maybe?
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Feb 1, 2020 16:42
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On parking minimums: bad, abolish them immediately. Now that I've said that, such that there should be no confusion about my position on parking minimums, I think we are talking past each other. I think abolishing parking minimums isn't going to do very much to help with the housing shortage or the cost of housing because I don't see why any developer would build any new housing without parking in the places where parking is already jam packed. Yes, it costs less to build such a building, but it is also worth less to the people looking for housing and will attract only those people who are so cost constrained that the premium for parking is impossible to pay for. In places where parking is jam packed, it is because there aren't any sufficiently good alternatives to driving and dealing with the car. Maybe its different in the suburbs, I don't know, I haven't lived in one for nearly 20 years. So, when I see people discussing parking minimums without also discussing how much they are going to spend on public transport to make it useful to the residents I see "poor(er) people should have to deal with that poo poo, I don't care." As an example of this, I literally said failure to provide public transport to poorer residents is punishing them by making them look for parking and luxury handset responded with a paper that advocated charging people for street parking. I guess that is a more obvious kind of punishment. Cicero posted:You're describing a chicken-and-egg situation. Parking minimums are part of why alternative modes of transport are terrible. They're one of the major headwinds that make workable walking/biking/transit difficult. And it's common for parking minimums to be hilariously high, too, like literally "more space required for parking than the actual inhabited structure" kind of high. I don't think this is true at all. As long as there is no alternative to driving, people will own cars and find a place to put them. Your point here is a kind of accelerationism where if we just start making car driving miserable, then public transport will all of a sudden get funded. But driving is already miserable if you can't afford to live close to work. It is already miserable when you get home from 9 hours at work and 30-45 minutes each way in traffic and have to hunt for a place to leave your car for the night. But richer (or older) people don't deal with that poo poo, they buy houses close to work with plenty of parking on site and don't even think about. The public transport must come, it must be frequent, it must cast a wide net, and it must go useful places. Without this, you are just saying the poor(er) should suffer. Edit: Yeah, everyone else seems to be assuming that parking is otherwise abundant. Not just the poster above me, but the article on housing prices, too: quote:But you doubt you can rent the slots for $250 a month, because parking is abundant in the neighborhood. So, yeah, I agree that eliminating parking minimums will probably bring down prices with few other consequences in places where you can just do whatever with your car. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 20:29
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Squalid posted:it's worth pointing out that the housing crisis in places like California is so bad, and so many people looking for housing are so cost constrained, that in the present environment they literally have no options. In this context any changes that bring down housing costs are likely to benefit them, since cost is a major barrier to housing for so many. Also its worth pointing out that the poorest people who are most likely to be cost constrained are also those who are least likely to have a car, and therefore least likely to be impacted by reduced parking availability. That gives me a different way of thinking about my point. The changes we have to make are so drastic, both in terms of changing people’s habits and reducing the cost of housing, that when people bring up parking minimums I respond with OK, but who cares? When I was looking for a new apartment a few months ago, the new 1 bedrooms with a parking spot were about $3500/month. In order for the average couple in LA to not be rent burdened we need something like $1400/month. We need prices to drop by 60% before the median couple can afford it. The savings of 12.5% for eliminating the parking spot is literally 1/5 of the way there and only works that well if the developers will pass on 100% of the savings to renters.
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Feb 1, 2020 22:18
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Cugel the Clever posted:Eh, it's worth recognizing two things: This is a lot of words to say, “I agree.” Unless I’m missing something, you are agreeing that developers only really get rid of parking when there are alternatives to driving for the residents and you are also agreeing that we should build more public transit and make it more universally tolerable, if not useful.
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Feb 1, 2020 22:29
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This is very strange. I’m getting multi-paragraph responses with people rather violently agreeing with me. Let’s change the conversation. Does anyone have any sources examining instances of when parking minimums were eliminated and what the outcome was in actual development of housing? Again, read this: I think parking minimums should be eliminated immediately and funding for alternatives to driving should be dramatically increased immediately, as well.
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Feb 1, 2020 23:04
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Cicero posted:You disagreed with me, then strawmanned my position for some reason. I'm still not sure why. I’m confused by the first part of your post as I haven’t disagreed with much of anything you’ve written. I’m not trying to disagree with you. Thanks for the link, Matt Yglesias is like patient zero for never shutting up about parking minimums, but he hasn’t been able to convince me that it actually matters in practice, even though the theoretical argument is compelling. The link to the article is dead, but I have a title to search for now. Thanks again.
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Feb 2, 2020 00:12
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Squalid posted:it's not as if there isn't an extensive literature on the subject anyone can easily find themselves on google scholar. . . My attempts at googling this have resulted in innumerable opinion pieces and theoretical works and no data. The authors of the paper linked to in Cicero’s post literally give an explanation for this problem: parking regulations are are ubiquitous so comparing parking minimums to no parking minimums is very hard. If you’ve got a list of search terms you’ve used to get results, I’d love to see where I’m going wrong. Again, I want to see actual evidence, not models or theoretical exercises. The Manville paper is unconvincing. They point out that the developers in question actually supplied more spaces than legally required even when not required to do so, merely that the spaces were simply not on site and they further point out that Los Angeles in 1999, when the ARO started, had way too much parking because 50 years of reinvigoration plans resulted in lots of parking lots replacing leveled buildings. Finally, they point out that downtown LA is uniquely situated with good access to public transport and a large number of already car-less inhabitants. All of this supports my thesis that reducing parking requirements in car-heavy locations with little space for more cars and poor public transport isn’t likely to do much.
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Feb 2, 2020 01:05
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Cicero posted:You responded at one point with "I don't think that's true at all", then accused me of accelerationism for apparently saying that getting rid of parking would automatically lead to transit getting more funding, something I never actually said or implied. It was a clear strawman. In my original post on this subject I claimed that the discussion on parking minimums was overdone because, in places that already have jammed up parking developers aren't going to change much as developers will still want to offer parking unless there are alternatives to driving. Your response starts with this: Cicero posted:You're describing a chicken-and-egg situation. Parking minimums are part of why alternative modes of transport are terrible. They're one of the major headwinds that make workable walking/biking/transit difficult. And it's common for parking minimums to be hilariously high, too, like literally "more space required for parking than the actual inhabited structure" kind of high. In the context of my post (paraphrased again for you here: "eliminating parking minimums without adding alternatives won't change development behavior very much in places where there is no parking"), I don't know how to read your first paragraph other than to say "just get rid of parking minimums." Notice, as well, that no where in your post do you include any comment on alternatives to driving. In fact, you express a preference for underground parking. You later claim that no one would say that parking minimum elimination can be effective absent other changes, like transport alternatives. But, your first response to me quite literally says to eliminate parking minimums and does not suggest any other changes as well. So, I argue that you have made the argument for parking elimination sans other changes, whether you wanted to or not. Cicero posted:Stop right there. Why bring this up? Literally zero people have suggested that developers will always provide the bare minimum. I think I've made my point on how I read your original response to me in the above text. None of my interpretations of your posts are in bad faith or "deliberately misconstruing others' arguments". Cicero posted:
You are partially correct about this but I don't want to argue this third-order point, I should have said "it does not refute my thesis" rather than that "it supports my thesis." Mia culpa. You should read the underlying paper (not the Yglesias blurb), it is very good. For instance, I did not know that banks won't give you loan in the Los Angeles area unless you have parking secured for the lifetime of the loan. That suggests that eliminating parking minimums in Los Angeles is going to be less effective than one might hope in increasing the number of units that can be built in a given area unless there is ample parking near by the developers can use somehow. And, in fact, that is exactly what the developers did in the ARO. Cicero posted:Not to mention, when you specifically asked this question, you didn't say anything about public transport: The post of mine that you link quite literally contains this sentence: MickeyFinn posted:Again, read this: I think parking minimums should be eliminated immediately and funding for alternatives to driving should be dramatically increased immediately, as well. I don't know how to respond to this. The thing you claim is not there (a demand for transport alternatives) is right there, now in bold, in the quote you provided. Maybe you linked the wrong thing?
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Feb 2, 2020 16:58
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Cugel the Clever posted:Not sure I understand this sentiment. By eliminating the parking, you make alternate modes of transportation both more necessary and more viable. All the parking minimum does is remove space that might have held more people and businesses. Free-riding off the public good of public transit is exactly what we want to encourage. I don't think the last two words in the bolded sentence are true, but that might be because we are using different definitions of "more viable." Elimination of parking minimums without funding more public transport will not make the buses run more frequently. When I think of making alternate modes of transportation "more viable" I think of allowing more people to use buses and bike lanes and trains and sidewalks instead of cars. But to make the buses and trains more viable, they have to run more often and go more places (I read somewhere that the two most important factors in public transport usage are frequency and coverage). To make the bike lanes more useful you have to make them more protected or at least more official. To make the sidewalks more useful there has to be places in the area people want to walk to (work, restaurants, the grocery store, whatever). It is not even clear that eliminating parking minimums reduces the amount of local traffic or road use. The Manville study found that developers offered 20% more parking spots (than required by the parking minimums) after elimination of parking minimums. They were able to do this because they could use all the overbuilt parking in downtown Los Angeles. If you had hoped that eliminating parking minimums would have discouraged car use based on the difficulty of paying for and finding parking, there is at least one piece of evidence that the opposite is true. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 17:20
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Cugel the Clever posted:With the right policy and non-brain-dead developers, the space that might have been reserved for parking can instead be filled with space that is full of people. I agree with this, but I also think that "right policy" and "non-brain-dead developers" is doing way too much heavy lifting. What are the right policies? How do we get developers to think about foot traffic as a replacement for cars? The developers in the Manville article were very clear that they wanted to build buildings with much less parking, but the banks where they get their loans literally would not give them money unless they had parking for the lifetime of the loan. That suggests that the problem (in this instance) isn't just the brain-dead developers, it is also the brain dead bankers. What is the policy that we implement to force banks to give loans to projects with (by their judgement) insufficient parking? My response to the questions of what the right policy is and what the right incentives are to get spaces full of people instead of cars is to build public transport and other alternative transport modes. A banker who accomplishes every single task during his entire life in a car is going to think it is obvious that parking needs to be everywhere and he is going to demand it from developers. Same of developers, same for city council people, same for your friend. Once you have lots people moving around in ways other than using a car, it becomes obvious to me that developers should want to build ground floor retail and cities will want big sidewalks and local parks and all those other nice things you want. At that point, the constituency for parking minimums will be basically irrelevant. None of this should be read to mean I think this will be easy. Femtosecond posted:The local YIMBY movement sees all Single Family Homes as reprehensible things that must be up zoned and done away with, but there is increasing push back from ethnic minorities that are questioning why it is seemingly always their SFH 'hoods that are targeted for redevelopment and not others. It's a reasonable question. IMO we need to be pushing quite a bit harder to ensure that redevelopment is equitably occurring across the city and if anything weighted heavier to occurring in wealthy areas. This is why my favorite slogan for fixing housing in California is "bulldoze Atherton first." MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 20:09
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pointsofdata posted:That was meant to be a joke post trying to show how silly supporting parking minimums to protect the less well of is and the policy still manages to be better than parking minimums. There is not one single poster involved in this conversation who supports parking minimums.
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Feb 2, 2020 21:44
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nrook posted:In some sense, denser development actually does make the buses run more frequently: all else being equal, in a denser area the same bus line will cover more useful places to be. As such you can cover the same number of people with a shorter, more frequent bus line. Public transit is fundamentally limited by the actual development that exists; if people are closer together, it becomes more economical to offer the same coverage and frequency; in contrast, if development is sparse, high-frequency buses and subway lines can become too expensive to be feasible. Transit services like "park & ride" commuter rail are still useful, but not nearly as much as a good inner-city bus line or subway route. Thank you for the book recommendation. I agree with your point but I think it is a second-order effect. The bus lines (or any other non-car transit) has to be some kind of minimally useful in the first place, or maybe just not horrible, to get the benefits of density you describe, otherwise no one is going to use them anyway. Until alternative transport vectors allow lots of people to meet most (if not all) of their needs, i.e. as long as we have a car culture, buyers, renters, developers and bankers will still want parking everywhere and eliminating parking minimums will do very little to help with the housing crisis that, in particular, California is facing. When people are looking for places to live, they need to be able to get themselves to work, their kids to school, buy groceries, and find fun things to do on the weekend. To-date during my lifetime in the US the answer to those questions is to have a car because all of that stuff is scattered around a city with public transit that is far too slow to be useful.
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Feb 2, 2020 22:07
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Squalid posted:Now as MickeyFinn has said (perhaps unnecessarily), there might be some specific circumstances where reducing minimums won't necessarily lead to increased density. Nobody thinks this one piece of policy is a magic bullet. But generally speaking, there are many places that would benefit. There are also less dramatic changes that could also be beneficial, like allowing more parking to be offsite, or just reducing how much has to be provided. So mainstreet can just be a nice, friendly, dense row of businesses without any open lots, but parking can still be available on the backstreets. I don't think it is "unnecessary" to point out that the discussion on minimum parking is, in my opinion, overblown and places where parking is already tight aren't going to see much benefit to eliminating parking minimums. I guess the importance of this point depends on where most people live. Since a majority of the US lives in suburbs, maybe none of this matters. Of note: the two articles posted on elimination of parking minimums were both in places where there was otherwise lots of parking, and the Manville article literally said it was insufficient for driving development of new apartments. It also seems like cherry-picking success stories, especially the Strongtowns article. But, by all means, eliminate the minimums, I simply don't expect much to happen as a result.
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Feb 3, 2020 05:22
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Squalid posted:i say its unnecessary since i doubt there is anyone, anywhere thinks changing parking regulation is the one quick fix that's going to give us walk-able, public transit oriented cities. And yet, since the start of this conversation the only people who have suggested any changes that should go hand-in-hand with the elimination of parking minimums is me (public transport) and one person who wanted to see walking emphasized more. We're here talking about how to make parking less of a problem both for transit and housing costs and the vast majority of responses involve hand waving away what those other policies even might be, just that they must be good. quote:I don't really know why you think this subject is over-emphasized, it barely even comes up in this thread, I can't remember the last time I even heard it discussed outside of extremely niche publications that cater specifically to urban planning people. The conversation in this thread is evidence of the problem I am talking about "parking minimums and some other things, housing crisis/traffic denied." I barely see or have a discussion about those subjects that isn't this.
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Feb 3, 2020 16:15
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Ardennes posted:Btw, I think there was a discussion about "just building" market priced housing would solve the issue and so far at best rent prices have stabilized but haven't seriously declined and the city is as much in a housing crisis as it was years ago despite a surge of construction (which is starting to peter out). Also, there is almost certainly a higher number of people on the street or living in their cars. FWIW here is an article (thanks Femtosecond!) about how developers in Vancouver cut back building as demand began to drop and they weren't sure they could sell enough pre-sale units to get funding. So far I've seen the following housing issues with bank/finance involvement: the 2008 bubble/bust, the subsequent property buy-up, minimum parking requirements and now this presales thing. I'm beginning to wonder if the fundamental problem in housing is banking.
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Feb 25, 2020 15:55
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'd argue that a primary residence should not be taxed. Please make the argument. Those properties use city services and should pay for them.
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May 2, 2020 14:56
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Hambilderberglar posted:What is wrong with the idea of making property taxes some vanishingly small fraction of a percent (few hundred bucks a year) to pay for the costs of maintaining the cadastre and levy increased income taxes on higher income bands to offset revenue loss? It would shift the burden away from fixed incomes and toward higher earning working individuals. Tax a second home at the long term capital gains rate because it functions the same as any other wealth hoard. Why a few hundred bucks a year? Where did that value come from? Maintaining the cadastre is insufficient, isn't it? The city built (and maintains) water pipes, sewage pipes and water lines to nearby that property so that the property can access those services and the owner is using them. The owner should pay for those, too. The roads that go to the house should be paid by the owner. The property tax issue seems like people trying to use a change in property taxes to ameliorate more fundamental problems in the United States. Namely that retirement incomes are inadequate, housing is in shortage (in urban areas, at least), and house prices are also the principle means to wealth generation for the middle class (maybe the poor as well?). I don't think the property taxes are the issue. Property taxes are a way to internalize (to the homeowners) the societal cost of their homeownership, that seems like a good thing to me. That old and poor people get priced out of their homes is a problem because the old and poor have fixed incomes and no where else to go.
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May 2, 2020 17:06
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Hambilderberglar posted:Lastly, I personally don’t really care about the degree of ownership or usufruct someone has over their (primary) residence. Having a roof over your head is as close to a fundamental need as there is and it does not sit well with me that someone can be in the circumstances where they cannot afford to pay taxes for what is a basic necessity. The right to having a roof over your head (which I agree with) is not the same as the right to have this particular roof over your head (which I don't agree with). Where does the right for a particular roof over your head begin? Where does it end? I have no idea. Doesn't the fact that the person cannot afford the taxes for their house mean that they have too much house? luxury handset posted:this doesn't work out for everyone, specifically the somewhat largeish group of old/elderly people on fixed incomes who are very attached to their homes. this is a cohort which is larger than you'd think given the dynamics of when/how homes were constructed in the 20th century, and this sort of dispassionate "cash out for a profit" take doesn't always land when we're talking about places that people can have more emotional than financial investment. also when you live in a place for a long time you tend to put down community roots and have good relationships with your neighbors, and this too is severed when you sell your home - i think that this aspect of people wanting to stay put is often overlooked among people who are young and predominantly renters, for whom homes are largely interchangable and judged based on their surrounding amenities rather than the communities around them This is a problem because people have no where else to go, either globally or within their community, when its time to downgrade or cash in. I think there would be a lot less objections to "granny has got to GTFO" if she could move a mile or two away into a 1/2 bedroom apartment from her 4 bedroom house and bank a few hundred thousands bucks as compared to the current status quo where leaving the state is more likely. It also seems to be the case that elder care focused facilities and housing are hives of scum and villainy. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 20:45 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 20:40
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luxury handset posted:not necessarily. property taxes can go up simply because the houses around you got nicer without your house changing in any way. property taxes can go up because a new school was built down the street. property taxes can go up for lots of external reasons that have nothing to do with your property I don't think this matters. By definition, if you do not have the resources to maintain something, you have too much of it. Right? Maybe I should have said "too much desirable house" in the post you quote? luxury handset posted:you'd face an argument just claiming that "when it is time to downgrade or cash in" is inevitable. people can get very attached to homes they've lived in for decades I did not mean to imply there was a set time to move out. What I meant was when the owners could no longer afford the property taxes and have to move. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 20:52 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 20:50
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Mooseontheloose posted:Sounds like you are giving localities a great way to force undesirables to move out in the alternative a great way for developers to force people out. All of this is dependent state to state, locality to locality but its not that simple. I agree. Any policy or strategy has to be carried out in good faith. I also agree that humans aren't robots and they want things and those reasons are valid. But we regularly tell people they can't have things that they want and they cannot afford. Why is this different?
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May 2, 2020 21:04
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luxury handset posted:i know you are not saying this, but this is an identical argument for pro-gentrification redevelopment I think this depends on how deep you go down the rabbit hole. The people who have a house are certainly less poor than the people who can barely afford to rent, they literally have at least a fraction of an asset. I think discussing property taxes is short sighted. The problem in the United States that is driving gentrification and property tax inequities is massive wealth inequality and its knock-on effects, like our ridiculous tax system that is used to preserve that inequality and the paltry support for seniors. Talking about what to do about property taxes seems to me to be treating current homeowners as a special class, while leaving renters out. Why should we privilege homeowners over renters? Mooseontheloose posted:What the threshold of maintenance? If it is solely paying taxes, shouldn't time be a factor? Why should you be whims of a fickle market? In the United States we subject people to the "whims of a fickle market" to get everything they need, including employment, healthcare, education and food. Why should housing be different? My answer is that it shouldn't be different, but that is because we shouldn't be subjecting people to the fickle market for any of those things.
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May 2, 2020 22:39
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luxury handset posted:you can't really blame gentrification on wealth inequality, unless you're talking about the existence of people who can't afford to live in the neighborhoods they currently live in if those neighborhoods become considered desirable after long periods of being considered undesirable. gentrification is more a problem of local government's inability to adapt to increasing growth that is inherent when the economy preferences urbanization to such a degree This argument makes no sense. Gentrification is literally outside money coming in to outbid locals for housing and driving up prices as said outside money is coming from people who can pay more for housing. If the disparity between the two groups was smaller the tendency to gentrification would decrease. The logical conclusion of your argument, that income inequality plays no large part in gentrification, would be that it happens to rich neighborhoods as often as poor neighborhoods, which is so untrue we don't even talk about the "gentrification of rich neighborhoods," those four words don't even make sense.
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May 3, 2020 01:33
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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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Shrecknet posted:One thing I've never seen properly addressed among the 'Housing is a Human Right' set (and this includes me, I also believe it's a human right) is that there are absolutely more and less desirable houses. I live in a pretty posh part of my city, but there are definitely less-good parts, more run-down or less accessible by bus. If housing is a human right, and we are meant to just give people housing, how do we distribute it? Obviously the current method (rich people get everything Raise marginal and progressive taxes and use that money to build housing in the less dense areas of cities and increase public transport funding. That means going into Beverly Hills and Atherton with bulldozers and making space for denser housing. Probably have to all-but-ban cars, too. No, I do not think any of this is actually going to happen.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:35
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) isn't working, but what other method would work? A central housing authority that assigns you housing based on your job to make it close to you? What about when the supermarket is farther away? We'd need to drastically reform every city but NYC to make them accessible from anywhere instead of car-focused/-required.
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BougieBitch posted:My point is that the funding for EVs that people are talking about (from the feds) is split between consumer rebates, fleet upgrades, and battery production capacity and the investment in domestic production of batteries and charging infra is important even if the current tech doesn't allow for a replacement of diesel vehicles because the technical knowledge base to produce the eventual solution to that problem is going to come out of that sort of work (either domestically or abroad). Your statements seem to argue that it is unimportant or undesirable for governments to invest in any of that. I don’t want to spend tax dollars subsidizing England or Amazon. I want to spend that money building out rail and bus lines. Battery plants to build batteries for passenger vehicles are not the same as battery plants for a smaller number of trucks and trains. Charging infrastructure in dense urban areas for large numbers of passenger vehicles is not the same as infrastructure for trucks that start and end at delivery centers. Again, that is England or Amazon’s problem. The premise of your questions seems to be that supporting EV passenger vehicle development and/or adoption will benefit more useful things for fighting climate change, like trucks (freight and delivery?), and I see no reason to accept that premise.
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Nov 9, 2023 17:31
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It isn’t clear to me what you want from this discussion. Everyone here, I think, understands that EVs are going to be a big part of the US’s strategy on climate change. As far as I can tell, most posters aren’t happy with that to one degree or another. Part of the reason this thread doesn’t get many posts is because we’ve all, I think, accepted these facts. What do you want, posters to say “actually, this is good and I like it?”
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Nov 9, 2023 18:56
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 01:28 |
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Is $140k a lot for a town/city this size? I don’t have enough context to decide if this matters or not.
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Feb 22, 2024 15:53
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