[HN Gopher] Positive Steps to Encourage Housing
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Positive Steps to Encourage Housing
Author : jseliger
Score : 34 points
Date : 2020-01-14 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.city-journal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.city-journal.org)
| linuxftw wrote:
| There's plenty of affordable housing in America. It's all just in
| places people don't want to live, like Cleveland.
|
| People don't want to live there because there isn't any economic
| opportunity. There isn't any economic opportunity because we
| shipped the jobs overseas.
|
| Then, when the system finally imploded and people could no longer
| make their mortgage payments, the taxpayers bailed out the banks
| that were making money hand over fist.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| > Then, when the system finally imploded and people could no
| longer make their mortgage payments, the taxpayers bailed out
| the banks that were making money hand over fist.
|
| I'm not happy about what happened either, but what do you think
| would have happened if none of the banks had been bailed out?
| linuxftw wrote:
| Property prices would have deflated back to affordability.
| People with lots of debt would have been crushed, people with
| little debt would have made a killing.
|
| We finally could have clawed back the economy from the
| banking class with widespread bankruptcies. Could you imagine
| if 30% or more people had a bankruptcy recently? It would
| totally wreck the credit bureaus too.
| larrik wrote:
| Not OP, but at the time what I personally wanted to happen
| was the government to bail out the customers, but not the
| banks themselves. Basically let the institutions implode but
| not let depositors foot the bill. Clearly a pipedream,
| though.
| sien wrote:
| There's plenty of affordable housing in America where people do
| want to live as well:
|
| "According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, lightly-
| regulated Houston has seen its civilian labor force grow by 20
| percent in the last decade, compared to the San Francisco metro
| area's 16 percent. Some 21 Fortune 500 companies have their
| headquarters in Houston. What's more, for every job the Houston
| metro area has added, it's also permitted another unit of
| housing. As a result, the average rent for a one-bedroom
| apartment is $841, and home prices are below the national
| average."
|
| From here :
|
| https://reason.com/2019/11/05/bernie-sanders-blames-apple-fo...
|
| It's not rocket science. If you want affordable housing make it
| easy for people to build and increase supply. It's remarkable
| how Silicon Valley is all about solving big problems for the
| world but demonstrates with Bay Area housing that some problems
| don't need technology, they just need reasonable government and
| if you don't have that, well, things don't work.
|
| To be fair, this problem is global. Many places that are doing
| well that haven't allowed enough construction like London,
| Sydney, Stockholm, Melbourne, Paris and other places
| demonstrate the same failure to enable enough housing
| construction.
| davidw wrote:
| Paris is actually making some progress:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-
| th...
|
| I've always loved this article, which mentions Houston, and
| discusses that it's one of many ways to add enough supply:
| https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-
| your-...
| irq11 wrote:
| Maybe the fact that Houston isn't 49 square miles, surrounded
| by water on three sides, might have something to do with it.
|
| When Houston wants another housing unit, they just sprawl out
| into the plains to make it happen. (Not incidentally, this is
| why the city was devastated by the last hurricane: huge
| portions of it sprawl into floodplains.)
| kelp wrote:
| Yes, and San Francisco is mostly zoned for no more than 4
| stories in height. It would never be as cheap as Huston
| because it can't sprawl. But there is a ton of opportunity
| to build up.
|
| The San Francisco height / bulk map is pretty enlightening.
| https://sfgov.org/sfplanningarchive/zoning-map-heightbulk-
| di...
|
| All those light colored areas are max 40 feet.
| wallace_f wrote:
| Last decade was terrible for housing construction:
| https://reason.com/2019/12/23/the-2010s-were-a-terrible-deca...
| ghaff wrote:
| Interesting graph. Some of it is that there was a big drop in
| any construction after about 2008. So any ramp in the 2010s was
| starting from a very low level. But the rate of the recovery,
| while ramping upwards, hasn't ramped up at a particularly fast
| pace.
| davidw wrote:
| Odd that Oregon's HB 2001 is not mentioned, as it's a big step.
| legitster wrote:
| It was de-fanged a bit by being paired with a rent-control
| bill. Still a great step.
| davidw wrote:
| The rent control thing is fairly loose in some ways.
|
| Article doesn't mention Minneapolis' reforms vis a vis
| exclusionary zoning either. Seems like another big omission.
| downerending wrote:
| It's a symptom as much as a cure. Oregon has immense amounts of
| available land to build housing on, but it also has BA-like
| restrictions that remove most of that from possible housing
| expansion. This law won't do much if that isn't fixed.
|
| (The law allows for duplexes to be built in single-family areas
| without rezoning.)
| davidw wrote:
| Oregon's UGB allows cities to grow, just in a controlled way.
|
| Absent that, and maintaining subsidies for driving, you get
| Houston or Phoenix like sprawl.
|
| HB 2001 allows up to 4-plexes in many cities.
|
| You could actually get a _lot_ of housing out of that kind of
| development, it turns out:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/add-housing-by-
| allowing...
|
| Which makes sense, as most places in Europe are way more
| land-constrained than the US and manage to house people by
| growing up and in, rather than only out.
| downerending wrote:
| I'd argue that Phoenix compares quite favorably to the BA
| or Portland. It has an efficient transportation structure,
| and more importantly, interleaved levels of housing that
| make it relatively easy to live near (within walking
| distance even) to one's work, regardless of economic class.
| Except for the rich, that's essentially impossible in the
| BA, and pretty near for Portland.
| notJim wrote:
| This is not born out by commute statistics. 86% commute
| by car in Phoenix compared to 65% in Portland. If you're
| saying Phoenix can work well at an individual level, I
| might agree, but as far as urban planning goes, I'd say
| Portland is much better. Subjectively I've lived in both
| places, and Phoenix is far far more car-dependent than
| Portland. Walking along those 6-lane streets throughout
| the city, traversing massive parking lots through strip
| malls does not make for pedestrian-friendliness.
| munificent wrote:
| Well, neither does 120degF summers. I think there's an
| argument that Pheonix fundamentally can't be pedestrian
| friendly so optimizing for car-and-bus-friendliness is a
| justifiable strategy.
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