[HN Gopher] Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting...
___________________________________________________________________
Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a
house
Author : dredmorbius
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-04-18 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| nemo44x wrote:
| Renting is underrated but owning is nice too if you want to root.
| However I think a lot of renters or people that complain they
| can't afford a house also forget about the costs of property tax
| and maintenance. Those are 2 costs that never end and don't
| remain fixed (in most places) over time.
|
| For instance, anywhere reasonably commutable to NYC and close to
| a train line is going to probably have 10's of thousands a year
| in property taxes...
| larsiusprime wrote:
| How does this contrast with more old-school approaches to the
| housing crisis, like say, Georgism & Land Value Tax?
|
| There was a big review on Progress & Poverty over at Astral Codex
| Ten recently on the subject:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...
|
| This proposal seems to address the same problem, but the
| mechanism is pretty different, and I'm wondering if it improves
| upon what the Georgists have already proposed, or if it is less
| efficient by being different.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I think you're on the nose here.
|
| The public ownership rental option goes nowhere without a
| capability to acquire (and retain) properties for the
| programme, and the ability to move unproductive or
| underproductive real estate into same.
|
| California's property tax situation (e.g., 1977's Proposition
| 13) makes this an all but unsolvable problem for that state.
| Short a countervailing proposition, a (state) constitutional
| amendment, or a state or federal supreme court reversal, that
| law is going nowhere, and is pretty much a Land Value Tax's
| antiparticle / kryptonite.
|
| One potentially promising alternative is the growth of land
| banks, mostly in the Eastern and Midwestern US, notably
| Illinoios, Ohio, and New York, possibly elsewhere. Though not
| based off a land value tax, tax-delinquent properties are
| acquired by the land bank which then attempts to return them to
| productive use. Pairing the land bank and public ownership
| rental models strikes me as a potential viable route to
| expanding both concepts.
| seibelj wrote:
| If this is such a good idea, why don't they raise private funds
| from various charities and rich people to fund an experiment? Why
| am I as a taxpayer constantly asked to fund ever more schemes?
| This one has the all markings of a non-profit, and if you involve
| the government and associated bureaucracy it will become an
| entrenched quagmire like the huge housing projects that have been
| torn down in many cities. I don't see why we need a trillion-
| dollar slush fund to make this happen.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| Expanding on this, there are already similar schemes out there,
| and they've done nothing to stop property price inflation.
|
| Abstracting away ownership from the property to a collective
| legal entity ignores the main reason why people 'own' property
| in the first place - property needs to be actively maintained,
| and when it's not, those affected need to be able to identify
| and movitiate a responsible party.
|
| Even when you own stock in a cooperative, you're responsible
| for the part you live in. Once you tie in financing, insurance,
| and utilities, you're left with something that looks an awfully
| lot like property ownership, except with a slightly different
| fee structure.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I agree. Also how does this system change the cost of housing
| over all. I don't see how it changes anything. The simple
| reason rents are high in some areas is supply and demand. Will
| this increase supply? Or reduce demand in those areas. Doubt
| it.
| unsigner wrote:
| "Think of a woman who buys a home in one part of town, takes a
| new job in another area a few years later, and is then stuck with
| a 90-minute commute, or of a man who turns down the better job
| because he doesn't want to sell his home or be saddled with a
| long commute. Now multiply that by millions of households across
| the country. Homeownership locks people in place, in large part
| because of the high transaction costs of buying and selling
| property."
|
| This assumes that you exist first and foremost to work jobs, and
| anything that impedes this is bad and needs to be optimized away.
| This is very American, very contemporary - don't accept it as
| universal.
|
| Move a little to the side in time and in space and people are
| "from somewhere", live there, and optimize their life to improve
| them living there - possibly by taking jobs in the vicinity.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| How is this any different from owning shares in a housing
| cooperative? Aside from the risk being - possibly - divided
| across multiple properties, I don't see how this would solve the
| main issues driving appreciating housing prices any better than
| attacking their root causes (build more housing supply, limit
| housing speculation, and prevent overleveraging).
| nemo44x wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. However, there are some co-Ops in
| NYC that allow you to buy shares at a really cheap price VS
| what the market would pay. But when you sell, the co-op sells
| the shares so although you profit, you won't be as much as if
| it were sold at market value. But you paid below market so it
| works out.
|
| However, these aren't just open to anyone. You need to know
| people to get in. It's a self policing community that takes
| care of each other over generations. Even if you're "in",
| you'll likely be on a waiting list until availability opens up.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| A lot of older condominiums in the states were originally
| housing cooperatives because the legal structure at the time
| didn't have an easy way to handle communal living (e.g.,
| apartments).
|
| There are even more of them in Europe, although you're
| generally expected to pay a significantly higher amount up
| front and actively participate in common area maintenance and
| (in some cases) participate in social activities and the
| like.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This is "the rest of the story" on a recent HN submission which
| was _not_ as it turns out the "rent vs. buy" polemic much of the
| discussion seemed to expect (not without some basis given the
| headline and structure of the article), but actually a fairly
| radical, and intersting, housing policy proposal.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824383
|
| The article's author has in fact written a book on the subject, a
| chapter of which is exerpted here. (I've chosen the chapter title
| rather than article title for the submission.) The previous
| article had somehow managed to completely omit mention. The book
| itself is _The Affordable City_ , by Shane Phillips, from Island
| Press:
|
| https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city
| dang wrote:
| You're right that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824383
| was completely derailed by its title, which often happens with
| sensational titles, especially about universal topics like
| housing, food, health, transportation.
|
| But I don't think
| https://www.planetizen.com/features/110948-affordable-city-o...
| (the URL you submitted here) is a very good alternative--it
| seems kind of boring (mostly platitudes and cheerleading), and
| doesn't seem to cover the interesting bit, which is the
| specific proposal that you reference. So I've changed the URL
| back to the Atlantic article for now, with a variation of the
| subtitle which references that specific idea.
|
| If there's a third article which is even better, we can change
| it again.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Yeah, it's kind of a hard dig.
|
| The Atlantic piece at least eventually gets around to
| describing the proposal. It manages to completely avoid any
| mention of the author's book (which I'd submitted as an
| addition), which is ... several shades of perplexing. The
| chapter extract also isn't the best though at least it points
| to the larger work. The two items in tandem ... _kind_ of
| help get the message through?
|
| (I'm doing some further digging on the initiative, proposal,
| Lewis Center, and Phillips in parallel with the discussion
| here. In a world of pretty tired and unimaginative
| suggestions regarding housing, this at least has some novel
| and possibly even likely elements, though it probably needs
| to be combined with other initiatives, most especially those
| discouraging idle land and real estate asset inflation.
| Phillips could use some coaching on persuasive writing and
| outreach as well....)
|
| This is good for now.
| don-code wrote:
| I didn't quite glean a thorough understanding of the model from
| the article. It sounds like it's:
|
| 1) Public funds provide capital to build a new dwelling;
| individuals move in at rates similar to market rent.
|
| 2) Rather than rents paying a landlord, rents act like principal
| payments on a personal mortgage - e.g. I own $10,000 worth of
| shares of the property after paying $1,000/mo for ten months.
|
| 3) Eventually, I own enough of a share of the property that I no
| longer have to make payments, similar to having paid off a
| mortgage. I'd be responsible for upkeep (e.g. roof repairs),
| property taxes, that sort of thing.
|
| What I'm not understanding, though, is how this passes down. If
| I'm a partial owner and move, doesn't the next buyer have the
| same issue raising capital that the model tries to address? Does
| it not also mean that I could become a landlord in my own right,
| and begin renting to another occupant, who stands to build no
| wealth themselves?
| [deleted]
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| IDK but property rights can be modified, e.g. to exclude
| alienation (so can't be sold or inherited). You only get a
| lifetime right to occupy. Then, can be sold to the next person.
|
| Nicely, this wouldn't address intergenerational poverty, nor
| threaten the landed gentry.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| Thinking about the principles laid down in the article: a) Do
| not require significant initial funds for buying b) Do not have
| other people profit of the housing
|
| A simple solution congruent with these principles could be:
|
| Selling the house should be restricted to yield the amount of
| money you put in. This excludes money spend on repairs, etc.,
| and is to be adjusted for inflation.
|
| You can keep living in the house as long as you are alive. Once
| you are dead, you lose the house and the inheritance will be
| the same money you would get from selling the house/apartment
| under the regulated terms.
|
| The next renter of the regulated public housing apartment would
| just pay rent again until they have enough in their portfolio
| and then stop to have to pay rent.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's an element of rental housing which is an act of pure
| consumption. Real estate taxes (either paid or foregone),
| maintenance supplies, maintenance labor, common area utilities,
| paying the bond used to build the building, insurance, etc.
| Plus, there is a notion in the article that this would be an
| incoming-producing asset and that income is presumably coming
| from the rents paid. Unless this is a massive Ponzi scheme,
| there's consumption going on (and therefore you're not building
| equity with all of the rent payments).
|
| There's no realistic way you're going to have 100% (and likely
| not even 50%) of a rental payment going to building equity.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My dad administered a similar program for getting historically
| disadvantaged people owning multi family homes.
|
| Basically, folks would sign up for home ownership education, do
| a bunch of stuff related to maintenance, etc and shop for a two
| family. The housing authority (through a grant) would
| essentially provide a loan for 20-30% of the purchase price for
| down payment and some repairs. The loan would be forgiven in 5
| years.
|
| It was pretty transformative and really changed lives for the
| better. About 90% of the participants made it through year 5.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The author's proposal is laid out in his book, _The Affordable
| City_. Unlike many policy books, the table of contents,
| available at the publisher 's site, is both detailed and
| descriptive, and does convey the outline of his proposals:
|
| https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city
|
| The ebook is a $5 download, which I'd strongly encourage for
| the curious.
| bennysomething wrote:
| "those losses aren't equitably distributed, either: Nearly 2
| million mortgages are underwater in the U.S., and they're
| disproportionately concentrated in Black and Latino communities.
| Tenants in coastal cities, meanwhile, know the pain of forking
| over more and more rent every year, unable to save for a down
| payment and living at the mercy of sometimes unscrupulous
| landlords."
|
| What on earth does not equitable mean in terms of distributing
| losses?
|
| Secondly "living at the mercy" hold on, renters aren't tenant
| farmers who can't leave their lord's land. People do actually
| choose to live in expensive rented accommodation. They make the
| choice that the property location etc is worth more than the
| cash, to them.
| berdario wrote:
| People cannot actually choose the location, without giving up
| their work.
|
| "You can only find work in a big metropolitan center that
| demands 60% of your salary in rent? Though luck..."
|
| Let's say that you work in London... if you are 1h away from
| your work, you're still likely in zone 3 or 4, which is pretty
| expensive.
|
| Your choices then are: a 1h30/2h commute (each way) or giving
| up on having a place only for yourself, and start flatsharing
| aeternum wrote:
| Yes, we should probably treat land as much more of a public
| good, especially in cities. The true value of land has much
| more to do with the services nearby: jobs, shops, parks,
| emergency services. The majority of tax should be based on
| the land value, independent of the cost of structures built
| on that land.
|
| A single-family home (whether it be a shack or a million
| dollar mansion) in a city center with high land value is
| depriving the city of a lot of potential utility and should
| be taxed in proportion to that.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Land values are already captured in property taxes. There's
| certainly places where property taxes are too low and not
| doing enough to encourage better usage of the land, but
| that's straightforward to solve (though admittedly often
| not that easy politically)
| aeternum wrote:
| Partially, but property taxes discourage improving the
| structures on the land as the property tax also increases
| based on the value of the structure. This is generally
| the opposite of what want. Renovations, upkeep, and
| property improvements are good things so why penalize
| them?
| drewmate wrote:
| You might find Georgism [0] interesting. Its tenets include
| a (steep) land value tax that proponents believe would sort
| out the 'best use' of land in city centers. It's a
| compelling idea, but unfortunately the driving force behind
| American government seems to be once you have something
| (property, a business, etc...) nobody can do anything that
| adversely affects it. And Americans (over age 40) already
| own a LOT of property and would not take kindly to new
| taxes on it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#Main_tenets
| prox wrote:
| This falls in line with the old economic school of how
| value is created, which fell in disfavor because it
| didn't sit right with the upper classes, for clear
| reasons.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If you're referencing the LTV, no it doesn't
| prox wrote:
| No, I am referencing the Value Of Everything by
| M.Mazzucato.
| drewmate wrote:
| It seems reasonable enough to me, but I don't own any
| land. I think I'm realistic enough to admit that if I had
| been born 35 years earlier and had two homes that I paid
| off in my 40's and had appreciated 350% since then, I
| would probably feel differently about it. It's a tough
| nut to crack, for sure.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Yeah you can buy your dream house in the middle of nowhere
| for 200k but if you're a teacher, nurse or electrician job
| opportunities are likely scarce. People don't just live in
| cities for the opera.
| nakedshorts wrote:
| Name one career where rent is 60% of the income yet only
| exists in the largest cities.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Name one career where rent is 60% of the income yet
| _only_ exists in the largest cities.
|
| Suggesting that there are careers that only exist in the
| largest cities seems like an odd thing for you to introduce
| into the conversation.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think the point is that paying 60% of income in rent is
| unviable. You need to find a different job, a cheaper
| apartment, or move somewhere else. Maybe all of the
| above.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > paying 60% of income in rent is unviable. You need to
| find a different job
|
| I think you mean you need to dedicate career-level
| resources to locating a job that pays a meaningful amount
| more than the one you have - then beating out the
| hundreds of other job applicants while assisting your
| kids thru 4 hours of evening homework, battling a chronic
| health condition, performing routine household upkeep and
| cleaning, spending 8 hours a week trying to turn health
| insurance into usable appointments and the several other
| hours of mandatory obligations.
|
| This assumes we are considering the sort of scenarios
| faced by typically, struggling folks - and we aren't
| treating challenges as if they exist in isolation.
|
| > a cheaper apartment,
|
| After looking you find an absurdly small number and their
| condition is substandard at best. The roaches, noise and
| maladjusted neighbors guarantee you won't get more than 5
| hours sleep most nights. Moving into one of them would
| cost $4k out of pocket after _all_ of the various
| expenses and deposits are totaled up.
|
| > or move somewhere else.
|
| Folks who have enough $$$$$$.$$ to wholly fund a move to
| another city probably aren't struggling to the point
| where they need to move.
| ctdonath wrote:
| At what point can we acknowledge the harsh reality of "adapt,
| move, or perish"? If your choices and circumstances can't add
| up to a positive cash flow, there is no obligation for others
| to sacrifice their net productive choices so others can enjoy
| their net unproductive choices. We don't live in a post
| scarcity Utopia; why do some strive so hard to cancel this
| truth?
| sjg007 wrote:
| We need people to live where the jobs are. Yes you can also
| move jobs but that's basically the why. Also you have a
| higher probability of advancing from poverty to middle
| class or even high income living in the Bay Area.
| seoaeu wrote:
| > What on earth does not equitable mean in terms of
| distributing losses?
|
| That is literally explained in your quote. An inequitable
| distribution is one where a higher percentage of individuals in
| specific minority groups suffer losses compared to society as a
| whole.
| eplanit wrote:
| It's how race is injected into the conversation; specifically,
| to paint the situation so that people of color are seen as
| victims (of white people). The story has to be told in terms of
| the Oppressed vs. the Oppressors, and race is the key dividing
| line.
|
| It's too bad that the topic isn't covered from a non-racial,
| economic perspective. But, it's negative emotion that drives
| reader engagement.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > A third option is necessary: a way to rent without making
| someone else rich.
|
| I care how much I pay. I don't give a shit who gets it.
| berdario wrote:
| If buy-to-let is profitable, people will do it as a business...
|
| If people do it as a business, it'll drive the price of housing
| up even more, and since businesses have more capital than
| workers, the latter will be priced out (if lucky, they'll be
| able to afford a 90% LTV which will take decades to repay, but
| most workers cannot afford it on their own)
|
| If you care how much you pay, you care about who is extracting
| money out of you
| lvs wrote:
| You do if it exacerbates wealth disparity and inflation.
| ahoy wrote:
| The amount you pay is set by the people who get it.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It's set mostly by supply and demand across the market. The
| owner and the renter can get together and negotiate a small
| deviation based on the property's idiosyncracies, but it's
| the market that's primarily driving it.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The term for an opportunistic escalation in pricing (of a
| critical commodity) due to a rapid-onset shortage is price
| gouging.
|
| Like many US markets, local rental prices have ~doubled in
| the last two years. As in every case of price gouging,
| sufficient supply would have prevented the opportunism that
| is presently causing broad harm.
|
| Huzzah for supply and demand, I guess.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Right, pricing is following supply and demand. There's a
| lack of supply so the prices inevitably go up.
|
| Increase the supply through deregulation or incentives
| and we won't have this problem.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The alternative to "price gouging" is imposing some form
| of price controls. Since housing cannot be created out of
| thin air, that means some people will get lucky and
| everyone else will have to do without. I'm not sure
| that's any less a harm.
| ssalazar wrote:
| Not really. Housing resembles nothing like a free market.
| Supply and demand is driven a lot by political forces
| (regulation, political favoritism) that effectively limit
| supply. Large land-owning political entities or blocs have
| outsized influence on these factors.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Just because supply is constrained by regulations doesn't
| mean that pricing isn't driven by supply and demand.
| Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
| ssalazar wrote:
| Profit motive drives your rent up.
| seoaeu wrote:
| And competition drives it down.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Does nobody consider the carrying capacity of an area, that only
| so many people can live in an area under given zoning
| regulations, and that further increase of population density
| necessarily causes fundamental change to living conditions?
| Romantic as the notion of avoiding displacement is, either
| density increases or price increases - both unpleasant.
| Exponential population increase in a geographically limited
| mostly-2-dimensional area can't retain the same quaint culture.
|
| Change happens. Stability can't be decreed.
| jawns wrote:
| I'm a distributist, so I would prefer to see this type of system
| operated as a private cooperative, 100% owned by participants,
| rather than a government-run program. Why? Because then the
| people who get to make the decisions are the co-op participants
| themselves -- the people with the most skin in the game -- and
| the government can instead focus on areas where the participants
| actually need help, e.g. at the regulatory level, to make sure
| these arrangements are not unjustly disadvantaged.
|
| * If you are not familiar with distributism, see this primer:
| https://shaungallagher.pressbin.com/blog/distributism-for-ki...
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| How does that differ meaningfully from home owners associations
| and the like?
| thinkski wrote:
| Much of Eastern Europe tried this between the 1940s through the
| late 1980s. The result was blocks upon blocks of cramped, drab
| apartments with long waiting periods to get one. If you were
| married, you could get one sooner, which resulted in unhappy
| marriages. It sounds good in theory, in practice it didn't work.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| I don't think that what this article is describing is similar
| at all to Eastern Europe-style public housing. The US also had
| a big experiment in public housing in the 20th century, that
| also had a lot of bad results.
| 1996 wrote:
| Anyone who has seen how public owned goods turn out would realize
| how much of a bad idea it is: for a budget similar to the DoD,
| you may get wait lines like in a DMV, with as much administrative
| fiddling as the NASA, with a quality of service as good as the
| DHS. If you are lucky, you may get as many choices as their are
| public transportation option in the midwest.
|
| Thanks but no thanks.
| jkbbwr wrote:
| Care to provide some evidence to back up your claim or are you
| just on the red scare train.
| 1996 wrote:
| Evidence is the cleanliness of public transportation, the
| derelict public bikes and other 2 wheel battery assisted
| devices, the derelict laptops in school that provide them to
| student...
|
| Maybe it's just a big anti communist plot, or maybe it's just
| human nature to not take care about things you do not own.
| ahoy wrote:
| I live in a new york. Our subway is clean and regular, the
| bike share docks in my neighborhood are stocked and well-
| maintained. The busses, though sometimes crowded, run on
| time.
|
| Public transport works well when your city prioritizes it.
| I spent my youth living in places that don't and I
| literally cannot imagine going back.
| igorstellar wrote:
| > Our subway is clean and regular
|
| I've noticed it got cleaner after COVID happened. Before
| COVID... It was world's most disgusting subway I ever
| been to: filthy, sketchy and leaks rust on your head.
| 1996 wrote:
| > I live in a new york. Our subway is clean
|
| Litteraly where I stopped believing you.
|
| It's dirty. Only DC has a somehow-clean subway, which
| stands out as a nice exception to the rule.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > Public transport works well when your city prioritizes
| it.
|
| And when there is critical mass. Public transit works in
| dense urban centers, because it's less worse than driving
| and parking. It doesn't work in smaller towns. There, it
| just becomes something that everybody pays for but a tiny
| minority of people ever use.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Isn't this what terrible public housing is already? Could it be
| less terrible or would it always devolve into a housing caste
| system because middle-/upper-classes would never use it? Set-
| asides for "affordable housing" in new developments are an
| absolute joke because there are very few units, they often have
| separate "servant-like" entrances, and may not be treated equally
| compared to other residents.
|
| Also, the root cause isn't housing prices, it's a lack of supply
| because of NIMBYs, a lack of fast/cheap transportation,
| developing for maximum traffic/commute times like LA, and a lack
| of development around walkable/self-contained living areas.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The housing market is FUBAR because the people who already have
| a house absolutely 100% need prices to go up indefinitely to
| fund their lifestyle. The government can't do anything either
| besides tell banks to lend starters more $ because the system
| cannot be allowed to collapse.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Public housing as typically formulated in the US (and pardon
| some _very_ hazy recollections and understanding) has been more
| an assistance /entitlement system offering _only_ usefruct
| rights (that is: a roof over one 's head), and no equity
| valuation.
|
| The Shane Phillips / Lewis Centre proposal specifically
| addresses _equity_ rights in addition, which is at the very
| least rare, if not novel.
|
| (There are some co-housing / co-op structures which have some
| similarities, these are largely smaller scale.)
| ffggvv wrote:
| it's not terrible because the middle upper classes don't use
| it. the middle/upper classes don't use it because it's terrible
| because of the people who live in it and do terrible things.
| sorry it's not PC but it's true
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Also because you can't qualify for section 8 housing?
| dsr_ wrote:
| "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor
| alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
| steal their bread."
|
| -- Anatole France
| ferongr wrote:
| I see no issue with such law.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The root cause is way too little development relative to
| demand, orchestrated via zoning regulations. Wikipedia spells
| this out in detail for San Francisco [1].
|
| > Since the 1960s, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area
| have enacted strict zoning regulations. Among other
| restrictions, San Francisco does not allow buildings over 40
| feet tall in most of the city, and has passed laws making it
| easier for neighbors to block developments. Partly as a result
| of these codes, from 2007 to 2014, the Bay Area issued building
| permits for only half the number of needed houses, based on the
| area's population growth. At the same time, there has been
| rapid economic growth of the high tech industry in San
| Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley, which has created hundreds
| of thousands of new jobs.
|
| (Supply << Demand) -> Price goes up.
|
| If we're to solve the housing affordability crisis, city
| councils simply need to drop onerous zoning regulations and
| permit construction such that supply can meet demand.
|
| Anything short of this is just a beat-around-the-bush bandaid
| that hasn't and won't achieve anything. For instance, rent
| control. What a regressive concept, with tons of unintended
| consequences.
|
| [edit] for real do you think there'd be a housing shortage or
| affordability crisis if the entire southern and western 3/4 of
| San Francisco was allowed to build up from 4 stories to 6?
| Basically everything other than districts 3 and 6. [2] That'd
| easily add 50% more housing.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage
|
| [2] https://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/san-
| francisco's-superv...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The root cause is way too little development relative to
| demand, and zoning regulations.
|
| Trying to mimic 1960s TV neighborhoods thru single use zoning
| regs has not served our country well.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a lot of people enjoy living in those
| neighborhoods. Surely if no one actually liked living in
| those neighborhoods it wouldn't still be the ideal people
| strive for.
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| I wish there was some way to fix the incentives so people
| valued growth properly.
|
| Currently the incentives are broken. If you buy in you're
| incentivized to limit any future growth to capitalize your
| ownership of restricted supply. This takes many forms, but
| zoning, "neighborhood character", "environmentalism", noise,
| shadows, etc. - it's all about supply restriction.
|
| If there was a way for everyone to get the increased value
| that came from growth more explicitly then I think the
| political incentives would shift. You'd still have to
| overcome some status quo bias, but at least there wouldn't be
| a direct economic incentive for owners to restrict supply.
|
| No idea how something like this could be structured.
|
| At least new RHNA numbers seem good, I'd also like to see
| something that revokes prop13 protection for localities that
| block new housing. If you're going to fuck everyone else
| over, you should at least have to pay for it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think there is still a place for government action to help
| prevent historic populations of a community from getting
| displaced.
|
| But those programs should be implemented as _subsidies_ , not
| price controls! The only reason we're so reliant on the
| latter is it is more easy politically to put the costs on
| suppliers and hope the electorate doesn't notice that you're
| actually exacerbating the problem.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But those programs should be implemented as subsidies,
| not price controls!
|
| Subsidies for historic populations without price controls
| would be a windfall for landlords, and an accelerant to
| runaway general unaffordability. You could probably split
| the difference with weaker rent controls and subsidies that
| make it look like stronger rent control from the renters
| side, which might mitigate the worst problems of either
| policies (albeit, at thr cost of combining thr problems of
| both.)
|
| What would probably be better is to find a way to _lean
| into displacement_ , or at least accept it, while giving
| displaced residents a stake in the unleashed value.
|
| Strong rent control but with a buyout option where the the
| bought-out renter gets some share of the excess (compared
| to what they could have been charged with rent control)
| rent over a specified period with some floor might be an
| option.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Subsidies for historic populations without price
| controls would be a windfall for landlords
|
| How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices
| are going up, they will be making the money regardless of
| whether the renter is paying for it or the government is
| paying for some of it.
|
| If your point is that a subsidy will shift demand and
| increase the price, that is exactly what we want! A price
| signal to the market to build more housing to accommodate
| everyone who wants to live there _including displaced
| communities_!
|
| > _lean into displacement_
|
| What does this mean? I think there is some level of
| societal interest in preventing displacement, there are
| negative externalities from displacement that the market
| can't properly price in.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices
| are going up, they will be making the money regardless of
| whether the renter is paying for it or the government is
| paying for some of it.
|
| Subsidies for a population that otherwise couldn't afford
| it will accelerate the rate at which market price
| increases, especially since those subsidies will also
| increase as the market price does. It's like student
| loans and college prices, but worse.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > tudent loans and college prices, but worse.
|
| It's not worse if there is cost-sharing.
|
| And as I said above,
|
| > that is exactly what we want! A price signal to the
| market to build more housing to accommodate everyone who
| wants to live there including displaced communities!
|
| Inevitably, trying to keep displacement from happening is
| going to increase prices for newcomers. The question is
| whether we want to do that in a way that incentivizes
| increasing supply or one that keeps people out.
| candiodari wrote:
| > If your point is that a subsidy will shift demand and
| increase the price, that is exactly what we want! A price
| signal to the market to build more housing to accommodate
| everyone who wants to live there including displaced
| communities!
|
| As long as that same government is using law (ie.
| violence) to prevent building more housing, no amount of
| subsidies can be effective.
|
| What do you intend landlords do? Hire an army to defend
| cheap housing from the government?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, subsidies should be paired with dezoning.
|
| Yes, law includes the threat of coercion, I don't see
| what adding that little tidbit does to improve your
| point.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Its simple - tax landlordism out of viability.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| How do people who can't afford to buy then survive? I'm
| in NZ and we've just seen laws introduced that makes
| being a landlord more expensive and unsurprisingly it's
| seen rental increases as a result.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Yeah, I guess that's the logical conclusion. I'd naively
| expect that the profitability of an asset would decrease
| its market value, but the owner, banks and government are
| all interested in keeping the prices high, so instead of
| offloading less lucrative properties at cheaper prices,
| the rents get increased :/ I've rented most of my adult
| life, never did the landlords not be assholes. There must
| be a better way.
| 6510 wrote:
| Spend the money on new houses without asking anyone for
| permission. (Specially not home owners who financially
| benefit from homelessness.)
|
| You could even do a construction project and bill the
| land lords for that directly. In an even crazier universe
| they would get something in return for the [forced]
| investment.
| ksherlock wrote:
| There's a second third option (or first third, as it already
| exists) -- community land trusts. The basic idea is that you own
| the house but the land under the house is owned by a non-profit.
|
| https://slate.com/business/2016/01/bernie-sanders-made-burli...
| gewa wrote:
| Isn't this, what a housing cooperative are about? They are very
| common in Germany and seen as valuable cultural heritage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I don't know why they're not talking about cooperative ownership
| too! Limited-equity cooperative ownership seems to me seems the
| real third option. (Full-equity cooperatives like say NYC's
| market-rate alternative to condos is not what i'm talking about,
| and is just a form of ownership rather than another option).
|
| https://shelterforce.org/2017/04/25/will-limited-equity-co-o...
|
| To make it accessible to all necessary income levels, it may need
| government subsidy, and has sometimes had it in the past (just as
| obviously government-owned housing would be assumed to get
| subsidy). But tenant-controlled cooperatives seem preferable in
| all ways to straight-out government ownership (which yeah, isn't
| that just public housing), and limited-equity tenant-controlled
| cooperative ownership has a pretty successful track record in the
| US and other places.
|
| https://nationalcooperativelawcenter.com/co-ops-are-better-a...
| thex10 wrote:
| This is what I thought the linked article would be about!
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| "Spending so much on a rental feels wasteful--irresponsible, even
| --when you could pay a similar price on a mortgage, at a constant
| level for the next 30 years, while also building substantial
| wealth"
|
| Unless your home insurance rises every year and your monthly
| ownership costs double in 4 years.
|
| Many of us lost houses in the oughts to exactly that.
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