> The fact that the population of greater Houston has more than doubled in 30 years tends to support the idea that they are building enough for growth.
This isn't enough to support the idea unless prices have also not climbed.
The Bay Area population has dramatically increased and prices have too because building to support this growth has been fought by NIMBYs via bad policy.[0] As a result houses on the peninsula have reached insane prices and there is little available for new people, see: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...
Myself and many of my friends (~30yrs old) rent with multiple roommates.
The only people that can buy experienced some sort of exit event or have a lot of FAANG equity with two FAANG incomes. Even then they have to pay property tax on that insane value that the NIMBYs don't pay.
Maybe Houston has done a better job, but population increase itself isn't much evidence.
Bad incentives for existing owners to restrict growth exist everywhere, but they're particularly bad in California because of Prop 13.
The most frustrating bit to me, is that the NIMBYs that won the housing lottery and leverage their political power to screw everyone else also play victim. I hope one day we can pass something that corrects a lot of these bad incentives. The new RHNA housing policy and things like Sacramento's elimination of single family zoning are the way. SB50 and related policy would help too.
I mean, population _is_ pretty good evidence of growth. 20 years ago Houston MSA was 15% larger than SF MSA and today it's 50% larger. What other evidence of "building for growth" can you demand?
You can expand sprawl via single family homes and still not build nearly enough housing to meet population growth requirements.
You can have a lot more population and still build little. It just forces people to live in shared housing with roommates at very expensive rents.
I'm not arguing that you're wrong about Houston - maybe they did build enough. I'm just saying that population growth itself doesn't tell you too much.
It's the change in population vs. the change in new housing with a separate line for each.
It's not super easy to understand because the population change is in thousands of people and housing is just in individual units, but I think it's clear from the graph (if I'm reading it correctly) that Houston is not building enough to meet demand. When you mouse over you can see the amount of new people and compare it to the amount of new housing. There's a lot more new people than new housing.
[Edit]: I found an even cooler dataset which I added to the above graph, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=B72x - it doesn't go back as far, but it shows available housing inventory which is a more relevant metric (and it's going down). I tried adding median price too, but it made the graph hard to read.
Basically, in a city not meeting demand I'd expect to see the following:
- Prices increasing faster than inflation
- Population increasing faster than new housing
- Availability of housing going down (supply constraints which cause prices to go up)
How bad the situation is depends on the above variables, but generally if you don't build enough to meet demand things get worse. That is true in a worst-in-the-world way in the bay area, but also appears to be true most places due to bad incentives - people who already bought in benefit (or at least think they benefit) from restricting supply.
Wouldn't you have to have some sort of adjustment for singles vs families over time? and for average number of people in a household? Number of people in a household has a cultural factor and age factor also (young single people often share households, more young people => higher density).
I have no idea impactful those numbers would be, just pointing out that there are lots of confounding factors to consider.
Yeah totally, I think those are all things to consider.
I'd also guess a factor of young single people sharing households is due to limited supply and high cost. If it was affordable to have your own apartment, more people would do so. The roommate situation is partly (though not entirely) a symptom of failure to build.
You can see this when you compare regions, where I grew up (western new york) housing is super cheap even though there's a lot less economic opportunity. Nobody I know from high school that stayed there lives with roommates. Many have bought their own (nice, new) house for ~150k. That house in the bay area would be 3 million easily.
So while I agree there are confounding factors at play, the housing supply issue is so extreme I think the others are largely rounding errors.
The only reason one wouldn't be able to demolish the house in the US is if it was designated a historical landmark, that I know of.
Otherwise, if it's still zoned for a single family home, then the owner of the land has the right to deconstruct and construct a single family home, per the updated building codes and whatnot.
I would like to be educated if there's something I'm missing. Is there a legal maneuver in CA that can prevent people from using their real estate for whatever it's zoned for, excluding frivolous lawsuits?
Yes, many jurisdictions in California require city permits for demolition and the process for getting those permits is by no means guaranteed. In my city after you apply for a permit you have to post public notice for 90 days so your nosy neighbors have a chance to go to the "landmarks preservation commission" to argue that your dilapidated shack in which nobody has lived for 50 years is, in fact, a priceless treasure and an irreplaceable piece of the city's identity, an event for which you'll need to hire an expensive land use attorney, a historian, and a forensic architect. Assuming you miraculously get through that part of the process, it certainly is by no means assured that you'd get a permit to build another home because the development standards are written in such a way that "by right" permits don't exist. You need a use permit from the city for everything, and for that you'll need to go through more public hearings at the zoning adjustments board and the design review committee. Meanwhile, you and your lawyers and architects will probably have to appear again before the full city council multiple times because each of the LPC, ZAB, and DRC decisions can be appealed to the full council by anyone, even if they don't live in the city.
On initial reading, I don't see why land zoned for a house would even need a use permit. But then the linked "more" website (which goes to blob.core.windows.net?) says:
>What is a Use Permit?
>A Use Permit is a discretionary land use approval which, under certain circumstances, may authorize a use that is not allowed as a matter of right in a particular zoning district.
>Is a Use Permit Required?
>Each zoning designation has certain uses which are allowed subject to the securing of a Use Permit. These discretionary uses are listed in the Use Table ofArticle 2 of the zoning ordinance.
The first answer says use permits are for authorizing something that's not zoned, and the second answer says all uses require securing a use permit, even for the zoned designations? Looks like a lot of local corruption.
I don't know things about that county, I can only tell you the tactics they use in my city. One of them is at some point the minimum lot size for anything was increased to 5000 sq ft, even though most lots are 4000 or less. This means if you want a new structure on a 4000 sq ft lot, you need a special permit from the city.
Another one is setbacks. If most parcels are 40x100 feet, and the city says you need a 15-foot side yard on both sides, then you either need to figure out how to build a house that's only ten feet wide, or you need a special permit.
It's unfortunate that such blatant corruption on the local level is allowed to fester. One would hope a court somewhere up the chain in the state would come down the right side.
This isn't enough to support the idea unless prices have also not climbed.
The Bay Area population has dramatically increased and prices have too because building to support this growth has been fought by NIMBYs via bad policy.[0] As a result houses on the peninsula have reached insane prices and there is little available for new people, see: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom...
Myself and many of my friends (~30yrs old) rent with multiple roommates.
The only people that can buy experienced some sort of exit event or have a lot of FAANG equity with two FAANG incomes. Even then they have to pay property tax on that insane value that the NIMBYs don't pay.
Maybe Houston has done a better job, but population increase itself isn't much evidence.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage
Bad incentives for existing owners to restrict growth exist everywhere, but they're particularly bad in California because of Prop 13.
The most frustrating bit to me, is that the NIMBYs that won the housing lottery and leverage their political power to screw everyone else also play victim. I hope one day we can pass something that corrects a lot of these bad incentives. The new RHNA housing policy and things like Sacramento's elimination of single family zoning are the way. SB50 and related policy would help too.
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