I'd mention something, but I see you've already invited a giant white elephant, which has its trunk wound around the handle of an "affordable housing" sign.
You believe the low income housing market is underserved.
1. Raise money (your "Tax Amazon" friends are a good start).
2. Build housing.
3. Sell to underserved segment.
> Perhaps one day you'll appreciate the psychopathy of telling people they should just move away from their lifelong home. Not everyone is a detached knowledge worker hopping around sampling cities like they're a plate of hors d'oeuvres.
> I would love an example of housing for everyone in locations that meets their needs, achieved in a timely manner, in a way that removes profit and investment motives.
Well, on the other hand, is there something inherent in housing that requires those motives?
Why not just build a massive cluster of skyscrapers and put all the people who want cheap rent there? It would cause much less impact on the existing homeowners at large. To me that is a much more equitable solution for both parties.
Personally, I would say if you can't afford to live there, don't. There are plenty of places to live and many people do.
> Nobody is investing in affordable housing, it's all luxury apartments
Please, tell me of a city in the US that's built affordable housing within the past 50 years - not luxury housing that got old and thus cheap, and not luxury housing that gets subsidized by the city.
> How do you prevent over-supply from being built? How do you ensure that the housing is of suitable quality?
How do we prevent the over-supply of anything? How do we ensure the quality of anything in the market? Housing is not a unique good. This is a solved problem.
> a friend recently visited and used airbnb to lodge at one of those newish buildings on 9th street. The building looks great on the outside. But, inside, the units looked and felt like what I imagine Soviet block style buildings would be like.
And what's the vacancy rate on that building? Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not serving a market niche.
>Los Angeles has a huge housing shortage. If my experience is anything to go by, it’s because the bureaucracy is so dense it takes years to just get the permits in place. It would be cheaper and better if I could just pay a bribe and get it done quickly.
No. Los Angeles has a huge housing shortage because most local voters and active participants in local politics are homeowners. They want a housing shortage, so they get a housing shortage.
>>Can you not spare a shred of sympathy for people who want to live in the city they work in but can’t because property owners won’t let them?
Of course I can. My sympathy goes both ways.
>> (Also, building housing doesn’t just tank the value of your home, trust me.)
I'm not talking about simply increasing the supply of housing. The specific example we are discussing is a new skyscraper blocking the view from an existing one.
A lot of the program seems to have rested on subsidies and incentives, which are nice ways of saying you're relying on a profit or investment motive.
> Well, on the other hand, is there something inherent in housing that requires those motives?
Aside from that it requires scarce resources to produce and maintain and is rival in nature? I suppose not. Though that does put it in the company of quite a few other goods and services.
> or you strongly incentivize a lot of people to not go for this.
By very definition if we do literally anything that makes housing more affordable, we make it less of a good invetment, which means a lot of people will not go for it. We already covered that in my first comment.
Old people that own houses want them to be a good invesment.
Young people that do not own houses want them to be affordable.
Pick one group to make happy.
> We can use the money they pay to fund building more housing
Now you're complicating the issue and getting away from the core issue/problem here. Yes, building more houses would be great, but that is NOT the fundamental problem here.
The fundamental problem that has to be addressed first, is that housing can not simultaneously be a good investment AND be affordable. We MUST fix that first.
> FWIW, I'm personally not sure that increased density is the actual answer anyway... or what is.
The truth is the materials and labor to build what most people consider “housing” is out of reach for a lot of people and these people don’t know it. There’s a reason that nearly all new multi-family development is “luxury” - it’s the only profitable way. Anything that’s “affordable” is government subsidized. Not to mention upkeep.
So we need to change what people think affordable housing is. It’s a lot closer to a trailer than it is to a fixed structure. I don’t know if a lot of people are willing to accept that.
I'd mention something, but I see you've already invited a giant white elephant, which has its trunk wound around the handle of an "affordable housing" sign.
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