alt Hacker NewsExcessive regulation is 90% of it.
Here's how a rational market works. If I build an apartment complex, eventually those apartments will get older and more affordable. And even before that upper middle class folks will move in, freeing up their previous homes.
But that's not how many in local governments see it. So you have affordable housing quotas on new developments.
You have developers building units for the homeless at 600k each. https://abc7news.com/post/new-high-rise-building-house-skid-...
Affordable housing vouchers, section 8, etc, become a dystopian nightmare.
11 year waiting list. https://laist.com/news/section-8-waiting-list
The problem is twofold, first it's too difficult to build homes. In California you can literally just claim a new highrise will block your sunlight and make you sad. That's enough to delay a construction.
Parking requirements ensure space that could be occupied by people is instead reserved for vehicles. Plus the parking structure itself drives up the cost to build, 30% of your construction cost isn't unreasonable.
On a macro level, many cities should of fixed their issues with inadequate housing construction decades ago.
On a personal level, you need to go where you can afford.
After about 4 generations of living in LA about half my family has left. It's more than possible to make it off a middle class salary, but you need to make that choice.
If you stay in an unaffordable city you can't wait around waiting for politicians to fix it.
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For years in Washington DC there was one single crank who went to every community engagement meeting and prevented hundreds of units of housing from getting built.
> Excessive regulation is 90% of it.
Housing crisis is observed in almost all what is called "first world" (europe, japan, usa). I believe that 90% of the issue is more global than a regulation.
> Excessive regulation is 90% of it.
If it was, then the housing price would be correlated with the level of regulation, but it's not (housing less dense places is always cheaper than housing in big cities, even if you compare the most heavily regulated place on earth with the least regulated big city in the world.
> Here's how a rational market works.
A rational market made from human is as realistic as “dry water”.
The key issue is that housing is treated as an asset, and the policies made to boost housing construction are designed around building a market in a way that gives housing the same kind of financial yields as stocks. But while stock prices can grow because productivity increase, housing value can only increase if housing becomes more expensive.
> you can literally just claim a new highrise
> will block your sunlight and make you sad
If a high-rise blocks a single electron of my apartment's normal sunlight, it would definitely make me sad.
> If you stay in an unaffordable city you can't wait around waiting for politicians to fix it.
Sadly this is the best advice for personal well-being. 'Sadly' because it disrupts families.
> In California you can literally just claim a new highrise will block your sunlight and make you sad. That's enough to delay a construction
So what's the problem?
Land use should be regulated imho, just like air pollution and other commons phenomena.
I don't care what kind of towel you buy to dry yourself off with, but I do care if a developer affects the environment and housing around it.
Throw out a made up percentage and proceed to start talking about rational markets as if they exist in the real world. I immediately know this analysis is going to be great. Older houses are obviously cheaper for some reason even though housing prices in city centers keep increasing. Poor people are the real problem for needing a place to live. With the conclusion that there is nothing that can be done and people just have to take it. That's abundance (jazz hands)
> Here's how a rational market works.
Might regulations be the result of these "rational markets"? After all, if I invest a lot of money to build apartments, I might want to protect that investment by lobbying for regulations to make it harder for competitors, increasing the value of my investment. Or if I buy an apartment, I might want to prevent others from ruining my view, prevent noise, etc. All completely rational.