Post

Charging 50% more for steel, aluminum and lumber ain't helping.

The biggest expense is "land".

I see no political problems with this plan, everyone agrees with me that housing is a right and that AirBnb is evil so this should receive no pushback

We can eliminate the parking minimums. It's still not going to create new studio apartments in Boston that rent for $700/month

Housing is cheap, actually.

The best you were destined to get anyway was “well that’s just that one project, the rest are making money hand over fist”

Quite sad, since paying for government subsidized housing with taxes gives them exactly what they want, with much more success than forcing private developers to build homes they can’t afford, except the appropriation of rich peoples’ resources is mildly abstracted out

So much of human behavior in every context turns out to be some variation of Toddlers Expressing Big Feelings, and refuses to be engaged with on any other level

seems like a solid component of a decent argument for an entirely different kind of political economy

median household salary in Tokyo is ~370k yen a month, median rent on 2LDK ~180k so ~48% of median salary compare with San Jose where median household salary is 12k USD/month and median 2 bedroom is 3200/month, or 27% of median salary

Reminds me of this deep dive into the variety of commercial storefronts in Japan by everyone's favorite clothing/fashion commentator

Credit where due. I know how it is structured now. It was formed as a SUPER PAC by Rachel Laing when she was doing PR. She advertised it to her developer clients as a way to influence the process while appearing progressive. You can see who the donors were in the FEC database.

what are the particulars of the ceqa reform thing

I am so glad. This CEQA "Reform" initiative is a Trojan horse that allows polluters to keep polluting groundwater forever. Or until we manage to pass another initiative to reverse it.

thirty years ago this was just garden variety poorfucking. yimby is recent and from first principles is opposed to this kind of development, imo.

Those are my “facts.”

It seems like the takeaway from that article from the local developer is that the market is not going to solve the problems at the bottom that it created and that the YIMBY doctrine of incremental reductions due to increased supply at the top will not help those on the bottom.

The modern YIMBY movement is about 10 years old. This idea that YIMBYism started with demolishing SROs for redevelopment is deeply ahistorical.

...that would be the 80s-90s I believe lol

I want part of the strategy in overcoming reasonable infill opposition to be new towns, high unit volume mega developments. They can be scalable in growth, the trade-off for nimbies is okay, keep your town, but you can't touch the new next town over

I agree with your point.

seems like a very unvirtuous circle

No profit new housing would still not be affordable to people who are not paid enough to be comfortable (most of us). I make good money but my only realistic path to owning a home in my community is buying a vacant lot and getting a modular home installed on it. Complicated! Still expensive

75% seems...very low for maximizing profit. Like the Realpage scandal was that they were suggesting 95 percent as optimal

My area has had a less than 1% vacancy rate for years.

Interesting. My community, population about 32k, has seen an explosion of apartment construction the last ten years or so, almost all from outside developers.

www.census.gov/housing/hvs/...

Related to this, @besttrousers.bsky.social recently shared a piece on how the structure of UI actively punishes the construction industry and holds back productivity and wages.

When the pandemic & chip shortage happened and new cars stopped being built, what happened to the price of used cars? How'd that go for people needing affordable cars? Reminder: *all* new cars are market rate. The closest "affordable housing" equivalent for cars is the city bus.

This is like saying water is wet and gravity points down. But anti-housing lefties are still like “what abt BlackRock and the F’n billionaires, maaaan?!”

And that someone might need to need a profit incentive to do something that benefits others as well.

What was different in 1900-2000(ish?) that enabled housing to be comparatively cheap, in terms of home-price/income ratios? My in-laws’ home, in a lovely central neighborhood in an unassuming small Rust Belt city, cost about 2-3× their schoolteacher+truck driver salaries in 1979.

Remember when developed countries used to build public housing? Sure, they were often badly built and badly maintained, but the solution to that is *do better* not "oh well, we made a poor effort and failed, let's never do it again"

What oeople today dont realize today is that 1935-1985 fed gov’t financing built massive amounts of housing for the poor—& also working class & lower mid-income. Nixon & Reagan ended that. We can & should get back to doing that. Just building housing only the top 30% can afford doesnt fill that gap.

Prefab housing can help here somewhat. I’ve even seen a prefab apartment tower built near me. But yes, workers should be paid well and materials cost money. There are other was to reduce costs (how many elevators and how much parking do regulations require, etc.) but the stuff isn’t free.

True, the market cant serve the poor (30% AMI) w/o subsidy. But also true that RE industry gets all kinds of tax subsidies to provide housing. And it is unacceptable that too many landlords, especially big apt owners, wont accept poor people even when they have vouchers & can pay market rents.

That's like why do efficient agriculture when we could go back to hunting and gathering - how much could the labor cost, really.

This is actually a good idea. All we need is for you folks to take the damn tariffs off our softwood lumber and we'll harvest as much of that as you can afford to buy. It's a huge industry in Canada that's been held back for years even before Trump because of trade disputes.

Don’t worry. We are instituting a 50% tariff on the country that sends us lumber, so that should help.

That only looks like a problem to people preoccupied with who gets to be first to live in the brand new housing. Construction costs don’t really impact the existing stock.

This just tells me the traditional method of approving, building and getting houses to market is horribly inefficient. Things like modular builds can bring these costs down significantly. It's wild to me that a house is essentially bespoke built even when it's cookie cutter.

I need a t-shirt that says this. Maybe on the back with: CAM TAXES INSURANCE

It seems to me that property taxes are playing a big role here too but it isn't one I understand bc I just don't know that much about property tax rates

New housing is ALWAYS going to be expensive for a long list of reasons including cost of labor, materials, and land. Affordable housing has always traditionally been older housing. And if you want more of that, build more market-rate new housing so people can move up.

This is why some housing wonks support upward displacement: moving wealthy people out of down market and older housing into new luxury housing But that doesn't make good sloganeering

No, the biggest factor is that everyone wants to live in the same handful of places. Theres actually tons of affordable housing out there, it's just in places where noone wants to live.

That's not a significant driver of rising prices. It's just not. Private equity buys like $10 billion worth of homes every year in a $55,000 billion market

There’s also the troublesome fact that the minute you finish building a house it starts doing its damnedest to crumble into dust on you without constant maintenance. That takes labor! Often the skilled labor of expensive trades, like electricians or plumbers.

and thats even before the other stuff we put in the houses after they are framed. i generally agree but we need to be careful about the framing i think. density foxes this anyways though. build up and we have to use less of everything

Is housing for everyone a social benefit to communities & their residents? Currently, are dwelling units treated as a commodity? If a government agency builds or subsidizes dwelling units as part of a "Housing First" policy, what's the worst thing that could happen?

Yeah, although I'd still argue it's more the cost of the zoning limited land than the labor/materials cost itself.

Just to play off of this, our municipality acquired property in a rezoning and put in 16 standalone units as workforce housing from both Habitat and by moving houses from elsewhere. The property is in a trust, so no land cost, and resales are capped. Still, almost no one can qualify for them.

They aren’t realistically separable though.

That's called the exception that proves the rule.

There is no equivalent to zoning or a limited number lots for cars, so it's never going to be a good analogy.

and they did a few years ago when COVID substantially disrupted car production

Agree but also, I have to remind passers by, that “affordable” in housing discourse is a term of art that means “income restricted and subsidized”. When they mandate x% “affordable” they are not mandating cheap inexpensive units, they are mandating income restricted and subsidized units.

Our revealed preferences are usually kinda dumb

how many of those countries have quotas for affordable cars

No thanks I'd prefer Indian EVs

True.

The analogy to cars is a poor one. Housing is essential like food which we do (inadequately) provide through SNAP for many millions of households. Also, we do subsidize roads for people who can afford cars & leave the poor w/o cars at severe disadvantage for jobs, education & upward mobility.

Or the more realistic scenario is that they own older more affordable models

The hidden additional point is that you can live without a car. People who are 'priced out' of having housing are, well, *unhoused*. It's very hard to get bank accounts, cell phone plans (no landline = necessity for), jobs, and custody of your kids when unhoused.

During the pandemic the supply of new cars crashed due to supply chain issues. What happened to the price of used cars? They skyrocketed all the way down the market to the old beaters. Restricting the building of expensive new cars literally made it harder for poor people to buy cheap used cars.

I don't know specifics but I remember reading about the housing market in Singapore some time ago and being impressed by their ability to provide, seemingly, every citizen with *some* sort of ownable home. Obv the US and Singapore are very different, but surely there are some lessons we can learn?

it’s a good point

I think everyone left of center agrees that some subsidies will be required to allow the poorest people to keep a roof over their head. Few YIMBYs are opposed to programs like Section 8 housing vouchers

No, but freer markets would house more people. Housing inventory is artificially constrained as a policy choice, not just materially, today

Bombs are important for killing Russian invaders in Ukraine.

You’re telling me? Max has been doing this thankless work nonstop for many years. On Twitter long before the Bluesky days.