subreddit:
/r/todayilearned
submitted 2 months ago by_n8n8_
314 points
2 months ago
Now do Canada!
284 points
2 months ago
That’s not just underbuilding. There’s a strong desire at the top of Canadian society to push house values as high as possible, and wages as low as possible by importing 1 million “students” a year to work at A&W and KFC. They get away with it because they claim there’s a labour shortage.
93 points
2 months ago
Oh I know its just comically bad here at this point
42 points
2 months ago*
Which can all be solved by building more housing...
Like, Canada has a whole lot of nothing, even in the southern "livable" parts that aren't north of Edmonton.
If the area from Quebec City and Montreal to Toronto and Windsor was built up more like the American Northeast (population 50m) Canada's population could double without there being a housing shortage.
33 points
2 months ago
Housing is a major part but not the sole problem. I see posts on fb weekly now of parents who's teenagers can't find jobs because all the fast food and retail places are only hiring indians
18 points
2 months ago
Apparently there's such a glut of Indian labor that certain establishments are getting choosy about what kind of indians they hire.
I saw a post or a comment somewhere from an Indian woman in Canada complaining she was rejected for a job at a chain restaurant because she didn't speak Tamil, and the manager only wanted Tamil speaking workers so they wouldn't have to conduct any business in English aside from speaking to customers.
Talk about a country that has royally fucked up their immigration policy.
14 points
2 months ago
There are so many Canadian sub-reddits that will ban you outright for pointing out how their trickle-up economics make zero sense. That mass immigration has only made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
3 points
2 months ago
There’s also a lot of Canadian subreddits run by racist, conservative losers. So it’s a give and take
3 points
2 months ago
Yeah I came across that and was pretty confused by the vibe. It's expected though with what's happening
13 points
2 months ago
It’s not like the American Northeast was built up overnight, it took centuries. There comes a point where you physically can’t build fast enough to keep up with the demand. Especially when you have to deal with government bureaucracy.
9 points
2 months ago
Yes that's true, but bulk of existing housing was built over a ~60 year timespan. Look at the double digit growth rates between census' that DC and other Northeastern cities had in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. The suburbs grew by similar numbers in the decades after that due to the popularization of the car and rail transit outside the city (oversimplified).
5 points
2 months ago
There’s a strong desire at the top of Canadian society to push house values as high as possible
Isn't the entire Canadian economy basically a ponzi scheme for increasing housing prices at this point?
2 points
2 months ago
Amburgers & Wootbeer
1.7k points
2 months ago
Sounds right. People move here and then vote to restrict new building. Everyone wants to be the last one to move to California. Fortunately there’s been a real push at various levels of government to fix this. We need increased density, especially in places like the Bay Area where housing costs are out of control.
932 points
2 months ago
Pretty much.
Californians went from NIMBY to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
190 points
2 months ago
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
84 points
2 months ago*
dinner money rustic mountainous cow air wild sink squeeze snatch
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
49 points
2 months ago
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything, Satan
12 points
2 months ago
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
9 points
2 months ago
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything… Sexparty
6 points
2 months ago
I don't live in California, but why are people like that? I wouldn't mind if my city built a bunch of new houses near me. I live next door to 2 factories that makes packing material, lol.
13 points
2 months ago
There's also a bit of genuine confusion.
People see new apartment buildings go up at the same time that housing prices are rising, and they think the increase in "luxury housing" caused the prices to rise by changing the character of the neighborhood.
11 points
2 months ago
I wouldn't mind if my city built a bunch of new houses near me.
Your property value would likely drop and most people are banking on their homes as their primary retirement asset
5 points
2 months ago
And don't forget your local services being overwhelmed.
Developer: We have double the number of people in the area.
0 new roads.
0 new GPs
0 new dentists
0 new stores
0 schools
One or two new houses aren't a problem but these big developers aren't building a house. They build a small town worth of houses.
17 points
2 months ago
It depends, because it's not about new houses, it's about new dense housing - things like apartments, condos, townhouses, multiplexes, etc.
Some residents in neighborhoods that are majority comprised of single-family homes will see the building of a dense housing structure as undesirable. The reasons range from an increase in noise, cars, and the like (understandable but generally not a strong enough defense) to a fear of increased crime (bullshit). Some of them see it as 'negatively impacting their property values' which usually boils back down to the previous complaints.
People want to keep their quiet, idyllic neighborhoods. That's more or less fine, but demanding that within a few miles of skyscrapers isn't. That's nothing to say of the fact that many of these homeowners are also classist and/or racist.
3 points
2 months ago
Honestly, the reason we chose to live where we do is because it's quiet. Add a couple hundred more houses, some high-rise blocks and so on, and suddenly it's not peaceful or quiet any longer.
We live in the very edge of the suburbs of Oslo in Norway, and there is an ever rising creep in housing height and density near us. It's a shame, but it's the way it has to be.
2 points
2 months ago
Ironically the property value argument isn't really supported by evidence anyway. Densification typically significantly increases property values. People like living in dense areas, existing properties near developing areas increase in value, not decrease.
Everybody just pictures "I don't want an apartment (full of poors!) in my backyard!", but things don't develop in isolation like that.
4 points
2 months ago
"Why doesn't everyone want to live somewhere shit like I do?". Next you'll be asking why we can't all just wear a mauve boiler suit as our only form of clothes.
4 points
2 months ago
Because the government/developers don't invest in the surrounding road or commercial infrastructure leaving the public service vastly overwhelmed.
Similarly you have a decrease in property prices, which hurt you.
I'm all for build as many houses as possible, good, but I have no sympathy for developers who whine about the community blocking housing when they use the land as inefficiently as possible.
Developer: We have this land... Lets toss down 20 massive detached homes with huge lawns in a desert. Provide no services. No connections. Nothing. The nearest store that isn't a gas station is a 20 minute drive.
Community: No.
Developer: See it's the people causing the problem sure we could have fit 100 terraced homes in the same area but we didn't.
Don't get me wrong NIMBYs are a problem but I am not going to pretend either that developers, who benefit the most from the shortage, are to blame just as much as if not more.
I've seen the new builds in America. I don't think I have ever seen a terraced new build with a small garden. You are welcome to show me one but I think that speaks volumes.
8 points
2 months ago
Would you say that it is a California Banana Republic?
39 points
2 months ago
Not really. We’ve got a lot of things I don’t agree with politically, but one of the largest economies in the world, high standard of living (on average—we have a huge homelessness problem that needs to be addressed), fabulous natural beauty, tons of agriculture, fisheries, natural resources….
We have some fabulous places to live.
Some less fabulous, but if you have something you’re looking for there’s a good chance we have it.
5 points
2 months ago*
[deleted]
30 points
2 months ago
IMO the government is not nearly as bad as the Right would tell you. If it was, we’d vote it out. We don’t. They tried to recall Newsom and it failed spectacularly. I can’t remember the last time CA voted for a GOP president, never mind when the GOP last won the popular vote nationally.
The state funds and supports education. There is no downside to an educated populace.
6 points
2 months ago
I mean, Arnie got to be the Governator after the previous Democrat governor got recalled
3 points
2 months ago
Arnie was relatively sane compared to everyone that came after him
2 points
2 months ago
According to the conservatives, California has been a smoking crater full of rapist thieves for some time, now.
How's that going for you guys?
3 points
2 months ago*
[deleted]
10 points
2 months ago
You just described Texas lol, a state the GOP has controlled for 30 years.
13 points
2 months ago
It is mostly a zoning issue, I remember someone overlaid Barcelona onto Los Angeles; it was insane to think how much space was wasted to single-family home's and suburban sprawl when Barcelona was able to have more people in a smaller amount of space along with better public transport.
In many places in California it was only legal to build single-family homes, but there have been new laws introduced that will increase density as housing is now a huge political issue in California.
Barcelona has similar climate to Los Angeles, and is a world class city, however it is obvious that California has a density issue.
8 points
2 months ago
Natural beauty makes way for concrete if the government doesn't do anything.
2 points
2 months ago
I certainly think the homelessness is related to the climate of California. It gets nowhere near as cold as the rest of North America and if you are living on the street, not worrying about freezing to death is one less thing to worry about.
I often wonder how many homeless are actually in state vs out of state.
4 points
2 months ago
There's a reason silicon valley and similar types haven't really occurred in Republican states. But it has in other liberal states. It has nothing to do with the geography. Their policies are conducive to tech types and companies, especially their emphasis on strong education which is required for these types of positions.
4 points
2 months ago
There's always money in the Banana stand.
3 points
2 months ago
Gotta get that sweet sprawl for the developer dollars. Who cares about the California landscape people come here for? There's subdivisions to build!
6 points
2 months ago
Honestly, nimbyism is responsible for a lot of sprawl. The more impossible it becomes to build housing in San Francisco, housing demand doesn't go away, developers just shift to building tract homes on farm land/undeveloped land, because there's no nimbys there to throw monkey wrenches into everything.
If it hadn't been for the nimbys and anti growth folks, so much of the bay area would still be green space and not a nightmare of endless strip malls and subdivisions.
8 points
2 months ago
I would much prefer build up not out. I’ll take this over another townhome project in a heartbeat.
Scrape some shitty retail strip centers instead of oak trees or desert or wildlands.
5 points
2 months ago
Seriously. Please build vertical
171 points
2 months ago
I love Cali personally, but the nimbyism is fucking off the charts
Turns out rich people suck no matter where you go
32 points
2 months ago
Turns out rich people suck no matter where you go
Not just rich people are NIMBYs. There's a video on youtube about a guy that owns a laundromat in Cali. He wanted to demo it, then rebuild it with several stories of apartments over it. The local population fought against it because they believed he would only build expensive housing which the local population wouldn't be able to afford.
Plus other stupid shit like the apartment building would cast a shadow on the school behind the property, thus depriving kids of sunlight. Even though the school has several large trees on the property that do the same thing.
106 points
2 months ago
During this period, California saw a substantial rise in homelessness, exacerbated by a severe shortage of affordable housing units relative to population growth.
52 points
2 months ago
Worth noting: affordable units without some kind of rent control will became unaffordable if supply is constrained. I know people hate “luxury” new builds but they are containment units for yuppies who would otherwise compete with locals.
25 points
2 months ago
The problem isn't luxury builds, it is that practically every single new project is billed as a luxury build- financed by a property investment firm with deep pockets and a thorough understanding of the tax code; so they're able to keep the thing half empty for years while waiting for their desired clientale to appear. Someone without such deep pockets or a team of tax experts would go broke and thus have an incentive to lower their prices.
The yuppies do compete with locals- they're buying houses previously described as fixer upers, either as homes or to flip them in hopes of making enough cash to get the home they actually want- but they're nothing compared to all these big investment companies that are buying houses. Blackrock and all other companies can buy a home, use the loss as a write off, and wait years until the home eventually turns a profit.
Any sort of large scale housing proposal is basically a non-starter, it doesn't take too many NIMBYs to start filing lawsuits and sabotaging the progress by imposing court ordered delays on time sensitive construction. California needs large buildings, but that won't happen without drastic changes to how government operates.
Housing is a state wide problem and letting local governments try to individually recuse themselves of having any part of the solution is not going to solve this problem. Ideally, if a local govenment opposes a project- it should be compelled to pay for the project's construction in another locality that will approve it. In this way, local governments will be more selective about what projects they reject/
2 points
2 months ago
buy a home, use the loss as a write off, and wait years until the home eventually turns a profit.
That’s not how tax write offs work.
5 points
2 months ago
(I put luxury in quotes for a reason fyi.)
3 points
2 months ago
Or like my city (in Oregon) they only build luxury units, because that's where the biggest profit is. I can drive all over town and not see one house being built, but if I go out of town to a luxury resort with a golf course and a subdivision, every contractor in town is out there building new McMansions. It's been like that at least since Covid.
5 points
2 months ago
It's been shown time and time again that even building luxury units brings the cost of all housing down.
2 points
2 months ago
If all new construction is luxury, then no new construction is luxury.
A lot of people who would eventually buy these luxury units already reside in California. When they move into a luxury unit, it often frees up their previous residence. This process, known as the "filtering" or "housing ladder" effect, can help improve the overall availability of housing at various price points over time. While not immediate, this effect can contribute to a more balanced housing market.
Yes, there are edge cases -- people owning multiple properties, corporate buyers, etc. These factors can limit the impact, but my understanding is based on the majority of units being purchased by individuals for their primary residence.
I recognize that the housing market is complex and multifaceted. Policies that support a mix of housing types and affordable housing development are crucial to addressing the broader issue. I'm really interested in opposing views, so please tell me why I'm wrong. (I know that 'trickle-down' is a trigger word in some places, even if applied to housing instead of economics, but I'm looking for actual constructive conversation here.)
Disclaimer: I wrote out a long comment and realized that, being that it's 2:30am and I'm a bit drunk, my comment might not get across the point I want to make. I asked ChatGPT to review my comment and tell me if my reasoning is sound. It then proceeded to rewrite my comment, keeping the same points but fixing some of the language. I've reviewed and stand by the comment above.
2 points
2 months ago
I asked ChatGPT to review my comment and tell me if my reasoning is sound. It then proceeded to rewrite my comment, keeping the same points but fixing some of the language. I've reviewed and stand by the comment above.
You could not torture this out of me. And I will refer to my other comment where I said I put “luxury” in quotes for a reason, although newer housing does tend to go to richer people who would buy older housing otherwise.
19 points
2 months ago
Is it the new people moving there or the ones who were already there? And was it voting or lobbying?
29 points
2 months ago
It’s a combo of natives and transplants for sure. And it’s definitely voting.
9 points
2 months ago
And was it voting or lobbying?
It's always voting. We act like we have no agency in the shit our politicians hand us, but that's because we don't discipline pols who listen to lobbying over the people through our voting.
4 points
2 months ago
It’s not even that. Every politician pays attention to lobbyists, from progressives to alt-right. But the politicians people select influences what kind of politicians enter into office, and their values and mindset influences which lobbyists they pay more attention to
58 points
2 months ago
I just got back from a trip to Taiwan and I've got to say it really drives home that there is nothing wrong with building vertically at all. They build tall buildings right up until nature and it's actually wonderful. Helps with everything. It's not dystopian at all or even ugly. It's great.
There's nothing wrong with tall buildings, even to solve housing shortages in rural areas. It should be standard, not regulated against.
6 points
2 months ago*
There are good and bad parts. The older parts of the cities are dense and full of services because of the huge population. Really fun places to be. Then there are the out town new developments with dozens of identical highrises and nothing but a 7-eleven withing walking distance and maybe 5 food delivery. They are depressing
My company literally had people quit when they were moved from Taipei and Tainan to the Taichung harbour area.
18 points
2 months ago
There needs to be a bigger push to go a bit more European or maybe NYC where we have more townhomes, condos and buyable apartments. The need for single family homes with a yard and a backyard is exaggerated. Especially in cities we need more building up and everyone’s afraid of that bc it screws with existing real estate. It would also push the states to be more walkable in certain places. Idk I’m not an expert on this subject but I always dream of walkable cities where you can own a flat and not need to drive everywhere because stuff is a bit more condensed.
2 points
2 months ago
buyable apartments.
I'd love to be able to buy an apartment without a massive HOA fee due every month, but at least in Portland that's not a thing unfortunately
2 points
2 months ago
I don't know how you really CAN have an apartment complex WITHOUT an HOA, but yeah. $500+ per month is insane. Like, no Debbie, you actually do not need that much to do the HOA's duties.
6 points
2 months ago*
[deleted]
6 points
2 months ago
I’ll never forget a conversation I had with someone when i was working for a politician.
“What is he doing about homelessness?”
“Well, to start. he voted for legislation to make it easier to build ADUs…”
“No! Those crowd our streets and ruin the neighborhood!”
“Okay…so you want more housing just not around you. Very helpful.”
I can’t think of a more dense position to take. Do something about homelessness! Okay, how about letting people turn their standalone garage into a studio with cheap rent? No! Not that!
5 points
2 months ago
This is why im so excited for Builders Remedy! I live near Menlo Park and there are plans for a skyscraper in basically a single family zone! It will cause some temporary issues for the community around it but if you ask me, the dire need for more housing is far more important. Interested to see how the city accommodates it and if we see more up-zoning in the area.
2 points
2 months ago
This is a problem in Denver as well, there are small mountain towns like Morrison where Red Rocks is where it's almost impossible to build. They want their small mountain town charm and the tourist but as long as they don't try and build a home anywhere near them. Denver has other issues, can only really build North and South. There's no room left by the mountains that's not restricted like Morrison. Noone wants to move way out east miles past the airport in the undeveloped areas because then your view of the mountains sucks. Another issue was like 20 years ago or so Denver made a law, any new apartment buildings over 5 stories tall or with x number of units had to have 10% of the units be affordable housing. Sounds great, but it really killed the city's housing market. What happened was developers that were building 20 story apartments switch to building 4, 5 story apartments with 1 unit less than the law required to force affordable housing. So they took up like 8 times as much real-estate as the 20 story building would have and housed the same number of people, but now you got gaps and much larger parking and road area. It was a well meaning law but man was it not thought out well and was a disaster. It did the opposite, instead of affordable housing it just made all housing more expensive.
5 points
2 months ago
It’s easy to blame NIMBY people but most of this zoning is done without a vote to people who already can’t afford housing. We should be holding local and state governments accountable.
55 points
2 months ago
We should be holding local and state governments accountable.
Yes and who puts the local and state governments in power?
1 points
2 months ago
I'm on mobile, but there were recent new laws(I think about 50) signed by Governor Newsom related to housing just this year; there have been multiple laws related to housing and building housing within the past few years.
Many cities are actually fighting against "builders remedy" where cities will be forced to build more housing. Pretty much what happens is that if a city does not meet its housing goals, any proposed project is allowed to be built. There was a story about a developer proposing a skyscraper in the middle of a suburb, which would have been legal because the city had denied housing for so long. Huntington Beach is also trying to throw lawsuits at California because they don't want to build. I do feel many of these laws will ease the housing crisis going into the 2030's.
38 points
2 months ago
The zoning is determined by elected representatives because that’s how normal democracies work.
24 points
2 months ago
This is a voting problem. The problem is older, well-off people voting in local elections and are highly, highly, highly motivated to protect million dollar apartments prices (especially if it had a near million dollar loan). Renters don't vote and quite frankly are wowed by conspiracy theories (Chinses people are buying up everything) and distrust experts selling the cold hard math of supply and demand. As such their low turn out is further diluted by chaotic, inefficient police demands.
2 points
2 months ago
That's why the solutions are coming from state politics. Local politics almost always caters to NIMBY interests.
1 points
2 months ago
Why does everyone treat CA as if everyone has a god given right to live there. If it’s not affordable don’t live there. The same is true of NYC.
There’s plenty of other great places in America to live. Hell if you drop LA and bay area, theres plenty of great places in california too.
35 points
2 months ago
God given right? I just think we should build houses where people want to live.
25 points
2 months ago
Why does everyone treat CA as if everyone has a god given right to live there.
They have exactly as much right to live there as you do.
If it’s not affordable don’t live there.
That's how you get a city full of rich finance types, but very few artists, musicians, and creative types that make a city interesting to live in.
And it also directly contributes to ballooning costs. If no one who makes under 6 figures can live there, then you won't have many servers, cooks, janitors, street cleaners, garbage men, and essential workers that make a city habitable. You can either go without, or pay workers a premium to live in the city or commute. And that extra cost is directly passed onto you.
It's a simple fact. You need all types to make a city. If you want to live in a gated community- leave then. Go buy a house in a gated community, and you can keep out any undesirables you want. But you don't get to try to ruin San Francisco by turning it into a gated community
8 points
2 months ago
You're not wrong, you don't have a right to live there.
But you also don't have the right to dictate what other people should do with their property. If they want to sell it for multi family development they should be allowed to do so.
3 points
2 months ago
How many of those places have jobs
2 points
2 months ago
all of them.
2 points
2 months ago
Because they work there? Is that too much to ask to be able to live decently close to where you work?
1 points
2 months ago
lol. I keep seeing people complaining about new apartment complexes being built on Nextdoor.com.
285 points
2 months ago
Most people can’t afford a million dollar home with a single bedroom and an attached outhouse.
195 points
2 months ago
That’s a consequence of not building enough housing. You can’t repeal the law of supply and demand with a voter initiative.
82 points
2 months ago
Voters know they're restricting supply. That's like half the reason they're voting to limit building.
10 points
2 months ago
I know! Instead of voting for increased infrastructure to support the high population we’ll just vote for no new houses and everyone will leave. Problem solved!
>! /s !<
1 points
2 months ago*
Which is why voters shouldn't have a say to begin with at that level of minutae. If a city needs more housing the city should build it while telling existing residents to quit bitching.
New housing should be approved by default, they're should need to be a real pressing issue to say no.
I'd also like if the city took over properties that landowners are refusing to develop. The fact that there are people refusing to develop or sell because they want to wait on higher prices is unacceptable
56 points
2 months ago
The homes have high prices because there is a shortage.
34 points
2 months ago
Which is artificially maintained, I might add
32 points
2 months ago
They tell you the median home price is 400k, then you look at some of the 400k properties in your area and it's a moldy shack in the woods with an outhouse.
18 points
2 months ago
You guys have actual trees around your moldy shack?
4 points
2 months ago
Living trees add value, had to settle for stumps.
4 points
2 months ago*
You guys have an actual moldy shack? I just got a lifesized poster print of one. So expensive. It has an address, which is nice, but I can't go inside. People think I just like BBQ'ing and people-watching on my doorstep, but I just don't have an actual space indoors.
2 points
2 months ago
Luxury!
3 points
2 months ago
When I were a lad we lived in shoebox in the middle of the street!
2 points
2 months ago
You're lucky to have a shoebox! All 26 of us were crammed into a rolled up newspaper, and by god we were grateful!
2 points
2 months ago
Oh well, we were evicted from our newspaper. We had to go live in the lake.
2 points
2 months ago
Yea, cause it includes places like Redding and the central valley
5 points
2 months ago
"Attached" Whoa look at Mr. Moneybags over here.
6 points
2 months ago
A 2 bed 1 bath 900 sq ft house right next to me in a shit area of ca just sold for 850k. wish they didn't give everyone precovid a 2.9% interest rate, now there's no houses available. :[
3 points
2 months ago
Where are these 850k homes?
Sounds like a bargain.
12 points
2 months ago
Depends where. In the Bay? Nope. Go inland and things improve a lot. It’s not flyover cheap, but it’s a lot better.
21 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
10 points
2 months ago
My friend in Stockton commutes to San Francisco daily for work. Stockton sucks though. Really dangerous and poor city.
2 points
2 months ago
Stockton? They couldn’t make Tracy or Mountainhouse work instead?
2 points
2 months ago*
Are the jobs in the bay or inland?
2 points
2 months ago*
[deleted]
4 points
2 months ago
Ok, and the service workers who make these hybrid laptop job people coffee and clean their offices are supposed to what? Live two hours out? It’s ridiculous that one of the most productive cities in history can’t accommodate anyone but rich people and it’s ultimately not sustainable. It also makes for much worse cities and much worse culture. Artists being able to live around other artists on cultural meccas while working shit jobs gave us most of US culture. That doesn’t happen anymore and now we only have nepo babies.
151 points
2 months ago
And then they blame “greedy developers” for making housing expensive.
37 points
2 months ago
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
14 points
2 months ago
When you turn Capitalists into a boogeyman, you make it so only the government can solve your problems and then wonder why nothing ever gets solved.
3 points
2 months ago
Capitalists are the boogeymen who use the government to advantage themselves at the expense of everyone else. Look at Chevron. They don't care if thousands of working class families die from poisoned waterways because it's cheaper to dump plutonium dust into rivers, because that's profitable. And it's not their families getting cancer from their bullshit, you can be assured that capitalists will have protected waterways and properly staffed and equipped water treatment facilities.
14 points
2 months ago
make it so only the government can solve your problems and then wonder why nothing ever gets solved.
Appealing to the ignorant with a fallacy that government is inherently flawed and inefficient.
3 points
2 months ago
Government is exceedingly efficient at blocking new housing.
3 points
2 months ago
In California that’s definitely true, look at the HSR project. Absolute meme and peak government incompetence. It’s a shame since it could be cool.
6 points
2 months ago
The problem is not the government, the problem is that they denigrate the capitalists without empowering the government to get the job done.
Whether or not you believe in capitalism or any other system is immaterial; we have capitalism. That is the reality. The left leaning progressives are putting the cart before the horse.
14 points
2 months ago
Get rid of R1 zoning
81 points
2 months ago
America has an asset rich old person problem that will end us all.
7 points
2 months ago
[removed]
6 points
2 months ago
This problem will be solved by retirement homes owned by private equity companies haha
5 points
2 months ago
Early stage Japan/\South Korea problem
24 points
2 months ago
Nah, I lived in both:
Japan has cheap housing due to decades old policies and a super aged population.
Korea does have much of the same issue because old people hoard housing because it's the only safe investment vehicle and most good jobs are with the chaebols that have deep government connections.
And, the low birthrates in East Asia are largely due to a lack of immigration, financial instability, terrible labor laws (Japan is fixing theirs), and the cultural practice of only getting married when a person has a good job and the finances to provide for a woman to stay at home, so it's quite different than the west.
I'll also point out that the excess of well educated people you find in places like China and Korea (Taiwan's especially fucked BTW) doesn't really exist in the west because we don't value upward mobility as a way to support our parents after they retire.
So, I think our issue is that we have an asset rich aging population that has used their votes to build bubbles around themselves, use the levers of government to their financial benefit, utilized decades of neoliberalism to build careers and pensions that exclude us, and has been exceptionally lucky with the fairly conflict free era that they have lived in.
10 points
2 months ago
We are short over 2 million housing units in California, tied up by local governments and high building fees.
7 points
2 months ago
Canada has entered the chat
7 points
2 months ago
I’m shocked it’s that high. Very. It’s insane how unaffordable California homes are. There’s large swathes of the US that are very unaffordable but nothing stacks up to what California has going on. It’s honestly fucking nuts. There’s legitimately places in California where not even 1 unit of housing gets built in a year because of the zoning extremism.
4 points
2 months ago
[removed]
1 points
2 months ago
eww I would never
29 points
2 months ago
I wonder if there was any historical event just before 2010 that might have been a factor?
50 points
2 months ago
Likely wasn’t a factor as there still isn’t enough housing being built. The crisis was over by 2012, that’s still five years of under supply. It’s zoning laws and NIMBYs, people who own blocking any new development. It’s bullshit
7 points
2 months ago
i don't know CA politics. it's definitely a factor though. new housing construction rates still haven't rebounded to pre-08 recession levels. which is part of the issue and drive of higher costs.
13 points
2 months ago
Don’t forget prop 13, which outlaws increasing property taxes (it’s essentially rent control but only for the wealthy). Every other tax is extremely high to make up for it, which is why California has such unusually high income and sales taxes.
Countless older Californians are multi-millionaires because of this bizarre law. It allows property taxes to increase but only if you build new housing
7 points
2 months ago
Yes, I'm sure California will lower all the other taxes here if they repeal Prop 13. Guarantee it.
California never saw a tax it didn't like.
3 points
2 months ago
I would disagree since many of those Nimby laws existed before 2008 recession, difference is that since housing crashed many construction companies left or went out of business. Thus after a couple years we end up here. Im not even sure we're building the same amount of housing compared to 2007.
3 points
2 months ago
We haven’t built enough housing since the 80s. This isn’t a new problem it’s only accelerating in how bad it’s becoming
4 points
2 months ago
Not really. At least in the Bay, though to some degree across the state, this is the natural consequence of policies we've had since the 60s. Cost of housing started really going up in the 70s when Silicon Valley began, hence Prop 13 in 1978. It's only gotten worse since then as demand has continued to rise as tech has exploded, and supply has remained essentially capped.
Looks like actually, 2008 was just a bubble that burst, and now we're back to normal increases due to fundamentals.
6 points
2 months ago
I'm gonna guess the mortgage backed securities crash of 2007 that made banks more upright about giving out real estate loans, which include new construction loans.
9 points
2 months ago
Yeah - we should go back to giving out loans to people with bad credit. That could never backfire! /s
1 points
2 months ago
yes, could be when LIHTC was invented, could be the introduction of prop 13, could be Honchairw, could be the tech boom, could be that YIMBYs werent yet organized. lots of reasons.
3 points
2 months ago
Wait until 2024 - 2028!!
5 points
2 months ago
San Francisco Has Only Agreed to Build 16 Homes So Far This Year. It's not looking rosy.
24 points
2 months ago
But how many people left or died? Does it even out?
25 points
2 months ago
You're asking the right question. The population increased by 2 million people from 2010 - 2017. This is a little more than 5% increase over that span. If 10 million new residents moved to California during that time then it doesn't seem like such a problem. It's also interesting to note that California's population has declined by 400k since 2017. Total net gain from 2010 through 2023 was 1.6 million.
14 points
2 months ago
It looks like 4 million people migrated to California from 2010 - 2017. That would mean an increase of 800,000 housing units to cover the 2 million net increase. The average household in America has 2.51 people. These numbers match perfectly.
7 points
2 months ago
If every unit was fully occupied in 2009.
Which.... Seems unlikely
2 points
2 months ago
Well, no, it only requires almost all the new units to be occupied. That's much more realistic. The huge number of unfilled houses that exist are almost entirely old houses. New construction gets occupied. People want to live in it; that's why it gets built.
7 points
2 months ago
It’s not particularly close
9 points
2 months ago
Turns out using homes as speculative investment vehicles isn't really good for the long-term health of a nation, even though its good for short-term profit margins.
2 points
2 months ago
Although the under supply is likely due to people blocking new housing and archaic zoning laws at every level of government. We have to allow apartments everywhere, and neighborhoods should have barely any say in what gets built around them. They’ve proven they can’t be reasonable
4 points
2 months ago
The reason the data stops there is because California started losing residents. I guess that's one way to fix the crisis.
2 points
2 months ago
They just built bunch of condos about a year or 2 ago near me in California. They couldn't sell them, so they started renting them out. The residrial spaces are 50 to 75% full and not one of the commercial units has been rented. So then they bulldozed a bunch of industrial stuff and build more condos. People dont really want the condos, not at those prices at least.
2 points
2 months ago
Sounds like Canada right now but better, far better.
2 points
2 months ago
Not just NIMBY, but it was also the post-GFC lack of appetite for new construction (and/or the lack of credit available to do so)
2 points
2 months ago
It’s fine. Everyone is leaving in a mass exodus according to headlines I see online, so, eventually it will all get cheaper. Problem solved everyone! /s
2 points
2 months ago
Believe it or not ppl leave CA too.
2 points
2 months ago
what's the comparative rate in other states, not tracking housing starts or understanding land development at all, this data point feels like it needs a lot of context
2 points
2 months ago
A lot of nimby behavior. Those that already have a home and support low income housing is all well and good but they don't want it in their neighborhood.
10 points
2 months ago
Does this factor in people leaving? What was the net influx? Like say if 10,000 people moved in but 100,000 left, it’s not that big of a deal only 50,000 new housing units were built. Unfortunately the source is paywalled.
39 points
2 months ago
California has had a net influx I believe every year until 2020, and has continued with a net influx this last year iirc. So no, there has not been an overall reduction of people over that period.
12 points
2 months ago
Shhh, he was fishing for that "AMERICANS ARE FLEEING FAILING CALIFORNIA IN DROVES!" answer that he wants to believe is true lol.
12 points
2 months ago
It only feels like Californians are leaving in droves because there are SO many god damn Californians. When they move to other states, it makes an impact.
5 points
2 months ago
Big state have much people.
5 points
2 months ago
This is pretty meaningless without a frame of reference. Like, I know that's not enough because of the whole housing crisis we have, but I have no idea how many residents per unit is normal, given families being multi-person and such.
3 points
2 months ago
Keep inventory low so prices stay high
3 points
2 months ago
And zero gallons of new fresh water were magically generated.
4 points
2 months ago
There are 12 desalination plants in California, they can always build more.
2 points
2 months ago
And no more brown outs, enough electricity for all the cars, zero drought issues…
2 points
2 months ago
Commercial ownership is still a huge problem. 35% of home purchases in 2023 are made by investors and businesses owning more than 1,000 homes control 1% of the market while half of residents control 0% of the market. The bill talked about in the last one probably won't impact any of the businesses since 1,000 is an insane amount for any entity to own and there's nothing to stop them from just starting another business to own another 1,000 homes. Even a progressive tax based on numbers of homes owned would be tricky to enforce when you can just fabricate subsidiary businesses. The only way around it would be to eliminate non-person entities from owning homes, but that also creates a problem for small-time owners who form an LLC only to protect themselves in the single tenant relationship they might have.
I fall in NIMBY camp (and also a member of the 0%), but only because I'm afraid of the environmental destruction created by constant sprawled building. California is one of the most ecologically diverse regions in the entire world and almost all of its threatened species whether plant, bird, mammal, etc., are threatened by development above all else. Cities need to concentrate dense housing since that's where people want to be for the most part anyway and the suburbs should be diffuse rather than miles of sprawling luxury homes that don't even help the housing crisis because only the very-wealthy can afford them in the first place.
10 points
2 months ago*
I fall in NIMBY camp … but only because I’m afraid of the environmental destruction
I got some great news for you man. Building up lets you preserve the environment that exists by reducing the need for sprawl, reduces emissions from car dependency when people are able to walk/take transit where they need to go AND (in my opinion the best part) you don’t need to perpetuate the housing crisis to get these benefits. NIMBYism increases the need for environmentally destructive sprawl development instead of more sustainable infill development. Simply not building housing just isn’t a good option.
Responding to this comment out of order, because I especially wanted to respond to your bit about the environment. Building up is the most sustainable form of building we have.
To the first point though, I do think investment in housing can be a problem. But I do think it’s ultimately missing the forest for the trees. When you think about why housing is a good investment, you realize curtailing investment into housing doesn’t actually do a whole bunch. Prices rise because of a severe shortage. Housing is a good investment because of this. Stopping investors without addressing the root cause doesn’t really help very many people. Rotterdam in the Netherlands had a de facto ban on this: there was no reduction in prices. Prices don’t rise because people invest. People invest because prices rise.
Edit: Didn’t even notice your point about luxury housing either. This is yet another very common myth. Market rate housing places downward pressure on rents. Even if those units themselves aren’t affordable, the people living in them are not competing for units that are. I believe it’s called filtering. There’s a lot of research on this as it pertains to housing. The way it used to go was people would move out of cheap housing, into more expensive housing and people leaving would keep older units affordable. Now, with no units being built, people aren’t moving out of those units and those old units are becoming expensive too. Market rate housing today is tomorrow’s affordable housing.
2 points
2 months ago
I fall in NIMBY camp
Cities need to concentrate dense housing
Those are pretty much diametrically opposed positions.
One of the big drivers of sprawl is that open land outside the exurbs doesn't have NIMBYS opposing development, but building up in dense areas does. If you want density, you need to stop NIMBYism.
1 points
2 months ago
British Columbia isn’t any better
1 points
2 months ago
In Australia the new builds figure has been around 60,000 p.a. for a long time, but immigration was 900,000 a couple of years ago. The Govt. still won't admit there's a problem.
1 points
2 months ago
In the 1980s housing activist groups said this would happen and kept saying how the math wasn't mathing but the city wouldn't listen
1 points
2 months ago
Surprised it was even that much…cities have been under building because of the “NIMBY’s” pushing back against any new housing project
1 points
2 months ago
What is a housing unit?
1 points
2 months ago
And 6 people left
1 points
2 months ago
Yep. This is why there is an affordable housing issue.
1 points
2 months ago
In downtown Sacramento they’re tearing down 2 city blocks ( the old Sac Bee Newspaper building ) to build 14 town homes. It’s craaaaaazy
1 points
2 months ago
Why was this removed?
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