Affordable Housing - an article Financial Times

[t-bob]

An article in today's Financial Times sums up the housing crisis worldwide. Written by Aime Williams, it shows that people from London, San Francisco to Sydney are becoming aware that builders and politicians are fooling them over local control and affordable housing. The article notes that where builders have convinced politicians to degrade local input on the promise of affordable housing, none is build eventually. The problem there is that no one is responsible for enforcing affordable housing on builders. Only though local zoning and initiative can builders be forced to produce affordable units. So ironically, by removing local control builders are freer to produce market rate and luxury housing!
article can be read at: housingft.jpg

This is very difficult for me. This Bay Area and Marin County. I’m looking either for a Mexico or another part of California or other states.

[Marshall]

The profit margin is much slimmer on affordable housing. And government already puts so much burden on a builder with codes and regulations and inspections, that anyone in construction is incented to go big. I'm not berating codes. They serve a good purpose. But the largest cost factor in America is not materials. It's labor. And it takes almost as much labor to build a small project as it does a big one. Affordable is hard to come by.

It's a vicious circle.

[brucemacneill]

Bob, if you want affordable stuff you'l have to move to a Red state but you won't like it much. My formerly Red state of Va. has gone Purple and now a full 50% of the population in my county gets Medicaid. I guess that's affordable but of course it just means they get Welfare paid for by someone else. Affordable housing has to be subsidized, meaning Welfare paid for by someone else. It's the Communist way, which is why they go bankrupt.

[fauxmaha]

Environmental activist Mike Shellenberger has an interesting take on this:

In the 2013 science fiction film, “Elysium,” the rich have fled to a luxury satellite orbiting Earth while the poor toil in dangerous conditions below. Life in California today differs in degree, not in kind, from that dystopian vision.

Homeless encampments of hundreds of people have cropped up around the state in the last two years. Occasionally, they are ravaged by hepatitis A, which killed 20 people last year. In Silicon Valley, 132 people died on the street in 2016 — up from 85 in 2015. In San Diego, 117 people died, up from 56.

Last year, San Diego city workers nearly killed a homeless person after accidentally throwing her and the tent she was sleeping in into the back of garbage truck. She escaped just seconds before being crushed by the trash compactor.

Meanwhile, inside comfortable homes perched atop Berkeley and Beverly Hills, affluent progressives condemn the cruelty of the Trump administration toward the poor.

...

The biggest difference between “Elysium” the movie and present-day California is that in the real-world version, Elysium’s residents believe they are progressive.

How do they maintain that fiction, which is more detached from reality than “Elysium” the movie? By living in a fantasy world where California is leading the world in saving the environment and fighting racism.

But in saving the environment, California progressives increased electricity rates, hurt manufacturing, and allowed carbon emissions to rise even while they declined in the rest of the U.S.

And in vigorously protecting the right of their low-wage foreign servant class to remain in California while denying everybody, including them, affordable shelter, progressives aren’t being generous, they’re being selfish.

Nobody wants to talk about it, but the truth is that California’s liberal immigration laws have been good for the progressive residents of Elysium. They benefit directly from the downward pressure that low-skill immigrants put on the wages for restaurant workers, cleaners, gardeners, and drivers.

The outcome of all of these supposedly progressive policies is the most racially unequal society in the whole of the United States. After decades of progressives congratulating themselves on their anti-racism, low-wage workers — who are disproportionately people of color — today suffer the brunt of the state's housing, tax, and regulatory policies.

[Marshall]

WOW, that is good !

[RickW]

There is no great solution in a capitalist society for affordable housing. No I’m not espousing dropping capitalism. I live in one of the most heavily affected areas of North America when it comes to housing costs. It’s mind boggling what has happened to real estate prices here. Normal wages can no longer buy an apartment in Vancouver proper, and where we live, out in the burbs, houses are closing in on a million dollars.

What is happening here is what has happened in a lot of places. People don’t own, they live in small footprints, or they just get forced out. And what can be done? I really don’t kinow; once prices start to rise, speculation hits, and then people from everywhere are flipping houses to make money, driving the prices to insane heights.

The one thing I would consider is what Mexico did years ago; it’s really hard for foreigners to buy property. Here the speculation that it’s all foreign buyers causing the problem is rampant, and there is a certain amount of truth to it; they have added a foreign buyers tax. We also have put an “empty” house tax on places that are not currently lived in. Doesn’t seem to have slowed it down.

My children will not be able to afford to live here. It’s crazy, but I’m not sure how you get out of it.

[Russell Letson]

It's not just rich foreign buyers. In 1989, when we spent a term in England, we heard stories about Londoners showing up in York and bidding up the housing market--they'd bring attache cases full of cash and make offers way over local market prices. Turns out the combination of the high-speed train from London and their enormous financial-sector earnings made it attractive to buy a house in York and commute to the Smoke. As a result, many locals could no longer afford to buy a home.

I don't know how one counters such raw market power. Zoning efforts discouraging empty-house ownership are going to be vigorously opposed by real-estate speculators, just as attempts to keep farmland from getting gobbled up by developers never seem to work. (Different dynamics between the two, I know.)

Certainly real-estate-as-flipping-investment (or -money-laundering mechanism) in cities like New York and London is one of the forces pricing out ordinary people (which in those cities might include dermatologists and sub-partnership lawyers as well as baristas and construction workers)out of the housing market.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Here's the deal.

When you are out in the ocean surfing, and a big wave comes, you either ride the wave, or you don't ride the wave, complaints about the size and shape of the wave don't do a lot of good. The ocean is bigger than you.

Mike

[mnhermit]

Generally, if you want affordable housing you have to go where no one else wants to be. Used to be fairly cheap to live in Dickinson, ND, but when the oil boom happened, it wasn't. There probably aren't going to be amenities like excellent health care, or corner drug dealers in those places, probably no public transportation, no food banks. And the neighbors may be nosy. And there probably aren't any jobs.

Just too many d@%m people.😀

[t-bob]

Dennis, you said "there's much damn people" I saw an article that read .....In 30 years about 30 billion people in world...... Too many many people anyway

[timfarney]

Jun 15, 2018 10:38:22 GMT -5 fauxmaha said:

Environmental activist Mike Shellenberger has an interesting take on this:

In the 2013 science fiction film, “Elysium,” the rich have fled to a luxury satellite orbiting Earth while the poor toil in dangerous conditions below. Life in California today differs in degree, not in kind, from that dystopian vision.

Homeless encampments of hundreds of people have cropped up around the state in the last two years. Occasionally, they are ravaged by hepatitis A, which killed 20 people last year. In Silicon Valley, 132 people died on the street in 2016 — up from 85 in 2015. In San Diego, 117 people died, up from 56.

Last year, San Diego city workers nearly killed a homeless person after accidentally throwing her and the tent she was sleeping in into the back of garbage truck. She escaped just seconds before being crushed by the trash compactor.

Meanwhile, inside comfortable homes perched atop Berkeley and Beverly Hills, affluent progressives condemn the cruelty of the Trump administration toward the poor.

...

The biggest difference between “Elysium” the movie and present-day California is that in the real-world version, Elysium’s residents believe they are progressive.

How do they maintain that fiction, which is more detached from reality than “Elysium” the movie? By living in a fantasy world where California is leading the world in saving the environment and fighting racism.

But in saving the environment, California progressives increased electricity rates, hurt manufacturing, and allowed carbon emissions to rise even while they declined in the rest of the U.S.

And in vigorously protecting the right of their low-wage foreign servant class to remain in California while denying everybody, including them, affordable shelter, progressives aren’t being generous, they’re being selfish.

Nobody wants to talk about it, but the truth is that California’s liberal immigration laws have been good for the progressive residents of Elysium. They benefit directly from the downward pressure that low-skill immigrants put on the wages for restaurant workers, cleaners, gardeners, and drivers.

The outcome of all of these supposedly progressive policies is the most racially unequal society in the whole of the United States. After decades of progressives congratulating themselves on their anti-racism, low-wage workers — who are disproportionately people of color — today suffer the brunt of the state's housing, tax, and regulatory policies.

Yeah. Then again, it’s not “progressives,” whatever that means, who have been holding the minimum wage below living wage standards for decades, and complaining about “welfare” while aid programs supplemented the labor costs of low-wage industries by keeping their grossly underpaid employees from sinking into hunger and homelessness. There’s plenty of duplicity to go around.

[fauxmaha]

Jun 17, 2018 7:09:34 GMT -5 timfarney said:

Yeah. Then again, it’s not “progressives,” whatever that means, who have been holding the minimum wage below living wage standards for decades, and complaining about “welfare” while aid programs supplemented the labor costs of low-wage industries by keeping their grossly underpaid employees from sinking into hunger and homelessness. There’s plenty of duplicity to go around.

There's nothing stopping California, or municipalities therein, from setting it's minimum wage however high it wishes.

[Russell Letson]

Minimum-wage standards, like air-quality standards, are most effectively addressed above the local-government level. (That's aside from any political counter-pressures.) Same goes for other anti-labor pathologies gathered under the cunning label of "right to work" laws.

Shellenberger's tagging "progressives" is some interesting lefter-than-thou jiu-jitsu--and I wonder to what effect, when he gets cited by Jeff. He might as well call them "limousine liberals."

[timfarney]

Jun 17, 2018 9:02:58 GMT -5 fauxmaha said:

Jun 17, 2018 7:09:34 GMT -5 timfarney said:

Yeah. Then again, it’s not “progressives,” whatever that means, who have been holding the minimum wage below living wage standards for decades, and complaining about “welfare” while aid programs supplemented the labor costs of low-wage industries by keeping their grossly underpaid employees from sinking into hunger and homelessness. There’s plenty of duplicity to go around.

There's nothing stopping California, or municipalities therein, from setting it's minimum wage however high it wishes.

Nothing but conservative politicians.

[fauxmaha]

Jun 17, 2018 21:55:52 GMT -5 timfarney said:

Jun 17, 2018 9:02:58 GMT -5 fauxmaha said:

There's nothing stopping California, or municipalities therein, from setting it's minimum wage however high it wishes.

Nothing but conservative politicians.

California Democrats hold a greater than 2:1 advantage in the State Assembly, almost a 2:1 advantage in the State Senate, in addition to every statewide elected office.

[jdd2]

Remember when california was solid republican? Nixon and Reagan both retired there.

From the 50s up until clinton, CA's electoral college votes went to the republicans. That it would eventually be so solidly democratic was once unthinkable.

(of course the changes in CA could be the model for what's happening elsewhere in the US)

[aquaduct]

Jun 17, 2018 21:55:52 GMT -5 timfarney said:

Jun 17, 2018 9:02:58 GMT -5 fauxmaha said:

There's nothing stopping California, or municipalities therein, from setting it's minimum wage however high it wishes.

Nothing but conservative politicians.

Really? Name one.

[aquaduct]

Jun 18, 2018 2:31:31 GMT -5 jdd2 said:

Remember when california was solid republican? Nixon and Reagan both retired there.

From the 50s up until clinton, CA's electoral college votes went to the republicans. That it would eventually be so solidly democratic was once unthinkable.

(of course the changes in CA could be the model for what's happening elsewhere in the US)

They've become so solidly Democratic they've gotten a referendum on the ballot to split into 3 states.

Yeah, everybody wants to be just like California. Right.

[theevan]

Jun 17, 2018 9:52:09 GMT -5 Russell Letson said:

Minimum-wage standards, like air-quality standards, are most effectively addressed above the local-government level. (That's aside from any political counter-pressures.) Same goes for other anti-labor pathologies gathered under the cunning label of "right to work" laws.

Shellenberger's tagging "progressives" is some interesting lefter-than-thou jiu-jitsu--and I wonder to what effect, when he gets cited by Jeff. He might as well call them "limousine liberals."

How cunning of you to label them "anti-labor pathologies".

High paid workers in Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, South Carolina, et. al. are loving that pathology.

[millring]

What should set minimum wage? What should it be? How should it be determined?