Comment by stego-tech

Comment by stego-tech 2 days ago

Populist rent control is an excellent motivator to get counter-parties to the table to discuss productive alternatives in a market where no outside pressure currently exists.

There is no silver bullet solution. Rent control can be a big part of that solution, but what’s ultimately needed are a combination of policies that disincentivize the hoarding of housing as an asset class, promote home ownership itself for stability and community rather than fiscal nest egg, mandate denser housing in areas served by mass transit, tax land properly by removing caps on yearly increases, protect renters from unnecessary evictions (lack of renewals, no-fault evictions, etc), removing zoning laws on residential and commercial space (essentially reducing zoning laws to industrial vs non-industrial) to speed up approvals for construction, and get the government more active in meeting the needs of its populace through public housing programs (like Singapore does).

It’s highly complex and nuanced. I’ve long since stopped entertaining smug clapbacks from armchair economists who aren’t involved in the boots-on-the-ground issues at hand, and you shouldn’t parrot them around for them.

creato 2 days ago

> Populist rent control is an excellent motivator to get counter-parties to the table to discuss productive alternatives in a market where no outside pressure currently exists.

This makes no sense, the battle is ultimately between renters and owners of low density housing. Those owners don't care about rent control, they only care about zoning disallowing construction of new rentals. If anything, they're probably happy to see rent control if it means the pressure on cities to upzone is removed.

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crooked-v 2 days ago

It's not actually that complex, as can be seen in Austin: just actually build enough and prices will go down even as population numbers go up. Most US cities have just spent decades doing absolutely everything except actually allow housing to be built.

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stego-tech 2 days ago

All things being equal - commuting times, service access, property availability, environmental impacts, education quality, economic stability - then yes, the solution is “easy” in that we “just need to build more housing”.
Once any of those multitude of variables aren’t equal, however, the market can and will exploit it. This is the reason why the housing crisis is global, but the solutions are variable. In New England for instance, there’s a glut of available property currently being hoarded and vacant as an investment hedge, because we have no more land to expand onto. Combined with vacant towns that were former industrial hubs, and there’s an awful lot of available real estate to be clawed back for better use - except markets have been tailored to specifically promote a hoard-and-hedge strategy that harms the working classes (renters and homeowners both), and keeps depressed communities from rebounding. Remote work had a real shot of revitalizing those towns and shattering the vice grip of Capital on land or housing through the relocation of workers to cheaper markets, but the RTO mandate essentially amplified existing crises that much more and robbed them of the chance to rebound.
So no, it’s not as easy as building more housing, it’s also about ensuring those who need housing get access to it first, rather than those who simply seek to extract rent or hold it as an investment hedge.
Again, there’s no silver bullet to this problem.

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- crooked-v 2 days ago
  
  New England has vacancy rates noticeably under the national average (https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/USHMC/reg//NewEng...). There's no 'glut' being 'hoarded'.
  
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  bpt3 2 days ago
  
  I think creating a permanent world peace would be easier than convincing progressives to give up their tired, inaccurate housing market tropes.
  It is impossible to have a constructive conversation with people who refuse to accept basic facts, and I don't think they have any idea how counterproductive it is.
  
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