Recent decades suggest that, with a bit of strategy, backlash from curtailing economic protections for working people can easily be minimized to spiraling debt, homelessness, addiction, and suicide, in that order. No biggie.
Now how can we get rid of nimby rule? Local governments have way too much influence on development, for better or worse.
Perhaps sufficiently large development proposals must be entertained by the entire city or town rather than being unilaterally decided by a board - that seems like a sufficient compromise (at the expense of speed, but development is slow anyway given the appeals).
Of course that’s not a perfect solution either since there are towns in which home ownership rate is almost 100% and thus they would be most incentivized to not allow any development even if they all voted at the expense of the neighbors shouldering the development burden.
That's really not true. Rent control has been shown multiple times to actually work in reducing prices, and when quantitative welfare analysis in whether the drop in mobility is worth the drop in prices are done, it's often found to be worth it. There are of course ways to do rent control that are better or worse, some of which may indeed be generally counterproductive, and everyone agrees that it can't solve the problem by itself.
Economics is not even close to being sufficiently precise for you to be able to reason through any appreciable problem from first principles.
Rent control works for some people (e.g. those already living in rent controlled apartments). It also tends to suppress long term supply and improvement of existing supply, and that hurts other people in less visible ways (e.g. people who would have moved into new housing which was never built due to supply suppression, or residents of rent-controlled buildings which gradually fall into disrepair).
In general, we should be skeptical of any policy where those helped are obvious and those harmed are non-obvious or distributed through time and space.
See, that's what I mean about sensible applications of rent control. Having a small class of rent controlled appartements is silly and it's not something you ever want to do, it's only ever a terrible compromise between politicians and landlords that everyone knows is a bad idea.
It doesn't suppress supply when building is already wildly profitable and is just being slowed down by permitting either.
The negative impacts of rent control have been the subject of literally hundreds of empirical studies. It's a known quantity at this point and, when you quantify the impact, it's generally worth it, especially in our current zoning hell. It also helps with price stickiness once supply does increase : as you know, developpers only like to build upmarket appartements, which typically take a decade or more to trickle down to the average person.
The main thing is not to do silly things like only apply rent control to a small portion of appartements, we know it doesn't work, and to allow rent to increase with any reasonably incurred costs. This way you actually incentivize landlords to repair their apartments, you reduce the mobility risk, etc...
Non-market housing is basically rent controlled and very productive. I'd say it's the most productive rent control as if you get enough of it (30-40%), the market almost align to non-market housing and landlords have to compete on housing quality.
Just have sf associations build non-market housing. En masse.
Yes, if you want to address the issue. Whether you should is another question. That is what the higher levels of government do. When the majority of citizens need something, you essentially use threat of violence to take it by force. You will never fix the "nimby problem" any other way.
> When the majority of citizens need something, you essentially use threat of violence to take it by force.
Basically a rehash of colonialism (or something that rhymes with it). We want a resource that the existing people on the land (NIMBYs, this time) have, so we'll take it using force.
It certainly rhymes with how we’ve done things in the past. And there's even a nifty phrase for it - the tyranny of the majority.
And I've gotta ask... why do we "need" these specific parcels of land? Especially in a time where so much work can be done from anywhere in the US. There's plenty of land, why are we so eager to use force to take these highly specific parcels?
Local governments have finite power given to them by state and federal government. So, the argument is more that state and federal government should actually exercise their authority to fix the underlying problem.
Abstractly hyper local optimization is suboptimal.
All governments get their power from the people who they serve. As soon as they do not serve the interests of the people the represent they should be dissolved. Local government gets its power from the local people and no one else.
Most obviously their form and powers vary based on the state.
Several hundred years of court cases make there limits clear. Local governments regularly get overridden on all kinds of things.
Local governments are also completely dependent on outside help for all kinds of things. It’s common for them to even lack local police forces let alone a court system. Outliers like major cities seem extremely powerful, but for the most part they have similar powers to HOA’s.
PS: As to getting authority from the governed… Some let people outside the area vote, and a few that give corporations a say.
The Tenth Amendment, for whatever it's worth, talks about federal and state governments. Local governments: city, town, village, county, etc., are creatures of their state and wholely subordinate.
You may be misinterpreting how “nor” is used in the sentence.
The 10th makes it clear the constitution gives the federal government specific powers which means those specified powers aren’t available to the states or local governments.
The first draft is a little easier to understand: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” (Which is not) can be flipped to the front so -> “Those powers given to the United States are its alone, all other powers not specifically listed are retained by the States.”
Both versions makes it clear states are losing some power, but they are given a little spin to make it less obvious.
I think he’s proposing urban dekulakization, so presumably the dispossession and redistribution would be enforced at the national level or at least by state level authorities.
Gotta keep an eye on those totally-not-made-up-for-political-purposes kulaks. First, they'll want to keep all* of the grain they grow, next their homes. Such selfish people.
California basically did this[1]. Sadly though the desirable coastal areas are literally full and all spoken for and even without any real zoning anymore there’s nowhere to actually build. So you’re gonna need to eminent domain some Malibu mansions to make room for the non stop line of 1+5s from LA to SF.
It’s also interesting to me how many people propose increasing supply when there is nowhere to build, but can’t even think about reducing demand, say by reducing the all time record in migration. But that’s literally crimethink.
Sure the USA has a ton of empty space. But guess what, that’s because most people don’t want to live in those places. And the places where people do want to live like waterfront cities are geographically full.
As someone who also lives in California, can you point out the parts of the state where there's nowhere left to build? It certainly isn't any of the places I've lived (Beverly hills, SF, East Bay), each of which has seen significant commercial redevelopment in my lifetime. None of them are dense by global standards either. SF only has 25% the population density of Paris, for example.
Anyone who does this will get unelected in the next election, so that’s where the lack of will comes from. You have to sell these ideas to the people first somehow, the politicians aren’t going to commit political suicide to enact them, we are really problem.
You know why the local government is the best government? It's the government I can fire through voting. If the state had more power my votes would also have more power to change my community.
I don't mean to imply abolishing the federal government in favor of local government. Just a redistribution of power that favors the local government more than the current status quo.
Typical issue of why you vote at all. Your influence to the result drop significantly from your town meeting, to local to state to federal. Obviously you cannot just have local gov otherwise it is impossible to coordinate some project. But some issues are better local.
The problem is which is which and if conflict how to resolve them. Not sure there is an answer.
I think the point is local government is more accountable to its citizens than state or national governments and therefore removing something inherently local from its purview, like land planning, would be stupid.
Rent control is a limit on margins. That makes it a declaration that builders can only scale up profits on volume, which is what is necessary anyway in regions that are largely built out but still massively short of supply. Which means that it’s aligned with the goals and even predicted dynamics to the point where it’s little more than a formalized constraint.
Complaining about it is basically an admission that either other more important factors are keeping supply from happening or that the purported market benefits if/when it does might not be real.
Quite possibly both. As far as I can tell even when there are no obstacles the market isn’t interested in adding supply to the point of diminishing marginal returns, and unit prices do not fall on supply movement, only demand drops.
This is the natural consequence of Citizen United (such a dishonest name). When those with money is allowed to leverage their wealth to disproportionately affect legal proceedings and lawmaking, it is just a step towards dystopia.
Capitalism is a monetary policy, not a form of government. In the US, it is becoming a form of government to the detriment of democracy. When people cannot voice their opinion through voting, it tends to end badly.
Here’s hoping the rich folks figure that out before it’s too late to solve with democracy.
> Capitalism is a monetary policy, not a form of government.
Capitalism is a mode of social relations that monetary policy is downstream from. Remember capitalism was established as dominant by way of revolution. Capitalism and democracy fundamentally contradict one another from the outset, but democracy was capitalism's path to victory. The contradiction still remains.
If you don't bother to mention how they attained the capital, you could be describing feudalism as well!
Realize the most important aspect of capitalism is the ability to accumulate capital, to a fundamentally infinite end because any limits will be overturned by the controllers of the capital.
There are a lot of problems with lobbying but in this case I don’t see the relevance. With sufficient appeals any case could theoretically be taken to the Supreme Court.
Citizen United is bad but this has nothing to do with it.
It's just a lawsuit against NY that the plaintiffs hope to get in front of Supreme Court and win there.
The article insinuates there's lobbying involved but it's mum on the details i.e. what exactly they are spending money on given that it'll be decided by 9 judges.
Furthermore, I believe Citizen United is specifically about spending money on political candidates and whatever lobbying this is, it's not that.
My question is, how can the case be at the Supreme court level already? What about New Yorks's Supreme courts. What were the results of trying it locally? And why would the Supreme Court of the United States pass any ruling other than, "states can decide for themselves whether they want to use rent control or not", since that was the same argument they used for Abortion?
Watch us get the worst of all world policy, keep restrictive zoning so the housing supply remains low but eliminate rent control so the demand translates directly to higher landlord profits.
Landlords -> lobbyists of large real estate investment corporations. One of the biggest social crimes is enabling housing ownership companies to become large investment vehicles.
Good. People think rent control helps poor and middle class people find a good place to live, and punishes those evil, evil landlords. What it does in practice is discourage building new housing, and encourages evil, evil landlords to convert existing housing into condos they can sell. It drives people out of the city.
Why your friends get cheap rents and not my friends who would also like to have cheap apartments in SF?
How is it fair that everyone who doesn't have rent controlled apartment is paying more for their apt than they otherwise would, as dictated by supply-demand 101.
How is it fair that a private entity (a landlord) subsidies another private entity (renter) under threat of government violence?
In any other business context (e.g. selling cars) such rules would be beyond the pale.
Can you imagine the government telling Ford that if a buyer meets some criteria Ford has to sell them F-150 at 40% discount? It sounds absurd but this is what rent control is.
Yeah, I can, because the flip side of this is that they're already marking up the ford 250%, so when they take the 40% of the new total off they're just getting their normal margins and not their vastly inflated ones that they get to pawn off on others in the name of "ford price control", and everyone else pays those higher prices thinking, "Well, if that guy can afford it, I must be able to also..."
Rent control is a two-edged sword. Does some good, does some bad.
Not much is said, but globalism, facilitated by the internet, is a factor driving up house prices. In Vancouver, Canada, they built a lot of condos but the majority of the stock was bought up by overseas residents. In many cases the condos weren't even advertised for sale in Vancouver for locals to buy.
The internet has made it easier for investors to obtain information about potential "investment" properties.
If you are going to build more homes you need to make them available to locals only. I'm sure present (globalist) trade treaties forbid such things.
Another possible solution is for the government to build rent to own housing at an affordable price. That's effectively public housing which has its problems too. Also, I suspect there are trade treaties that prevent that from happening too.
In a lot of cases rent control doesn’t even apply to new housing, and even where it might it’s effectively a declaration that profit is allowed on volume more than margins, so it’s pro-density.
You can ruin that with zoning, of course. But rent control isn’t the anti-supply force in that scenario.
Unpopular opinion: rent controls should be used only in times of drastic changes in housing supply or demand, and have short time limits equal to what it would take to resolve a housing crisis. Sudden change in demand or natural disaster destroys 20% of housing stock: 3-5 years of rent control. Otherwise we are just using politics to torque the market, "taking" capital from owners/landlords, and generating non-market incentives for renters. (see: master tenants, secret sub-leases, etc.)
Rent controls should be part of development deals.
Imposing them post-development distorts the market and causes weird side effects (people refusing to move even when they “should”, illegal subletting, etc).
But by the same token, proceeds from rent should be taxed at the full land value of property, so that the only profit from rent is from improvements. The tax proceeds should then be used to subsidize rent, if necessary.
In general for something to be optimal supply must meet demand. Usually if demand is high supply will eventually follow. Demand for construction (creating supply) is there, but for reasons we don’t need to get into, it’s not allowed.
So affordable housing is throwing the relative poor a bone, but the thing is those mandates change profit margins if the non-affordable housing cannot effectively eat the cost, changing the demand for construction.
Man they're really hammering away at this "billionaire benefactor" line, as if the public debate on this topic is over and national consensus has been reached, as if this whole narrative wasn't contrived in the last 6 months.
The article doesn't go into detail about the claims of the plaintiffs (called "lobbyists" as if the court can he lobbied), I wonder why. I really want to know what their constitutional argument is, because I don't see rent control by states and cities being unconstitutional. Unfortunately this article is devoid of substance and is just a propaganda piece to normalize the "billionaire benefactor" narrative.
Not gonna lie... Pro-renter policies in my state definitely dissuade me from renting. It's scary to think you might not be able to get your house back from a dishonest renter without going to hell and back.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadNow how can we get rid of nimby rule? Local governments have way too much influence on development, for better or worse.
Perhaps sufficiently large development proposals must be entertained by the entire city or town rather than being unilaterally decided by a board - that seems like a sufficient compromise (at the expense of speed, but development is slow anyway given the appeals).
Of course that’s not a perfect solution either since there are towns in which home ownership rate is almost 100% and thus they would be most incentivized to not allow any development even if they all voted at the expense of the neighbors shouldering the development burden.
A revision would make more sense, but treating it like a black and white issue is disingenuous.
More basic issues clearly need to be addressed before politicians can repeal rent control and still get reelected.
Economics is not even close to being sufficiently precise for you to be able to reason through any appreciable problem from first principles.
In general, we should be skeptical of any policy where those helped are obvious and those harmed are non-obvious or distributed through time and space.
It doesn't suppress supply when building is already wildly profitable and is just being slowed down by permitting either.
The negative impacts of rent control have been the subject of literally hundreds of empirical studies. It's a known quantity at this point and, when you quantify the impact, it's generally worth it, especially in our current zoning hell. It also helps with price stickiness once supply does increase : as you know, developpers only like to build upmarket appartements, which typically take a decade or more to trickle down to the average person.
The main thing is not to do silly things like only apply rent control to a small portion of appartements, we know it doesn't work, and to allow rent to increase with any reasonably incurred costs. This way you actually incentivize landlords to repair their apartments, you reduce the mobility risk, etc...
Just have sf associations build non-market housing. En masse.
Basically a rehash of colonialism (or something that rhymes with it). We want a resource that the existing people on the land (NIMBYs, this time) have, so we'll take it using force.
It certainly rhymes with how we’ve done things in the past. And there's even a nifty phrase for it - the tyranny of the majority.
And I've gotta ask... why do we "need" these specific parcels of land? Especially in a time where so much work can be done from anywhere in the US. There's plenty of land, why are we so eager to use force to take these highly specific parcels?
Abstractly hyper local optimization is suboptimal.
All governments get their power from the people who they serve. As soon as they do not serve the interests of the people the represent they should be dissolved. Local government gets its power from the local people and no one else.
Most obviously their form and powers vary based on the state.
Several hundred years of court cases make there limits clear. Local governments regularly get overridden on all kinds of things.
Local governments are also completely dependent on outside help for all kinds of things. It’s common for them to even lack local police forces let alone a court system. Outliers like major cities seem extremely powerful, but for the most part they have similar powers to HOA’s.
PS: As to getting authority from the governed… Some let people outside the area vote, and a few that give corporations a say.
I know it's out of fashion, but the Tenth Amendment appears to say otherwise.
The 10th makes it clear the constitution gives the federal government specific powers which means those specified powers aren’t available to the states or local governments.
The first draft is a little easier to understand: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” (Which is not) can be flipped to the front so -> “Those powers given to the United States are its alone, all other powers not specifically listed are retained by the States.”
Both versions makes it clear states are losing some power, but they are given a little spin to make it less obvious.
> You must use the government to essentially take land and repurpose it.
Which government? In your first sentence we removed land planning from the local government.
* - enough to eat, anyway.
It’s also interesting to me how many people propose increasing supply when there is nowhere to build, but can’t even think about reducing demand, say by reducing the all time record in migration. But that’s literally crimethink.
Sure the USA has a ton of empty space. But guess what, that’s because most people don’t want to live in those places. And the places where people do want to live like waterfront cities are geographically full.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-09-17/wh...
Until it’s Kolowoon Walled City from Tijuana to Oregon it’s not enough!
- "use the government to essentially take land and repurpose it"
These are third world tactics.
I don't mean to imply abolishing the federal government in favor of local government. Just a redistribution of power that favors the local government more than the current status quo.
The problem is which is which and if conflict how to resolve them. Not sure there is an answer.
If the entire nation votes on it, the solution will be “send them all to California”.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
Complaining about it is basically an admission that either other more important factors are keeping supply from happening or that the purported market benefits if/when it does might not be real.
Quite possibly both. As far as I can tell even when there are no obstacles the market isn’t interested in adding supply to the point of diminishing marginal returns, and unit prices do not fall on supply movement, only demand drops.
Here’s hoping the rich folks figure that out before it’s too late to solve with democracy.
Capitalism is a mode of social relations that monetary policy is downstream from. Remember capitalism was established as dominant by way of revolution. Capitalism and democracy fundamentally contradict one another from the outset, but democracy was capitalism's path to victory. The contradiction still remains.
Realize the most important aspect of capitalism is the ability to accumulate capital, to a fundamentally infinite end because any limits will be overturned by the controllers of the capital.
It’s not like you can pay to skip the process.
It's just a lawsuit against NY that the plaintiffs hope to get in front of Supreme Court and win there.
The article insinuates there's lobbying involved but it's mum on the details i.e. what exactly they are spending money on given that it'll be decided by 9 judges.
Furthermore, I believe Citizen United is specifically about spending money on political candidates and whatever lobbying this is, it's not that.
Why your friends get cheap rents and not my friends who would also like to have cheap apartments in SF?
How is it fair that everyone who doesn't have rent controlled apartment is paying more for their apt than they otherwise would, as dictated by supply-demand 101.
How is it fair that a private entity (a landlord) subsidies another private entity (renter) under threat of government violence?
In any other business context (e.g. selling cars) such rules would be beyond the pale.
Can you imagine the government telling Ford that if a buyer meets some criteria Ford has to sell them F-150 at 40% discount? It sounds absurd but this is what rent control is.
Not much is said, but globalism, facilitated by the internet, is a factor driving up house prices. In Vancouver, Canada, they built a lot of condos but the majority of the stock was bought up by overseas residents. In many cases the condos weren't even advertised for sale in Vancouver for locals to buy.
The internet has made it easier for investors to obtain information about potential "investment" properties.
If you are going to build more homes you need to make them available to locals only. I'm sure present (globalist) trade treaties forbid such things.
Another possible solution is for the government to build rent to own housing at an affordable price. That's effectively public housing which has its problems too. Also, I suspect there are trade treaties that prevent that from happening too.
You can ruin that with zoning, of course. But rent control isn’t the anti-supply force in that scenario.
Imposing them post-development distorts the market and causes weird side effects (people refusing to move even when they “should”, illegal subletting, etc).
But by the same token, proceeds from rent should be taxed at the full land value of property, so that the only profit from rent is from improvements. The tax proceeds should then be used to subsidize rent, if necessary.
In general for something to be optimal supply must meet demand. Usually if demand is high supply will eventually follow. Demand for construction (creating supply) is there, but for reasons we don’t need to get into, it’s not allowed.
So affordable housing is throwing the relative poor a bone, but the thing is those mandates change profit margins if the non-affordable housing cannot effectively eat the cost, changing the demand for construction.
The article doesn't go into detail about the claims of the plaintiffs (called "lobbyists" as if the court can he lobbied), I wonder why. I really want to know what their constitutional argument is, because I don't see rent control by states and cities being unconstitutional. Unfortunately this article is devoid of substance and is just a propaganda piece to normalize the "billionaire benefactor" narrative.