When your retirement is dependent upon extracting 30 years of equity appreciation from your primary residence, *anything* that threatens the value of your home is a threat to your personal material well being.
Average Joe American homeowners want and need housing scarcity because they very often have nothing else. So resistance to new bui…
When your retirement is dependent upon extracting 30 years of equity appreciation from your primary residence, *anything* that threatens the value of your home is a threat to your personal material well being.
Average Joe American homeowners want and need housing scarcity because they very often have nothing else. So resistance to new building is both rational from the individual household perspective and horribly destructive from the macro/societal perspective.
Do we have any evidence whatsoever that ‘Average Joe Homeowner’ pays attention to zoning policies or building policies or anything at all like that? Do we know if these policies were passed recently or in the 1920s? I just find this odd given that I know so many civic minded people and not one of them has a clue about any of this, nobody attends city planning meetings or pays any attention to any of this, wherever they live. It’s not even on people’s radar for the most part.
It seems untrue this whole ‘build more housing stock, and housing costs will go down’ in big desirable metro areas. The demand is almost inexhaustible. Do we really think that if Honolulu or Seattle or San Francisco or New York becomes as affordable as Topeka, people won’t just move there until the rates go right back up?
That’s certainly not a reason not to build but I am always seeing these things assumed and I am wondering why when they don’t seem very plausible.
I don’t find it plausible that a slowly boiling national crisis was created by Joe Schmoe Homeowners’ desires. That’s all that happened? Joe Schmoe just said recently ‘I don’t like it when houses get built where I live, for I am dependent on the scarcity of homes for my retirement funds...’ and went --where? to the city council?--and now we don’t have enough houses.
Seriously? That’s the main thing that happened?
I think people are using their intuitions for a complex problem.
However, that’s not to say we should not build a LOT more housing. We must. We simply need to understand what is making housing cost so much, and how to lower that cost. We need to increase density in cities even if it won’t lower the cost of housing because it is environmentally better and it will provide more places for people to live overall.
But there’s just something odd about the individualist framing.
Have you ever been to small town zoning hearings, or county planning meetings? Because yes, that is exactly what happens. 100 boomers show up and oppose affordable housing developments because those houses will decrease property values. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant. So the zoning code is written with minimum lot sizes, minimum setbacks, minimum square footage. All in response to *citizen demands*. This stuff doesn't come out of the ether.
If you have actual data and information that's not anecdotal I would love to see because housing prices went up globally. They went ip
nationally. They went up in places losing population. Rents increased in areas where vacancies did not increase. I just don't think the causal story can possibly be the whole story given that it depends on supply & demand & a lot of anecdotes that can't explain things in every region. As well as behavior and law that isn't occurring in every place prices went up. It's not convincing to show one town where people block a building and then say HERE is why global housing prices and shortages occurred ...Just stop these people and prices will decline.'
I am sure it happens but I live in one of the desirable metro areas and it doesn't happen here. Nobody thinks that they can stop buildings from going up, and developers are involved, and buildings are constantly going up. But demand cannot be met apparently as prices just keep going up.
Anyway, my point is about cause and effect. There are claims about causes of housing prices that seem false. E.g. claims that some nimbys ate increasing prices when the zoning codes are from LONG ago.
When your retirement is dependent upon extracting 30 years of equity appreciation from your primary residence, *anything* that threatens the value of your home is a threat to your personal material well being.
Average Joe American homeowners want and need housing scarcity because they very often have nothing else. So resistance to new building is both rational from the individual household perspective and horribly destructive from the macro/societal perspective.
Very difficult problem.
Individually rational choices that have aggregately irrational consequences.
Do we have any evidence whatsoever that ‘Average Joe Homeowner’ pays attention to zoning policies or building policies or anything at all like that? Do we know if these policies were passed recently or in the 1920s? I just find this odd given that I know so many civic minded people and not one of them has a clue about any of this, nobody attends city planning meetings or pays any attention to any of this, wherever they live. It’s not even on people’s radar for the most part.
It seems untrue this whole ‘build more housing stock, and housing costs will go down’ in big desirable metro areas. The demand is almost inexhaustible. Do we really think that if Honolulu or Seattle or San Francisco or New York becomes as affordable as Topeka, people won’t just move there until the rates go right back up?
That’s certainly not a reason not to build but I am always seeing these things assumed and I am wondering why when they don’t seem very plausible.
I don’t find it plausible that a slowly boiling national crisis was created by Joe Schmoe Homeowners’ desires. That’s all that happened? Joe Schmoe just said recently ‘I don’t like it when houses get built where I live, for I am dependent on the scarcity of homes for my retirement funds...’ and went --where? to the city council?--and now we don’t have enough houses.
Seriously? That’s the main thing that happened?
I think people are using their intuitions for a complex problem.
However, that’s not to say we should not build a LOT more housing. We must. We simply need to understand what is making housing cost so much, and how to lower that cost. We need to increase density in cities even if it won’t lower the cost of housing because it is environmentally better and it will provide more places for people to live overall.
But there’s just something odd about the individualist framing.
Have you ever been to small town zoning hearings, or county planning meetings? Because yes, that is exactly what happens. 100 boomers show up and oppose affordable housing developments because those houses will decrease property values. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant. So the zoning code is written with minimum lot sizes, minimum setbacks, minimum square footage. All in response to *citizen demands*. This stuff doesn't come out of the ether.
If you have actual data and information that's not anecdotal I would love to see because housing prices went up globally. They went ip
nationally. They went up in places losing population. Rents increased in areas where vacancies did not increase. I just don't think the causal story can possibly be the whole story given that it depends on supply & demand & a lot of anecdotes that can't explain things in every region. As well as behavior and law that isn't occurring in every place prices went up. It's not convincing to show one town where people block a building and then say HERE is why global housing prices and shortages occurred ...Just stop these people and prices will decline.'
I am sure it happens but I live in one of the desirable metro areas and it doesn't happen here. Nobody thinks that they can stop buildings from going up, and developers are involved, and buildings are constantly going up. But demand cannot be met apparently as prices just keep going up.
Anyway, my point is about cause and effect. There are claims about causes of housing prices that seem false. E.g. claims that some nimbys ate increasing prices when the zoning codes are from LONG ago.