this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023

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First American City to Tame Inflation Owes Its Success to Affordable Housing (www.bloomberg.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/politics

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[–] [email protected] 101 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Nooo my TrIcKlE DoWn EcOnOmIcS is the only thing that works. If we allow affordable housing, what’s next, can people marry a toaster!?

[–] DrTeeth 33 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nooooo. Think of the children!!

[–] brawleryukon 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Think of how much productive work we can get out of them, you mean?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I hear there are children willing to give capitalism a hand.

[–] brygphilomena 11 points 10 months ago

Those pedophiles wanting to marry a brave little toaster. Terrible people.

[–] CuddlyCassowary 98 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Minneapolis, MN for those who don’t want to open.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Props. Minnesota seems to be doing some really progressive stuff

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If it wasn't cold as fuck id consider moving there

[–] Letto 10 points 10 months ago

Looking at weather trends in the US it will probably be outright tropical in another decade lmao. Consider it an investment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I live there. The cold really is cold AF, but it’s only half the time. It’s tolerable and the changing seasons are beautiful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

It’s like their Scandinavian ancestors awoke from some code word

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It even looks like they got rid of the zoning laws that forced everything to be a bungalow! This picture could easily be mistaken for some place in Europe now

[+] PeleSpirit 60 points 10 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Well, you could simply not make a payoff possible. If you build, you must also build affordable housing. Period.

Alternatively, the city could just have its own housing company. In my hometown in Germany, more than half of all apartments are owned by the city or non-profit cooperatives.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is non profit coops the model in tower blocks?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They took over the old East German blocks, but also build new, modern houses.

The blocks are also far less bleak than they might appear. Usually the surroundings are pretty green and all buildings have been renovated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Ahh yes that's the same model that was adopted here in CZ. 1/3 of the population lives in commie blocks and those were also mostly made into housing co-ops.

[–] brawleryukon 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

we have a very small middle class.

That assumes there even is a middle class.

(Spoiler alert: there isn't.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

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[–] Pipoca -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Net-new luxury housing is good for affordability, because when someone moves into a more expensive unit, that frees up their current more affordable unit.

More to the point, Seattle literally just legalized missing middle housing in most of the city earlier this year. That's good for affordability, but new housing takes time to build. And developers will try to build the most lucrative project they currently can.

Housing is a matter of supply and demand. When you're in a housing shortage, prices will be high and most of the new supply will be luxury. The solution to a housing shortage is to build more housing, period. If you build housing faster than increasing demand from population growth, prices of units will go down. If you build housing and prices stay high, you didn't build enough. Build more. Remove NIMBYs ability to prevent new builds.

Which is not to say that building public housing or other projects to subsidize housing is a bad idea. But it's really, really hard to do that effectively during a housing shortage and solving the shortage is good for everyone except homeowners who wanted to use their equity as their retirement nest egg.

[+] PeleSpirit 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] theGimpboy 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not about trickle down, it's about building to meet the capacity. I live in this area and can tell you first hand. I live in a cheap building and all the luxury condos going up has made it so my landlord cannot jack up rents anymore. They were doing it constantly before the building boom and now they can't even fill multiple units at the rents they want to charge.

[+] PeleSpirit 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Pipoca 0 points 10 months ago

Vacancy rates don't reflect what people think they do, and actual long term vacancy rates are a fraction of what people think they are.

In particular: the census' published vacancy rates includes all housing that isn't someone's primary occupancy on census day to be unoccupied.

The vacancy rate includes buildings that are tied up in estate, forclosure or divorce proceedings, housing that is actively being renovated, that can't be rented until it's renovated or is mostly constructed. It includes units that are actively on the market. It includes units that just got rented or sold but where the new tenants will move in a week after the census. It includes housing where the owner is in jail, or on an extended work assignment elsewhere. It includes private vacation homes and AirBnBs.

You can argue about the ethics of evictions, forclosures, AirBnB and vacation homes, but the vacancy rate is fundamentally a snapshot of current occupancy. A certain amount of short term transient vacancies are expected, because many normal processes take time. You don't sell your parents house and have someone move into it the day your parents die, after all. Vacancy rates are not evidence of a conspiracy to artificially lower the amount of housing in an area by holding units off market.

To my knowledge, the census doesn't actually track the rate of long-term habitable vacancies, units that could be sold or rented tomorrow but aren't on the market.

[–] bassomitron 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I would almost guarantee that the amount of people leaving affordable housing to luxury housing is a completely negligible percentage, like <1% of home buyers. Prove me wrong, I guess, but your argument that building more luxury housing somehow benefits the middle and poor classes just reeks of nonsensical bullshit, sorry.

[–] Pipoca -1 points 10 months ago

Directly? Obviously, that's pretty rare.

But housing is something like a game of musical chairs. If Alice moves into a luxury unit, that leaves their old unit open. Bob then moves into Alice's old unit, Charlotte moves into Bob's old unit, Dave moves into Charlotte's old unit, etc. until Zoey moves into Xanders old unit.

The question isn't 'how likely is Alice's old unit to be affordable?', it's 'how likely is it that Zoey's old unit is affordable?'

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Things are so in the shits even Bloomberg reports on these things.