Demolishing buildings is a waste. There's another way: deconstruction - "Erick Serpas Ventura, CEO of Vema Deconstruction in Vancouver, acknowledges that traditional demolition using machinery such as excavators is shockingly fast — often, less than a day. Deconstructing a wood frame house, on the other hand, takes a little under a week with four to six people and some machinery. Ventura said, "You have more people doing more labour, but you're also creating more jobs." Moore said deconstructing a brick home, like those found in Toronto, can take longer and cost more — 50 to 100 per cent more than the cost of demolition. Local government incentives and bylaws, as well as sales of valuable recovered materials, could make the cost of deconstruction more competitive."
When prices go up, it's proof that capitalism has failed
'Oracle of Wall Street' who predicted 2008 financial crash says rise in young, sexless men living with their parents will cause house prices to plunge 30% - "Meredith Whitney, who earned the title after predicting the financial crisis of 2007 - 2008, suggested young men increasingly living with their parents and disinterested in starting families will drastically reduce housing demand."
"Luckily" there's always mass migration
Noah Smith ๐๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ on X - "In terms of wages, income, and wealth, Gen Z and Millennials are doing much better than previous generations. Corporate America is not failing the youth. It's only housing that's really broken."
How British council flats became the blueprint for the best housing system in the world - "When the humble council estate was first devised, it was hoped Britain’s public housing would become the envy of the world. Few today would say this has come to pass. There is a huge shortage of state-subsidised houses nationally, and those who rent or own privately often do so at great expense. One country that’s arguably shown how social housing should be done is Singapore, where sensible government policy has not only solved an acute housing crisis, but also enabled the majority of the population to own their home. You wouldn’t believe it now, but British housebuilding was the blueprint. As Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government oversaw the building of one million homes – an unbeaten record Sir Keir Starmer has promised to surpass – British colonial administrators in Singapore also built a handful of houses to replace the country’s overcrowded slums. “One of our odd characteristics is that the British have been historically pretty good at building infrastructure, housing and so on – but only outside the UK,” says Paul Cheshire, emeritus professor of economic geography at LSE. He cites Britain’s involvement with the Hong Kong and Moscow metro systems, as well as Singapore’s housing... Low-income residents living in kampongs across the island were resettled by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), a colonial housing taskforce. But the project had a familiarly British problem – it moved at a snail’s pace. “When Singapore attained self-governance, it faced a severe shortage of sanitary housing. Although there was public housing available, it was grossly under-supplied,” says Alan Cheong, head of research in Singapore for estate agent Savills. When the country went to the polls that year, housing was a hot-button issue. The winning candidate, Lee Kuan Yew, ran on a manifesto that accused the British of “failing miserably” to build enough homes, and promised to ramp up construction of new housing. He kept his promise, and winning seven further general elections meant he could see the project through. The Housing Development Board (HDB), a state-owned housebuilding company, was formed in 1960 with the “mission of providing quality and affordable public housing for Singaporeans”, Cheong says. Thousands of new homes were built inside tower blocks but, in a key difference to the British strategy, they were designed for the country’s growing middle class – not just to house the poorest residents... Singapore ranked 11th out of 94 markets for housing affordability in a survey conducted last year by consultancy Demographia. London came 80th... So why hasn’t Britain been able to achieve anything on this level? One huge difference is land ownership. In Singapore, the state owns the majority of land and housing, whereas in Britain, most is private. Beyond that, the finger is pointed at the UK’s planning system. “Our problem is not a lack of affordable housing, but that all housing – at all levels – is not affordable enough. That is primarily because of our planning system, constricting land supply where people want to live around our big cities,” says Cheshire. “[The system] hinders building because of its discretionary decision making, with control almost entirely at the local level. This injects uncertainty into the development process. “Then, via our system of local government finance, we more or less fine local communities that allow development – so no wonder we have constructed a Nimby world. “Singapore, though – really constrained in land supply, not just policy – does things differently and efficiently.” However, despite its historic success, there are questions over what will happen to Singapore’s build-to-own model in the future. So far, none of the public flats’ 99-year leases has expired, but some are starting to run low."
Time for more regulation
NYC Apartment Construction Wage Requirement Leads to 99-Unit Buildings - Bloomberg - "There’s an unmistakable trend across New York City: Real-estate developers are seeking to construct buildings with exactly 99 units. No more, no less. In the past four quarters, 28 such permits were filed, more than double the total from the previous 16 years combined, according to city data analyzed by the Real Estate Board of New York, a lobbying group. To those in the industry, there’s no question what’s behind the pileup at that precise number: A new tax program for real estate developments that requires higher worker wages for buildings with 100 or more apartments... Developer MaryAnne Gilmartin is a case in point for the results of the program. She once envisioned a pair of 400-unit rental towers on a NYC lot, but she’s now considering as many as six smaller buildings — a patchwork of projects that ultimately would deliver fewer apartments. The revised plan would take longer to execute and cost more per unit, but Gilmartin said this is the more financially viable option for her. It’s an unintended consequence of an initiative designed to substantially expand the city’s supply of housing, a crucial need at a time when spiraling rents have made life in New York more unaffordable than ever. The Real Estate Board of New York and many developers argue that 485-x hampers their efforts and will lead to fewer units than might have gotten built under the old program it replaced... Add in high interest rates, rising land costs and the looming impact of tariffs, and the math on larger buildings doesn’t make sense, said Rick Gropper, founding principal at Camber Property Group, a New York-based firm that specializes in developing affordable and mixed-income housing... “You still have to have an elevator and other building requirements, with only 99 units to offset those costs,” he said... REBNY has warned that the city’s housing needs are massive and that while the group supports any program that encourages construction, the wage mandate means 485-x won’t come close to generating enough units to give New Yorkers meaningful rent relief, said Henry Perez-Tlatenchi, a senior policy researcher at REBNY."
Damn greedy corporations keeping housing expensive!
Pubity on X - "One 32 year-old tech millionaire is suing to strip protections from upwards of 1,200 animal species to avoid paying a $140,000 animal conservation fee for his new home. His lawsuit argues animals native to only 1 U.S. State shouldn't be covered by the Endangered Species Act."
Clearly, pricey housing is proof that capitalism has failed
London Renters Union on X - ""No matter how many houses you build, if they are not affordable, then you will not solve the housing crisis." @ZackPolanski at our @TWT_NOW panel on why we need to take on the profiteers and the corporate giants to win homes for people."
Thread by @JeremiahDJohns on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Genuinely the most enraging thing about housing discourse is how people talk about 'affordability' like it's some sort of innate quality, like the building needs to be made out of affordium. Housing. is. affordable. when. housing. is. abundant. Supply and demand are real.
There are expensive cities that don't build. There are cheap cities that do build. And there are no cities that build lots of housing and still see very high housing costs. Data shows this over and over and over and over."
Left wingers are economically illiterate and don't think supply and demand set prices, only "greed"
Alec Stapp on X - "This is madness: In California, environmental review lawsuits seek to block nearly HALF OF ALL PROPOSED HOUSING UNITS"
Damn greedy landlords and investors keeping housing expensive!
Reforming Permitting Requirements to Lower the Cost of Building New Housing and Increase Housing Affordability - "A key detail for permitting issuance is whether the development approval process requires “by-right” or “discretionary” permitting. With by-right permitting, a housing development proposal will be approved so long as it conforms to all zoning laws and building codes, which are known in advance. With discretionary permitting, the proposal is subject to the approval of a public body, such as local planning authority, which may require several re-designs, city council hearings, public outreach meetings, environmental impact studies, impact fees, and other concessions. Relative to by-right permitting, discretionary permitting increases costs, time to approval, and uncertainty. In some cities, discretionary permitting can also create opportunities for corruption and favoritism. Whether developments are subject to by-right or discretionary permitting varies by locality and the proposed type of housing. Among large multi-family projects subject to discretionary permitting, the median time spent in the permitting process in recent years was 7.5 months in Boston, 8 months in Oakland, 13 months in Los Angeles, 16 months in Seattle, 30 months in New York City, and 33 months in San Francisco. These numbers may understate the burden since they exclude projects that never receive approval. In New York City pre-certification and environmental review alone often take nearly two years. In California, environmental review lawsuits sought to block the permitting of 48,000 proposed units — nearly half of all proposed units – in 2020 alone. Even for projects that are ultimately greenlit, construction cannot begin until litigation is completed, typically in four to five years... One study of Washington state estimated that each additional month spent in the permitting process increases the cost of building by about $4,400 (or about 1 percent). In New York City, a two-year delay for mid-rise development increases the per-unit cost by an estimated $50,000. Permitting requirements may also dissuade smaller projects and impose larger burdens on smaller builders who are less well capitalized."
Meme - Robert Reich @RBReich: "Rent is skyrocketing and home buying is out of reach for millions. One big reason why? Wall Street. Let me explain."
Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl ๐ @jmhorp: "One big reason? NIMBYs."
"In 2020, Reich wrote letters to the City of Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission objecting to the construction of ten housing units (including one low-income unit) on a lot near Reich's home"
Meme - Jordan Grimes๐ฐ @cafedujord: "Rent is skyrocketing and home buying is out of reach for millions. One big reason why? Rich homeowners like Robert Reich keep blocking new multifamily housing in their affluent neighborhoods. Let me explain. ๐"
"Dear Landmark Preservation Commissioners,
My wife and I moved into our house at 1230 Bonita Avenue, two doors down from the Payson House, fourteen years ago. One reason we moved into the area was the abundance of older homes dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offering the charm of an older era of Berkeley, along with the lovely Codornices Creek that runs through the neighborhood. The character of the neighborhood is anchored by the Payson House, built in 1889 and the oldest in the area, and by the old live oaks surrounding it. We walk past it every day. We were frankly appalled to learn that the new owner of the Payson House was planning to tear it down, and already had illegally cut down two of the oak trees in order to squeeze ten units onto the lot. It is no small irony that the original owner of the house, William Payson, was a political reformer who fought against the illegal practices and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century. We urge the Landmark Preservation Commission to designate the Payson House at 1915 Berryman Street, a City of Berkeley Landmark. If historic preservation means anything, it means maintaining enough of the character of an older neighborhood to remind people of its history and provide continuity with the present. Development for the sake of development makes no sense when it imposes social costs like this
Sincerely,
Robert B. Reich
Perian Flaherty"
Why Your House Was So Expensive - The Atlantic - "Name just about any problem the U.S. has suffered from in the past decade. Inequality? Obesity? A vague, pervasive sense of doom? You could tell a housing story about all of them. In the essay “The Housing Theory of Everything,” the writers Sam Bowman, John Myers, and Ben Southwood argue that the housing shortage in the Western world—“too few homes being built where people want to live”—prices out middle-class workers from high-productivity zones, forces people to spend more time sitting in their cars to commute long distances, and reduces the availability of homes and overall growth rates. There you have housing’s contribution to more inequality, obesity, and gloom. And this generalized Western trend is especially bad in the U.S. Although homeownership is strongly encouraged by federal tax law, America has fewer dwellings per thousand inhabitants than the European Union or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average... In America’s most expensive housing markets, reformers often focus on the need to “upzone” neighborhoods to build taller. But other rules might be even more onerous. As the urbanist Brian Goggin wrote in 2018, some cities have permitting processes with dozens of stages, which can take hundreds of thousands of dollars to get through. When UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation interviewed developers and construction workers about the costs of building in San Francisco, everybody agreed on only one point: “The most significant and pointless factor driving up construction costs was the length of time it takes for a project to get through the city permitting and development.” The average San Francisco project takes nearly four years to be permitted... These rules might not sound utterly diabolical. Who’s against money for schools? Who’s against safe low-income housing? No one, perhaps. But when you add them up, defensible rules can become indefensible barriers to new construction. This is especially true for affordable-housing projects, which depend on many different financing sources and government agencies. The Terner Center estimates that these projects in California cost $48 more per square foot than market-rate projects. That’s an extra $48,000 to build each typical apartment of 1,000 square feet, or nearly $4 million extra for an eight-apartment building. What happens when affordable housing isn’t affordable to build? You get less of it. Let’s say you’re a developer. You find an empty lot in a major city. You propose to build a big apartment building on the cracked concrete, with dozens of units set aside for people experiencing homelessness. When you ask around the community, people tell you they love the idea. More housing, less homelessness. Who could possibly say no? The answer is: one angry, litigious neighbor. By filing an environmental lawsuit, this single person can delay construction for years by demanding that the planners conduct expensive and time-consuming research on the ecological impact of new development. This isn’t a hypothetical. As the author and city planner M. Nolan Gray wrote in The Atlantic, it’s the story of a housing dream deferred, at the corner of First and Lorena Streets in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the past few decades, Gray said, California’s environmental rules—particularly the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA—have allowed citizens to veto new projects by dragging developers to court and saddling them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and environmental research. “CEQA lawsuits have imperiled infill housing in Sacramento, solar farms in San Diego, and transit in San Francisco,” he wrote. Researchers sometimes call this phenomenon “citizen voice.” Because I’m fond of both citizens and voices, I don’t like this term. I prefer vetocracy—rule by veto—which is Francis Fukuyama’s phrase for systems that empower minority objectors to stop anything from happening. Local vetocracy sounds appropriately vomitous to describe this situation... Interstate-construction costs tripled from the 1960s to the 1980s, even after adjusting for inflation, according to research by the George Washington University professor Leah Brooks and the Yale Law professor Zachary Liscow. Basic costs, such as labor and materials, didn’t explain the increase. But the researchers found suggestive evidence that CEQA and other environmental laws passed in the 1970s empowered citizens to veto new construction projects, which “caused increased expenditure per mile,” Brooks and Liscow concluded... Around the world, construction appears to be one of the only commodity-producing industries that isn’t getting more productive. The Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon has estimated that the construction industry recorded negative productivity growth around the turn of the century in both the U.S. and Europe due to a decline in “multifactor productivity,” which is a complicated proxy for innovation... French building agencies conduct environmental studies in-house and don’t open the door to citizen lawsuits that can stymie new development... Housing costs are complex because nearly half the cost comes from local rules and preferences rather than just materials and labor. That’s appropriate, in a way. A house is not just a pile of wood and stone and work. It is a depository of our values. America’s housing system could prioritize abundance—more houses, permitted faster and built cheaper. Instead, by putting rules over outcomes and litigation over public benefit, we are getting fewer houses, interminable permits, and expensive projects. As in health care, energy, and scientific research, the failures of U.S. housing policy aren’t mysterious error codes. They’re design flaws. This is what happens when a bad blueprint is built to plan."
I like how he advocates more immigration, but in the whole article he doesn't talk about demand side factors at all
George on X - "WATCH: Senator Elizabeth Warren, aka Pocahontas, tried to trap President Trump's HUD nominee Scott Turner with a gotcha, and it totally backfired. He calmly & smoothly silenced her with facts.
"Do you support additional federal investment in programs so that we can lower the cost of building affordable housing?"
Turner: "What I do support is maximizing the budget that we do have... My point is there's record funding for HUD. HUD's budget is nearly $70 billion at this point..."
Scott Turner is saying he can solve the problem with the same budget, and her reaction is that it can only be solved with more tax funds. The Democrat solution to any problem is to just print more money."
A good insight into left wing economics - if things don't work, it's always because too little money is spent
Moses Kagan on X - "Something I wish every legislator, regulator & housing court in the country would internalize: The harder you make evicting a tenant who dishonors his lease:
1. The harder it is for owners to justify renting to marginal applicants, &
2. The less appealing it is for developers to build new housing in your jurisdiction"
Greedy landlords need to suck it up and let everyone stay for free and wreck their places, or they're bad people
Irish Independent on X - "Retirees now driving up house prices in scenic areas along Ireland’s coastline"
The Laymans Take on X - "So elderly Irish people buying a nice house for a pleasant retirement is driving up prices and that's a problem But immigrants coming by the hundreds of thousands has no impact, and you're racist for suggesting it"
Meme - Mason @webdevMason: "Spoiler: she recently found an apartment, was coached by "housing activists" to lie about her recent rental history and ongoing debt obligations, and got her church to cover the security deposit By her own account she can't afford the $2,360 rent and that's apparently fine"
Amazon Piss Jugs - Free Palestine @JeremyWard33: "Horrific capitalist dystopia: She makes $72K/yr but lives in a Ford Fusion. She can't afford rent in Seattle"
"More Americans turn to living in their cars. Dozens of parking lots have opened across the country for working people who can afford a car but not rent."
Clearly, housing needs to be free
Move fast and build things? Minneapolis holds lessons for the Labour Government’s planning reform - "Minneapolis wanted to address its housing crisis by building more in the existing urban area, rather than new suburbs. The city started by lowering mandatory parking requirements for new developments in 2009 and 2015. Developers needed to build fewer parking spaces for every home they built, reducing their costs significantly and making more developments viable. In 2019, the city enacted a more comprehensive reform through the Minneapolis 2040 Plan... By changing the rules to allow more development in a system that guaranteed planning permission to developers who followed those rules, the hope was that developers would respond and build more housing. The zoning reforms allowed more dense development. Figure 1 shows significant jumps in planning permissions for multi-family developments, mostly blocks of flats, after the reforms in 2009, 2015 and 2020. Trends in development types decoupled, so developers started preferring denser housing due to the new rules. Higher construction meant housing supply began to meet demand. As shown in Figure 2, housing numbers per resident – a measure of housing availability – were falling in Minneapolis and across the US for most of the 2010s. Since 2019, housing availability has started to improve across the US, but it increased much more quickly in Minneapolis after the implementation of the 2040 Plan. The increase in supply made housing more affordable. As Figure 3 shows, real housing costs dropped for buyers and renters in Minneapolis between 2020 and 2024. During the same period, housing in other cities in the same region became more expensive... Minneapolis price drops are significant and exceptional only five years after the biggest reform. This is partly because, in a rules-based system, changing the rules is enough to increase supply."
Clearly, developers just became less greedy
New study shows why Chicagoans were right to reject ‘Bring Chicago Home’ - "Chicago became the first major city in the country to reject a “mansion tax” referendum at the ballot box. “It was cowardly,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said after the loss. “And I will be punching back.” But did voters make the right choice? A new study out of Los Angeles suggests yes, they did... In 2022, LA voters passed Measure ULA, which slapped a 4% transfer tax on properties selling for more than $5 million and a 5.5% transfer tax on properties selling for more than $10 million. ULA has generated $288 million a year in new revenue so far. But it’s also imposed significant hidden costs, which are now coming to light. According to a new study from nonprofit research organization RAND and UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, ULA:
Cut commercial, industrial and multifamily property transactions by 30-50%
Cut new housing production by about 1,910 units per year, an 18% drop compared with the pre-election level of new development
Led to a $25 million loss in property tax revenue, which compounds year after year
“We found that it is having a pretty strong negative effect on both market rate housing and affordable housing,” said Shane Phillips, a housing policy researcher at UCLA... Austin’s experience echoes that of Minneapolis, where pro-growth housing reforms have led to more construction and falling rents. The same story is playing out in New Zealand, where Auckland made it easier to build housing while Wellington did not. The results are clear... Rent relative to income is now falling in Auckland while rising in the rest of the country."
Opinion: Chicago should follow the lead of Austin, Texas, on affordable housing - "the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate dawdled with a resolution asking Illinois lawmakers for permission to implement rent control, a failed policy that’s wrecked housing markets nationwide. Aldermen should have been cutting the city’s burdensome housing regulations that are choking development and driving up costs in the city. Chicago’s leaders must abandon their self-strangling, restrictive approach to affordable housing. Regulation coupled with market manipulation is not working. Just this year, average one-bedroom rents have grown to more than $1,900 per month in Chicago. They should look toward another blue city, Austin, Texas. Austin has shown you can only build your way to affordable housing. You can’t regulate it. This year, rents in Austin dropped again to $1,436 per month. How?
In 2019, the city eased zoning restrictions and provided incentives for higher density in affordable and mixed-income developments.
In May of last year, the city boosted its commitment to housing affordability by passing local ordinances to allow single-family homes to be built on smaller lots.
Last month, the City Council voted to expand single-stair housing developments to provide more affordable options for families. Buildings no longer are required to have two staircases per floor when taller than three stories, which eliminates the need for a central hallway and allows compact designs.
Austin leaders spent time dismantling red tape instead of pursuing headlines. The result? Austin has been building well above the national average for new units, while Chicagoland ranks last of the top 10 urban areas for issuing new housing permits per 100,000 residents, according to an Illinois Policy Institute analysis."
