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metacontent | 4 years ago

I don't want to attack you, but its hard not to attack a comment like this. Building more housing won't solve the homelessness problem, building a lot more housing might lower prices a little bit which might mean that some middle class families might be able to buy a home, but that is about it.

Nobody is living on the streets in SF because houses cost too much money. If money was the only issue then they could easily move to a different town where housing is cheaper, there are many places to live that are cheaper than SF.

In my opinion whenever someone says the main problem is the price of housing they are saying it because that is their own personal problem. They want to buy a house, and they think the prices are too high. Why do they not mention unemployment? Or addiction? Or lots of other issues? Because those aren't their own personal problems, so they focus on the one thing that matters to them personally, and that's the price of housing.

discuss

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ClumsyPilot|4 years ago

> "personal problem. They want to buy a house"

This is extremely short-sighted. Expensive real estate is a blood-sucking vampire squid on the real economy, on every economically productive citizen

You are paying for that overpriced housing every time you buy a coffee, you pay $1 for the coffee beans and you $4 for the coffee shop rent. You pay rent of every person who's services they need, from a delivery man to a plumber.

The idea that rising house prices are okay because you own a house is just as daft as the idea that rising food prices are okay because you have a full fridge.

The optimal strategy is to drive down relative cost of food, housing and energy, and other nessesities of life to zero, that's what we call 'economic growth'. Thats why we no longer live like peasants.

kamaal|4 years ago

>>you pay $1 for the coffee beans and you $4 for the coffee shop rent

Not just this, every last bit of economy is designed to benefit the exclusivity enjoyed by land lords.

No wonder the biggest beneficiary of the big salaries in Bay Area, CA is eventually the real estate market.

If land/housing/space is in short supply then every economic transaction is a kind of rent, you just don't notice it because you are paying for it instalments, its rent nevertheless.

throwaway0a5e|4 years ago

>This is extremely short-sighted. Expensive real estate is a blood-sucking vampire squid on the real economy, on every economically productive citizen

Now do food, utilities, energy, transportation and government.

The idea that amount of people's resources is dedicated to these "overhead of modern life" type things shouldn't be minimized is mind boggling.

metacontent|4 years ago

This is just my own personal hair brained idea, but my own idea on the best way to reduce the price of housing is simply to make it harder for people to buy a home. Hear me out. I do not mean increase the price of homes. I mean to drive prices down, you must restrict peoples ability to buy a home.

Essentially, if you make it easier for people to buy a home, then you will end up with more buyers, when you have more buyers then the demand for the product is increased and that results in the price of the product to rise. If you restrict the buyers then there is less demand for the product, and less demand results in the price of the product dropping. If less people are able to buy, then less people are able to sell, if people can't sell then they will lower prices.

It is hard to restrict buyers for houses, the only way I've thought of that is possible is to increase the minimum down payment size. If the minimum down payment size was increased to something really big like 50% for a few years, that would drastically reduce the number of people that would be able to buy a home, and that drastic decrease in buying demand would result in a drastic decrease in prices.

Conversely, where I live the minimum down payment is 5% if tomorrow the gov were to say "we want to make it easier for people to buy a home, and so we are reducing the minimum down payment to 2%" that would mean that more people would qualify to buy a home. More people qualifying would mean that there are more buyers and buying pressure is increased, and increased buying pressure would result in rising prices. So lowering the minimum down payment size, while well meaning, would soon result in the prices for homes going even higher and we would be right back where we started with many people being priced out of the market.

Increasing the minimum down payment size would also mean people effectively get priced out of the market because they would be unable to afford the minimum down payment, but conversely, the prices of houses would fall drastically because of the decreased buying pressure. People would be forced to save for a bigger downpayment, but the total they would pay when they actually buy the home would be decreased.

blawson|4 years ago

Lattes in Miami are also $5, just saying.