
California affordable housing is more expensive than luxury housing - feross
https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-04-09/california-low-income-housing-expensive-apartment-coronavirus
======
standardUser
"...and rules that compel developers to meet labor and environmental standards
that often exceed what’s required for luxury condominiums."

It's not just rules. Funding is competitive, and if you want a competitive bid
you need to promise the world. Parking, green technologies, accessibility,
community space, lots of amenities for residents, landscaping, not to mention
the cost of ongoing compliance.

"Another is California’s labyrinthine financing process, which forces
developers to navigate a dozen different funding programs controlled by five
separate departments with authority divided between the governor and state
treasurer."

Having worked in the industry for 10 years, I'd say this is an understatement.
There's also federal, local and county regulations in addition to the multi-
tentacled state system.

~~~
mgolawala
This is so depressing to see. These are the symptoms of a system slowly
grinding to a halt under its own weight. Compare the tax code in 1970 (or
earlier) vs today (1). Regulations and laws keep getting more and more
complex. It keeps getting slower and costlier to get anything done. Then throw
in the aging infrastructure, the greater wealth inequality along with
significantly decreased social mobility. Un-affordable healthcare and
education costs that cripple you before you can even begin to walk. Completely
un-affordable housing after that, or a ridiculous commute without decent
public transport. No wonder our political system looks as bad as it does..
people are getting increasingly angrier, more polarized, more frustrated, more
desperate. There is such inertia to these 'systems' that it takes overwhelming
effort and sacrifice to change its course.

These problems don't seem to be getting solved, they seem to be getting worse.
How do you realistically reverse something like this? Are there examples of a
successful reversal having been made without hitting the dreaded 'reboot'
button on society?

We will probably muddle along during our lifetimes, but I fear for my
children's generation.

(1) [https://taxfoundation.org/how-many-words-are-tax-
code/](https://taxfoundation.org/how-many-words-are-tax-code/)

~~~
ageitgey
I sold a piece of software to the state of California once. Among the 100+
page contract was a page where we had to agree that if, during the
installation of this web app, a baby was to be abandoned, that we promise that
we would abandon said baby at an approved fire station within 3 days of birth.

That was probably 10+ years ago, but it was a real eye opening moment in
seeing the mindless wheels of bureaucracy turn. Obviously everyone at every
stage of the procurement process knew this page of the contract was insane in
the context of installing a simple web app, but no one had the power remove
unneeded rules in situations in which they don't apply and no one is going out
on an anti-baby-safety ledge. So everyone for the rest of time has to agree on
how to properly abandon babies in every contract.

~~~
gizmo686
Through my employer, I do work on an open source application. At one point a 3
letter agency contracted us to add some functionality that they needed. Of the
developers at the company who work on said application, I happened to be the
one picked to work on these features.

Eventually, someone actually read the contract and noticed that it required
anyone working on it to have a security clearance. I ended up working on other
parts of the same open source application that were being funded by a contract
without such a clause, so we could have someone with a clearance charge the
contract.

------
ab_testing
The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking.

    
    
      That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.

~~~
algeoMA
From the article: "“Low-income people tend to own cars that are in disrepair
and ride motorcycles adding to the noise of a ‘lights out at 8 p.m.
community,’” Marylyn Rinaldi, a neighboring condominium owner, wrote in 2011
in a letter to the City Council that was later cited in a lawsuit over the
project." Nimbyism at its finest.

~~~
nitrogen
Why shouldn't a community be able to decide that they want quiet nights?

~~~
nerfhammer
what percent of "low-income people" own motorcycles? what would the occupants
of 10 apartments have to do such that a small city would no longer be said to
be able to have "quiet nights" that could not be enforced against by any
method other than excluding the apartments completely?

~~~
stevehawk
ooh, I'm gonna go with "a lot". Because motorcycles are a lot cheaper to buy,
own, and maintain that cars. And a lot of them don't even require licenses in
the US (49cc and smaller, if I'm not mistaken).

~~~
Robotbeat
It’s the expensive Harley’s that are the most expensive AND loud, not the
little scooters.

~~~
stevehawk
If you think scooters aren't loud then you've probably only heard the ones
ridden by hipsters and software developers.

------
pavlov
After moving to America a while ago, one thing that struck me is how a lot of
things are designed as effectively regressive taxes: the poor pay more than
the rich.

I opened a basic bank account with a giant American bank. The account has an
exorbitant monthly fee, something like $15, but it’s waived if you keep a
sufficient balance or have a steady salary. So the only people who pay the
crazy fee are the broke people with irregular income. This is one example out
of many such seemingly structural biases in everyday services.

~~~
aianus
$15/mo is far too high at current interest rates so your point stands, but,
rich people with steady balances are also paying the bank a fee in the form of
an interest-free loan that the bank re-invests.

$15/mo is equivalent to ~$14,400 balance at 1.25% APR [0] so anyone with a
higher balance than that across their big bank low-interest/no-interest
accounts is paying more than $15/mo.

[0] I chose this number as something you can actually get in an FDIC-insured
account at a more generous online bank like Ally

~~~
my_usernam3
From a business perspective, the $15 a month makes sense.

However, I'd consider banking an essential need to modern day life. Thus I
think it is worth looking at through a humanities perspective. Unfortunately
in our current situation, it's very expensive to be poor.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
This is a popular progressive opinion in the United States, currently pushing
for "Postal Banking," AKA simple banking and check cashing at post offices for
no cost. The conservative position currently being pushed is privatizing or
shutting down the USPS.

------
renewiltord
Haha, most government money projects in California are a mechanism to funnel
tax money into chosen pockets. The interests in play encourage that because:

* Most Californians don't like other people living near them. They want to live like in the suburbs and it annoys them if that changes.

* They can fig leaf in 'environmentalism' or 'traffic' or whatever in order to do that. Sometimes they'll fig leaf in 'gentrification' and 'affordability'.

* They want to be able to complain about government spending but not really do anything about it. The best part is that this allows you almost all the real benefits of actually having government spending change: you still get the funneling, and you get all the social value of being against overspending.

* The last thing is that Americans as a whole hate being told they've been defrauded. It's like the worst thing in the world to be a sucker here. So the right response is always to pretend like you aren't being suckered. That's crucial. You can always choose to say things like "San Francisco is built upon 150 years of shipwrecks" or "America is a big country" or "California is diverse".

My hope is one day to embed myself in enterprise sales to government. It's the
good life.

------
supernova87a
One thing I would really like a clear explanation of:

When public officials in CA cities talk about "affordable housing", there is
actually some definition of this, isn't there? And it doesn't usually match
what people in casual conversation mean by affordable housing, right?

"Affordable housing" doesn't just mean a normal house or apartment at an
affordable price, does it? Does it mean public housing units built and managed
by the city? Or it means housing built by private developers, that's only
available for renting or ownership by people meeting certain criteria?

If "affordable housing" means public housing complexes, then I think people
voting or advocating for it don't really understand what they're getting into.
Because those don't really have a great track record of success.

~~~
pchristensen
"Affordable" can mean a lot of things. Usually the official definition is
housing that costs less than 30% of the income of someone at some multiple of
the local poverty income level. Housing can meet that bar in a number of ways:
rising incomes, smaller/less equipped units, no parking, public subsidy for
rent, public subsidy for land or development fees, etc. Due to the terrible
experience with public housing across the USA in the 1950s-1980s, most
governments avoid owning the units if they can avoid it.

------
virgilp
> Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an
> underground garage with 53 parking spots.

How did it ever get here? Requiring more than 2 parking spots per apartment is
insane.... especially for "affordable housing".

~~~
kevingadd
Low-income families often pack many people into a small apartment, so it's not
unrealistic for one apartment to need 3 parking spots for two working parents
and a working child, just as an example.

I lived in a household like that growing up

~~~
JoeAltmaier
OR decent mass transit. But forget that in California.

~~~
komali2
Uh, is there _any_ state with decent mass transit in the USA? Some of the
cities have "passable" mass transit, but they're an exception imo. Nothing
comes close to take-your-pick medium sized town in take-your-pick European
country.

~~~
RHSeeger
Is NYC mass transit not considered decent? The subway always seemed pretty
reasonable to me. Admittedly, that's a city, not a state, but states vary
wildly.

~~~
komali2
I'd say it's not too bad, but it's rapidly falling to pieces, and personally I
haven't seen the kind of action I think necessary to ensure it functions at
all 50 years from now, shit, let alone 20.

And that's a huge chunk of the US population, but still, it's one city. What
of Los Angeles, with its buses stuck in permanent traffic, or its subway with,
what, 15 stops? What of Houston, with a light rail that travels about the
speed of a car but waits at every intersection, and serves something like 10%
of the city? What about getting from one city in the US to another?

Sure, it's a big country. Sure, it industrialized the car. Sure. But still.

~~~
RHSeeger
That's totally fair. As a rule, the US's mass transit system is a garbage
fire. However, I consider NYC's to be reasonably good, specifically in
response to

> Some of the cities have "passable" mass transit

~~~
cmendel
GP was talking about states rather than cities though

>is there any state with decent mass transit in the USA?

------
tru3_power
Man this hits deep. I moved out to Southern California a few years ago from
the south east. It’s crazy, I can barely afford to buy a house here with a
300k/yr income. Even then it’s gonna be some non remodeled, in need of
upgrades 700k home. To get anything decent (new kitchen, windows, working
hvac) it’s at-least 900k+. I don’t get how people are buying these homes.

~~~
xnyan
Help me understand. An average mortgage is 200k, at the average household
income of 63k and a 30 year at 4.1%, thats 18.5% of your pretax income going
into a mortgage. The same numbers for a 300k income and a 700k house works out
to 13.5%. Seems like you are doing significant better than most? Happy to be
corrected.

~~~
missedthecue
Yeah I'm not sure what he's talking about either. $900k home on $300k income
is entirely reasonable and a better ratio than what the average person does

~~~
s1artibartfast
I’m not sure what part about a a 900k house inflated due to NIMBYism and
stupid policy choices is reasonable.

If OP feels the main entering the bottom of the market with their exorbitant
salary, imagine how the the average person feels.

------
vmception
One thing I've found is that it isn't worth it to "win" and be able to afford
living in these places, because nobody else can.

In expensive neighborhoods there are good connections from neighbors, but
right now - and I have no way to quantify this - it seems like that doesn't
apply to places that now become expensive. People with connections are just
part of a different generation and live in already wealthy neighborhoods.

The up and coming trendy neighborhood don't have the connected's trust fund
children nor a bunch of VCs. Only airbnb speculators, transient corporate
housing and some TikTok influencers chasing status.

Everyone has been resigned to imagining their dreams of certain zip codes, and
just doing something else that happens to be way more practical. If you
actually get into those zip codes, nobody else is there.

So doing extra things for the goal of keeping up against all odds seems to be
a fools errand, for housing location at least. Other fun things you can do
with your net worth.

------
subsubzero
What can't be discounted besides the usual suspects of bad zoning, high cost
of land etc. is construction costs. Basically an area gets so expensive that
it prices out construction workers and their families. This is being seen in
the bay area now as a typical single family home goes for over 1M in the
pennisula/SF/South Bay area. Go farther out to the east bay, far south
bay(gilroy etc) and prices are still 700/800k+. The need for housing is so
great but also it is a vicious feedback loop of ever increasing construction
costs to build this housing. For LA/San Diego area it is rather large so more
affordable housing can be found but overall it is still extremely expensive
compared to the rest of America.

~~~
JamesBarney
This seems reasonable but I don't think it's a significant contributor to the
price of construction.

None of the developers seem to mention it as an issue, and there are plenty of
employees that exist in San Francisco that are paid wages that are similar to
construction workers.

~~~
pchristensen
But there are marginal projects that don't get built because of the higher
cost of construction labor. With shortages like the Bay Area, every bit lost,
for any reason, hurts.

~~~
JamesBarney
Is it true that if the labor rates in San Francisco were lower you would have
more buildings 100% agreed.

But its like your business is setting money on fire to keep the building warm.

Could you use a regular unleaded instead of premium gasoline? Sure.

Would it be better for the business? Yes at the margin.

Should you spend any time deciding what is the cheapest gasoline to use to set
money on fire? Not until you decide to use something besides $10 bills as
fuel.

------
aSplash0fDerp
Unless you have a stake in the "exotic investment schemes", you missed the
boat on selling out a generation.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSAmOQuyjU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSAmOQuyjU)

We can replace New Zealand with the US, Canada, UK and Austrailia and the
story is almost exactly the same (even the bad actors are consistent).

Take the money and run (now that WFH/WFA has gained ground).

Running in place financially does not build character, contrary to popular
belief.

------
qppo
I'm doing my part to extract as much wealth as I can from my Bay Area salary
to buy a home somewhere else. Anyone else doing the same?

It would be financially irresponsible to buy property here even if I could
afford it.

------
r0m4n0
Honestly I ran into partially related situation in NYC. I found a 1-bed
apartment I liked at a nicer building, I decided to proceed and next thing you
know I'm signing the lease. I read the lease and says a few very peculiar
things:

1) the rent is 50% higher than what I saw being advertised/communicated

2) there is a massive discount that brings the rent down to what we agreed to
on a separate page

3) this turned out to be a rent stabilized building so my rent is protected
under rent control and I was informed I have more rights about increased rent

After some more thought I realize building management has been increasing the
rent at the government regulated percentage every year behind the scenes and
sometimes the market was relatively flat, they continued to raise the actual
rent providing discounts, 10 years later they are giving a massive discount so
that it actually meets the market demand. Later on they have full control on
raising rent as often as to basically whatever price they want. Something
about the whole thing seems like this isn't what rent stabilization was for...

~~~
ver_ture
So this is saying that you are "agreeing" to the full price, allowing them to
one day charge you that full price? (While hooking you in with the 50%
discount?)

~~~
currymj
they can't just arbitrarily jack up the rent during the term of the lease. but
they might when you try to renew the lease, or when you move out. the effect
is as if there is no rent stabilization (unless market rents go up above $4000
a month or whatever the "official" number is.)

------
pascalxus
I know this will be downvoted because people aren't really interested in
solving the real problem.

We could fix the whole SF homeless population problem in the space of one
parking lot. Just build micro apartments of 10'x10' feet. Make it 150' wide at
the base: 15x15 = 225 x 40 stories = 9000 inhabitants. 100' feet might not be
much, but it's a hella of a lot more space to live in than hong kong, where
people barely get one bed.

And, with SF's enormous homeless budget of over 300 million, combined almost
over 500m? there'd be more then enough funds to build as many of these
buildings as we need.

The thing that stops these types of solution is rules, rules and more rules.
We choose not to solve the homeless situation: it's a political choice.

~~~
dbspin
You've just described a 560 foot tall prison cube. No cooking, toilets,
corridors or walls apparently. Perhaps the inhabitants whose true crime was
poverty, will be happy to inhabit your force walled thought experiment. Some
would be reticent. But I foresee great things coming from this most lateral
solution.

~~~
balfirevic
This is the largest building in Croatia, housing around 5000 people:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamutica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamutica)

It's a normal building with normal apartments, not a ghetto or a prison.

~~~
dbspin
Actually it currently houses less than 3000 people, and is serviced by
enormous green space. That's not remotely comparable to a 9000 seat cube in an
urban setting. I can't speak to Croatia, but having travelled in the former
Soviet Union often what makes such places livable are the enormous (by Western
standards) amount of amenities which survive from Soviet times - skating
rinks, public parks, ice skating rinks, bowling alleys etc. Added to which is
a grey economy of apartment run stores selling fresh and preserved produce.

Also - and I have no idea how you'd quantify this, lack of negative
comparators may play a part. When most people in your city, be it Mariupol or
Tallin, also live in enormous modernist silos, it's not a source of
resentment.

Finally it's important to note that by comparison to any US city, Croatia has
a tiny crime rate, especially in terms of violent offences. It's a safe,
relatively ethnically homogeneous, socially integrated country. This is not
similar to the lack of social cohesion in play in the American context.

[https://cafebabel.com/en/article/life-in-mamutica-the-
bigges...](https://cafebabel.com/en/article/life-in-mamutica-the-biggest-
apartment-complex-in-croatia-5ae008aff723b35a145e3f8e/)

~~~
balfirevic
> Actually it currently houses less than 3000 people, and is serviced by
> enormous green space

That's just normal green space, at least for that part of city :) I lived a
few blocks away when I was at university.

> amount of amenities which survive from Soviet times - skating rinks, public
> parks, ice skating rinks, bowling alleys etc. Added to which is a grey
> economy of apartment run stores selling fresh and preserved produce.

I would not say that is true of Croatia. Stores are mostly large chains (and
it's for the better, in my opinion). Parks are there, sure, but other
amenities didn't seem any more prevalent than what I saw in Los Angeles.

Anyway, my general point is that large density housing can be pretty nice and
does not need to be ghetto-like.

------
sambull
No new house around me was sub 1500 sq ft... guess bigger is better. But all
the other houses in the area built between 1950-1990 were all under that.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I would be perfectly fine with 800-1000 sqft and little yard but nobody builds
this anymore. And if you have a basement for storage you need less garage too.
Why do US houses rarely have usable basements?

~~~
three_seagrass
Not saying this applies to everything, but the houses I lived in without
usable basements were close to the water line, which would have made a full-
sized basement a liability for the house.

~~~
CameronNemo
Basements do not react well to earthquakes either.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/J8tpy](https://archive.md/J8tpy)

~~~
nerfhammer
you can also confuse the paywall by putting an extra dot after the .com

------
foogazi
in 2009 when this project was being planned housing was soooo cheap in San
Diego

Existing apartments for 100k in nice areas, why even try to build for 400k on
prime beach areas?

Think about it: Miguel Zamora has been living on government housing vouchers
since 1992 waiting for an apartment whose cost rose from 400k to 1MM.

If he had received as settlement enough money for a downpayment (20-50k) he
would own his own place and would have participated in the equity growth

------
kragen
US $414,000 per apartment was the original bid? Something has gone terribly
wrong with your civilization.

— ⁂ —

I think about the Isla Maciel slums where I used to volunteer. They're on the
outskirts of Buenos Aires, and although I'm not familiar with any official
statistics, I think the average daily income is under a dollar per person per
day, with significant variation above and below that level. Some of the roads
are dirt while others are paved, and the buildings are mostly somewhat
ramshackle houses made of hollow brick with corrugated iron roofs. It's sort
of similar to some of the neighborhoods I lived in as a kid in the US before I
moved into a trailer park.

Despite this astonishing level of income, there is no homelessness (though
there is elsewhere in Buenos Aires), and almost nobody rents. This is because
people build their own houses. The most common material is hollow ceramic
brick, the kind that's a latticework of thin red-clay walls; you have to
scavenge or buy these
[https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-821163523-ladrillo-...](https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-821163523-ladrillo-
hueco-12x18x33-9-tubos-pallet-144-unidades-zona-sur-
_JM?quantity=1#position=13&type=item&tracking_id=9848aa63-e0a0-4f35-a558-f9709cb9ac9e)
at a cost of about AR$6000 (US$50) per pallet of 144 bricks, which works out
to about 35¢ per brick. The poorest people instead build with wood, like
people in the US. (We haven't had an earthquake here during human habitation.)

If you do the figures, you can see that a generous 7 m × 3 m wall contains
about US$130 worth of bricks, plus a smaller and cheaper amount of sand and
cement. You can build a 49 m² house from four of these walls (US$520) plus 49
m² of corrugated steel, which if you have to buy it
[https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-799438818-chapa-
aca...](https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-799438818-chapa-acanalada-
galvanizada-c30-por-6-metros-
_JM?variation=40260420703#position=10&type=item&tracking_id=df5f6081-993b-4eff-a37e-abbf02e1f477)
is about AR$24000 (US$200). Putting these parts together into an actual
building envelope typically takes a semi-skilled laborer a week or two, and
most people either do it themselves or have their sons, boyfriends, or
husbands do it, since they don't have any money to hire someone else. Adding a
toilet, a sink, a bidet (we are not barbarians, after all), some PVC pipes for
water and sewer, and a kind of shitty electrical installation (hopefully with
at least a circuit breaker) might bring the total out-of-pocket cost close to
US$1000.

You might note that US$1000 is significantly less than US$414000.

Now, Isla Maciel is a dangerous place. Everyone has lost family members either
to gang violence or to police violence. I wouldn't advise visiting without
knowing anybody there any more than I'd advise trying to visit the US without
a visa; people there laugh about the stories of the tourists who mistakenly
wandered into their neighborhood and got robbed. I'm not holding it up as an
ideal of human civilization. But I'd much rather have a house in Isla Maciel
than a park bench in Los Angeles or a rat-infested motel room in Solana Beach.

And I don't think the violence there is a result of a lack of enforcement of
building codes, as someone will no doubt attempt to argue in response to this
comment. Rather, both the insecurity and the freedom to build your own house
result from the lawlessness of the neighborhood, which in turn proceeds from a
general feeling that the law establishes oppression rather than justice — a
proposition with ample empirical support within the confines of Isla Maciel,
in my view, as well as other similar slums in Buenos Aires. This in turn
undermines officially recognized systems of land tenure, with the consequence
that residents of Isla Maciel can often claim land by building on it, if that
doesn't piss off the neighbors too badly.

— ⁂ —

How much would building such a house in the US cost, if it were somehow
allowed? Let's suppose the cost of labor is some US$30 per hour
([https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/How-Much-Does-a-
Constr...](https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/How-Much-Does-a-Construction-
Worker-Make-an-Hour) gives an average of US$16/hour with a range of US$9–23,
but this doesn't include overhead, worker's comp, unemployment insurance,
etc.) which works out to US$2400 for two person-weeks. So maybe the total cost
is US$3400, including materials and labor. So the cost of labor isn't the
problem. Something has gone terribly wrong with your civilization.

— ⁂ —

I reread Laura Ingalls Wilder's _Little House on the Prairie_ last month, and
I was struck by the description of the building process. If we take the
description in the book as factual (not everything in the book is, but I
assume in this case Ingalls Wilder was doing her best) it took a couple of
weeks for a skilled carpenter and an unskilled assistant to build the single-
room log cabin which afterwards housed a family of five for a year, plus
another few days for the fireplace. But this was using raw materials from
nature — trees chopped down and hauled from the creek by horse-drawn wagon,
mud mortar to hold the fireplace stones together, mud for the chimney. (The
chimney later caught fire due to shoddy construction and nearly burned down
the house, and a dropped-log accident nearly broke Ma's foot. Building codes
and safety rules are important!) Presumably the family had an outhouse for
defecation, although the book shrinks from even mentioning such matters.

She doesn't give dimensions for the house, but it seems to have been around 4
m × 5 m, some 20 m², less than half the size I described above. My own
apartment is 40 m²; fortunately I'm spending the quarantine at my girlfriend's
apartment, which is some 50 m². (The roof leaks, the pipes burst, the curtains
billow from the wind even when the window is closed, and whoever installed the
electricals was either an idiot or a homicidal maniac, but she had my
refrigerator, you see…)

— ⁂ —

How did we get from a situation where an average person could build a five-
person house with four person-weeks of labor — 0.08 years' of per-capita GDP —
without even the support of a manufacturing base to provide them with boards,
bricks, and toilets, to a situation where an "affordable housing" unit costs 6
years' worth of the US per-capita GDP, and 7 years of the US median household
income? That is, a median _household_ in the US now needs to work for _seven
years_ to pay the cost of building a house, rather than two weeks. Half the
population earns less even than that. When it comes to housing buying power,
people in the US are _three orders of magnitude poorer_ than 150 years ago, or
than in the worst slums of Buenos Aires today. Something has gone terribly
wrong with your civilization.

Some people might cite the cost of land (both the Isla Maciel residents and
Ingalls Wilder's family simply took their land without paying for it), but
consider [https://www.landsofamerica.com/property/0.2-acres-in-Los-
Ang...](https://www.landsofamerica.com/property/0.2-acres-in-Los-Angeles-
County-California/7848448/), 0.2 undeveloped acres for US$175000, about 20 km
from downtown LA. In non-medieval units, that's 800 m², enough for 15 of the
49 m² single-story houses I described above, which works out to US$12000 per
house; if you dig a basement, you could cut that to US$6000 per house, at some
penalty to the construction cost. Moreover, if you could build a 15-story
apartment building on half of that land (you can't, it's zoned industrial), it
would hold some 100 apartments of 49 m² each, at a land cost of US$1750 per
apartment. In a skyscraper you have to pour reinforced concrete slabs for
floors, which isn't free, but at ground level it typically costs on the order
of US$50 per square meter, which is only US$2500 for 50 m². $1750 + $2500 +
$3400 = $7650 ≪ $414000! Something has gone terribly wrong with your
civilization.

Some people might cite Baumol's cost disease: when productivity goes up, wages
go up, and so goods that have fixed labor requirements become more expensive;
Baumol's example is an hour of chamber quartet music, which continues to
require four musicians for an hour, just as in 1787. (The article itself
blames "union-level wages" for construction workers.) But that explanation
would suggest that construction workers like Miguel Zamora could easily buy
housing, and we know that's not true. Even if the whole workforce was earning
the US$51 per hour cited for plumbers in the article, that would only add
another US$2500 or so per dwelling to the numbers I calculated above.

— ⁂ —

What if, instead of using ten-thousand-year-old technologies like log cabins
and bricks cemented together with mortar, we used modern technology to build
housing?

You might get something like the Hexayurt, which costs under US$500, can be
built by one unskilled person in less than a day, and shows up by the
thousands every Burning Man: [http://hexayurt.com/](http://hexayurt.com/) —
although there are some fire safety concerns with the material, so stuccoing
it might be advisable. That might double the cost.

High-cube 40-foot shipping containers cost about US$7000 (or much less, used)
and can be stacked into buildings many stories high; they are watertight,
laugh at earthquakes, and have 28 m² of floor area. For $414000 you could buy
dozens of them, maybe hundreds.

Or you might get something like modern trailer houses; I don't know how much
these cost to make, but you can get them used for US$20k–US$40k, full of
amenities like gas stoves, showers, cabinets, glass windows all around,
multiple bathrooms, electrical outlets in all the walls, and central heating,
unheard of in both Ingalls Wilder's time and in Isla Maciel. But could we
maybe sacrifice some of the outlets, and the heavy welded steel frame that
allows you to move your house to a different trailer park, in exchange for
ending homelessness?

Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with your civilization.

------
TA_askhn_iplaw
I live in Solana Beach, a few blocks from the Pearl site. AMA.

~~~
greedo
I grew up in SB, moved away in 95. Went back last summer for a wedding in La
Jolla. Town sure has changed. House prices are crazy as ever, and even the
poorer parts of town had crazy prices for housing. But it has the best Mex
restaurant in SoCal (Tony's Jacal).

------
client4
[http://archive.is/J8tpy](http://archive.is/J8tpy)

------
Medicalidiot
How do y'all think this nationwide housing crisis will precipitate?

------
kwillets
Amongst the various human rights, the right to build a house should be
fundamental, but somehow it was lost to political forces.

~~~
bbeekley
Housing seems to me to be one of the most government-planned markets due to
the strict zoning laws, but I've only seen fairly lefty orgs advocating for
relaxed regulation. I'm surprised there isn't more movement from libertarians
along the lines that property owners should have more rights for what they can
build on their land.

~~~
twblalock
There are two liberties in tension: the right to do what you want on your own
land, and the right to live in peace on your own land (which requires you to
restrict what your neighbors can do on _their_ land).

~~~
dionidium
It's odd to me that anyone finds this compelling. You have a right to wear
whatever t-shirts you like. You don't have a right to prevent other people
from wearing t-shirts with colors you find objectionable. Yet, somehow in
housing we've decided that, no, you actually do have the right to object to
all kind of innocuous nonsense (window styles, setbacks, paint colors, and on
and on). There's nothing so trivial that it's beyond objection.

I understand that people _would like_ to control what others do around them,
but we should be totally unresponsive to those desires. The sentiment behind
modern NIMBYism isn't remotely confusing. Presumably, people who buy a house
in a neighborhood do so because they like the neighborhood the way it is and
don't want it to change. But...so what? That desire is outweighed by other
concerns at _every turn_.

~~~
sokoloff
I will never buy a property that's subject to an HOA board of approval for
things. Mostly for the reasons you list above.

However, people who did buy in an area subject to an HOA presumably did want
that and agreed to it ahead of time. I don't think that should allow someone
to come in, buy into the development, and unilaterally decide "because my
liberty" that they don't have to follow any of the HOA rules.

~~~
dionidium
HOAs are the vanguard of unreasonableness. What I’m more concerned about has
nothing to do with HOAs. It’s zoning, design review, and scores of other
unreasonable laws that impact even those of us who aren’t crazy enough to join
an HOA.

~~~
sokoloff
Sorry, I was trying to say that even though I would personally never buy into
an HOA, I support the legal rights of those _who did_ to enforce the
bylaws/covenants of the HOA agreement.

I think HOAs are stupid, much the same way I think that many other things are
stupid, but I also support the right of people to choose to voluntarily do
things I find stupid (like worshipping an obviously incorrect deity [because
it's different from mine]).

------
jayd16
It might be an unpopular opinion but considering the current pandemic I'm glad
California is not as dense as it _could_ be.

