Hey cool. Thanks for the snark comrade, for the record I never mentioned empty homes but that can definitely be an issue as well. But yeah I'm sure you don't transfer your wealth to a rich person on the first of the month but I do and have never had an option to do otherwise.
Yeah and my leech dropped rents $500 as soon as she had 3 empty units. She wasn't keeping them artificially empty or charging more than people would pay. Limited market availability meant she could charge absurd amounts. People moving our because of Covid created the same effect as just building more housing.
You are literally describing a scenario where the problem with affordability isn't that there isn't enough housing, but that the housing is owned by a rich person who will charge you as much as they possibly can to live there.
Lotta libs here suddenly pro-market when it comes to housing lol
They can charge as much as they want because there's not enough.
When the demand for housing in the Bay dropped precipitously after Covid and people not needing to pay those prices for the sake of their commutes, the prices went down.
We literally live under capitalism. All landlords are not a cartel. Demand affects prices. Supply affects prices.
Look man, you can build your market housing. I can tell you the future though. Rich people will buy them and either keep them vacant as an investment or rent them so you can pay their mortgage and secure their wealth with yours.
Housing prices and rents will continue to rise and poor people will continue to struggle for a dignified existence.
As long as rich people are permitted to use housing as an investment they will continue to do so, artificially inflating the price of housing by maintaining scarcity (which is fine for them because they can afford the prices and they're guaranteed to continue to go up).
Since most everyday people can't compete with the rich for housing, the downstream effect of this is the maintenance of an artificially high rental pool, which as you mentioned, puts pressure on the system that keeps rents high.
Work to decommodify housing comrade. Housing is a human right and shouldn't be subject to market perversion.
I'll tell you how the current approach of urban leftists opposing market rate housing is going to turn out: everything you said about my future, but faster and worse. And when it's all over and the dust has settled, the evictions and the displacement will have been more total and more complete.
Single family exclusive zoning creates artificial scarcity. That's what I devote most of my energy to fighting. 75 percent of SF is zoned for single family. The parts that aren't? Historically black and brown neighborhoods. It makes no sense. No wonder development in the few areas it's allowed is so intensive and expensive. No wonder the displacement is so severe when the only place new multi-unit housing is allowed is in minority neighborhoods. Leaving discretionary power in the hands of wealthy white planning commissions made (almost always) of realtors means you design your city to benefit realtors. The reason that new development has a pool and a gym and a "community space" isn't to attract residents, it's to get past the planning commissions. The planning commissions who will deny their requested variances at the slightest hint that the housing being built won't be the most premium and attract only rich white couples.
So I devote my local political energy to fighting spot and exclusionary zoning, advocating for the development of housing in my wealthy suburb, legalizing public housing, and enacting rent control and eviction protections.
I'll be happy for us all when we get the revolution, but I'm not going to uphold the status quo in the meantime.
YIMBYism as currently constructed is so obviously a manufactured movement that it may as well just be branded as an advertising campaign for housing developers. If you have to build “market rate,” housing it needs to be in the context of government policies that actually pressure the market at a minimum, which most YIMBY types seem to be 100% in opposition to. They also say “we’re not against public housing!” and will decline to advocate for it, even when it’s got a chance of passing.
This does not align with my lived experience of having been on the Bay Area YIMBY Slack channel for two years.
CA's article 34 and Costa-Hawkins repeal efforts had a lot of individual YIMBYs supporting them, even if the statewide-org endorsement vote did not pass.
I'll say that, from the inside, I ran into one literal developer shill and he was grasping at straws trying to get someone local to support a project that would have displaced existing tenants that the org had refused to push for.
The reason the public housing and rent control bills didn't get org-endorsed is because (shocker) it's not a leftist org and there are a lot of neolibs who don't believe in those. The vote was closer than you think, though. That also doesn't mean there weren't plenty of people who call themselves YIMBY who were calling and organizing for those efforts individually. Broad coalition groups can disagree. See: DSA whenever they have to do candidate endorsements.
Here's ye olde switcheroo:
internet socialists: I'm going to ally with wealthy homeowners to stop the construction of new market-rate housing.
YIMBYs: To build affordable, housing, right?
For most cities where this is an issue there's already enough housing - the problem is that it's all owned by rich people
If that's the case building new market homes don't really fix any problems - rich people are just going to buy them as investments.
Leftists stop falling for this made-up story of empty cities challenge.
Hey cool. Thanks for the snark comrade, for the record I never mentioned empty homes but that can definitely be an issue as well. But yeah I'm sure you don't transfer your wealth to a rich person on the first of the month but I do and have never had an option to do otherwise.
Yeah and my leech dropped rents $500 as soon as she had 3 empty units. She wasn't keeping them artificially empty or charging more than people would pay. Limited market availability meant she could charge absurd amounts. People moving our because of Covid created the same effect as just building more housing.
You are literally describing a scenario where the problem with affordability isn't that there isn't enough housing, but that the housing is owned by a rich person who will charge you as much as they possibly can to live there.
Lotta libs here suddenly pro-market when it comes to housing lol
They can charge as much as they want because there's not enough.
When the demand for housing in the Bay dropped precipitously after Covid and people not needing to pay those prices for the sake of their commutes, the prices went down.
We literally live under capitalism. All landlords are not a cartel. Demand affects prices. Supply affects prices.
Look man, you can build your market housing. I can tell you the future though. Rich people will buy them and either keep them vacant as an investment or rent them so you can pay their mortgage and secure their wealth with yours.
Housing prices and rents will continue to rise and poor people will continue to struggle for a dignified existence.
As long as rich people are permitted to use housing as an investment they will continue to do so, artificially inflating the price of housing by maintaining scarcity (which is fine for them because they can afford the prices and they're guaranteed to continue to go up).
Since most everyday people can't compete with the rich for housing, the downstream effect of this is the maintenance of an artificially high rental pool, which as you mentioned, puts pressure on the system that keeps rents high.
Work to decommodify housing comrade. Housing is a human right and shouldn't be subject to market perversion.
I'll tell you how the current approach of urban leftists opposing market rate housing is going to turn out: everything you said about my future, but faster and worse. And when it's all over and the dust has settled, the evictions and the displacement will have been more total and more complete.
Single family exclusive zoning creates artificial scarcity. That's what I devote most of my energy to fighting. 75 percent of SF is zoned for single family. The parts that aren't? Historically black and brown neighborhoods. It makes no sense. No wonder development in the few areas it's allowed is so intensive and expensive. No wonder the displacement is so severe when the only place new multi-unit housing is allowed is in minority neighborhoods. Leaving discretionary power in the hands of wealthy white planning commissions made (almost always) of realtors means you design your city to benefit realtors. The reason that new development has a pool and a gym and a "community space" isn't to attract residents, it's to get past the planning commissions. The planning commissions who will deny their requested variances at the slightest hint that the housing being built won't be the most premium and attract only rich white couples.
So I devote my local political energy to fighting spot and exclusionary zoning, advocating for the development of housing in my wealthy suburb, legalizing public housing, and enacting rent control and eviction protections.
I'll be happy for us all when we get the revolution, but I'm not going to uphold the status quo in the meantime.
YIMBYism as currently constructed is so obviously a manufactured movement that it may as well just be branded as an advertising campaign for housing developers. If you have to build “market rate,” housing it needs to be in the context of government policies that actually pressure the market at a minimum, which most YIMBY types seem to be 100% in opposition to. They also say “we’re not against public housing!” and will decline to advocate for it, even when it’s got a chance of passing.
This does not align with my lived experience of having been on the Bay Area YIMBY Slack channel for two years.
CA's article 34 and Costa-Hawkins repeal efforts had a lot of individual YIMBYs supporting them, even if the statewide-org endorsement vote did not pass.
I'll say that, from the inside, I ran into one literal developer shill and he was grasping at straws trying to get someone local to support a project that would have displaced existing tenants that the org had refused to push for.
The reason the public housing and rent control bills didn't get org-endorsed is because (shocker) it's not a leftist org and there are a lot of neolibs who don't believe in those. The vote was closer than you think, though. That also doesn't mean there weren't plenty of people who call themselves YIMBY who were calling and organizing for those efforts individually. Broad coalition groups can disagree. See: DSA whenever they have to do candidate endorsements.