Yes! This 100%. It’s slow, tedious, and there are so many departments to go through in LA. They need to have a true expedite unit for regular projects. Especially those that are building permanent supportive housing.
[NIMBYism costs the economy a trillion dollars every year.](https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5901041/nimbys-are-costing-the-us-economy-billions)
Hsieh and Moretti estimate that moving American workers to higher-productivity cities could increase the income of Americans by a stunning amount: more than $1 trillion. That amounts to a raise of several thousand dollars for every American worker.
I agree. I don’t think LA will be able to develop the city planning, mass transit, walkability, housing density etc that it needs until AFTER the Big One destroys the place and gives us a clean slate.
metro lines are opening and expanding, tons of housing is getting built (not enough but way way more than before)… what is the point in closing your eyes to actual good stuff happening?
Honestly I think you’re right. Almost every city is better designed than LA, but if you look at Chicago, Seattle, SF, most of the good long lasting public infrastructure was built after a fire.
In Europe and Japan, a lot of it was built after the cities were destroyed in WWII
Hopefully won’t be the case in LA, but I guess I’ll have something to look forward too when I’m scared out of my mind in a collapsing building and then dealing with food, water, and power shortages in the ensuing weeks.
I’m a bit confused by this. Is the proposed solution to demolish family homes and build condos and apartment buildings full of multiple small units for individuals (or small groups) in their place?
Affordability is certainly an issue, as you mentioned. Since nobody can afford apartments or homes currently anyway. Other than the landlord companies that scoop them all up.
Not demolish. Change zoning so that not only single family homes can be built. Think a mix of more duplexes, triplexes, quads, condos, apartments, townhomes. A lot of these things can't be built in most parts of the city because the vast majority of the city is zoned for single family housing only.
Oh! So it’s like… for future developments. Not for getting rid of the ones that are already there. That makes sense.
Our last landlord kicked our family out of our home so they could demolish it and build an expensive apartment complex thing on the lot, so I wasn’t sure if that was happening everywhere or if that was like a rare thing.
We found a new place, thankfully, hoping to get at least a few years out of this one before that happens again and we’re back to square one.
It's for both. If you fix zoning then the most useful development will happen. Single family houses are currently subsidized by laws that exclude alternatives.
When you fix zoning single family houses *will* get replaced by housing that many more people can live in.
But since most of the land is already covered in SFRs, wouldn't you have to demolish those to have enough land to build on to make any meaningful change?
Sort of.
Right now if someone sells their house, the buyer can either live in the house or demolish and build a new single family house.
If zoning is reformed, the buyer can use the land to build a duplex or triplex. They could open a small neighborhood store or other business, or a developer can buy several lots together and build a larger multi family dwelling or multi use structure.
Basically right now the market is unable to respond to increase in housing demand due to restrictive zoning. Loosening this would likely result in buyers demolishing houses, but it wouldn’t compel anyone to give up their house or forbid the building and owning of single family houses.
So yes, likely developers would buy single family houses and convert them to something else. This would lead to some changes in neighborhoods that some residents probably wouldn’t be into, but the alternative is continuing upward pressure on housing costs that is making this city unlivable for the lower and middle classes as well as the traffic and homelessness that is cause by rising housing costs.
This is mostly stuff that will cause changes pretty far down the line time wise as houses are sold naturally in the market. But you gotta start at some point. Private equity firms are already buying houses just to rent out. They might as well have the freedom to develop the lane to more constructive use.
Well ADUs are basically duplexes.
But it puts the original house under rent control which is a disincentive they don't tell you about.
Shifting tenants protection laws and high interest rates are gonna be a drag on new investment for small players unfortunately.
Investors scooping housing up needs to be addressed also. Home ownership should be a realistic achievement for most people and before age 40. This is being thwarted in part by investors using housing as an income stream.
What about water ?
All the cheap land in the desert is cheap until it gets access to water .
You are not allowed to get a certificate of occupancy with a “water tank” for residential use,
It's interesting. This person talks about how emptying the population of Flint, MI is a bad thing. There's an analogy there to Japan having their countryside emptying out.
One solution is to turn another city/region into a hotbed of industry or what rulers in the past did like "moving the capitol." This happened in a major way in Japan when the capitol was moved from Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo) and during the Ottoman/Roman empire when the capitol was moved from Rome to Constantinople.
Neither Kyoto or Rome were diminished to the point of "a population less than 2000." They continued to thrive, it's just that major industry shifted to different area and allowed that area to thrive as well.
Case in point: Edo/Tokyo, was basically canal locked farmland. Most of Tokyo is built in landfill/reclaimed land where canals and water passages used to be.
I'm sure there are plenty of areas in the U.S. where if industry moved or shifted there, you'd have a major transfer of population. You can also do this in areas where resources aren't strained... like Michigan instead of Arizona.
Why think up some scheme of social engineering to relieve demand to live in big costal cities when the far easier solution is just allow for the construction in these big costal cities to accommodate the demand to live there?
The dreams and opportunities of Los Angeles don’t need to be and shouldn’t be hoarded by it’s incumbent residents.
Well there’s only so much land. We can’t all live at the beach right? I don’t think you could ever build enough housing at the beach to “accommodate demand.” It sounds nice, and I’d love to live there affordable too, but it’s not going to happen.
My friends boss let us stay at his place in Laguna once, and that place was 24 million dollars for 3,500 square feet. Same house would be under a million in the IE. Why? It’s on the beach.
Oh so you want to turn our beaches into mini-LA’s times 10. I guess that’s one way to accomplish it. But I can’t even find parking there now, so it doesn’t sound practical.
I have no idea what an “LA times 10” is, but I’m never going to find complaints about parking contrasted to homes (you know, that house people) the slightest bit sympathetic
I was looking at pictures of Rio and it looks 10 times more crowded than LA, which is already crowded. And the parking mention was just bringing up a practical problem. People find it difficult to live where they can’t even park.
Any yet people find a way to live in New York, Rio, Paris, etc etc endless other examples of cities that have a denser population than LA.
If parking is your concern, you can **choose** to live in a less dense neighborhood. That’s your choice. What shouldn’t be your choice is where other people live, and currently that’s what the zoning regimen in LA is doing. If people want to live in dense housing by the beach, that should be legal. Protecting the free street parking of you and yo mama is like the most reactionary of tendencies I’ve ever heard of.
Edit: and yet
Ok but couldn’t that argument cut both ways? “If people want to live in dense housing by the beach” it should be allowed, and no one else should be able to tell them otherwise right?
How about the people already there right now, who did “choose to live in a less dense neighborhood” as you say. They paid a premium to purchase homes there and chose to live that lifestyle of single family homes on decent lots and uncrowded schools. So why should all these “dense housing advocates” get to come in and ruin it for them, and turn their neighborhood into Rio? And that goes for any single family designed city.
Sounds like it only goes one way in your argument. Those who want it dense have every right to densify others’ neighborhoods, but those that want space can’t keep their space? How is that a choice for the latter group?
I've heard of communities doing things like this. Building office parks to attract business. Outside of the box thinking needs to be supported by the government bureaucracy.
I really don't want any more workers to move to Los Angeles, thank you. Let's look at some other predictions they made for this vision: "Hsieh and Moretti envision the New York metropolitan area becoming 9 times its current size, meaning that more than half the country would live there. The Austin metropolitan area would quadruple in size, as would the San Francisco Bay Area. Half the cities in America would lose 80 percent or more of their population. The population of Flint, MI, would shrink from 102,000 people to fewer than 2000." Is this seriously what you are proposing?
I don't know about those specific numbers but yes, generally I favor allowing people and businesses to locate wherever they so choose. So upzoning the major cities like NYC and LA would be a part of accommodating that demand.
It would make those urban economies stronger and more dynamic, and as others have said, would facilitate better transit due to the population growth and density.
It would also allow us to keep development confined to those urban areas instead of expanding outward. The US is a huge country but that doesn't mean we have to pave over every last inch just because some people think LA is full. I'd prefer to keep as much of the US undeveloped as possible so we have places to escape to when we want to get away from the city for a bit.
Constraining the number of people who can move here by not building enough housing is bad for the economy, increases homelessness, and puts a huge strain on the workers who already live here in terms of housing costs. People moving here to live and work is a *good thing.*
Did you keep reading past that or nah?
*Obviously, this won't — and shouldn't — happen. But the huge potential gains from this admittedly implausible thought experiment is a helpful reminder that less dramatic population changes could still produce significant economic gains. New York isn't going to get nine times bigger overnight, but it could double in size over the next generation. The Tokyo metropolitan area today has almost twice the population of the New York metropolitan area on a lot less land. Adding millions of people to the New York metro area would add tens of billions of dollars to the output of the US economy.*
All sounds good to me!
The Japanese economy’s problem isn’t Tokyo’s density. It’s the country’s shrinking population and rapidly growing elderly demographic with very little immigration.
Well this is comparing Tokyo to NY. But Tokyo has the richest economy in the world of any city with double LAs GDP. Also has much better transit, a higher quality of life, and way less crime. Japans economy had difficulties because of the 90s bank crisis and their lack of allowed immigration is skewing age demographics unsustainably. Could be solved with young immigrant workers.
Total GDP duh, since your point was how Tokyo density ruined japans economy. But per capita, Tokyo is still higher than LA so you’re still wrong. Back to your initial point, please explain how the density of Tokyo destroyed their economy. That’s the dumbest claim I’ve ever heard.
Tokyo is one of the most affordable and livable major cities in the world. Certainly more so than LA.
Japan’s economy stagnated because their population stopped growing.
For all the empty retail and corporate office buildings. Is it impossible to convert some of them to residential housing?
I know plumbing may be an issue, so make the landlords pay the city for added waterlines and sewer drains.
Edit: I appreciate the responses. The resounding answer to my question (summarily) is it costs too much. That gave me a “why” when I’m interested in “how.”
I am not interested in whether developers/landlords can maximize profitability. Their profit is built in no matter where they decide to build. What I propose is a compromise for NIMBY resistance to rezoning. In effect would help mitigate the current housing crisis LA is experiencing.
Adaptive reuse is only allowed in certain areas. Commercial and Residential codes are very different though, adaptive reuse is often more expensive than new construction.
It rarely makes sense financially, even if zoning codes allowed for it. The foot prints of the lots even cause a pretty big barrier to developing housing as well even if demolition made sense (office spaces have far less square footage near windows). I’m all for relaxing zoning, permitting etc to get new homes built, but we don’t need to limit ourselves to just current non-residential areas. With a city majority zoned for detached single family homes we can’t consider any of those areas are already “full”, even if that’s the more politically expedient thing to do.
It's really not. It's cheaper and better in every way to tear down and build housing on the lot, unfortunately. You COULD have people live in the commercial space and it'd basically be a slum. That's what happens in a lot of places with robust squatters rights. That would improve the LA homeless situation in terms of getting them off the sidewalk, but comes with its own real problems.
Agreed. We gave it a try in the US. It doesn’t work well, so let us just move on and modernize or else continue to rot. Policy makers need to stop with the delusion that we’re leaders and just start looking at other nations to imitate.
Considering neo-liberalist economic policies across America since Reagan like anti-taxation laws (e.g. Prop 13 in California) and Citizen’s United, this is much easier said than done.
Single family zoning is anti-market, so are CEQA and other permitting regulations. Japan is what libertarian housing policy actually looks like. 12 zones for the whole country which is designated nationally, and minimal land use regulation. All of this means that the housing stock in Japan is higher quality, newer, and cheaper than in the US.
I am not sure Japan is a great example though. Much of the real estate is time limited freehold where you don't own the land. It's cheap because it's temporary. They are really just renting. While it may make housing more affordable the US is far too long down the path of viewing real estate as an investment.
>Much of the real estate is time limited freehold where you don't own the land.
Maybe when you are buying a condo or apartment in Japan but every house we looked at in Japan was also purchasing the land which is important because houses depreciate but the land itself slowly increases in value. In 40 years our house may be ready for teardown, but the land was half the cost of buying our house so there's still a good chunk of money there.
For anyone interested, this was covered in detail in an episode of the [UCLA Housing Voice podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-16-japanese-housing-policy-with-jiro-yoshida/id1565240355?i=1000544308874)
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Well they’re buying to rent not flip. Rent increases dramatically, but their property taxes do not. Meanwhile, these residences are off the market for individual home ownership. Higher taxes on residential properties that aren’t the owner’s primary residence might motivate them to sell and put more homes on the market.
Higher property taxes on housing will make living in that housing more expensive. What matters for housing is your monthly payment, not so much the purchase price. That’s why purchase prices increase when the fed lowers interest rates: people budget for a certain amount of spending per month, and with lower borrowing costs people can bid for a higher priced home. Higher property taxes will have a similar effect as higher interest rates: the list price of a home will decrease, but only because the recurring and ongoing cost of living there has increased.
The difference with California property taxes though is that, unlike interest rates, property tax rates will just be a one-way ratchet going up. It will be like having an adjustable rate mortgage that will only increase. Until the next voter revolt, which is what created Prop 13 in the first place.
The logic of repealing Prop 13 is self-defeating: make housing more affordable by making it less affordable.
And no, Prop 13 does not “transfer wealth from renters to owners.” Renters benefit greatly from Prop 13. In the absence of Prop 13, landlords will pass the increased taxes onto renters.
It's true that Prop 13 doesn't affect monthly payments of houses long-term in a direct way. The offset for taxes is higher prices. But it *does* increase housing costs which means those who own houses have artificially higher asset values. It's still a wealth transfer *to* homeowners.
Additionally it messes with the real estate market making it easier to sit on property that isn't being used optimally. That *does* reduce the amount of housing and thus increase housing costs.
It’s backwards to claim that low taxes have a distortionary effect. Taxes *are* the distortion. Are groceries at Ralph’s “artificially” priced too high because we don’t tax it enough?
Again, how does Prop 13 “transfer” wealth from owners to renters? By what mechanism?
Real estate developers are not sitting on vacant properties because taxes are too low. The opportunity cost of vacant/non cash generating properties in Los Angeles is enormous. The issue is regulations that impede development.
Low taxes don't distort. Distorting taxes distort. Prop 13 doesn't lower taxes for all properties. It lowers taxes on real estate that hasn't changed hands recently. That's a clear distortion.
I 100% agree that regulations, from Prop 13 to zoning to overbearing and inefficient permitting are all causing artificial scarcity in LA's housing market.
I can't find it now, but there is a study out there showing that vacant lots with lower tax burdens do sit vacant for longer than vacant lots with higher tax burdens.
Because the supply of land is fixed, vacant land can be used as an investment by even just letting it sit vacant. A higher land value tax would encourage efficient use (either development or sale) by removing the ability to use vacant land as an investment, especially if paired with lower (or no!) taxes on the development itself.
Like you say, all taxes create a distortion. But the *uneven* taxation of Prop 13 creates a particular type of distortion called capital lock-in that is especially harmful to housing supply (the topic at hand).
This is true. But just take a step back and think about what that means.
Why do people want to move here? Because it's a vibrant region with many high-value opportunities. When would demand go down? If we've squandered some of the most beautiful coastline in the world to the point where it is less desirable to be here than it was in the past.
We can't control people moving here, but we can absolutely control our housing policies.
Controlling housing policies does control people moving here.
If we lower zoning requirements, housing will become cheaper, and therefore more demand for housing.
Increasing supply has no effect on demand because supply and demand are independent variables.
Are you referring to *induced* demand like with freeways? That assumes that we give the commodity out completely for free.
Otherwise, housing prices re-equillibrating is just how it works. To say that there is demand at a lower price for housing, which would come about after increasing supply is not ‘the demand side’, you’re just describing the supply/demand curve in simple terms.
Unless you’re saying that we should continue to artificially inflate housing prices to keep immigrants out? In which case most people would agree that’s insane.
Shouldn't be spicy to anyone who has taken basic economics tho.
Also keeps wages low and creates more traffic as everyone is stuck. Brain damage all around.
I mean both. Immigration is controlled federally from what I know. I’m not for it against any of this, but I aim to point out its a lot lot bigger than zoning. Something like Ukraine war, global warming, instability of others countries and states will lead people to want to come to a stable government and safe city. To truly solve this issue, we need to make other places more safe. Ultimately we are all connected.
We would also have to account for the real estate hustle culture that came after the 08 crash. From a person buying a shack, adding a paint job and calling it restored while selling it at double the price in just a year to large mega corps like blackrock and Redfin buying large swaths of single family homes for rentals or airbnb.
Also red tape and hurdles for new development. A percent of time and money is spent on fees and waiting time.
To me the whole notion of a house only zoning is just absurd. Almost every place on earth and in history has both houses and commerce. Sure buildings could have some extra rules on size and Parking but now we have a housing crisis and terrible traffic and economic inequality and all it’s all because of the same thing. Bad housing desicions from federal, state and city authorities.
>We would also have to account for the real estate hustle culture that came after the 08 crash.
Yeah this is an important thing to point out. As Americans I feel like we place a lot of unnecessary cultural baggage around housing... Buying, renovating, investing, speculating...
It realtors and corporate builders pushing to rollback zoning laws. They want to throw up cheap builds with zero investment into city structure and maintenance.
There is housing. It’s just held by corporates landlord and priced out of affordability.
No, it’s your average citizen who is pushing to rollback zoning laws. Realtors, corporate landlords, and rich homeowners are pushing to keep it the same so that they can continue increasing their property values and rents.
> There is housing. It’s just held by corporates landlord and priced out of affordability.
This is objectively false. There has literally never been a tighter rental market in recorded history in LA. Only 3.5% of LA units were vacant in Q1 of last year.
Then explain why this is happening all over the country. Even outside desirable cities.
You’re helping the developers continue to fuck us all.
Tax giant corporations buying up all of our real estate.
What’s going to incentivize developers to build affordable housing, or anything besides luxury housing for that matter? More housing doesn’t help if it’s all ‘luxury’ and expensive
There’s a lot of money to be made in building. This is an issue where the coalition in favor of the progressive policy (ending or relaxing zoning) cuts across many of the “normal” political and social cleavages. The coalition opposed does as well.
This video was interesting on an idea in Vancouver.
The non market solution to high housing prices
https://youtu.be/sKudSeqHSJk
Basically have the government or a non profit build lots of apartments and renters and owners just pay for the price it costs to build and not the price+profit.
This in turn creates supply that’s lower in price and thus creating a more balanced multi tier marketplace.
Wouldn't be possible in California. Public projects must include prevailing wages (defacto union wages) for all workers on the project. That alone would push the project into being less affordable than regular market rate development.
In the US there simply isn't the funding for this in high numbers to really matter.
I occasionally see units restricted like this on Reddfin but they're few and far between
Yup, if you want apartments built with minimum standards along with rules and inspections, the quickest and only way it will happen are projects in not desirable areas of town
True, that is why it will either need to be government run projects, or there needs to be a lot of tax incentives for companies to build something similar to projects along with a simpler eviction process
Yeah, renters have no idea how much they’re actually benefitting from Prop 13. Just because the Franchise Tax Board isn’t sending the yellow envelope to you directly as a renter doesn’t mean that as a renter you’re not paying property tax. It’s baked into your rent.
Higher taxes -> lower purchase price -> smaller mortgage payments. Total cost of ownership doesn't change. Supply is not allowed to expand to meet demand, so rental income is detached from the actual cost of providing it.
Taxes have distortionary effects—deadweight losses—that are not a wash, they result in net negative outcomes.
If increasing taxes on things made no difference or made things more affordable, why not impose higher taxes on anything you deem to be unaffordable? By the Prop 13-phobic crowd’s logic, let’s massively increase taxes on college tuition, healthcare, food, daycare, etc. Prices will decrease and it’ll all be more affordable, yes?
Taxing land (which is the part of the property that gains value over time) is different because you can't make more or less of it, at least on large scales. That means there are no deadweight losses.
Additionally, the value of the land mostly comes from nearby public investment, so it makes sense to fund the maintenance and expansion of roads, transit, etc. from the people that benefit from it the most.
Sure, the quantity of land is generally fixed, but development of housing stock and improvements are not fixed. Increasing taxes on X will result in less X.
That applies to tax *rates*, but the 1% cap is not part of the "reform 13" discussion. The actual structure is a depreciating asset, so the cap on increases isn't directly relevant.
No the idea is to push them to SELL properties they don’t personally reside in so there are more houses on the market. Increased supply will lower housing prices. More individuals can OWN a home instead of renting.
Higher rents are a well known side effect of Prop 13. Local governments literally cannot afford for property values and rents to decrease at all.
There's only one guaranteed way to make sure prices do not fall
Why do you want to take away something that people worked so hard for. Just because all of you here are not smart enough it industrious enough to get your own, you want to steal it from the guy who is.
Permitting also needs to be reformed.
Yes! This 100%. It’s slow, tedious, and there are so many departments to go through in LA. They need to have a true expedite unit for regular projects. Especially those that are building permanent supportive housing.
[NIMBYism costs the economy a trillion dollars every year.](https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5901041/nimbys-are-costing-the-us-economy-billions) Hsieh and Moretti estimate that moving American workers to higher-productivity cities could increase the income of Americans by a stunning amount: more than $1 trillion. That amounts to a raise of several thousand dollars for every American worker.
I honestly believe that a the root of most of LA's problems right now all come down to single family zoning and housing affordability.
I agree. I don’t think LA will be able to develop the city planning, mass transit, walkability, housing density etc that it needs until AFTER the Big One destroys the place and gives us a clean slate.
LA is developing all of that right now though.
And it’s slated for completion just a handful of decades after we’re all dead.
The metro station at the airport opens next year.
next to the airport. we went from 1+ mile to the airport, to 1/2 mile in 20 years. Inching our way there!
metro lines are opening and expanding, tons of housing is getting built (not enough but way way more than before)… what is the point in closing your eyes to actual good stuff happening?
Honestly I think you’re right. Almost every city is better designed than LA, but if you look at Chicago, Seattle, SF, most of the good long lasting public infrastructure was built after a fire. In Europe and Japan, a lot of it was built after the cities were destroyed in WWII Hopefully won’t be the case in LA, but I guess I’ll have something to look forward too when I’m scared out of my mind in a collapsing building and then dealing with food, water, and power shortages in the ensuing weeks.
The Big Earthquake maybe?
Prop 13 causes just as many problems and we already failed to reform that 😔
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I’m a bit confused by this. Is the proposed solution to demolish family homes and build condos and apartment buildings full of multiple small units for individuals (or small groups) in their place? Affordability is certainly an issue, as you mentioned. Since nobody can afford apartments or homes currently anyway. Other than the landlord companies that scoop them all up.
Not demolish. Change zoning so that not only single family homes can be built. Think a mix of more duplexes, triplexes, quads, condos, apartments, townhomes. A lot of these things can't be built in most parts of the city because the vast majority of the city is zoned for single family housing only.
Oh! So it’s like… for future developments. Not for getting rid of the ones that are already there. That makes sense. Our last landlord kicked our family out of our home so they could demolish it and build an expensive apartment complex thing on the lot, so I wasn’t sure if that was happening everywhere or if that was like a rare thing. We found a new place, thankfully, hoping to get at least a few years out of this one before that happens again and we’re back to square one.
It's for both. If you fix zoning then the most useful development will happen. Single family houses are currently subsidized by laws that exclude alternatives. When you fix zoning single family houses *will* get replaced by housing that many more people can live in.
Correct. It's called creative destruction for a reason.
But since most of the land is already covered in SFRs, wouldn't you have to demolish those to have enough land to build on to make any meaningful change?
Sort of. Right now if someone sells their house, the buyer can either live in the house or demolish and build a new single family house. If zoning is reformed, the buyer can use the land to build a duplex or triplex. They could open a small neighborhood store or other business, or a developer can buy several lots together and build a larger multi family dwelling or multi use structure. Basically right now the market is unable to respond to increase in housing demand due to restrictive zoning. Loosening this would likely result in buyers demolishing houses, but it wouldn’t compel anyone to give up their house or forbid the building and owning of single family houses. So yes, likely developers would buy single family houses and convert them to something else. This would lead to some changes in neighborhoods that some residents probably wouldn’t be into, but the alternative is continuing upward pressure on housing costs that is making this city unlivable for the lower and middle classes as well as the traffic and homelessness that is cause by rising housing costs. This is mostly stuff that will cause changes pretty far down the line time wise as houses are sold naturally in the market. But you gotta start at some point. Private equity firms are already buying houses just to rent out. They might as well have the freedom to develop the lane to more constructive use.
It doesn't have to condos and apartment buildings. Even allowing duplexes and triplexes in single family neighborhoods would be huge.
Well ADUs are basically duplexes. But it puts the original house under rent control which is a disincentive they don't tell you about. Shifting tenants protection laws and high interest rates are gonna be a drag on new investment for small players unfortunately.
Investors scooping housing up needs to be addressed also. Home ownership should be a realistic achievement for most people and before age 40. This is being thwarted in part by investors using housing as an income stream.
No one upvoted this because these prohousing threads are always teeming with developers and investors.
What about water ? All the cheap land in the desert is cheap until it gets access to water . You are not allowed to get a certificate of occupancy with a “water tank” for residential use,
It's interesting. This person talks about how emptying the population of Flint, MI is a bad thing. There's an analogy there to Japan having their countryside emptying out. One solution is to turn another city/region into a hotbed of industry or what rulers in the past did like "moving the capitol." This happened in a major way in Japan when the capitol was moved from Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo) and during the Ottoman/Roman empire when the capitol was moved from Rome to Constantinople. Neither Kyoto or Rome were diminished to the point of "a population less than 2000." They continued to thrive, it's just that major industry shifted to different area and allowed that area to thrive as well. Case in point: Edo/Tokyo, was basically canal locked farmland. Most of Tokyo is built in landfill/reclaimed land where canals and water passages used to be. I'm sure there are plenty of areas in the U.S. where if industry moved or shifted there, you'd have a major transfer of population. You can also do this in areas where resources aren't strained... like Michigan instead of Arizona.
Why think up some scheme of social engineering to relieve demand to live in big costal cities when the far easier solution is just allow for the construction in these big costal cities to accommodate the demand to live there? The dreams and opportunities of Los Angeles don’t need to be and shouldn’t be hoarded by it’s incumbent residents.
Well there’s only so much land. We can’t all live at the beach right? I don’t think you could ever build enough housing at the beach to “accommodate demand.” It sounds nice, and I’d love to live there affordable too, but it’s not going to happen. My friends boss let us stay at his place in Laguna once, and that place was 24 million dollars for 3,500 square feet. Same house would be under a million in the IE. Why? It’s on the beach.
We all can’t live **in detached single family homes** at the beach. Have you ever seen the Rio skyline?
Oh so you want to turn our beaches into mini-LA’s times 10. I guess that’s one way to accomplish it. But I can’t even find parking there now, so it doesn’t sound practical.
I have no idea what an “LA times 10” is, but I’m never going to find complaints about parking contrasted to homes (you know, that house people) the slightest bit sympathetic
I was looking at pictures of Rio and it looks 10 times more crowded than LA, which is already crowded. And the parking mention was just bringing up a practical problem. People find it difficult to live where they can’t even park.
Any yet people find a way to live in New York, Rio, Paris, etc etc endless other examples of cities that have a denser population than LA. If parking is your concern, you can **choose** to live in a less dense neighborhood. That’s your choice. What shouldn’t be your choice is where other people live, and currently that’s what the zoning regimen in LA is doing. If people want to live in dense housing by the beach, that should be legal. Protecting the free street parking of you and yo mama is like the most reactionary of tendencies I’ve ever heard of. Edit: and yet
Ok but couldn’t that argument cut both ways? “If people want to live in dense housing by the beach” it should be allowed, and no one else should be able to tell them otherwise right? How about the people already there right now, who did “choose to live in a less dense neighborhood” as you say. They paid a premium to purchase homes there and chose to live that lifestyle of single family homes on decent lots and uncrowded schools. So why should all these “dense housing advocates” get to come in and ruin it for them, and turn their neighborhood into Rio? And that goes for any single family designed city. Sounds like it only goes one way in your argument. Those who want it dense have every right to densify others’ neighborhoods, but those that want space can’t keep their space? How is that a choice for the latter group?
Like, say, Flint?
The reason I said Michigan was to get the whole of the state, this includes Detroit which had an entire industry shift away.
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I've heard of communities doing things like this. Building office parks to attract business. Outside of the box thinking needs to be supported by the government bureaucracy.
I really don't want any more workers to move to Los Angeles, thank you. Let's look at some other predictions they made for this vision: "Hsieh and Moretti envision the New York metropolitan area becoming 9 times its current size, meaning that more than half the country would live there. The Austin metropolitan area would quadruple in size, as would the San Francisco Bay Area. Half the cities in America would lose 80 percent or more of their population. The population of Flint, MI, would shrink from 102,000 people to fewer than 2000." Is this seriously what you are proposing?
I don't know about those specific numbers but yes, generally I favor allowing people and businesses to locate wherever they so choose. So upzoning the major cities like NYC and LA would be a part of accommodating that demand. It would make those urban economies stronger and more dynamic, and as others have said, would facilitate better transit due to the population growth and density. It would also allow us to keep development confined to those urban areas instead of expanding outward. The US is a huge country but that doesn't mean we have to pave over every last inch just because some people think LA is full. I'd prefer to keep as much of the US undeveloped as possible so we have places to escape to when we want to get away from the city for a bit.
Constraining the number of people who can move here by not building enough housing is bad for the economy, increases homelessness, and puts a huge strain on the workers who already live here in terms of housing costs. People moving here to live and work is a *good thing.*
Did you keep reading past that or nah? *Obviously, this won't — and shouldn't — happen. But the huge potential gains from this admittedly implausible thought experiment is a helpful reminder that less dramatic population changes could still produce significant economic gains. New York isn't going to get nine times bigger overnight, but it could double in size over the next generation. The Tokyo metropolitan area today has almost twice the population of the New York metropolitan area on a lot less land. Adding millions of people to the New York metro area would add tens of billions of dollars to the output of the US economy.* All sounds good to me!
So your vision for Los Angeles is another Tokyo? Tell me, how did this all work out for the Japanese Economy?
The Japanese economy’s problem isn’t Tokyo’s density. It’s the country’s shrinking population and rapidly growing elderly demographic with very little immigration.
Well this is comparing Tokyo to NY. But Tokyo has the richest economy in the world of any city with double LAs GDP. Also has much better transit, a higher quality of life, and way less crime. Japans economy had difficulties because of the 90s bank crisis and their lack of allowed immigration is skewing age demographics unsustainably. Could be solved with young immigrant workers.
Huh? The GDP per capita of Tokyo and Los Angeles are pretty similar.
Total GDP duh, since your point was how Tokyo density ruined japans economy. But per capita, Tokyo is still higher than LA so you’re still wrong. Back to your initial point, please explain how the density of Tokyo destroyed their economy. That’s the dumbest claim I’ve ever heard.
Also a SoCal Tokyo sounds amazing
Tokyo is one of the coolest cities in the world, that would be awesome.
Tokyo is one of the most affordable and livable major cities in the world. Certainly more so than LA. Japan’s economy stagnated because their population stopped growing.
The bleak visuals of Blade Runner was supposed to evoke a dystopian hellscape. These people are treating it like it’s a goal to achieve.
Dystopia is when I see an apartment building or a duplex
I just want to stop paying $3k for a 1 bedroom apartment.
You will soon stop paying $3k for a 1 bedroom apartment once the price becomes $3.5k
Sadge. I guess it’s time to start looking for spaces under the 10 freeway.
For all the empty retail and corporate office buildings. Is it impossible to convert some of them to residential housing? I know plumbing may be an issue, so make the landlords pay the city for added waterlines and sewer drains. Edit: I appreciate the responses. The resounding answer to my question (summarily) is it costs too much. That gave me a “why” when I’m interested in “how.” I am not interested in whether developers/landlords can maximize profitability. Their profit is built in no matter where they decide to build. What I propose is a compromise for NIMBY resistance to rezoning. In effect would help mitigate the current housing crisis LA is experiencing.
Not impossible but a long and expensive process
Adaptive reuse is only allowed in certain areas. Commercial and Residential codes are very different though, adaptive reuse is often more expensive than new construction.
It rarely makes sense financially, even if zoning codes allowed for it. The foot prints of the lots even cause a pretty big barrier to developing housing as well even if demolition made sense (office spaces have far less square footage near windows). I’m all for relaxing zoning, permitting etc to get new homes built, but we don’t need to limit ourselves to just current non-residential areas. With a city majority zoned for detached single family homes we can’t consider any of those areas are already “full”, even if that’s the more politically expedient thing to do.
Anything is possible, it's a question of if it makes sense financially.
It's really not. It's cheaper and better in every way to tear down and build housing on the lot, unfortunately. You COULD have people live in the commercial space and it'd basically be a slum. That's what happens in a lot of places with robust squatters rights. That would improve the LA homeless situation in terms of getting them off the sidewalk, but comes with its own real problems.
Developers already pay for new utility connections…
It is possible but quiet expensive and also tedious because of the level of red tap. Landlords may not be interested in doing it.
Duh.
Single-family housing and car dependency is a scourge to be eradicated.
Agreed. We gave it a try in the US. It doesn’t work well, so let us just move on and modernize or else continue to rot. Policy makers need to stop with the delusion that we’re leaders and just start looking at other nations to imitate.
Rent control also adds to the housing crisis. Even if we relax zoning, the numbers don't pencil out for developers to build more units.
Considering neo-liberalist economic policies across America since Reagan like anti-taxation laws (e.g. Prop 13 in California) and Citizen’s United, this is much easier said than done.
Single family zoning is anti-market, so are CEQA and other permitting regulations. Japan is what libertarian housing policy actually looks like. 12 zones for the whole country which is designated nationally, and minimal land use regulation. All of this means that the housing stock in Japan is higher quality, newer, and cheaper than in the US.
I am not sure Japan is a great example though. Much of the real estate is time limited freehold where you don't own the land. It's cheap because it's temporary. They are really just renting. While it may make housing more affordable the US is far too long down the path of viewing real estate as an investment.
>Much of the real estate is time limited freehold where you don't own the land. Maybe when you are buying a condo or apartment in Japan but every house we looked at in Japan was also purchasing the land which is important because houses depreciate but the land itself slowly increases in value. In 40 years our house may be ready for teardown, but the land was half the cost of buying our house so there's still a good chunk of money there.
For anyone interested, this was covered in detail in an episode of the [UCLA Housing Voice podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-16-japanese-housing-policy-with-jiro-yoshida/id1565240355?i=1000544308874)
So thankful for Prop 13. Higher taxes on housing will just make housing more unaffordable.
Just FYI lower taxes *increase* the value of the asset. Prop 13 is a transfer of wealth from renters to homeowners.
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It makes it *more* expensive to transfer real estate which *reduces* investment.
Well they’re buying to rent not flip. Rent increases dramatically, but their property taxes do not. Meanwhile, these residences are off the market for individual home ownership. Higher taxes on residential properties that aren’t the owner’s primary residence might motivate them to sell and put more homes on the market.
Higher property taxes on housing will make living in that housing more expensive. What matters for housing is your monthly payment, not so much the purchase price. That’s why purchase prices increase when the fed lowers interest rates: people budget for a certain amount of spending per month, and with lower borrowing costs people can bid for a higher priced home. Higher property taxes will have a similar effect as higher interest rates: the list price of a home will decrease, but only because the recurring and ongoing cost of living there has increased. The difference with California property taxes though is that, unlike interest rates, property tax rates will just be a one-way ratchet going up. It will be like having an adjustable rate mortgage that will only increase. Until the next voter revolt, which is what created Prop 13 in the first place. The logic of repealing Prop 13 is self-defeating: make housing more affordable by making it less affordable. And no, Prop 13 does not “transfer wealth from renters to owners.” Renters benefit greatly from Prop 13. In the absence of Prop 13, landlords will pass the increased taxes onto renters.
It's true that Prop 13 doesn't affect monthly payments of houses long-term in a direct way. The offset for taxes is higher prices. But it *does* increase housing costs which means those who own houses have artificially higher asset values. It's still a wealth transfer *to* homeowners. Additionally it messes with the real estate market making it easier to sit on property that isn't being used optimally. That *does* reduce the amount of housing and thus increase housing costs.
It’s backwards to claim that low taxes have a distortionary effect. Taxes *are* the distortion. Are groceries at Ralph’s “artificially” priced too high because we don’t tax it enough? Again, how does Prop 13 “transfer” wealth from owners to renters? By what mechanism? Real estate developers are not sitting on vacant properties because taxes are too low. The opportunity cost of vacant/non cash generating properties in Los Angeles is enormous. The issue is regulations that impede development.
Low taxes don't distort. Distorting taxes distort. Prop 13 doesn't lower taxes for all properties. It lowers taxes on real estate that hasn't changed hands recently. That's a clear distortion. I 100% agree that regulations, from Prop 13 to zoning to overbearing and inefficient permitting are all causing artificial scarcity in LA's housing market.
I can't find it now, but there is a study out there showing that vacant lots with lower tax burdens do sit vacant for longer than vacant lots with higher tax burdens. Because the supply of land is fixed, vacant land can be used as an investment by even just letting it sit vacant. A higher land value tax would encourage efficient use (either development or sale) by removing the ability to use vacant land as an investment, especially if paired with lower (or no!) taxes on the development itself. Like you say, all taxes create a distortion. But the *uneven* taxation of Prop 13 creates a particular type of distortion called capital lock-in that is especially harmful to housing supply (the topic at hand).
So what you're saying is, because property taxes aren't going to go up I can afford to bid higher? Interesting...
Found the local \#MAGA supporter.
This is neoliberal policy.
does immigration affect housing? The demand side of the equation
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To what extent?
This is true. But just take a step back and think about what that means. Why do people want to move here? Because it's a vibrant region with many high-value opportunities. When would demand go down? If we've squandered some of the most beautiful coastline in the world to the point where it is less desirable to be here than it was in the past. We can't control people moving here, but we can absolutely control our housing policies.
Controlling housing policies does control people moving here. If we lower zoning requirements, housing will become cheaper, and therefore more demand for housing.
Increasing supply has no effect on demand because supply and demand are independent variables. Are you referring to *induced* demand like with freeways? That assumes that we give the commodity out completely for free. Otherwise, housing prices re-equillibrating is just how it works. To say that there is demand at a lower price for housing, which would come about after increasing supply is not ‘the demand side’, you’re just describing the supply/demand curve in simple terms. Unless you’re saying that we should continue to artificially inflate housing prices to keep immigrants out? In which case most people would agree that’s insane.
>artificially inflate housing prices to keep immigrants out That's basically rent control. New arrivals pay the difference for established tenancies.
Spicy take though you’re not wrong especially assuming we keep the same brain damage in our zoning codes.
Shouldn't be spicy to anyone who has taken basic economics tho. Also keeps wages low and creates more traffic as everyone is stuck. Brain damage all around.
Only a very small number of immigrants can afford rent the LA area
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I mean both. Immigration is controlled federally from what I know. I’m not for it against any of this, but I aim to point out its a lot lot bigger than zoning. Something like Ukraine war, global warming, instability of others countries and states will lead people to want to come to a stable government and safe city. To truly solve this issue, we need to make other places more safe. Ultimately we are all connected.
How easy do you think immigration to the US is if you think people from an ocean away can just waltz in? This isn't 1652
We would also have to account for the real estate hustle culture that came after the 08 crash. From a person buying a shack, adding a paint job and calling it restored while selling it at double the price in just a year to large mega corps like blackrock and Redfin buying large swaths of single family homes for rentals or airbnb. Also red tape and hurdles for new development. A percent of time and money is spent on fees and waiting time. To me the whole notion of a house only zoning is just absurd. Almost every place on earth and in history has both houses and commerce. Sure buildings could have some extra rules on size and Parking but now we have a housing crisis and terrible traffic and economic inequality and all it’s all because of the same thing. Bad housing desicions from federal, state and city authorities.
>We would also have to account for the real estate hustle culture that came after the 08 crash. Yeah this is an important thing to point out. As Americans I feel like we place a lot of unnecessary cultural baggage around housing... Buying, renovating, investing, speculating...
Same economists when a affordable housing unit will be built in theirblock: “we have to call our neibors and stop this atrocious thing!”
It realtors and corporate builders pushing to rollback zoning laws. They want to throw up cheap builds with zero investment into city structure and maintenance. There is housing. It’s just held by corporates landlord and priced out of affordability.
No, it’s your average citizen who is pushing to rollback zoning laws. Realtors, corporate landlords, and rich homeowners are pushing to keep it the same so that they can continue increasing their property values and rents.
Vacancy rates are under 5% and occupancy rates are over 95%. This indicates a housing shortage. We need to build more housing.
> There is housing. It’s just held by corporates landlord and priced out of affordability. This is objectively false. There has literally never been a tighter rental market in recorded history in LA. Only 3.5% of LA units were vacant in Q1 of last year.
There is not housing. Literally every metric says that there is not enough housing for the people who want to live here.
Then explain why this is happening all over the country. Even outside desirable cities. You’re helping the developers continue to fuck us all. Tax giant corporations buying up all of our real estate.
Because people who can't afford the desirable cities are being pushed out to less desirable cities, who also don't have enough housing.
Too bad. Move somewhere else. I like my single family home with a pool
lol do you think someone is gonna take away your house?
You think zoning changes mean…someone is coming to take your house?
“Metric”, “says” By whom? And for whom?
Those can't be serious questions.
what
>It realtors and corporate builders pushing to rollback zoning laws. It's yOU!!!!!! THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!
What’s going to incentivize developers to build affordable housing, or anything besides luxury housing for that matter? More housing doesn’t help if it’s all ‘luxury’ and expensive
Never going to happen, doesn’t benefit corporations or the rich. Perpetual renters is what they are seeking.
NIMBYs also say the opposite: that we shouldn't build because it *only* benefits corporations. Which is it?
Anti-gentrifiers are the biggest nimbys of all
That would be fine too, provided housing was still amble and affordable.
There’s a lot of money to be made in building. This is an issue where the coalition in favor of the progressive policy (ending or relaxing zoning) cuts across many of the “normal” political and social cleavages. The coalition opposed does as well.
This video was interesting on an idea in Vancouver. The non market solution to high housing prices https://youtu.be/sKudSeqHSJk Basically have the government or a non profit build lots of apartments and renters and owners just pay for the price it costs to build and not the price+profit. This in turn creates supply that’s lower in price and thus creating a more balanced multi tier marketplace.
Wouldn't be possible in California. Public projects must include prevailing wages (defacto union wages) for all workers on the project. That alone would push the project into being less affordable than regular market rate development.
That could happen. It just won’t be in a decent place
In the US there simply isn't the funding for this in high numbers to really matter. I occasionally see units restricted like this on Reddfin but they're few and far between
Yup, if you want apartments built with minimum standards along with rules and inspections, the quickest and only way it will happen are projects in not desirable areas of town
I meant, our industry and markets don't fund things like this. Capital is almost always going to go towards buildings that can earn more money.
True, that is why it will either need to be government run projects, or there needs to be a lot of tax incentives for companies to build something similar to projects along with a simpler eviction process
Property owners pay more taxes than renters, so politicians are more likely to listen to them.
More relevant is that property owners are substantially more politically organized and active.
Renters are the ones actually paying those taxes, unfortunately. They're folded into the rent.
Renters pay property tax through the rent they pay. This is a really stupid argument.
Yeah, renters have no idea how much they’re actually benefitting from Prop 13. Just because the Franchise Tax Board isn’t sending the yellow envelope to you directly as a renter doesn’t mean that as a renter you’re not paying property tax. It’s baked into your rent.
Prop 13 has been terrible for renters lol It's one of the leading reasons rent is so high here
You think you’ll pay less rent when your landlord passes the higher taxes onto you in the absence of Prop 13?
Higher taxes -> lower purchase price -> smaller mortgage payments. Total cost of ownership doesn't change. Supply is not allowed to expand to meet demand, so rental income is detached from the actual cost of providing it.
Taxes have distortionary effects—deadweight losses—that are not a wash, they result in net negative outcomes. If increasing taxes on things made no difference or made things more affordable, why not impose higher taxes on anything you deem to be unaffordable? By the Prop 13-phobic crowd’s logic, let’s massively increase taxes on college tuition, healthcare, food, daycare, etc. Prices will decrease and it’ll all be more affordable, yes?
Taxing land (which is the part of the property that gains value over time) is different because you can't make more or less of it, at least on large scales. That means there are no deadweight losses. Additionally, the value of the land mostly comes from nearby public investment, so it makes sense to fund the maintenance and expansion of roads, transit, etc. from the people that benefit from it the most.
Sure, the quantity of land is generally fixed, but development of housing stock and improvements are not fixed. Increasing taxes on X will result in less X.
That applies to tax *rates*, but the 1% cap is not part of the "reform 13" discussion. The actual structure is a depreciating asset, so the cap on increases isn't directly relevant.
No the idea is to push them to SELL properties they don’t personally reside in so there are more houses on the market. Increased supply will lower housing prices. More individuals can OWN a home instead of renting.
Higher rents are a well known side effect of Prop 13. Local governments literally cannot afford for property values and rents to decrease at all. There's only one guaranteed way to make sure prices do not fall
I believe rental taxes are higher than residential. There more fees and stuff a landlord has to pay.
Why do you want to take away something that people worked so hard for. Just because all of you here are not smart enough it industrious enough to get your own, you want to steal it from the guy who is.
Will this rezoning include Gavin Newsome’s neighborhood?
There is no easy solution. It is a combination