[HN Gopher] Affordable housing in California now routinely tops ...
___________________________________________________________________
Affordable housing in California now routinely tops $1M per
apartment to build
Author : baron816
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-06-20 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| CobaltFire wrote:
| There are comments here about what "affordable" should mean in
| the US.
|
| I have two kids (1 boy and 1 girl, one special needs) and we live
| in a two bedroom (850sqft) with the living room doubling as our
| bedroom so the kids get rooms.
|
| When I go visit friends or family that have 3/4/5 bedrooms it
| feels like a mansion, so I guess what's normal is a function of
| what you are used to. I will say that the challenges that come
| from living this small are very different from what my friends
| and family talk about.
|
| This is in SoCal for location reference, and I WFH.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I'm amused that you start by mentioning affordable and then
| make no reference to cost
| CobaltFire wrote:
| It's SoCal, so cost is relative. It's absolutely ridiculous
| what things cost here.
|
| My place would rent for about $3400 if it hit the market. I
| think market value is around $1m, and it was built in the
| 1920's.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I know it doesn't make you feel any better but that size of a
| home for family of 4 in Europe would be absolutely normal. For
| me it sounds like the topic is not even about "affordable
| housing" here anymore.
| stevesearer wrote:
| In Santa Barbara we just had 31 1-room units built for a total
| cost of $1.4m. These are spaces to get people off of the streets
| and are quite basic.
|
| https://dignitymoves.org/santa-barbara/
|
| From what I can tell, the it city and county just went for using
| emergency rules and bypassed most planning rules (it is on county
| land).
|
| Will be interested to see how it works out.
| gedy wrote:
| That's cool, but ironically middle class (even upper middle
| class) folks cannot find any "affordable housing" in SB. I gave
| up after saving for 10+ years and moved to San Diego.
| latchkey wrote:
| It isn't like San Diego is much cheaper. Especially the
| further west you want to be. A lot of this has to do with the
| short term industry, which SD just voted to substantially
| limit. Next year should be interesting for the property
| market when they roll out the implementation.
| gedy wrote:
| > It isn't like San Diego is much cheaper.
|
| It was a lot cheaper a few years ago at least, a 3-4BD SFR
| was less than 1BD condo in SB when I moved.
| latchkey wrote:
| Oh, it has changed substantially in the last few years.
| Covid changed everything.
| gedy wrote:
| Yes for sure, I'd not buy anything in California at
| prices in past 2 years.
| TedShiller wrote:
| > Will be interested to see how it works out
|
| Easy to predict: more over-crowding, more pollution, more
| traffic, lower quality of living for everyone
| _vertigo wrote:
| Santa Barbara is kind of an interesting informal case study.
|
| It's hemmed in by steep hills and the Pacific ocean and a lot
| of the available area has already been developed. https://www
| .google.com/maps/@34.4127513,-119.7096148,12z/dat...
|
| On the other hand, despite great zoning in the core parts of
| Santa Barbara that outlaws the typical strip mall
| construction pattern, leaving a relatively dense-feeling
| downtown, it's extremely car centric. There's noticeable
| traffic both on the 101 and downtown, especially on weekends.
|
| Spending time in Santa Barbara, you can't help but feel that
| a) there isn't a lot more room to spread out for more
| development, but b) there is definitely a lot more "room" for
| Santa Barbara to improve in terms of sustainably improving
| density. Santa Barbara makes a lot of concessions to cars,
| which is not going to scale at all if the population grows.
| If you take car dependence as a given, Santa Barbara probably
| cannot afford to grow much more.
|
| On the other hand, Santa Barbara is famed for its nearly
| perfect weather year-round. Good weather and and its small
| size means that almost all trips within Santa Barbara proper
| can be made easily via E-bike, if only there were more bike
| lanes, but there are too many 2 lane roads with cars that
| move too quickly driven by drivers who are not used to
| sharing the road. But I suspect that Santa Barbara may be too
| dependent on famously car-centric Los Angeles to ever
| consider de-prioritizing cars..
|
| It's all moot point, though, because I think most people who
| actually own homes in Santa Barbara are older and quite
| wealthy and do not really care too much about abstract things
| like "sustainable growth" and would quite prefer if Santa
| Barbara could just stay "the same" for the next 20 years
| until they die.
| stevesearer wrote:
| State Street was closed to cars during pandemic and it
| appears that is going to be permanent.
|
| The city also has an e-bike program that I can informally
| say is used quite heavily. In addition many youths ride
| e-bikes and I will be interested to see if that reduces car
| dependence for that generation.
|
| Water availability is an important factor limiting growth
| (though we do have a desal plant). Wildfires are another
| problem to pay attention to.
| _vertigo wrote:
| After a couple of years away, I returned last week. Yes,
| the e-bike program looks quite promising. Closed State
| Street is a no-brainer, although I've heard a lot of
| NIMBY-types are opposing it for some reason.
|
| But, after living in San Francisco for a couple of years
| and becoming used to riding my bike everywhere, I had a
| realization that while on paper Santa Barbara should be
| much more inviting than SF for bikes, in practice it's
| weirdly almost less inviting because drivers do not seem
| interested in sharing the road at all and there are very,
| very few bike lanes. Most of the main one-way "through
| streets" that run north-south in Santa Barbara like De La
| Vina, Santa Barbara, Anacapa, etc. are decidedly bike
| hostile because people drive very fast on them and there
| is no bike lane.
|
| One way to solve this is to make State St, Bath St, and
| Garden St dedicated north-south bike thoroughfares, and
| give all of the east-west streets that cross State St.
| bike lanes. Biking through Santa Barbara would then be a
| matter of biking north or south on a dedicated, safe
| thoroughfare before turning off east or west until you
| arrive where you need.
|
| As it stands, not really very inviting to bike in,
| _especially_ if you don't know the city by heart..
| ericmay wrote:
| Yep. In California, there are two answers: density (no cars,
| remove highways, etc.) or people need to stop moving there.
|
| It's physics. There is no other way around this.
| rayiner wrote:
| California is growing slower than the US as a whole and
| lost a House seat this decade as a result. California has
| had net domestic outmigration (people leaving) since 1990.
| majormajor wrote:
| As of 2019 California had domestic out-migration for
| under-100k earners and in-migration for >100k earners.
| Plus overall immigration.
|
| That might look different post-Covid, but that was a
| recipe for an affordability disaster even without growing
| faster than the US as a whole.
|
| (I think the high-asset crowd is overall at least as
| responsible as just the high-income crowd, though.
| Billionaires gentrify the millionaire neighborhoods, the
| millionaires displace some of the 500kinaires, etc, etc.)
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be _no_ cars, just design spaces
| where people don 't _need_ cars.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is an either or situation. If you give people the
| option to use cars, they will use them to drive 20min to
| a Costco and big grocery store for all their needs. They
| will also politically support measures that make their
| lives easier, such as minimum parking and bigger roads
| which then lead to needing cars.
|
| Severely restricting cars is the only way to have viable
| local businesses tailored to non-car shoppers and
| political support for advancing non-car infrastructure
| (i.e. sufficient density for sufficient people to live
| without cars and support businesses in walking/bicycling
| distance).
|
| The second a road more than 4 small car lanes across gets
| constructed (or 40ft), you make walking too cumbersome
| and risky.
| heartbeats wrote:
| So why not impose an internal visa system?
|
| Instead of having people buy up the property and jack the
| prices to shit, just have some notion of "Californian
| citizenship".
|
| * If you were born there, you're grandfathered in by
| birthright.
|
| * If you move out, we'll pay you some money or whatever.
|
| * If you want to move in, either pay a big sum of money or
| convince the government you're helpful.
|
| Then they could use the money from these sales to invest in
| the community, rather than it going to property
| speculators.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| We already have this with prop 13, let's not take it any
| further, it's already insane enough.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| Wouldn't such a scheme violate the Privileges and
| Immunities Clause of the US Constitution? See e.g.,
| _Crandall v. Nevada_ , where the Supreme Court explicitly
| held that an egress tax was unconstitutional.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crandall_v._Nevada
| heartbeats wrote:
| Certainly you couldn't do it like a straight-up visa
| policy, but you could probably achieve something very
| similar by giving them strongly unfavorable property
| taxes and so on.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| Such a taxation scheme sounds like it can potentially run
| into similar issues as well. For example, from Cornell's
| Legal Information Institute [0]:
|
| > In the exercise of its taxing power, a state may not
| discriminate substantially between residents and
| nonresidents. In _Ward v. Maryland_ the Court set aside a
| state law that imposed specific taxes upon nonresidents
| for the privilege of selling within the state goods that
| were produced in other states. Also found to be
| incompatible with the comity clause was a Tennessee
| license tax, the amount of which was dependent upon
| whether the person taxed had his chief office within or
| without the state. In _Travis v. Yale & Towne Mfg. Co._,
| the Court, although sustaining the right of a state to
| tax income accruing within its borders to nonresidents,
| held the particular tax void because it denied to
| nonresidents exemptions which were allowed to residents.
| The "terms 'resident' and 'citizen' are not synonymous,"
| wrote Justice Pitney, "... but a general taxing scheme
| ... if it discriminates against all non-residents, has
| the necessary effect of including in the discrimination
| those who are citizens of other States ...." Where there
| were no discriminations between citizens and noncitizens,
| a state statute taxing the business of hiring persons
| within the state for labor outside the state was
| sustained.
|
| [0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-
| conan/article-4/sec...
| epistasis wrote:
| This would also jack up the prices a huge amount, wealth
| is anything that people want where there's not enough to
| go around.
|
| By keeping people out, this will actually increase the
| scarcity and drive up "prices" even more. Your "big sum
| of money" acknowledges as much.
|
| So this is a terrible, unfair idea. And if we were to
| ever implement such a scheme, the only way to make it
| remotely fair would to heavily heavily tax this wealth,
| perhaps by charging existing residents a highly monthly
| rent to stay, and for those that get a grandfathered-in
| prize, they should have to pay a large amount of capital
| gains.
| heartbeats wrote:
| The prices of the passports would go up, yes, but the
| prices of property would go down.
| epistasis wrote:
| Prices for whom? Only those born into this wealth, or
| those who have wealth by other means.
|
| It's a recipe for even more massive inequality.
| ericmay wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but I think you'd ultimately
| have to leave the union to implement it because you can't
| restrict freedom of movement within the US.
|
| I think there are other potential solutions, however.
| Finding ways to create incentives for not speculating on
| property, huge taxes for vacation homes, etc. may work.
| Though it's dangerous because you might get something
| that sounded good at the time but turned out to be a
| disaster like Prop 13.
| rayiner wrote:
| Internal immigration reduces California's population
| (more people leave than come in). It's international
| immigration and births that drive's the state's
| population growth.
| epistasis wrote:
| That's only due to the rationing system that California
| has already implemented by having a housing shortage. We
| only give places to those with the highest amounts of
| money, so California is kicking out its children year
| after year.
| klipt wrote:
| Thanks, Prop 13!
| seoaeu wrote:
| You'd better take down all those "refugees welcome" signs
| then
| SilverBirch wrote:
| > The Terner Center study on the cost to build low-income housing
| found that projects paying union-level wages to construction
| workers could cost $50,000 more per apartment and those built to
| stricter environmental standards cost $17,000 more per apartment
| than those that aren't.
|
| $1m per apartment. So let's talk about the cost drivers driving
| 5% and 1.7% of those costs. Just... wat? Let's start examining
| the warts on the rhino charging at you?
|
| Also, if your plan to lower the cost of affordable housing is to
| pay the people who need affordable housing less then I have bad
| news...
| _Parfait_ wrote:
| Did you not read the entire article.. They say one of the
| largest drivers is trying to navigate the bureaucracy and red
| tape...
|
| ---
|
| A 2018 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found
| that 14% of the price tag for California's affordable housing
| projects was made up of consulting fees and other
| administrative costs -- the highest in the country and more
| than developers spend on land.
|
| ---
| onphonenow wrote:
| I work adjacent to affordable housing. TONS of tax credits
| and other funding (relatively) HOWEVER I wouldn't wish these
| projects on an enemy.
|
| The funding is a million strings attached / crazy opinions.
| So you have to be EXPERT to apply and manage the intersection
| of all the credits and funding.
|
| You are still subject to all the zoning / environmental red
| tape (even if it helps that there is affordable). If you are
| building luxary units easier to absorb this all, otherwise,
| again a nightmare.
|
| The places with affordable housing money tend to be wickedly
| expense. If San Francisco took their affordable housing
| money, and built out at the ends of BART they could build
| some multiple number of units. To get 100 affordable units
| into San Francisco is very very expensive.
|
| Outside of these crazy subsidizes, most other regulatory
| rules / delays etc argue against building "cheap" housing.
|
| So we house and feed folks in high need in some of the
| absolutely most expensive places in the US and world. And
| some of the units (which prioritize families) are relative
| massive 3 bedroom places. If you go to chinatown in SF, the
| density is so so much higher (private market) though likely
| illegal in many cases.
|
| If you spent the $1B/year even in California in one or two of
| the cheaper areas to live in you'd get so many multiples for
| it that it would blow your mind. Or if you were allowed to
| build chinatown levels of density.
| basedgod wrote:
| BART (and all subways in the US) costs $2 billion per mile
| to build a few years ago (somebody posted a while back BART
| + other subways recent construction costs), probably close
| to $4 billion per mile now due to inflation and higher
| materials costs
|
| I don't think spending $100s of billions on subway into the
| suburbs will even make a dent on housing prices
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| They don't want to address the real cost: the building codes
| being ridiculous. That would require reducing the amount of
| regulation. These codes have real cost and they don't
| necessarily add a lot of quality-of-life for the occupants.
|
| Edit - it was pointed out in another thread that affordable
| housing has to go through the same ridiculous permitting and
| environmental bureaucracy as other housing. That also costs a
| ton, probably more than the crazy building codes.
| majormajor wrote:
| This article is Northern California, not Southern, but are
| the building codes so much more ridiculous that the
| _construction cost_ is higher than you can pay to _buy_ new-
| build townhouses or standalone houses in LA County?
|
| My other question would be: why are we building new instead
| of buying up old hotels, old office or condo buildings, etc,
| if building new costs so much?
| danans wrote:
| It may seem counterintuitive ar first but renovating old
| buildings - especially non residential ones - for occupancy
| is often more expensive than building new.
|
| There are many reasons; new stuff is usually built on
| cheaper land, old buildings have lots of issues that make
| updating them very labor intensive.
|
| It's why most malls can't be easily converted into housing,
| and need to just be torn down completely, often just
| reusing foundations.
| majormajor wrote:
| Malls, office buildings are less realistic, sure.
| Prefering million-dollar-per-unit-construction to
| existing motels and apartments or condo buildings, on the
| other hand, appears to be perfect being the enemy of the
| good.
|
| It's easy for committees of _people who largely don 't
| need affordable or last-resort housing_ to make it
| practically impossible to create it.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I don't think there are that many disused hotels or
| condos just lying around.
|
| Hotels are tricky. There's rarely even a single kitchen
| available per floor, let alone per unit, and I would
| imagine a kitchen is required in the building codes.
|
| Ultimately, conversions have to be brought up to the same
| building codes as new construction, so you don't actually
| get rid of the problem (codes making any construction
| hard to do.)
| hardtke wrote:
| Some of the building codes are probably overkill, but part of
| the difference in California building costs compared to other
| states are energy efficiency requirements (like more
| expensive windows) that quickly pay for themselves in reduced
| costs to live in the unit and also reduce per capita energy
| usage. Unfortunately, neither the developer or landlord (if
| the unit is built for a rental) has incentive to build an
| energy efficient building as the tenant is going to
| eventually pay the energy costs. These requirements
| absolutely need government regulation because the "free
| market" leads to a non optimal outcome.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| How long do you think it takes to recoup an extra half
| million dollars in energy savings?
| babypuncher wrote:
| Where are you getting the idea that half the cost of
| constructing an apartment is a result of energy
| efficiency requirements?
| mlyle wrote:
| He's implying that if the energy efficiency is a primary
| cost driver -- e.g. worth even discussing in the context
| of affordable housing -- then it would take a long time
| to break even fiscally. Assuming it's 50% is just a
| little bit of hyperbole.
| epistasis wrote:
| Less than the term of the typical mortgage, i.e. these
| codes are only adopted when it lowers the cost of
| housing.
|
| With your $500k up front costs, how many units are you
| spreading that over?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I decided to look it up.
|
| EIA https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/p
| df/tabl... . Average CA bill: $116.94
|
| So, about $100k in energy savings changes will break-even
| in 71 years assuming no inflation and assuming that the
| energy savings bring you to zero energy expenditure. Five
| times that will be a period longer than the US has
| existed.
| devonbleak wrote:
| Just ordered new replacement windows from my house.
| Granted we picked out the most expensive line of windows
| for aesthetic reasons but the marginal increase for the
| CA mandated coating was ~5% of the overall cost of the
| windows. Do I expect to save the entire $22k cost of the
| windows on my energy bills any time soon? No I do not. Do
| I expect to save the ~$1500 that I spent on the coating?
| Sure I'll probably get ROI in 5-10 years with energy
| bills averaging ~$300/mo (no solar and it's 100 degrees
| outside today).
| peter422 wrote:
| This is a straw man to begin with because the building
| codes are not the issue... the permitting apparatus is.
|
| However, your analysis is simplistic and assumes:
|
| 1. The house uses no natural gas (most do)
|
| 2. The cost of electricity never goes up (it will in the
| short term at least)
|
| 3. CO2 emissions from wasted energy have no cost (they
| do)
|
| 4. Building energy efficient buildings is way more
| expensive than the alternatives for new construction (it
| isn't)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure, to make that case I'd pick the minimal parameters
| for these and model the behaviour that demonstrates that
| $x increased cost is justified. Presumably you have such
| a model you'd like to share? I can think of some easy
| things:
|
| 1. The example supplied in the article in SF at $1.1 m
| presents a good case. SF bans natural gas in new-build.
| So we can set this value to zero.
|
| 2. You may supply a unit-increase estimate if you like
| and adjust the model. I see this param over 20 y is 3%
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS49B72610 but if
| you'd like a different number, go ahead and plug it in
| and describe how it alters the outcome
|
| 3. CO2 emissions per kWh are currently 0.524 lb https://w
| ww.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/about/environment/cal... We
| can use the current Terrapass rate as the offset cost to
| account, or if you have an alternative source we can try
| that
|
| 4. Since you have positive affirmative statement, I
| suppose you can just state a ballpark sum. $x / unit.
|
| Evidence that I change my mind on HN and therefore you
| are not wasting your time participating in this modeling
| exercise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711423
|
| The concrete outcome is that we can make progress on this
| comment's claims
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31816514 We can see
| whether the cost quickly pays for itself.
| _benedict wrote:
| If the average electricity bill includes houses that use
| gas for heating, then the electricity bill is grossly
| inaccurate for houses without gas heating (unless we are
| discussing an area that requires minimal heating demand)
| [deleted]
| idiotsecant wrote:
| No, building codes are fine. Building codes exist for a
| reason, and just because you don't know that reason doesn't
| make them less valid. If you have a particular code example
| that you think is ridiculous i'd invite discussion on it, you
| may be surprised how many experts on the subject are floating
| around.
| spullara wrote:
| There are many, but this is an example in CA:
|
| All new tenants and new occupancies hereafter constructed,
| which exceeds 3,600 square feet shall have an approved
| automatic fire sprinkler system installed throughout.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| _fire sprinklers_ are the hill you 're going to die on
| here?
| mikeg8 wrote:
| Great response to someone who answered your invitation
| for a specific example. But I'll die on this hill.
|
| I can totally understand requiring them in multi-family
| or town-homes where there are shared walls - but not in
| single family homes. A residential fire suppression
| system for a ~2,500 Sqft home can cost anywhere from
| $10-25k to include on a new build in northern CA (I know
| from recent bids). That isn't a negligible cost and
| mandating them for smaller dwellings (in my county it's
| anything over 1,000 sqft) is a fine example of regulation
| that has "great" intentions but is making affordable
| housing un-afforable.
| mlyle wrote:
| It's also questionable if they save lives in single
| family dwellings, and also questionable whether the
| property damage they prevent from fires is larger than
| the property damage they cause through inadvertent
| activation/leaks/etc.
| amluto wrote:
| The problem here isn't the sprinklers -- it's the cost to
| install the sprinklers. The cost of a few hundred feet of
| CPVC or PEX pipe is low. The cost of an off-the-shelf
| sprinkler riser, pre-assembled, is a couple hundred
| dollars. The amount a Northern CA contractor will charge
| to install the parts is insane.
|
| (There is a problem with _too little_ code. NFPA 13R and
| 13D do not clearly specify backflow protection
| requirements, and the California Plumbing Code, which
| follows UPC, only specifies it by reference to a
| subjective hazard level as determined by the authority
| having jurisdiction. This means that different _local_
| jurisdictions disagree, which creates both added
| complexity when designing a system and a significant risk
| of an actual hazardous condition existing. Situations
| like this are why codes exist, and IMO the code authors
| thoroughly dropped the ball on determining the extent to
| which the water in non-passively-purged fire sprinkler
| system is hazardous and how to prevent it from getting
| into drinking water. If an actual standard existed, then
| there could be an off the shelf compliant system, and
| time and money would be saved.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's more the zoning than the codes.
|
| Though there are some that make apartments more expensive,
| like requiring two staircases. This also significantly
| reduces the pleasantness of the resulting apartments, and
| typically means that you can't open windows on both sides
| of the building and get cross flow.
| asdfadsfgfdda wrote:
| There are many in CA that are ridiculous. Most are not
| related to safety, but likely due to lobbying from some
| industry.
|
| Fire sprinklers are required in single family homes. The
| very small incremental safety benefit is far outweighed by
| the initial cost, maintenance cost, and potential failures
| (more plumbing to leak). If you really wanted to improve
| fire safety, make it cheaper to replace 1950s-era houses
| with new construction!
|
| Solar panels are required for new homes, which ironically
| adds a small amount of fire risk (like all electrical
| devices). This is required in areas with cloudy conditions,
| or houses that are shaded by trees. The cost per watt is
| ridiculous compared to how cost-efficient utility scale
| solar has become. Not to mention the safety risk to solar
| workers on a second-story house.
|
| Just in plumbing code, there are several ridiculous
| restrictions. Some jurisdictions allow air admittance
| valves, others do not at all. ABS pipe is illegal for
| commercial buildings, but just fine for residential. IPC
| allows 1.5" vents for toilets, but UPC requires 2".
| enragedcacti wrote:
| As just one example, Most of the USA's building codes
| mandate double staircases in buildings over 3 stories for
| outdated fire concerns which increases cost per unit mainly
| by reducing the number of units that fit in a given site
| and the arrangement of those units.
|
| https://www.treehugger.com/single-stair-buildings-united-
| sta...
|
| https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1384670822351048707?ref
| _...
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| This is literally what the article states midway through.
| mwint wrote:
| 5% and 1.7%.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Bah
| NackerHughes wrote:
| Warts on the rhino? That's an idiom I've never heard before!
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Particularly egregious given that they ignore the Terner Center
| Study's main finding, which is that the #1 predictor of the
| cost efficiency of housing is density. If you want cheaper
| housing, build it more densely. Whether it's union construction
| or not is a rounding error.
|
| This reads to me to be either deliberately anti-labor or
| someone who didn't want to make the obvious but hard to fix
| point in favor or making a divisive and clickbaity one.
| klipt wrote:
| > If you want cheaper housing, build it more densely.
|
| NIMBYs hate this one weird trick for cheaper housing!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Can they not spend $1.5 million per unit to build luxury housing
| and then allow the old luxury housing to become affordable? This
| kind of economics has worked in the past for housing when we
| built a lot more units, and it's kind of the natural lifecycle of
| a building.
| seoaeu wrote:
| The problem is that when people are suffering now, they don't
| want to be told to wait a decade or two for current luxury
| housing stock to filter down and become affordable. Just
| imagine closing a local food bank and replacing it with a vague
| promise that the local grocery store prices will improve. How
| well is that going to go over?
|
| Long term, we do need more market rate ("luxury") housing
| stock. But they cannot be instead of trying to help people who
| need it now
|
| Some places do social housing where they rent a fraction of the
| units to upper income individuals to subsidize the rest.
| However in the US funding sources generally have rules that say
| the units can only be rented to households making less than X%
| of the area median income. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing:
| even in a properly functioning housing market there are going
| to be some people who cannot afford mark rate housing, and the
| assumption is that everyone else will rent market rate units
| bombcar wrote:
| The dirty secret is that "affordable housing" is usually a
| certain number of "dwelling units" in a new development (think
| apartment building) and so they dump as much as possible of the
| entire cost of the building into the cost for the "affordable
| units".
|
| If I am building a building with 50 high-end condos, I won't
| bother making cheaper ones for my affordable units, I'll just
| designate some as affordable and maybe skimp on the trimmings,
| but even then probably not much because of the hassle.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It's not a dirty secret, it is by design. Having mixed income
| properties is thought to significantly deter the sort of
| blight caused by "ghetto projects".
| foolfoolz wrote:
| this isn't a secret it's section 8 and not the problem. new
| construction doesn't need to be cost effective affordable
| housing. new construction can and should be luxury.
| affordable housing can be older buildings. it's not a secret
| because the market is already priced this way
| seoaeu wrote:
| First off inclusionary units are not a "secret". But more to
| the point, that not the kind of affordable housing that the
| article is talking about: The article is about 100%
| affordable developments which are almost always by non-
| profits receiving government funding.
| yumraj wrote:
| > will offer two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments for between
| $1,186 and $2,805 a month
|
| Honest question: why does _affordable housing_ needs to be 3 or 4
| bedroom? Shouldn 't they be mostly Studio and 1-bedroom
| apartments, and at most, 2-bedroom, that too rarely?
|
| 4-bedroom sounds like a _luxury_ apartment and not an
| _affordable_ apartment.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| More bedrooms means the apartment can house more people. While
| the entire unit is more expensive, it's probably cheaper per-
| bedroom. A four-bedroom affordable housing unit could be
| occupied by a multi-generational household, or maybe a bunch of
| young adult friends.
| standardUser wrote:
| There are occupancy requirements. One person cannot rent a
| 2-bedroom, for example.
| lupire wrote:
| Legally, a bedroom sleeps at most 2 people.
| Maursault wrote:
| Federal occupancy standards require landlords _to allow at
| least_ 2 persons per bedroom, not limit it to 2.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >Shouldn't they be mostly Studio and 1-bedroom apartments
|
| No. It's not an intuitive result, but it makes sense when you
| think about it. Bedrooms are cheap to build. Kitchens and
| bathrooms are expensive to build. Building 3 units with a total
| of 3 bedroom, 3 kitchens, and 3 bathrooms is a much less
| efficient setup than building a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom unit. If
| you incentivize people to have roomates or co-habitate with
| extended family by building bigger suites you can make housing
| cheaper overall.
| jseliger wrote:
| The only affordable housing is lots of housing:
| https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/to-improve-
| hou....
|
| From there, people should be able to decide for themselves;
| "decide for yourself how much housing unit you want to buy" was
| common, until the '70s: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-
| did-cities-freeze-in-...
| djohnston wrote:
| I dont think bedroom # equates with luxury as long as n < 5.
| yumraj wrote:
| It can be a matter of perspective. I go by the necessity ->
| comfort -> luxury scale.
|
| Where, necessity = roof over head. Comfort = a warm, safe
| place with simple amenities, people sharing bedroom and so
| on.
|
| So, for me, Luxury = anything beyond that, as in no one
| shares bedroom, guest bedroom and so on.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Just because a beggar is asking for food doesn't mean he is
| expected to accept even spoiled food, don't you think?
| leetcrew wrote:
| having roommates is not akin to eating spoiled food?
| lupire wrote:
| Given budget constraints, better to feed two people a
| bowl of beans than one person a steak, I think.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Better have one happy person vote for you than having two
| unhappy persons voting for your opponent.
| robonerd wrote:
| Luxury relative to what, exactly? I think people in America are
| _generally_ accustomed to one-bedroom-per-child; that 's the
| standard our popular media promotes. I grew up in a family of 5
| with a 3 bedroom house; meaning two of us were always sharing a
| bedroom even as teenagers (we switched up who was sharing every
| year, meaning none of us had a fixed bedroom.) I think by
| American standards that was not entirely atypical, but
| certainly short of luxurious. But you seem to think 3 bedrooms
| qualifies as luxurious, and don't seem to make any
| consideration for family size.
|
| In some countries, cultures or communities, a family of ten
| might be living in a single bedroom. Maybe anything more
| spacious than that should be your standard for luxury. Or
| further maybe; any shelter that keeps you dry is the bare
| minimum. If it keeps you dry _and_ warm, that 's luxury. Why
| not? If you get chilly you can use a blanket; furnaces are
| luxury. Do you really _need_ anything more than a primitive
| FEMA tent? Running water plumbed straight into your home is a
| luxury, you can bring a water bucket to a community spigot
| every day. If you think that 's too much work you're just being
| entitled.
| Retric wrote:
| Families aren't limited to just a couple with a single kid.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| People have elderly parents too.
| bombcar wrote:
| And even if you allow that there are families with more kids,
| three bedrooms is kind of a minimum if you put the parents in
| one, the girls in the second, and the boys in the third.
|
| Of course, for many people today kids sharing a bedroom is
| tantamount to child abuse.
| yumraj wrote:
| > Of course, for many people today kids sharing a bedroom
| is tantamount to child abuse.
|
| Well, then they should not be looking for affordable (as in
| subsidized by other taxpayers) housing, no?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| That's easy to say until you consider that the people who
| need subsidized housing are also the people least likely
| to be able to attain contraceptives and abortion
| services.
| lupire wrote:
| Real question is why a blue state is failing at that.
| duped wrote:
| Because more people want to live there than can be
| housed.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not. Half of California's births are from Hispanics,
| who are more likely to be morally opposed to those
| things. (And good for them-that's called winning.)
| robonerd wrote:
| Abortion as a substitute for affordable housing? I
| propose this: we legalize euthanasia then use that as an
| excuse to strip you of all other entitlements. You don't
| deserve a home, that's just luxury because you could get
| yourself painlessly euthanized instead.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem comes when the legislature _decides_ that it
| _literally_ is child abuse, and mandates things like
| minimum bedroom laws (usually aimed at things like frat
| houses, but the effect can end up the same).
| msbarnett wrote:
| Not sleeping a family of 4 to a single room, 19th Century New
| York Tenement Style, is considered a luxury now?
| yumraj wrote:
| For the record, I was referring to 3-4 bedroom, and not 1-2
| bedrooms. If one is looking for subsidized housing, isn't
| kids sharing room a reasonable compromise?
|
| Regarding 3-4 bedroom, yes for most of the world they will be
| luxury.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > For most of the world, yes.
|
| This is not _really_ true for most values of "most", and
| the places it is true, the culture tends to be much
| different than you would find in California, eg) you are
| generally not looking at children being assigned hours of
| homework to perform in which they have no space to work on
| it, nor ability to work on it without distraction while the
| rest of the family lives on top of them.
|
| > If one is looking for subsidized housing, isn't that a
| reasonable compromise?
|
| You may want to look up the history of tenements in the US.
| Broadly speaking the answer turns out to be: no, this is
| not a good compromise.
| lupire wrote:
| how many bedrooma should a famiy with 4 kids have?
|
| What if a grandparent or two lives there?
|
| More bedrooms meaning more people makes kitchen and bath
| more efficient.
| ruined wrote:
| it's single-bed apartments that are the luxury. who do you know
| that lives alone except single young professionals? everyone
| else has family or roommates.
| alex_young wrote:
| According to the USICH [1] there are 271,528 students
| experiencing homelessness in California. Presumably some of
| these students would benefit from living in units like these.
|
| [1] https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Clearly California should form a committee to require
| developments containing affordable housing to submit construction
| cost impact reports, subject to public review and committee
| approval.
| lumost wrote:
| Housing construction costs are a nonsensical number to look at.
| If I'm going to build and sell a 2 million dollar property, I'm
| not going to spend 100k building a tiny home.
|
| Developers need to compete at this price point, the cost of
| construction is probably a loosely linear function of land value.
| Land value has been inflated by a puzzling combination of NIMBYs,
| interest rates, and economic growth.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| "Affordable housing" is a scam.
|
| If you want you want real affordable housing you need market
| rates that are affordable, not special set aside units.
| Clubber wrote:
| California should just eminent domain all these office buildings
| that nobody wants to drive to and renovate them for housing. Too
| bad all the politicians are too corrupt or weak to do anything
| like that.
|
| $1M per apartment, those money buckets must have a lot of leaky
| holes in them.
| altarius wrote:
| Possible, but not as cheap and easy as it might seem.
|
| https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/turning-downtown-...
| tyoma wrote:
| Affordable housing has to fight through the same permitting and
| environmental review process as any other housing. Then there
| are the lawsuits and planning delays and ballot initiatives by
| neighbors. Then the housing has to get built, likely with only
| unionized workers since State money is involved. And it has to
| follow the same building codes: parking minimums, balconies,
| mandatory solar panels, etc.
|
| With all the barriers involved, its amazing affordable housing
| gets built at any price.
| heartbeats wrote:
| Why don't they just get rid of the process?
|
| Hold a referendum to elect the constitution. Assuming it
| passes, you select a commission of people in charge of it.
| They get absolute power over anything relating to property -
| eminent domain, changing zoning laws, and giving building
| code exemptions.
|
| It would only work if there's a democratic majority in favor
| of it, but if it did, what would be the issue? Then it would
| be very simple: just buy up some land, start building, and
| rezone anyone who complains as heavy industry and evict them.
|
| I'm of course writing this in jest - hopefully they wouldn't
| have to be that draconian - but why hasn't anyone tried this?
| Is there not an electoral majority?
| seoaeu wrote:
| Because the tenants will surely be thrilled to commute from
| places "nobody wants to drive to"
| bombcar wrote:
| If we estimate something like $35k (the poverty line in
| California) then each affordable house costs _twenty eight_ years
| of poverty line income; maybe it 'd be cheaper to pay them to
| move far away.
|
| Yes, there are obvious problems with this, but the scale is
| getting out of hand.
| lupire wrote:
| Poverty like means "regular life is unaffordable" by
| definition. The solution to "poverty line" is people getting
| more income, not cheaper housing.
|
| "28 years" is still too high, but the units don't compare
| directly. Use "living wage" income for that.
| closeparen wrote:
| Limited housing supply must necessarily be unaffordable to
| someone. The only question is where we strike the balance
| between scarcity and abundance, and correspondingly at what
| income percentile it will be unaffordable.
|
| We could also use non market allocation schemes, which would
| displace the problem of "can't afford housing" to "stuck on
| the waiting list" or "my lottery number never comes up." Same
| thing in the end.
| bombcar wrote:
| Hmm, "living wage" puts a single person at $25k or so in some
| parts of the country, so it _still_ might be cheaper to just
| pay them to move away.
|
| Doesn't solve the real underlying problem which is that there
| are too many jobs that need to pay too little.
| seoaeu wrote:
| And in this proposal who is going to work as baristas,
| janitors, and delivery drivers?
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| I worked in the industry for 7 years in California. A big part of
| it is a race to the "top". If you want to be competitive in
| winning funding from the 5 or 6 different state/local/federal
| programs that need to be cobbled together to build a new project,
| you have to make _all_ of them happy. That means then highest
| possible LEED certification, on-site resources like computer labs
| and childcare facilities, plenty of green space, public art, and
| of course ample parking. That 's all above and beyond that
| already high standards of CA building codes (which, let's not
| forget, also includes being earthquake-resistant).
|
| Most of the new projects I worked on were very nice. Several had
| community pools. Most had balconies/patios. Most were well
| connected to transit (a biggie if you want to be competitive with
| the funding agencies). Virtually all were mixed income and housed
| families ranging from below the poverty line to 6-figure incomes.
| I would have happily lived in most of those complexes if they had
| been geographically desirable, but most were less urban than I
| prefer. Though I may still be on the waitlist for one
| particularly well-located building in SF!
| voz_ wrote:
| > from below the poverty line to 6-figure incomes.
|
| In SF, thats the same thing man.
| negamax wrote:
| Surely cost of land is a big part of this amount?
| spicyusername wrote:
| > More than half a dozen affordable housing projects in
| California are costing more than $1 million per apartment to
| build
|
| A quick summary of the supposed reasons for the high price tag
| discussed in this article:
|
| - increases is labor and material prices
|
| - stringent environmental and labor standards
|
| - high parking requirements
|
| - lengthy local approval processes
|
| - bureaucracy to secure financing
|
| - [paying] construction workers union-level wages
|
| - paying attorneys and consultants to navigate state and local
| bureaucracies to secure financing
|
| - consulting fees and other administrative costs
| idiotsecant wrote:
| conveniently, they leave out the #1 cause of high construction
| price. Lack of density. Residential construction gets cheaper
| the more of it you build in an area. It's possible this is not
| a popular notion amoung the readers of this article and that's
| why it was left out but it is in fact the main conclusion of
| the Terner Center study that they cited.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| > Residential construction gets cheaper the more of it you
| build in an area.
|
| This is only partially true, currently. It definitely used to
| be the case that larger developments would leverage economies
| of scale so that the more you built, the cheaper it cost. But
| I believe (as someone who works on multi-family housing
| projects in the Bay area) that we've reached a point where
| the larger projects do not have that reduced cost advantage
| because they have more legal/administrative/consulting costs
| that offset the lower labor/material costs.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Could be, but your conclusion does not match the study
| quoted in the article. Even in the bay area the cost
| savings for high density units are substantial.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I think historically there's been a preference in some
| areas--like SF Bay--to build single-family homes, sure.
| But more recently there are a _lot_ of higher-density
| projects being built around SF Bay, at least in South and
| East Bay and to a lesser degree in the North Bay, and
| it's my understanding that many of these have been
| planned _years and years_ before the construction
| actually started. The delays have been virtually all
| regulatory /bureaucratic.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| > Even in the bay area the cost savings for high density
| units are substantial.
|
| If that were the case, than how do we arrive at the
| article's headline of ~$1M per unit? Affordable housing
| is synonymous with high density so I'm failing to see how
| your "high density reduces cost" premise holds true when
| the main conclusions of the article show the opposite.
| Where are all the savings at $1M per unit?
| smn1234 wrote:
| Anecdata from a number of friends in NYC: the mafia controlling
| much of the market on glass (windows) and other construction
| materials, along with union jobs costing a premium... with YoY
| increases because they can, is driving prices much higher than
| where they should be.
|
| Mafia never left. Just transformed
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