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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

To the degree that there's a fixed amount of housing (or, more accurately, a supply of housing that isn't increasing at a rate sufficient to meet demand), it isn't. The only question is who gets to live in that housing and how much they pay for it.

People who live in very expensive real estate that they own already have the option to take their profits and move to Las Vegas or wherever. However, I'm very hesitant to say that property taxes are a legitimate lever to force people out of their homes for the benefit of tech workers moving to California. Especially given that 50% or more of property taxes go to school services which longtime owners aren't even using.

Perhaps the rate of allowable property tax increase in California should be larger than it is or there should be other changes--including making it possible to build more housing--but we should be skeptical of policies that systematically force long-term residents to move away.

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The problem is that the old single family housing unit is occupying valuable land which could better serve multiple families at a higher density.

City cores are about increasing the density of human population so that network effects increase productivity, decrease cost, or both thus raising the efficiency of limited resources.

The correct way of regulating the cost of a city is based on a combination of the usable area occupied (probably a 2-dimensional area unless someone is able to build above/beneath a given property), the number of tenants there and the 'useful floor space' (exclude hallways, balconies, etc) they receive for whatever their rent is (property taxes are rent paid to the municipality for use if it's commons resources; IE being close to other things and being able to reach them).

The government should be driving /down/ the price of housing when it is too high by pushing for the construction of denser housing in the urban core to drive the market curves from the supply side.

The government should also have it's tax structure setup in a progressive way (penalize rents not in the lower half of the equilibrium, including home owners that outright own their home (and thus only pay property taxes)).

When the market is over-saturated (as it would be if an area is deflating), it should be supporting the existing prices on the market by keeping taxes high, buying back properties that are sub-standard, and focusing on their re-development in to civic goods; some examples of which are parks, arts facilities, or facilitating new small business experiments.

Sounds like a hog confinement operation. I don't think that livable city cores are about anything like that. Maybe less dense cities are a better goal.

I suppose that it could be interpreted that way, however the point of the tax rate being 'progressively' designed is to encourage /both/ low rents and more space for rent (as a way of reducing the taxed assessed against the property value).

Urban planing is also supposed to include parks, recreational facilities, and a generally vibrant mix of entertainment types near a population. A utopic city is supposed to be /better/ than rural lifestyle because of increased opportunity of all types. Having grown up in the suburbs, the only opportunity that affords is disenfranchisement; which is what I also hear of the rural areas.

>A utopic city is supposed to be /better/ than rural lifestyle because of increased opportunity of all types.

I've got nothing against cities and have lived in them (and drive in currently for various events). There's also nothing wrong with living on a number of acres that give you a degree of privacy and separation that you don't get in a city.

Personally, I'm not a fan of classic suburbs but cities aren't a utopia for everyone either.

If cities could be more dense, we could pack the same number (or even more) urban-loving people in less space, and there would be more space left over for the rural-lovers elsewhere.

What we get instead is low density sprawl.

We are not gonna run out of rural. That's a red herring.

Sprawl happens because its a free market, and people buy that stuff (suburban housing).

The US doesn't have a free market in housing. There's lots of stupid zoning and covenants.

Yes, some people like suburban sprawl and buy it, but the alternatives are pretty much illegal in most places. See eg http://cityobservatory.org/my_illegal_neighborhood/ (The neighourhood featured there is still too sprawly for my tastes, but already illegally dense.)

Maybe where you live. I live in the country, where none of that happens. Good luck with that superior city living!

You are entitled to your preference, but the majority, the many millions of people who flock to cities, disagree with you.

No, go ahead and like cities, that's fine. But the goal of city design isn't packing folks in tighter and tighter like a cattle car. There's got to be a better metric.

And I'd argue, many folks flock to cities because, work. They shouldn't be counted among the fans of urban living.

Tracking the number of tenants in each building is an enforcement nightmare once you add a financial incentive to misrepresent it.

Just add a low density housing tax. Wait, don't call it that - call it a land-use tax adjustment. Measure ability-to-house-people as some combination of square footage of habitable area, bedrooms, bathrooms, and number of rental units. Divide by the lot size. Multiply by a large enough negative number to incentivize building, then add a constant to make it revenue-neutral instead of a subsidy.

This would effectively subsidize people who build higher-density housing at the expense of people who own parking lots or commercial real-estate. It's a little troubling to tax commercial development or offices, but it's already much easier to get approval to build jobs, so cooling that down a bit shouldn't be a huge issue. Besides, you can dodge the tax with mixed-use buildings, which is generally something that you want for efficient land use.

Land-value would be a better way of assessing the multiplier, but that's not constitutional for California to enact because of Proposition 13. So, it's back to a square-footage with a housing capacity offset.

It's impossible to drive housing costs down via development, unless you also ban immigration. Development promotes further population growth. The ideal is high rent AND high income.

Not sure if trolling, but if supply (housing) increases faster than demand (immigrants) prices go down (assuming you believe in Economics 101).

You could argue that it's impossible to build fast enough to surpass immigration rates, but that seems pretty easily disproved (for instance: Las Vegas since 2008 [1]).

Or did I misunderstand your argument?

[1] http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/nevada/las-vegas/

I believe the issue is that development alone isn't the biggest factor in city size and housing costs. At least not in an international market. As you bring the costs down, either more people come into town, because the job opportunity is good and the rent is low enough they can make good money, or money flows in from elsewhere until the prices go back up.

The Las Vegas example was coupled with a global downturn especially focused on real estate. Also, geographically, Las Vegas has more possibilities for expansion outward than SF, and it doesn't have the tech workers bidding up the prices as badly.

That sounds like the Field of Dreams[1] theory of civic planning, and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of examples outlining why it doesn't always work out well. For one, Detroit.

1: "If you build it, they will come."

There are compromise moves that are possible with political will. Eminent domain + temporary relocation assistance + a guarantee to be able to own a unit in the newly constructed building.

Knock down a 2-story house, replace with a 50 story one. Give the former owner a 1 or 2 bedroom in the new place, and put them up in a hotel while construction is underway. A small price to pay to get a whole lot of new units.

Google [Kelo]

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