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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

So consider a nice, quaint neighborhood. Person A lives there. Person B wants to live there too, because it is so nice.

Ok, let's say we double supply.

All the houses are now either twice as high, or half as big, or maybe the trees were cut down and the bushes ripped out to make room. There's twice as many people & everything therein. Is it still the same nice neighborhood?

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Was it the same neighborhood when you moved there?

Things change, especially in the US.

"The immaculate conception theory of your neighborhood’s origins": http://cityobservatory.org/the-immaculate-conception-theory-...

And: if prices are going up that much, and you really want out, you can sell and move, to, say, Lakeview, Oregon.

Yes, things change. But I contest the notion that adding more housing to a neighborhood is a magic bullet that will make everyone happy.

Among many issues, the fundamental attractiveness of a particular neighborhood may be tied to low population density.

In which case ripping down the neighborhood and rebuilding makes neither resident Person A nor prospective buyer Person B happy.

No, it won't, but it'll lead to the population as a whole being better off because it will allow more people to live in a very productive area, as well as leaving an out (sell and move) for those who can't stomach the thought of denser housing.

Sooner or later, the US must confront the fact that not everyone can live in a single story ranch house with a big yard in an extremely desirable part of the country, without causing massive sprawl (LA).

And a significant slice of the tech industry must confront the fact that not everyone in that industry can or should cram themselves into a narrow peninsula and a handful of other, mostly coastal, cities.

It does appear that, despite the internet, being in the same place offers some advantages. I'm all for people spreading out to different cities, but realistically, the bay area is going to be the place to be in the US, for the foreseeable future.

I understand that people who buy into a neighborhood want that neighborhood to freeze in time and maintain for all eternity whatever character it had on the day they bought.

But we should be wholly unsympathetic to that view. It's a reasonable thing to wish for, but it's not a reasonable demand to give in to.

"It's a reasonable thing to wish for, but it's not a reasonable demand to give in to."

This is a brilliant sentiment, and a brilliant quote. It applies in so many conversations...

I just wanted to express my appreciation (and my intention of stealing this quote many times in the future!).

You're right, of course, but this sentiment amounts to little more than stomping your feet and wishing the world were different.

As long as there is high demand, you can either build more or expect higher prices and more sprawl. I get that people don't like those choices, but that's what's on the table.

High local prices can be addressed with "distributed sprawl". ie growth in other cities.

I think the problem with that logic is that the people at the 'top of the heap' - VC's, CEO's and the like are not the ones being priced out, mostly. Granted, a company might open an office somewhere else, but that's after it's already large and established.

So you're kicking the marginal (in the economic sense) people out into marginal places where they have less access to what made the original area such a great place to have a job.

maybe, i have neither a moral stance nor suggested solution for that. Seems to me that is a trait of capitalism/market economies; those who can pay the most get what they want.

Yes, but the reason things cost more is because we are restricting supply through regulation. That's not to say that all the regulation should be repealed, but you can't examine the problem in a vacuum and expect useful information. It truly does come down to supply and demand.

Artificially restricting housing supply through SF-like approval processes is not capitalism, and rent control is a band aid. It is laws that highly favors the incumbents that already live there. Even if we determined who should be allowed to live here with some other mechanism than money we would still be housing supply constrained.

I agree that there are tons of things at play distorting markets.

Or you can do neither. It's not like the false dichotomy you're presenting is true.

Not in a free market. If demand is high, and supply doesn't raise to meet it, then prices will increase unless artificially suppressed.

Rent control could do that for rent, but has its own problems. As for owners, how do you tell someone they aren't allowed to sell their house for what someone else is willing to pay them?

If you do neither, are you implying that the third option would just be to tell would-be tennants to go look elsewhere because your neighborhood is full and you're not going to price out the people currently living there?

Sounds like it would work, until you realize most of the buildings are owned by landlords who want to cash in and get as much money as they can with the property they've invested in. They don't particularly care who is living in the property, just that somebody is there and that they're getting paid.

My position is exactly that the dichotomy isn't a false one.

Very dense neighborhoods can still be quaint with trees and bushes. This census tract is around twice as dense as San Francisco: https://goo.gl/maps/d2rQ7wc6Tc12

Thanks for that link for a visual comparison. It actually looks cleaner, too! And perfectly pleasant to live in.

And Paris -- one of the most beautiful and quaint cities -- has three times the population density of San Francisco.

Let's say your city has a massive homeless population, and increasing rents are making it difficult for long-time residents to make a living. Now make the buildings twice as high - it's a lot nicer now, isn't it?

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