Jump to content

We’reTexas

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    941
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by We’reTexas

  1. What’s the rent/own ratio in the area? In HCOL areas on the west coast it much, much cheaper to rent. I only say that because inventory is shit right now so unless you’re seeing stuff you really like it may be better to wait.
  2. Actually New Orleans is where all the medical centers are located and what is likely the driver for the college degree statistic (Ochsner, Tulane, LSU). There city and state have worked to build out a new medical center post-K as well. Obviously lots of these folks are temporary medical students/residents. Also, Orleans parish has gotten relatively expensive over the past decade, so naturally you’re going to see lower income (and less educated) residents displaced. Edit: NO is also a university town (Tulane, UNO, Loyola, Xavier, Dillard, etc) so that drives the stat as well.
  3. I don’t disagree, but capping appreciation/resale price is a fundamental element of the sustainability of these programs. They are not meant to subsidize home ownership (why not just directly do so?) but rather to provide would-be lifelong renters with the opportunity to put what would be rent money into equity, along with fixed payments and housing security. Of course the problem that arises is that these programs are intended for long term residents, and people who try to sell after a few years are often miffed they don’t get the full benefit of market ownership.
  4. Oh hey Minneapolis. And Houston. It’s a strawman to say that people expect upzoning to decrease home prices in the short term. As I and others have said, HCOL areas are fucked for a generation, and the only hope is to build enough to alleviate price increases and hope incomes keep up. Simply upzoning itself will not generate housing overnight as there will still remain many significant obstacles to development. We upzoned California with SB9, for example, but people still use regulatory mechanisms like CEQA to block development. As @Bozo_Casanova explained, you can only rely on sprawl to a point. I live in a place where we are well past that point, and the result is dire. Faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something that will help in the long term, I support the latter. It’s like supporting efforts to combat climate change. Oh wait.
  5. Housing is now a commodity in America because there is not enough supply for demand. There are investors in the housing market because they have identified this problem and see an investment opportunity. Invitation Homes spelled this out in their S-1. But the fact is that institutional investors are something like 1% of the housing market (though they certainly have had an increased presence in certain housing markets in recent years). But they are not the cause of the housing supply crisis. Lack of supply is. You keep stating this, but virtually every study done on the topic finds that building more housing, and in particularly increasing density, puts downward pressure on housing prices. But to the extent your ideal case study is a city that has decreased housing prices in a reasonably short period of time to allow middle class affordability, well, we live in a country where housing zoning and regulations have largely been established by local control (ie, NIMBYs). Do you expect that to have ever happened? Have you followed California’s and New York’s efforts to address this at the state level?
  6. I mean, at worst he could only strike out.
  7. Yeah, we need to accept that the ship has sailed on affordability and this is a generational issue, at best. NIMBY’s spent decades getting us here and we won’t alleviate it overnight, but that doesn’t we shouldn’t do anything at all. “A developer might get rich! Working class folks couldn’t afford those new townhouses! And what about the parking?!”. Straight off the greatest hits list of Nextdoor boomer NIMBY pearl clutching, as they amass wealth gatekeeping their neighborhoods increasingly accessible only to, well, the wealthy.
  8. It boggles the mind that one’s response to a housing supply crisis would be to do nothing.
  9. Yes, the housing situation is insane in UCSC (and several other UCs). From what I hear from colleagues, pretty common for kids to live in nearby towns like Watsonville, which sounds like it would suck. But again, very common experience for UC students who aren’t affluent - not like most UCSD kids live in La Jolla for four years either.
  10. Agreed. I, for one, was looking forward to getting a jump on my Black Friday shopping.
  11. It took me a while to shake my way of thinking as a UT grad, but it’s not “Cal and then everyone else”, it’s “Cal/UCLA=best public’s in the US and the rest are simply excellent”. It’s becoming more so as competition increases. No reason why Texas can’t aspire for that.
×
×
  • Create New...