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Anondson
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby Anondson » June 28th, 2015, 7:25 am

What if we didn't treat our homes as an investment that had to appreciate in value, like we treat our cars?

http://m.startribune.com/business/310159531.html

Biggest to me is we wouldn't try to control what our neighbors do on their property so much.

David Greene
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby David Greene » June 29th, 2015, 8:53 am

Biggest to me is we wouldn't try to control what our neighbors do on their property so much.
It's way more complicated than that. People care about the sense of place in which they live. Property value certainly plays a role but its prominence varys greatly from person to person. Even if everyone expected negative return on their houses, you'd still get opposition to various things.

min-chi-cbus
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby min-chi-cbus » June 29th, 2015, 7:31 pm

Of course, but on average you would definitely see a change in the way people behaved. I think that's an interesting point -- people ARE infatuated with the almighty dollar. It never ceases to impress me just how much!

RailBaronYarr
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby RailBaronYarr » September 21st, 2015, 7:40 am

I know most folks on the forums probably regularly read streets.mn articles, but I wanted to highlight Monte's recent post:

https://streets.mn/2015/09/18/why-arent- ... s-anymore/

I'll say that the comment section devolved a bit too much into picking apart word choices or side arguments, but the meat of the post was a great topic. I'm guessing most of us here, for fiscal and environmental reasons, aren't huge fans of seeing more single family homes build 30+ miles from downtown, but still a worthy discussion, and I think his thoughts are for the most part on point.

Here's another interesting read on the same topic (not sure if it was shared on this site before): http://www.builderonline.com/money/pric ... -history_o

mattaudio
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby mattaudio » September 21st, 2015, 10:12 am

I actually had an interesting question this morning: How many 1950s-70s "starter homes" has Bloomington condemned to widen stroads? Looking at an old-vs-new aerial of 82nd and Lyndale (Toro) it's clear that dozens of homes have been removed.

nordeast homer
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby nordeast homer » September 21st, 2015, 10:52 am

If you're talking about the ones to the north of Toro, they actually owned the homes and used the lawns for R&D purposes. They rented the homes out, but I believe they decided they didn't want to be in the residential real estate market anymore. During their last 2 expansions they removed the homes as they were not deemed necessary.

mattaudio
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby mattaudio » September 21st, 2015, 11:54 am

I'm aware that those have gone, but I'm speaking to an entire row of homes on the west side of Lyndale. Bloomingtonize has a good image of this on Twitter. They removed homes to make Lyndale a stroad and add pork-chop islands.

In hindsight, it would have been much better if Toro's entrance could have fronted American Blvd, maybe opposite the Grand Ave / Home Depot stoplight. This would provide better transit connectivity as well.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby FISHMANPET » September 24th, 2015, 10:45 am

On the "immaculate conception" theory of neighborhood development: http://cityobservatory.org/the-immacula ... s-origins/

Hint, your charming turn of the century neighborhood whose character you wish to protect from greedy profit hungry developers was in fact built by greedy profit hungry developers that destroyed the character of what was there before.

Didier
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby Didier » September 24th, 2015, 6:31 pm

Former NBA player Devean George is developing an affordable housing complex at Penn Avenue and Golden Valley Road. Cool to see. I worked with Devean on a small project and he seems like a genuine guy.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/09/1 ... g-project/

mplsjaromir
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby mplsjaromir » September 24th, 2015, 8:36 pm

Off topic but Devean has one of coolest NBA stories. He grew like 9" when he was college. One of the highest Division III NBA draft picks of all time. He lasted a long time in the league. I am so glad to see him doing what he can to help. Devean from all second hand accounts is a very stand up person.

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Nick
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby Nick » September 29th, 2015, 6:24 pm

http://www.theawl.com/2015/09/startup-idea
Airbnb. Amazing. Airbnb “believes that people can and should feel like they belong anywhere in the world.” Strongly agree. Hundreds of thousands of hosts. Tens of millions of users. 500,000 stays a night. A re-imagination of the notion of property. Incredible.

However, Airbnb investor Sam Altman says:

Unfortunately, a lot of other people have problems paying their rent or mortgage.

That’s bad. But:

75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes, and 60% of the Airbnb income goes to rent/mortgage and other housing expenses.

That’s good! So why not let Airbnb help them even more. That’s where ReHome comes in.

[...]
Nick Magrino
[email protected]

seanrichardryan
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby seanrichardryan » September 29th, 2015, 8:14 pm

Oh geeze. As with all 'sharing economy' ideas, who's really making the $$$. Soylent Corp? Maersk? The UAE?
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

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Nick
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby Nick » September 29th, 2015, 9:11 pm

I looooooooooove The Awl
Nick Magrino
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Tiller
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby Tiller » September 29th, 2015, 10:33 pm

I looooooooooove The Awl
eh, is theawl supposed to be satirical or something? I can't really tell.

After looking through the site (and re-reading a couple articles I've seen previously, namely on gamergate and neoreactionaries), and looking it up on wikipedia, I take it that it's basically a gawker spin-off blog devoted to talking about random obscure things? It still seems as if it should be satirical.

EOst
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby EOst » September 30th, 2015, 5:11 am

Some of its articles (like that one) are satirical. Most are standard "literary" articles, in the style of the NYRB or the Paris Review. It's a great site.

beige_box
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Re: Lake Calhoun

Postby beige_box » October 5th, 2015, 8:00 am

We Need More Affordable Housing.

maxbaby
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby maxbaby » October 6th, 2015, 2:11 pm

Not sure if this goes here so please feel free to move. Some very interesting numbers.
http://www.rejournals.com/2015/10/06/re ... ed-states/

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jw138
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby jw138 » October 6th, 2015, 3:24 pm

Not sure if this goes here so please feel free to move. Some very interesting numbers.
http://www.rejournals.com/2015/10/06/re ... ed-states/
Feel free to move this as well if it's not in the right place:

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/m ... dable.html
http://www.startribune.com/edina-consid ... 330791281/

This would set a bad precedent, IMO. We need to integrate, not separate.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby FISHMANPET » October 7th, 2015, 11:14 am

So a thought, and this could easily go in the Gentrification thread because in a way it's about displacement as well.

But this came across my Facebook feed:
https://www.facebook.com/adja.gildersle ... 5669353153

So I think we can all agree this is not an ideal situation for her, and I think we can all agree that society would be better off were she not in this situation. If you disagree with that you can just go ahead and leave now.

*waits*

Alright. So I'm always looking at things like this through a land use lens. And it's terrible that this is happening, but what "specifically" is happening? Is it discrimination against a potential "criminal?" Is it discrimination because they've found out she's black? Is it discrimination against something else? And that's important because if you want to make this illegal, you have to know what's being discriminated against. But more important is the why.

And not the first why. There's a troubleshooting method known as "5 whys" where basically, you keep asking why. So after the first why of "she is being discriminated against because of X" there's eventually another why of "why is the landlord not filling a vacancy with this tenant" and the answer there is that the landlord can fill that vacancy with someone that he deems more suitable. They don't have bogus "criminal" charges. They aren't black. They aren't a woman. They aren't the wrong astrological symbol. Whatever the reason for the discrimination, there exists a person that doesn't have those traits who can fill the vacancy.

So you all know where this is going. BUILD MORE FUCKING HOUSING.

The best check against unscrupulous landlords occurs when tenants — students or otherwise — have a large enough choice of units that they can reject a shoddy one, secure in the knowledge there are other options.

I'm not going to say that increasing supply of housing is going to "fix" discrimination in that it will make people no longer be racist or sexist or whateverist. But it will punish these people for their bad behavior. If you exclude a black tenant and there's another white tenant in line you're fine. And you can make up any flimsy excuse as to why you're doing it because this isn't 1984 and thoughts aren't a crime. But if you exclude a black tenant and there's no white tenant in line to fill that space, then either you lose money, or you cave and rent to the white tenant.

This all comes down to the fundamental issue of supply. There was a quote from David Greene in the Nye's derail that I never got a chance to respond to, and I think it fits well with what I'm saying here.
But, "It's as simple as that," states there are no other factors to consider with respect to availability of affordable housing other than supply. But it's fairly easy to demonstrate that's not true. Redlining, zoning, segregation, racism and more all play a role. Simply adding supply is not going to solve all of the other issues affecting where people can live.
Redlining, zoning, segregation, racism are all ways to allocate a limited supply. Those ways in particular generally exclude people of color to the benefit of white people. There are other ways. In rapidly "gentrifying" places, the almighty dollar is what's used to allocate the limited supply. Some anti-gentrification activists would prefer the opposite, where housing is allocated to those with the least money. Many bay area single family home dominated cities want to allocate based on tenure, basically excluding any new arrivals of any race or income. Public housing can be allocated by your place in a line or by a lottery. But they're all different answers to the same fundamental problem. We have more people looking for housing than we have housing. Whichever method we use to allocate the limited supply is just the equivalent of pushing the broccoli around the plate and telling your parents you ate sme. If we had more housing then suddenly these things become less important. Someone who is casually racist is probably going to be far more supportive of a black family moving in next door if there are literally no white families to move on. Someone who wants to exclude the rich will be far more accepting of rich people if all the poor people have housing. Etcetera etc. Just eat the damn broccoli. Build the damn housing.

Anondson
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Re: The economics of housing

Postby Anondson » October 7th, 2015, 12:38 pm

In the way that the old bumper slogan goes, "You aren't in traffic, you are traffic," you could mirror it with "there isn't an affordability crisis in your neighborhood, you are the affordability crisis".


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