once an alaska economist on twitter unfollowed me because I disagreed that “construct more houses” was the only way out of this housing crisis and suggested we may have some regulatory leverage as well
I continue to believe that the combination of a poorly (or non) regulated air bnb boom, the naked profiteering of real estate agents & associations, corporate ownership of housing as investment, tax regs that favor home owners over renters, and capital tied up in boomer’s assets are all contributing to a situation we can’t build our way out of
a cult-like faith in the “laws” of supply and demand, paired with a refusal to regulate housing profiteering, has resulted, IMO, in an over reliance on “build more houses” which is uh… not a benign activity
“The buildings and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for a staggering 37% of global emissions. The production and use of materials such as cement, steel, and aluminum have a significant carbon footprint.”
living in a tiny town during all this has been so instructive because it’s really obvious that we lost 10-20 houses to Airbnb right at the same time 10-20 families with kids stopped being able to find or afford houses. Meanwhile the real estate agents encourage folks to price houses at truly astronomical prices and in at least one case, entered into a relationship with a wealthy california investor to show houses to him first so he could snatch up lucrative rural alaska rentals
@seachanger I live in Cincinnati and the way California real estate investors are circling properties for sale here is a huge part of why one of the previously most affordable Midwestern cities is now having a massive housing crisis.
I can never, ever afford to buy here and sometimes that really bums me out, as at my age I'd like to afford the dignity of being allowed to have a <checks notes> dog, and a garden, which are impossible in my rental situation
But in other ways I'm so glad I am not shackled to a $1.5M crapbox house & can pick up & leave as desired
@seachanger When I was in Craig, AK recently I was surprised how many AirBnBs there were because... uh it's Craig. Honestly it was really nice to be able to find something for our group to use to regroup and clean off before heading back to civilization but it definitely seemed like an odd situation for the local housing market.
@ak yeah good luck finding a rental in rural se unless you’re visiting for a week from out of town 😂. Add on to that no income tax even for out of state owners so yeah, great place to have a “rental business” when you live elsewhere
anyway “experts” act like the housing economy is some sort of natural and inevitable process — and some will flip out if you suggest otherwise— but it’s right there in front of our faces: outcomes are driven not just by supply but also by greed & profiteering at every level. the housing “market” has been pushed and forced into the shape it’s in by people (with names and addresses) who made unholy amounts of money doing so
@seachanger i don't think blaming greed is useful, because when you look closely it looks less like greed and more a rational response to bad conditions. The government on the US and UK killed fixed pensions and told boomers to buy a house and live off the income. So the goal of housing policy changed from "house people" to "appreciate property values." This included a lot of supply restriction, but also other anti housing policies like banning rentals and granny flats.
@guacamayan my belief is that the greed of air bnb execs, housing company investment execs, and real estate agents are large drivers, as in responsible for > 1% of housing inflation. A lot of us are trapped in using homes as assets for retirement etc which isn’t really our fault, but then again many of us in the owner class have a good reason to avoid being critical of the situation and tend to sit on our privilege rather than talk about the pitfalls
@seachanger Yeah I'm like "sure, sure, build more, under supply, I can believe it" but also: the blithe disregard for the reality of gentrification and displacement on people's lives, the single minded fervor and smug contempt for skeptics, the obvious echoes of trickle down economics, I just can't...
@misc the smug contempt for skeptics has been so real! I approached one of my town’s “liberal” assembly people several years ago about perhaps regulating air bnb even a tiny bit and he just said “I actually like air bnbs and enjoy staying in them” lol and then closed the conversation door so any follow up was of course the crazy leftist making a scene (ie making him slightly less comfortable)
I am having the same argument with local legislators who also see the only solution as more development, but pointedly avoid any discussion of the explosion of 2nd homes and AirBnBs and how they play into the mix; our area has been losing population over the long term but there's less and less housing each year. My town is placing a moratorium on non-owner-occupied STR's residential neighborhoods, but we've lost ~half of our rental stock to them in the past decade.
@seachanger Boomers’ 5000 sqft McMansions are unsellable. Even after they die these monuments will remain too expensive to maintain and uninhabitable. Some might be renovated into multi family clusters. Or with a cultural change they could be multi generational co-ops. Stop giving property tax breaks solely based on owner age instead of wealth + income.
@ukuku I have seen some nice smaller houses as part of this wave of housing starts but yeah, they’re not the norm in most conventional developments, which are so often super sized for car housing lol
@seachanger
I don't think it's an either/or. Short-term rentals and private equity buying up houses are clearly part of the problem, but failing to build enough houses is important, too. The relative importance varies a lot from place to place.
Here in California, for instance, we can estimate the housing demand based on the population and average household size, and we're millions of units short. That's the result of decades of building fewer houses than we need. We can lessen the impact of the shortage by regulation, but we need more housing.
@seachanger I emphasize the corporate ownership of rental units as a driver of the mess (will a future econ text have a hula hoop, portable classroom, and big empty house as the markers of the Baby Boom?)
@seachanger yeah, an exon guy got angry enough to block me back on twitter when I kept asking what i should make of the fact that every american city with a homelessness problem also had at least 2-3x as many vacant homes.
@seachanger like… i get it! Complex problems have complex causes. But “we just need more” when the unused surplus is visibly, obviously sitting there doesn’t pass the smell test.
@eaton well after all anything else well… it’s not politically feasible (less yachts for rich people), outside the scope of this analysis (less yachts for rich people), only theoretical (less yachts for rich people), not relevant in our locality (less yachts for our rich people) and really impolite of you to talk about out loud (yachts are best left unspoken too) etc
@seachanger In the places I've been living lately, they keep demolishing housing to build "condos". The condos are totally unaffordable and even if one had enough money to afford one, they'd still be too expensive to be good uses of money. People online keep telling me unaffordable condos are good actually because it will soak up demand at the high end and therefore open up affordable housing. Then why isn't any affordable housing opening up?
@seachanger “Construct more houses” has never been the answer even if you don’t believe in regulatory approaches. It should be “create more homes”, a subtle but significant difference.
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