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the_lamou t1_jcfjymi wrote

Reply to comment by tsgram in Nearly 1,500 buildings ban Airbnb and other short-term rentals by fluffykintail

I mean, asshole landlords aside, who else would you rent apartments from? And if you say "everyone just buys their own," well... that's a really good idea for screwing over recent immigrants and the unbanked who can't qualify for a mortgage, plus all the petite that wouldn't be able to afford to buy even it prices fell by half.

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99hoglagoons t1_jcfp49r wrote

Not-for profit housing and non-market housing is a thing that is utilized across the world to various degrees of success. This is not to be confused with subsidized social housing (like NYCHA).

We just lack the imagination here to even ask the right questions. Asshole landlords or ownership. Both of these are rooted in for-profit financial transactions. There are a lot of people financially vested in you believing these are the only options.

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the_lamou t1_jcfu5cv wrote

Not-for profit housing and non-market housing is a thing, but the degrees of success it's used to across the world are "low." Every major city around the world is currently experiencing an affordability crisis (except Tokyo and some other large Japanese cities, but that's a while separate thing.) No one's got it worked out yet.

Personally, I would prefer that rather than handing control of all housing units to the people who did such a great job with the projects, we just fix our renting rules to be more equitable. Things like income-based rent regulations, first-come/first-served requirements in leasing, better tenant protections and maintenance requirements, more rent stabilization with fewer loopholes, limits on number of rental units owned, etc.

From a public policy perspective, I would much rather see a system that creates thousands of small landlords who have essentially built themselves a job than have that money to what would have to be a massive new program.

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99hoglagoons t1_jcfzct9 wrote

Oh yeah. I was just putting the not-for-profit concept out there. Even if implemented today at a large scale, it would take decades to see any meaningful results. And it's not happening anyways.

> we just fix our renting rules to be more equitable.

This part is going to continue to be a mess. The 2018 IAI reform was well meaning and intended to prevent landlords from evicting long term tenants in order to deregulate units or just significantly jack up prices through various improvement clauses. Or as I call it: "The great dishwasher revolution of 2010-2018". I didn't know a single person who had a dishwasher in NYC prior to that time period, man.

End result of that reform? Landlords are hoarding apartments they deem unprofitable and are waiting for regulatory winds to change. You could throw in clauses to prevent this, but hand of capitalism is insatiable. They keep finding different ways to circumvent. Combine units to deregulate is the latest and greatest. That empty unit is waiting for an adjacent unit to become vacant so they can go to work.

> Every major city around the world is currently experiencing an affordability crisis

Direct result of almost zero interest loans that have turned real estate into a wealth hedging tool. The recent uptick in interest rates is the best thing that could happen to affordability, but even that will take a decade plus to play out, and most likely it will not be allowed to play out. Interest rates will drop to near zero again just in time for corporations to buy out the next round of foreclosures.

We've been through all of this before.

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[deleted] t1_jcg0uu5 wrote

[deleted]

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99hoglagoons t1_jcg1m3i wrote

> We live in a free market my friend.

I don't know where to even begin with this absolutist statement. NYC housing market is a pasta bowl of regulated and unregulated rules and regulations. Like, anyone living here should at least know the basics.

Are you typing this from Florida?

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[deleted] t1_jcgmdtd wrote

[deleted]

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99hoglagoons t1_jcgq1ui wrote

I own in the city. Not looking for a handout. But I also rented here for very long time and have sympathy for renters who have to deal with negligent landlords who will fuck you over by denying basic services or plain force you out in name of chasing the profits. Been there.

Places where not-for-profit housing exists, you are basically paying a COOP fee instead of rent, and that fee covers cost of all operating expenses. Underlying mortgage, common utilities, maintenance, etc. No private profit is levied on top of that. Over the years such housing becomes really inexpensive. This is not some commie plot to nationalize housing. Variations of this have existed for a century in NYC. For the last 2 decades+ we have been balls deep into "private for profit developers" will magically make housing more affordable. Not happening. Not here, or anywhere else that took this neoliberal approach.

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columbo928s4 t1_jche1j4 wrote

no, actually we don't. we live in a mixed market economy

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n3vd0g t1_jcfkhbc wrote

Government.

Edit: for the people who truly believe that current state of the rental market isn’t already the dystopian hellscape they believe gov owned housing would be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DBKoWbtjE Edit: Also, Adam Smith has some great words on the subject https://www.reddit.com/r/adamsmith/comments/zche7/ysk_adam_smith_spoke_of_landlords_as_cruel/

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NetQuarterLatte t1_jcg6ybu wrote

NYC invests in the "right to shelter" to the tune of 5k per bed per month.

At those price levels, swimming pool amenities are possible even in Manhattan...

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filenotfounderror t1_jcfrnpf wrote

imagine how fucked in the head you would have to be to think "the government owns all the rental housing" isnt some dystopian nightmare 10x worse than whatever already exists.

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n3vd0g t1_jcfv2mn wrote

Youve clearly never heard of Austria 🙄

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filenotfounderror t1_jcfx5qn wrote

i dont know what that means.

  1. The government doesn't own all the rental property in Austria, though im sure it s subject to local laws.

  2. The Austrian Government has nothing to do with the US government. I am not familiar with Austrian politics, but the US govt is almost entirely dysfunctional at every level, usually on purpose, for a variety of reasons.

  3. i imagine the Austrian housing market in vastly different from the US housing market

  4. Regulating the entire rental market in the US in such a fashion would probably destroy billions, probably trillions of dollars in wealth for mostly retired Americans because housing prices would instantly crater. So on top of being entirely politically unfeasible it also just bad policy. All your doing is stealing for one person to give to another.

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n3vd0g t1_jcga0at wrote

  1. Vienna’s city government owns and manages 220,000 housing units, which represent about 25 percent of the city’s housing stock. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html Not suggesting all, but would like a substantial amount.

  2. Excuses. No reason we can’t work for a better government

  3. Yeah in that it regulates stock to maintain affordability and availability and allows for government ownership of dignified low income housing

  4. You really think the current rental prices aren’t already theft from one generation to another? Regardless, this is what social security is supposed to be for. We shouldn’t be encouraging owning rental properties as a means to retirement. Retirement should be a guaranteed right, but not like this. Regardless, this is unsustainable and I’m not going to cry over lost profits since society would still be for the better. Like come on man

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JX_JR t1_jchuqus wrote

New York's city government owns and manages 178,684 units, about 6% of the housing stock. They manage it exceptionally poorly, nobody wants to live there, and they are routinely sued for their inability to keep units in repair and supplied with heat and hot water.

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drpvn t1_jcflhjl wrote

This is some dystopian shit.

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n3vd0g t1_jcfv63q wrote

Yeah, Austria is soooo dystopian

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the_lamou t1_jcfxrt0 wrote

Most of Austria's social housing stock isn't owned by the government, but rather by private companies who operate a landlords within a tightly regulated system. It's no different than NYC's affordable housing lottery, albeit with a larger percentage of new units being allocated and better regulation. But it's not remotely accurate to say "the government owns the housing." Private landlords own the housing. They just lease it under the government's watch.

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n3vd0g t1_jcg9358 wrote

> Vienna’s city government owns and manages 220,000 housing units, which represent about 25 percent of the city’s housing stock. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html

Yet still a substantial amount is owned by the government and the program is wildly successful. It is very very different.

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the_lamou t1_jcgchn9 wrote

It's about half of all subsidized units, and has been in major drawdown mode for a while, shifting more units from government-owned to private-owned-but-regulated.

Their biggest advantage when it comes to housing prices is the ability to grow outwards. The city is essentially surrounded entirely by farmland, and as their population grew they were able to easily build new developments on what was formerly empty fields on the outskirts of the city. This is where a lot of the subsidized units come from - relatively recent new development undertaken as a public/private partnership.

NYC is not only incredibly densely populated (about 3x Vienna) but that population density extends out throughout the immediate metro area. For NYC to replicate it would require either deploying large swaths of small homes in the outer borroughs and converting them to midrises (which will cost billions upon billions of dollars and piss off a ton of long-time New Yorkers,) OR start building city-subsidized units in Duchess County and out near Dover, NJ.

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n3vd0g t1_jcgm66t wrote

> It's about half of all subsidized units, and has been in major drawdown mode for a while, shifting more units from government-owned to private-owned-but-regulated.

If this is true, then it doesn't seem to be doing them any favors. Housing prices are rising sharply as a result. https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Austria/Price-History

> NYC is not only incredibly densely populated (about 3x Vienna) but that population density extends out throughout the immediate metro area. For NYC to replicate it would require either deploying large swaths of small homes in the outer borroughs and converting them to midrises (which will cost billions upon billions of dollars and piss off a ton of long-time New Yorkers,)

So just do nothing then? That's your solution? Our country is in crisis and all we seem to do is virtue signal about homelessness while only actually caring about landowners. Do you know how much we spent on the Iraq war alone? Billions upon billions is quite literally nothing to the American government and that money would be cycled into people's pockets as people would be employed during this process to build these things.

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the_lamou t1_jcgyrqt wrote

>Housing prices are rising sharply

Housing prices are rising sharply everywhere because we literally cannot keep up with demand. What do you want the government to do about that? Forcibly seize land and force people to build houses on it? Or would you rather we sterilize half the population to prevent demand growth?

Home prices generally go up over time, if for no other reason than inflation goes up over time, and there's absolutely no way to stop that short of extremely unpleasant solutions.

>So just do nothing then? That's your solution?

No, it's not. I've outlined several solutions throughout this thread. Some are temporary stop-gaps. Others are actual solutions. But the only long-term solution is to build more housing (probably outside the city) and increase wages. That's it. It's not magic, and it's the only thing that'll really work. Supplement that with subsidization for people incapable of working, and you're done. BUT that might mean that you live in Poughkeepsie and have an hour and 45 minute commute into the city. Which, frankly, you can already do.

>Do you know how much we spent on the Iraq war alone?

Yeah. About two trillion dollars direct by the federal government. What I don't understand is how you think federal spending has any bearing on state and city spending.

But even assuming that this comparison made sense, let's say you wanted to build some apartments in NYC. We'll assume that the average zoning district in NYC is R6, and we use the smallest possible minimum lot size as a proxy for average apartment land cost. So that's 1,700 square feet, of which at least 40% has to be open space, leaving us with a building of 1020 square feet. That allows you to build about 1.5 units of housing per zoning regulations at a land cost of about $78,000 per unit.

NYC is (conservatively) short 1,000,000 units. That's about $8 billion JUST in land cost. Even if we upzone like crazy, and can cut that in half, we're talking $4 billion in current land cost. And if the city actually tried to do this, the land cost would go up significantly due to supply and demand pressure.

The actual building is going to cost about $350 per square foot. At 1.5 units per 1020 square feet, we're talking about an extra $240,000 per unit. So now we're at $316,000 in costs per unit, or 1/3rd of a trillion dollars, and that's being extremely conservative. Even if you assume the federal government pays for all or part of it, that solves one small problem in one small corner of the country while doing nothing to address everywhere else. And if you take this model and sissy it throughout the US, that $300 billion turns into $30 trillion easy, which is about double the annual US federal budget.

Plus, your plan requires us to forcibly kick people out of their family homes to make room for other people, which is a truly shitty thing to do.

One possible way around this is a combination of the Austrian system with the Athenian antiparochi system: the city partners with developers to go to low-density homeowners and say "you give us your land to develop, we build multifamily housing on it, in return you get a couple of units in the new building to do with what you want, some of the units are market rate, and half are subsidized housing, and we'll also upzone the property to make sure the developer has enough profit motive to handle the building." Combine that with a gradual upzoning of neighborhoods from the center out and within a decade or two, we might get to a point where supply meets demand.

In the meantime, we should continue fighting for a living wage. And, if you want cheap rent, you may just have to live outside the city, because unfortunately there are not enough units for everyone that wants one, and the only fair way of dividing resources when demand exceeds supply is to price some people out. Because no matter how good it may feel, hysterics on Reddit don't actually stove anything.

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n3vd0g t1_jch17z5 wrote

> Because no matter how good it may feel, hysterics on Reddit don't actually stove anything.

Lol hysterics? So rude jfc

> Housing prices are rising sharply everywhere because we literally cannot keep up with demand. What do you want the government to do about that? Forcibly seize land and force people to build houses on it? Or would you rather we sterilize half the population to prevent demand growth? Home prices generally go up over time, if for no other reason than inflation goes up over time, and there's absolutely no way to stop that short of extremely unpleasant solutions.

First off, you're gonna claim hysterics while putting that genocide straw man on me? ok. Second, yeah, I have no problem with seizing land that people are just sitting on. It's called eminent domain and I support it when necessary. inb4 "it's been abused in the past"

> Plus, your plan requires us to forcibly kick people out of their family homes to make room for other people, which is a truly shitty thing to do.

When did I ever say I'm kicking families out. Since when is a giant landlord that owns multiple buildings in nyc a "single family"? Again, straw man. It's naive to think this doesn't happen already anyways. It happens by landlords on a scale that is plainly ridiculous. And many times, the landlords don't even do substantional renovations or add units. They paint over shit, fix a few cabinets, add some appliances and hike the rent up by another grand a month.

> Yeah. About two trillion dollars direct by the federal government. What I don't understand is how you think federal spending has any bearing on state and city spending.

You do realize that part of a state's budget comes directly from federal allocations too, correct? You know how government works right? Like, not all infrastructure spending in a state is solely financed by that state.

I mean, whatever man. It's not like either of us will get our way anyways

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the_lamou t1_jch3dag wrote

>First off, you're gonna claim hysterics while putting that genocide straw man on me? ok.

Check your sarcasm detector, buddy.

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>Second, yeah, I have no problem with seizing land that people are just sitting on

Well, if by "just sitting on" you mean "living in with their families," and you're still ok with it, that's a pretty shitty attitude. Not to get all hyperbolic on you or anything, but maybe we shouldn't endorse forcibly seizing people's family land given this country's history.

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>When did I ever say I'm kicking families out. Since when is a giant landlord that owns multiple buildings in nyc a "single family"?

You didn't say that, but nevertheless that's what it's going to take. Why would we seize a giant landlord's multiple densely-zoned buildings? Those are already providing plenty of housing, and demolishing them isn't likely to increase density in any meaningful fashion.

No, the only way to get the city to have enough residential units is to go out to Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx, go to the neighborhoods which are currently single-family, duplex, and triplex homes, demolish every single one of them, and replace them with 4+ story 12+ unit housing. I know you're dead set on making this entirely an "ooga booga big landlord" problem, but it isn't. Big landlords build big buildings because that's how they maximize returns. The current housing shortage is a SMALL landlord, family-owned small building problem.

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>It's naive to think this doesn't happen already. It happens by landlords anyways on a scale that is plainly ridiculous.

Sorry, WHAT happens? You need to provide a little more clarity, because the "it" here can refer to a number of different things.

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>And many times, the landlords don't even do substantional renovations or add units. They paint over shit, fix a few cabinets, add some appliances and hike the rent up by another grand a month.

What do renovations have to do with substantial new development? You're going all over the place, because I suspect what you want isn't actually affordable housing. What you want is a bright, spacious, freshly-renovated apartment with all the latest amenities, in a cool neighborhood, for 1/10th market rate.

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>You do realize that part of a state's budget comes directly from federal allocations too, correct? You know how government works right? Like, not all infrastructure spending in a state is solely financed by that state.

Yes, I actually am very well of where infrastructure spending comes from. Given that I actually showed you the math, which you seem to not have understood in the least, I would say I likely understand it a lit better than you do. For example, I understand that in FY2019 (the last year before shit hit the fan,) the federal government provided about $711 billion dollars in grants to states. Which would pay for a massive upzoning and new construction project in two major cities, while leaving zero federal dollars for any other state programs. You ready to tell people they're going to have to give up their Medicaid so that you can have a shiny, new apartment?

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drpvn t1_jcfxit9 wrote

Oh shit I was in Vienna once and it was really pretty although insanely expensive and a random guy on Reddit just suggested that the Austrian government acts as a landlord so I guess I have no choice but to agree that landlords should be banned

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n3vd0g t1_jcg95n0 wrote

Vienna’s city government owns and manages 220,000 housing units, which represent about 25 percent of the city’s housing stock. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html

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drpvn t1_jcgb2d5 wrote

Well there it is, I am now forced to admit that landlords should be made illegal.

What’s the first step? Passing legislation that requires all landlords to either stop renting property or turn over their property to the state?

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tsgram t1_jcfn6vd wrote

Maybe landlords in a less predatory way, or a govt agency (yea….. I know that would be super corrupt in this country), or maybe if we hit the reset button on housing economics we don’t also need banks leeching people’s money to the extent they do because housing becomes more affordable.

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the_lamou t1_jcfsg6c wrote

Right, so the issue isn't "landlords," per se. The issue is predatory behavior and unaffordable rents. Banning landlords might solve the predatory behavior issue (although, considering the number of scandals NYC's affordable housing lottery has had, I wouldn't be quite so sure.) But it definitely wouldn't solve the affordability crisis, because there are simply not enough units for everyone that wants one, and the prices that people think are "affordable" are hilariously low. Like, not remotely realistic virtually anywhere in the country, let alone in the unofficial capital of the world.

As for banks leeching money, I genuinely don't know what you mean. Are you saying you should be able to get a long-term loan without paying interest?

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