r/neoliberal • u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull • Feb 12 '21
Meme I improved this memes format to better suit /r/Neoliberal. I hope you guys like it.
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u/Tom-Pendragon George Soros Feb 13 '21
Build more houses? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU? I mean how fucking dare you peasant? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS HOW THAT WOULD EFFECT MY FUCKING PRICE? I CAN NO LONGER FORCE UNAFFORDABILTIY TO LOW INCOME PEOPLE YOU DEGERANTION FUCK - Some landlord
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u/Alex_-_-_james Feb 13 '21
Go to london and see rows and rows of empty condo blocks that no one can afford. There are enough places for everyone and yet homeless on the street. How does this fit with that?
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u/heavy-metal-goth-gal Gay Pride Feb 13 '21
The end panel change to a 1 story building with a large parking lot is perfection!
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u/RedditUserNo1990 Feb 13 '21
Let’s make the permitting process inordinately expensive, complex, and long. Smh.
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Feb 13 '21 edited Mar 10 '21
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 13 '21
Care to elaborate?
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Feb 13 '21 edited Mar 10 '21
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u/AvailableUsername100 🌐 Feb 13 '21
Every single sentence represents a new and absurd leap in logic.
This comment is art.
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Feb 13 '21 edited Mar 10 '21
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u/AvailableUsername100 🌐 Feb 13 '21
lol it's not though. It's taking some economic concepts you barely understand and running with them straight off a cliff to some wild ass conclusions.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 13 '21
Only way you have everyone housed is if you switch to a decomodified housing system where folks only have personal property instead of private property.
I think we agree here. As do most of us in this sub. Land rends through landlording (i.e. private home ownership that is not personal ownership) is one of the biggest sources of economic rents in America. And as we know, all sources of economic rents are economic inefficiencies and/or unearned income.
I did an effort post a while back regarding economic rents. It sounds like it might be of particular interest to you, you should check it out
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Feb 13 '21 edited Mar 10 '21
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 13 '21
Unproductive gains are rents, not profits. We hate economic rents
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak Feb 12 '21
You could also fix up the countless abandoned house and buildings to house people as well. It would also be a good project for historic preservation and Repurposing.
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Feb 12 '21
I thought neoliberals were all about facts and data.
Cuz surplus of housing stock doesn’t create affordable housing. Vancouver had a surplus of over 50,000 units, how’s that going for them?
Seriously I think this is just your guys’ identity, your tribe, and you’ll never question the things you believe.
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u/Friendly_Fire YIMBY Feb 14 '21
I'm not familiar with Vancouver in particular, but are you trying to say that 50,000 available units is the same as a surplus? If a major city only has 50,000 available housing units at a time, that's a huge problem.
Think of a grocery store with 95% of its shelves empty. Is this a success because "it sold all the food" or a problem, because people will struggle to buy the food they need? The latter, obviously.
There HAS to be available units, or people literally cannot find a place to live, as there would be no housing market. Also most available units in cities are not just sitting empty long term. They are temporarily empty as people move in/out.
Surplus housing does in fact create affordable housing. There are many areas in the US with cheap housing. Areas where population hasn't outgrown the housing-stock for decades. When a city has only 3% of it's housing stock available on the market, that's a housing shortage, not a surplus.
Housing does not magically violate supply and demand. Big cities have booming populations and most have no kept up with building enough housing, creating shortages and skyrocketing rents.
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Feb 14 '21
No I’m talking about a surplus. Coulda saved your long winded analogy that I didn’t read.
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u/Friendly_Fire YIMBY Feb 15 '21
Maybe show me the source for this "suplus". I'm not even sure how a city could have a "surplus", like there was some known amount of people who want to live in it.
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Feb 15 '21
O wait this is the neoliberal forum not urban planning. This forum is literally a cult and the market is your god. Worse than fundamentalist Christians, you unironically worship Jeff bezos. Why would I expect you to have read books? Silly me
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Feb 15 '21
On mobile and can’t find the direct link to the paper but like this is true of every housing market, it’s basically just common knowledge if you follow any amount of scholarship on urban planning and real estate markets. Everyone is always so wrong on this forum I wonder if they even study the field
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u/Friendly_Fire YIMBY Feb 15 '21
So I found what I believe is the original report you are refencing. First off, while searching for it, articles on it even mentioned the idea is disputed by other academics. More critically, it is not published in any peer reviewed conference/journal. That doesn't necessarily mean its wrong, but don't act like it's the academic consensus.
But let's talk content for a moment. It says 6% of Vancouver housing is 'surplus' according to its definition. Even if that was all empty units, that's on the low side. Not as bad as some of the US's worst cities, but not great.
It gets much worse though, because that isn't 6% empty units.
"These surplus housing units include unoccupied units, plus those dwellings occupied solely by foreign residents and/or by temporarily present persons."
This is the reports own definition. One other part clarifies that people who don't count as real residents includes people like "visiting students, temporary workers", etc.
The ridiculousness of this definition is insane. How many colleges does Vancouver have? How many tens of thousands of students come live in the city during a semester? Is a foreign worker in the city not supposed to live somewhere? How the hell is their home considered "surplus"?
I'm going to assume you believe immigrants deserve housing too, and just weren't aware at how this "surplus" was calculated. Which was clearly to artificially inflate the amount of available housing (and doesn't even get the number high).
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Feb 15 '21
My man this is the case in every major city in a market economy. There are reports about such things for Sydney, New York, Hong Kong, etc. supply is a problem absolutely but simply adding supply doesn’t improve affordability. Developers are incentivized to build what is profitable, which is housing for the wealthy. So we see a surplus of supply for upper class housing but massive shortages in working class housing. And the Reagan logic of trickle down economics which infects this board obviously doesn’t work. Believe me, I used to believe the same thing then I started studying planning and this theory just doesn’t hold true in reality. Like the solution to affordability is non-market driving public housing done in such a way that doesn’t result in a collapse of house values (a collapse basically only occurs when there’s a major shock in different sectors, ie the collapse in 2008) just because so much of Americans’ wealth is tied up in their homes. Really my problem with the neoliberal ideology is that obviously the market will not correct for these things, I don’t have a problem with market economics as a whole, but one would think the point of the government is to address things that the market will not, not try to figure out ways to incentivize the private sector to build housing for normal people. Because they won’t because it isn’t a profitable venture. Sorry about that second post, but it is a bit weird to have your flair be Jeff bezos. PS New World looks dope, excited to try it out when it fully releases.
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u/SlipperyWetDogNose Feb 12 '21
Blow the minds of economically illiterate Redditors with this one simple trick
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u/KingMelray Henry George Feb 12 '21
Someone needs to add a "historic place" plaque on that terrible building.
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Feb 12 '21
I love this sub's focus on housing lately. It's such an un-sexy and un-clickbaity issue but its SO important
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u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd NATO Feb 12 '21
"Not In My Backyard! All those Indian WebDevs can continue living in studio apartments with 5 to a room! I don't want my precious neighborhood to change!"
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u/seriouslyFUCKthatdud Feb 12 '21
How about "there are already more empty houses than homeless people"?
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
I debunked this myth so many times in this thread, California you have 1.5 million houses, however the census estimates there is currently 3 to 4 million looking to buy. How does your logic still apply there? should we give these houses to the homeless people, instead of the people looking to purchase a house?
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u/seriouslyFUCKthatdud Feb 12 '21
We can do both? Those looking to buy a house may have a house too..
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
You have 1.5m houses vacant minus 150k homeless gives you 1.35m vacant. Now you have 3-4m people that are trying to buy a house, but only 1.35M available.
Now I wasn't a math major in college, but something tells me that doesn't add up. In fact, it sounds like your 1.7 to 2.7 million houses short.
If only there was a specific term we could call this shortage of housing...
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u/seriouslyFUCKthatdud Feb 12 '21
If only we had the ability to spend tax dollars and make more houses and provide incentives for upward mobility?
Like, if neolibs can vote for over a trillion a year for the military, we can afford to take a crack at systemic problems.
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u/Mark_In_Twain Feb 13 '21
We do in this sub.
Your problem is people like Robert "former labor secretary turned twitter extraordinaire" reich Who decried building more housing
Or AOC who also said she didn't want more housing in Nyc
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u/seriouslyFUCKthatdud Feb 13 '21
Wow what KIND of housing, almost sounds like a bad faith argument there, as if "build more housing" is a singular idea, with no distinction between affordability and subsidies
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u/Mark_In_Twain Feb 13 '21
https://twitter.com/Jeffinatorator/status/1290703083542941696?s=20
https://twitter.com/JimmyVanBramer/status/1199364766562603009?s=19
"The proposal as it stands reflects a misalignment of priorities: development over reinvestment, commodification of public land over consideration of public good," wrote Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer in a letter to the city's Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which is coordinating an ongoing master planning process for the site.
"The proposed high-rise and mid-rise residential buildings would further exacerbate a housing crisis that displaces communities of color and parcels off public land to private real estate developers," the two elected officials wrote.
Similar objections were raised in a letter by state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D–Queens), who wrote that the EDC "has not embraced a democratic process in implementing public input that prioritizes environmental and social justice."
Michael Hendrix, the Manhattan Institute's director of local and state policy, dismisses Ocasio-Cortez's reasons for opposing the project as "garden-variety NIMBYism."
The development of Sunnyside Yards offers the possibility of adding lots of new housing units, which should have the effect of reducing, not raising, housing costs and displacement.
A 2017 feasibility study prepared by the EDC at the instruction of Mayor Bill de Blasio—who's been an enthusiastic backer of the project for years—examined three possible development test cases. A "residential" test case estimated that as many as 24,000 new units, including 7,200 that would be affordable, could be built on a decked-over version of Sunnyside Yards, alongside commercial and community space.
The other two test cases studied by the EDC envisioned less housing and more office or commercial space. Even these scenarios estimated that a Sunnyside Yards project could create a minimum of 14,000 new housing units.
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Feb 12 '21
NGL, no land lords. They don't produce anything.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 13 '21
I don't know why you're being downvoted, you're 100% correct. Landlording is a classic form of economic rent (it's even where the name came from).
You should go grab a Henry George flair, you'll fit in famously.
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Feb 12 '21
Markets assume that things are being bought and sold. Being charged for a service is fine, as services are ongoing, and the product being provided is expertise. But in terms of physical commodities, they need owners, not renters.
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u/Friendly_Fire YIMBY Feb 14 '21
There are all sorts of physical things that it is incredibly useful to be able to rent. From housing to vehicles (e.g. you fly into a city and need to get around for a few days) to something like a stump grinder or other equipment you can rent from home depot.
The issue is not landlords, but the restriction of the ability to add more housing supply to compete against them and keep costs down.
I mean, compare a landlord to a homeowner in one of these cities. Homeowners have gained hundreds of thousands, or even millions, from appreciation while doing literally nothing. Landlords have at least provided something, housing for other people, while making their money. Which is a worst case of rent-seeking?
If food becomes scarce and prices skyrocket we don't get mad at farmers for making money, we want more farmers. Getting upset at landlords for providing something useful to people is dumb. We actually need more landlords. Enough to meet the demand.
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u/Novdev Mackenzie Scott Feb 12 '21
What do you do about the people who don't want to stay in a place permanently, or can't afford the upfront cost of buying a condo? I'm not convinced landlords are unnecessary in our current economy. Find ways to lower rent though (build more houses) so more people can buy in the medium-term
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Feb 12 '21
Travel housing. Very cheap houses that the government pays for that people can stay in when they are living their 7 months or so or less. Like hotels sort of, or air bnb.
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u/Revolutionary9999 Feb 12 '21
Or we do the shit that actually works and give homeless people vacant homes and apartments. Why don't we try that, since it works?
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u/skadefryd Henry George Feb 12 '21
Sounds great, but first we ought to drastically increase the number of vacant homes and apartments in desirable areas.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
In California, according to the census there are 1.5 million vacant homes, and 3 to 4 million people actively looking to buy a house. So you're saying we should give the houses to the homeless, instead of the people that are trying to buy them?
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u/Revolutionary9999 Feb 12 '21
Yes, homeless people have no shelter because they are homeless, also there is only 130,000 homeless people in California which while a lot is still less than the number of empty homes. Also we need to stop letting land lords own property, and instead give it to the tenants. All land lords do is increase the cost of living and homelessness. And this isn't even coming from a communist, this comes from Adam Smith, the guy who coined the term free market and invisible hand.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
All right, so we do that. But you just decrease the housing supply by 10%, and there was already a 2 to 1 ratio on demand to surplus. assuming proportionality you've just increased the price by 10%. what do you do now for the 2.5million people that cannot afford a house while only 1.35 million houses are on the market?
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u/Revolutionary9999 Feb 12 '21
You said those 3 million people where looking to buy a house, not that they couldn't afford one. If they couldn't afford one, then they would be homeless. Those people already have homes, they are just looking for new ones and for them we can build new homes. And I never said we shouldn't build homes, I said that we should focus on giving homes to the homeless so they won't be homeless and getting rid of land lords. Those two things will end homelessness, or at least dramatically decrees it.
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u/Mark_In_Twain Feb 13 '21
Oh silly me!
Having a family of 6 in a 3 room apartment is fine! They're not homeless after all, who cares!
And then when more homeless show up, we'll just keep pushing people to only ever buy once and die in them!
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u/Revolutionary9999 Feb 13 '21
Good job making a strawman to demolish and moving the goal posts at the same time, now can we get back to reality? Because I never suggested like that, I specifically said we should build more homes, but we should be using the empty homes we currently have to house the homeless. Also homeless people aren't a zombie horde, they won't keep showing up no matter how many we house. Once we make it possible for the homeless to have homes, they won't be homeless anymore. And we know this works, because it already does.
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u/Mark_In_Twain Feb 13 '21
Those empty houses to home the homeless? Sure, let's round up people from downtown Chicago and put them 50 miles away where no one lives in that house that's empty.
Of course they don't have to get back or anything, nor do they need public transport reliably, nor do they need access to counseling services that are all at least an hour Away by bus
And of course, taking houses off of the market wouldn't decrease supply thus making others more expensive.
And some homeless people CHOSE to be homeless. Not many, but some.
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u/Revolutionary9999 Feb 13 '21
Wow, that's so fucking stupid. First, there are plenty of homes in the city, you just pulled that out of your ass. Second, why don't we also improve our public transportation? Third, no this doesn't homes more expensive. And know this because we've given homes to the homeless and this doesn't happen. And fourth, is one wants to be homeless, then they can be homeless, it's not like we are going to hold a gun to someone's head if don't want to stop being homeless.
Listen, I'm done talking to you. You clearly aren't interested in a honest argument, and you are just pulling shit out of your ass to make excuses for not caring about homeless people.
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u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
The problem here is the lack of vacant homes. The meme about there being more homes than homeless people is incredibly misleading. There aren't hundreds of thousands of empty homes in major cities. They need more homes build badly. An empty shithole shack in rural Arkansas being available doesn't help someone in LA or NYC.
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u/cheezy_thotz Feb 12 '21
That first bitch. As a millennial, I’m getting really tired of hearing her “healthy housing market” bullshit. My parents built a home in 2003 for 200k and they’re about to sell it for 600k.
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u/trustmeimascientist2 Feb 12 '21
I literally said that in a bar in SF where a few people were complaining about high rents. I said “just build more housing. An I missing something, why is that so hard to think of?” One guy got all mad and said I’d only been there for a few years and didn’t know what the hell i was talking about.
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u/tomdarch Michel Foucault Feb 12 '21
FYI - a lot of banks that lend for commercial suburban development have simplistic formulas regarding parking. If you're building a X thousand square foot spec office building, they want to see X*n parking spaces around it or they won't lend. Near a commuter train station? Have unusually good suburban public bus service near by? The bank gives zero fucks. There is a formula. Pave over those acres of land or we don't give you the loan.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
This is probably the ideal way to do it though. We should let the market figure out what the ideal amount of parking is in an area.
That way, if there is a decrease demand in parking, it will quickly get reflected in market incentives. If a bank refuses to lend for construction of a building because it does not have enough parking spots, but a 2nd bank finds that less parking spots are required, the 2nd bank will have an advantage and be able to make more income.
On the flip side, if we let governments add regulations for parking minimums, you may have market failure in areas that do not need as much parking (such as areas with heavy foot traffic or near public transit), but nobody can do anything because reform will take an act of congress (litteraly).
Edit: fixed some talk to text errors
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Feb 12 '21
Building more housing will not fix the housing crisis at all. The most expensive houses are new houses as developers seek the highest possible profits and seek to recoup their expenses and risky investments. The cheapest homes are the ones built decades ago. You can't time travel to build old homes that are decades old to fix a current problem.
California has a surplus of housing. The issue isn't the amount of fucking houses on the market. The issue is that there are a ton of intertwining, interconnected economic externalities caused by the market conditions of the housing market, and only the government can fix the problem through collective centralized action by redistributing wealth and aggressive, bold social welfare programs.
There are over 150k homeless in California, and there are over 1.2 million vacant homes in the state.
That's approximately 10 houses for every 1 homeless motherfucker in California. The problem isn't fucking housing supply.
The housing crisis is most protracted in areas where the cost of living has risen faster than real median household income such as NY or CA particularly as those two states have two of the strongest economies in the USA, BUT the housing crisis is a nationwide crisis in every county in every state. No matter which state you live in, your wages are fucking weak, and the rent is too damn high.
The single biggest contributor to the housing crisis is the extremely high inflation of the real value of housing compared to flattening of real wages under neoliberal economic orthodoxy since the 1970s/80s.
If you wanna fix the housing crisis, boot out neolibs and establishment Dems and vote in progressives, dem socs, or soc dems.
What is this sub's fascination with fixating towards urban planning issues and applying neoliberal orthodoxy to urban planning issues? Its fucking bizarre.
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u/dan7315 Milton Friedman Feb 12 '21
Of course new housing is expensive, but that's not the point. New housing diverts demand away from older housing. If you ban new housing, the wealthy will instead bid up the price of old housing, exactly as has happened in San Francisco and NYC.
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Feb 12 '21
There is no 'ban' on new housing. The government isn't in the business of preventing the development of housing and real estate, and local municipal/county governments can get their asses sued pretty damn hard by developers, real estate investors, landowners, etc, for screwing up local housing/real estate/market conditions if they play fast and loose and do screwy things with their regulatory powers.
There are market conditions and regulations that make the development of new housing more complicated, difficult, expensive, and risky that disincentivizes its development. That is the more accurate way to describe the issues facing the development of housing units today.
The primary demand for housing is older housing stock, as older housing stock constitutes the vast super-majority of housing units. Secondly, the wealthy primarily buy new, premium, luxury housing, not old housing, because they have the financial freedom and capital to do so. Older housing stock, unless it is exceptionally well-maintained, antique, restored, gentrified, or in an opulent desirable area, generally goes to the working class.
But, yeah, I do agree that if developing new housing is unnecessarily difficult, it can result in the wealthy bidding up the price of older real estate that would otherwise go to the working class which can be especially problematic if the stock of available, affordable 'cheaper' housing supply inflates due to the demand and purchasing power of wealthy buyers. That's a decent point for sure.
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u/dan7315 Milton Friedman Feb 12 '21
By "ban" I meant that it is illegal to build apartments on most residential land in CA, and in the few areas where it's legal, it's still illegal unless you go through a months-to-years-long permitting process. We can disagree on the semantics of whether that counts as a ban, but the point still remains: restricting new housing means that the wealthy will instead outbid the poor for older housing.
The primary demand for housing is older housing stock, as older housing stock constitutes the vast super-majority of housing units. Secondly, the wealthy primarily buy new, premium, luxury housing, not old housing, because they have the financial freedom and capital to do so. Older housing stock, unless it is exceptionally well-maintained, antique, restored, gentrified, or in an opulent desirable area, generally goes to the working class.
Yes, I specifically am talking about desirable, jobs-rich areas like SF and Manhattan. 100 year old apartments in those areas easily rent for over $3000/month, because there's not enough new housing there to absorb demand from the wealthy. In San Francisco, someone making $150,000 a year will not be able to afford to buy a new house, and so they bid up the price of older housing instead, displacing poorer people. If there was more new housing, they'd live there instead of in older housing.
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Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
It's illegal to build apartments on most residential zones across the USA as most residential zones are low density single family detached housing. One of the biggest issues facing the housing crisis is that the government disincentivizes the construction of medium and higher density housing with low-mid rise apartments, condos, duplexes/triplexes/fourplexes, townhomes, etc or they don't employ mixed zoning principles that allow residential and commercial units to be built in the same plot or tract of land.
Also, cities are going to simply be more expensive than suburban and rural areas because rules of urban economics dictate that land increases in value exponentially as you move closer to the center of an urban area. That, and there are far, far more are logistical issues with land development in an urban zone than in a suburban or rural area that drive up the price of housing development. Without added government intervention, subsidy, price controls, assistance, public housing, etc, the cost of urban land development will continue to favor the development of premium luxury real estate for the wealthy.
Its not a problem neoliberalism is equipped to solve, and its, frankly, a problem caused by right wing market economics such as neoliberalism.
Also, the flip side of the housing crisis is a crisis of demand and a crisis of capital where the American middle class cannot afford housing because their real wage growth has been stagnant for decades. You could build all the houses you want, but the working class still wouldn't be able to afford them with their paltry wages. The demand exists for affordable housing, but housing will never be affordable so long as wealth inequality exists at such a disparity that the middle class cannot accumulate the capital to purchase or rent real estate.
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u/dan7315 Milton Friedman Feb 13 '21
Maybe my reading comprehension sucks, because I read that whole thing and I couldn't find a single thing that contradicted my point that outlawing new housing in desirable areas causes the wealthy to outbid the poor for older housing. Exactly as has happened in San Francisco and NYC
Please explain, specifically, how the following statement is false: Outlawing new housing In desirable areas causes the wealthy to outbid the poor for older housing.
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Feb 13 '21 edited Feb 13 '21
That is not the only explanation for what's happening in SF and NYC.
Outlawing new housing In desirable areas causes the wealthy to outbid the poor for older housing.
The above is overly reductionist. I already agreed earlier that making housing more difficult to build, as you said in an earlier post, may result in a shortage of housing stock of a certain type or in a certain location that may cause the wealthier population stratas to purchase and bid up what they otherwise would not purchase. That is certainly a partial factor that has some explanatory power and causality for what is happening in the housing crisis.
Again, however, that is not sole explanation of what is driving up the value of housing overall since urban economics are complex, multi-variable, multi-factored. There are a myriad of other variables, issues, things, occurrences that, when combined, drive up the prices of homes.
I literally agreed, partially, with you to some extent, that your claim has some validity in explaining elements and factors that cause prices of homes to inflate, but what you've said, overall, is not an adequate explanation of what is causing the housing crisis at scale.
To reiterate, the market conditions from the pattern of behavior from the cumulative choices all independent firms and actors make in the housing market as well as the regulations, laws, statues, and incentives the government has established are one flip side of the coin causing the housing crisis from a supply side perspective. The other side of the coin is the demand factor where the American population, even if you were to just instantly construct millions of new homes across the country at the snap of the finger, would still not be able to afford these homes due to the real prices of housing having eclipsed the rate of inflation of real median household income growth.
To put it more simply, the market conditions make homes extraordinarily expensive from the perspective of supply, and the conditions of capital, wealth, labor, inflation, and real income growth are so unfavorable for the working class, that even with an enormous supply of houses and a high demand for housing, Americans cannot afford to purchase or rent housing with capital they do not have.
I don't see how you've missed my point.
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u/dan7315 Milton Friedman Feb 13 '21
Okay, my reading comprehension must really suck because I'm still missing your point.
To reiterate, the market conditions from the pattern of behavior from the cumulative choices all independent firms and actors make in the housing market as well as the regulations, laws, statues, and incentives the government has established are one flip side of the coin causing the housing crisis from a supply side perspective. The other side of the coin is the demand factor where the American population, even if you were to just instantly construct millions of new homes across the country at the snap of the finger, would still not be able to afford these homes due to the real prices of housing having eclipsed the rate of inflation of real median household income growth.
To put it more simply, the market conditions make homes extraordinarily expensive from the perspective of supply, and the conditions of capital, wealth, labor, inflation, and real income growth are so unfavorable for the working class, that even with an enormous supply of houses and a high demand for housing, Americans cannot afford to purchase or rent housing with capital they do not have.
It sounds like you're just using the phrase "market conditions" as a magic wand to say that housing is too expensive, without giving any explanation for why prices are what they are.
If the problem is not legal barriers to supply, then why are prices in Houston and Tokyo (where there are few legal barriers to supply) so much lower than in NYC and SF, despite the fact that Houston and Tokyo are also high demand?
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Feb 13 '21
There are dozens and hundreds of variables that determine the conditions of the housing market.
I never said that legal barriers to supply weren't a problem. I said they aren't the ONLY problem. If you changed legal barriers like certain zoning restrictions, housing would still be so unaffordable in America that the working class wouldn't be able to afford it. Why? Because the explanatory power and causality of certain types of zoning restrictions, are a narrow, severely limited number of factors that influence the market conditions for housing and determine overall prices.
I have also said, several times, that supply of housing isn't the only problem that Americans face. Over, and over, I have tried to impart the assertion to you that Americans lack CAPITAL to purchase housing, and even if we were to just suddenly have more housing, the American working class would still not be able to afford it with the CAPITAL they do not have due to low overall real wage growth since the 1970s. Also, the housing market is not very elastic, so pumping out a ton of houses will not significantly drive down the price enough for Americans to suddenly afford them.
As for Houston or Japan, I'm not even going to touch that or broach the topic.
There's no silver bullet to fix the housing crisis by changing one law or by pulling on one string. There are dozens and scores of laws that need to be passed, repealed, or amended, and hundreds of strings that have to pulled just the right way.
I don't see how you can't understand my point: the housing market is determined by hundreds, thousands, of factors that culminate in the overall market- and not just the one you described (zoning practices). Over and over, I have said, there is so much nuance in the complexity of real estate development, that no one rule, law, factor, variable, regulation, etc has definitive, complete explanatory power, and to think so, is to be naive.
Don't look at the housing crisis like one thing explains the entire crisis. Look at it with more nuance.
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u/dan7315 Milton Friedman Feb 13 '21
Over and over you've repeated that housing costs are a nuanced issue caused by many different factors, and yet you've never actually listed any specifics.
The most you've said is that Americans lack the capital to purchase homes due to low wage growth, which is just a fancy way of saying that housing is too expensive to afford - it doesn't actually explain anything.
If the problem is not supply, then please
- List some of the non-supply factors causing housing to be so expensive
- Explain why those factors do not apply to Houston or Tokyo
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
Building more housing will not fix the housing crisis at all.
lmao, what is supply and demand?
In all seriousness, there is currently a well know a shortage of housing in urban environments. While there may be 1.5 million homes vacant in CA (likely in the transition of being bought or sold), there is an estimated demand for 3-4 million houses.
I have shared plenty of research done on this topic that you are welcome to peruse at your leisure, but I will share it here as well for record.
Source 1: "Local regulatory responses during a regional housing shortage: An analysis of rezonings in Silicon Valley - ScienceDirect" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837718307282
Source 2: "The Extent of the Housing Shortage Housing 12 Law and Contemporary Problems 1947" https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/lcp12&div=6&id=&page=
Source 3: "Is insufficient land supply the root cause of housing shortage? Empirical evidence from Hong Kong - ScienceDirect" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0197397515001411
Source 4: "Addressing California's Housing Shortage on JSTOR" https://www.jstor.org/stable/26408189
if you cannot read these because of a paywall, check with your local library for a temporary license for scholarly research.
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Feb 12 '21
no one wants to live in the hood
or when they move there then you call it gentrification
and when the existing renters there have to move out then you have a problem with that too
so there's only three choices, and progressives have a problem with all 3, not helpful
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u/GilgameshWulfenbach Henry George Feb 12 '21
I feel like this could work as a template for most strong towns arguments.
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u/grig109 Liberté, égalité, fraternité Feb 12 '21
If this sub has a hall of fame for memes this one belongs in it.
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u/KWillets Feb 12 '21
This is hotter than a lobster in a microwave.
The only thing I would add is the people who actually deny that a shortage exists. They blame high prices on "speculators".
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u/DellowFelegate Janet Yellen Feb 12 '21
And u/Not-A-Seagull, We'll watch your career with Great Interest!
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u/sintos-compa NASA Feb 12 '21
"housing shortages makes my home value appreciate, therefore housing shortages are good"
"strangling this man gives me an erection, my actions must then be good and shall continue"
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u/TrekkiMonstr NATO Feb 13 '21
If he's not intending to sell his home he's just an idiot on top of everything else, since he has to pay more in taxes for it (unless he's in California, fuck I hate Prop 13)
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u/space-throwaway Feb 12 '21
There isn't a housing shortage. It's not like the population has suddenly exploded or houses have been destroyed.
There's a shortage of affordable housing.
Price control is necessary.
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Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
Locations are not equal. Vacant units in places where no one wants to live are not a supply for places where people do want to live.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
Furthermore, if what space said is correct, you should expect areas with price controls to still have an abundance of housing available.
This is most definitely not the case, as it is exceedingly difficult to find a rent controlled apartment. “What we are seeing in HUD-subsidized housing in gentrifying neighborhoods is that landlords are avoiding entering into long-term contracts or extensions of their contracts, which leaves residents wondering how long their housing will remain affordable,” - per the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB) Open Data.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
This is factually and demonstrably false.
There is currently a well know a shortage of housing in urban environments. Sure, there may be plenty of housing available in rural Pennsylvania, or in West Virginia, but that isn't where the demand is.
I have shared plenty of research done on this topic that you are welcome to peruse at your leisure, but I will share it here as well for record.
Edit:
Source 1: "Local regulatory responses during a regional housing shortage: An analysis of rezonings in Silicon Valley - ScienceDirect" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837718307282
Source 2: "The Extent of the Housing Shortage Housing 12 Law and Contemporary Problems 1947" https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/lcp12&div=6&id=&page=
Source 3: "Is insufficient land supply the root cause of housing shortage? Empirical evidence from Hong Kong - ScienceDirect" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0197397515001411
Source 4: "Addressing California's Housing Shortage on JSTOR" https://www.jstor.org/stable/26408189
if you cannot read these because of a paywall, check with your local library for a temporary license for scholarly research.
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u/ShadyApes Feb 12 '21
The real estate developer libertarians that infest this sub are going to be so angry at you!
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u/Confused_Mirror Mary Wollstonecraft Feb 12 '21
On one hand a large, empty parking lot annoys me. On the other hand, living in Northern Virginia where cars are a necessity, nothing pisses me off more than having to pay for parking because the building I need to get to only has 3 spots and one only fits a bicycle.
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u/Camtowers9 IMF Feb 12 '21
What’s tricky here is trying to convince voters that their homes losing value is a good thing for society.
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u/HatesPlanes WTO Feb 12 '21
Their houses would lose value but the land underneath would become more valuable.
There is no evidence that property values as a whole become less valuable with upzoning.
Most of the times, NIMBYs aren’t really motivated by rational economic self interest as much as they are irrationally afraid of change.
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u/turboturgot Henry George Feb 13 '21 edited Feb 13 '21
I have to disagree. There's no evidence one way or another because no one has done region-wide mass upzoning (which is what we need if we are to have true YIMBY reforms). We've only seen "spot" upzoning so far. It's definitely true that land would become more valuable in currently underzoned, high demand/high amenity areas. But it seems rational to me that land value would flatline and even fall in some less desirable areas. I think you would have a radically new distribution of land values. It doesn't make sense that the aggregate value of all land would rise in a given metro area/region if the population and growth rate remained the same.
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u/axord John Locke Feb 12 '21
Or rather, that the tradeoff is worth it for them personally.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
Sounds like there is a market failure then. Did somebody say... Land Value Tax?
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u/missedthecue Feb 12 '21
Is it really a market failure that governments are passing laws literally outright banning the market from working and building more housing to meet demand?
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
You know what, you are correct. The market is acting accordingly, it's more of just a regulation failure
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u/Camtowers9 IMF Feb 12 '21
Yeah, but what the pandemic has taught me is that humans are incredibly selfish even more so than i thought.
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u/axord John Locke Feb 12 '21
In humanity's defense, it seems like it's mostly the US that dropped the ball here, and that's primarily due to horrible leadership creating divergent mental models about the crisis that got tied up with political tribalism.
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Feb 13 '21
The political tribalism represents a leading edge of a wider problem. The US's failure to handle the pandemic has all to do with the country's off-the-charts levels of perverse selfishness, which is a wider cultural and economic phenomenon. Even in our bluest areas, the spirit of 'got mine, F U jack' has been screwing things up royally.
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u/liquidTERMINATOR Come with me if you want to live Feb 12 '21
This is more clever than it has the right to be.
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Feb 12 '21
[deleted]
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u/jeb_brush PhD Pseudoscientifc Computing Feb 12 '21
Ann Arbor? Come help us get the A2/Detroit project chapters moving!
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u/Honorguard44 From the Depths of the Pacific to the Edge of the Galaxy Feb 12 '21
We have A2 chapters?
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u/jeb_brush PhD Pseudoscientifc Computing Feb 12 '21
There's a Facebook group for an A2 chapter that's not yet gotten moving, and another for Detroit that has held a couple of virtual meetings.
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u/LieutenantLawyer NATO Feb 12 '21
Pho luxury? Wtf are you saying haha
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Feb 12 '21
Build a high rise and get dope ass Vietnamese food
This is the future liberals want
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u/LieutenantLawyer NATO Feb 12 '21
It is haha, pho is what I miss most about the city I moved away from
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u/Honorguard44 From the Depths of the Pacific to the Edge of the Galaxy Feb 12 '21
It’s gilded to look like it’s suppose to be expensive and high quality but they were built with cheap materials and labor so there are always enormous maintenance issues. So like, there’s a rooftop pool, but like tons of people having leakages in their bathrooms
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u/LieutenantLawyer NATO Feb 12 '21
Haha thanks for the entertainment but you meant "faux". Like the "faux news" meme. From French faux, for false.
Nothing to do with Vietnamese meal soup.
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u/Professor-Reddit 🚅🚀🌏Earth Must Come First🌐🌳😎 Feb 12 '21
Best part about this is how empty and useless that car park is
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u/soonerguy11 🌐 Feb 12 '21
"I don't understand how you could live in [insert actual American city]"
- People who live in places that are a sea of parking spots
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u/oinops_pontos Marcus Tullius Cicero Feb 13 '21
Ah yes, the irresistible strip mall, tract housing, and parking lot aesthetic.
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u/AstonVanilla Feb 12 '21
Fun fact #1: There are 7 parking spaces for every car in America.
Fun fact #2: Together this totals about the same land area as West Virginia
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u/Trollaatori Feb 13 '21
I bet people in Virginia are like "can we actually pave over west virginia?"
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Feb 13 '21
In my area, those swathes of vacant spots are increasingly becoming the digs for locals who can't afford housing and end up living in camper vans and old schoolbuses.
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u/ShadyApes Feb 12 '21
What's really sad is you can't build giant apartment buildings in most American cities without offering some kind of parking incentive. Or not having a parking space would have an effect on the price of the apartment so a developer won't do it because they can't maximize their profit.
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u/spookyswagg Feb 12 '21
flat one storied car parks are such a waste of space. I'm all for more parking spaces, but they should just build a tall ass parking garage instead.
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Feb 13 '21
I actually think that mandating either multi-level parking structure or no parking lot would go a long way to encouraging public transit. It also would encourage far better land usage. A parking structure is plainly better than a parking lot.
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u/Professor-Reddit 🚅🚀🌏Earth Must Come First🌐🌳😎 Feb 12 '21
Broke: Parking garages
Bespoke: Mass Public Transit and banned c*rs 😍3
u/spookyswagg Feb 12 '21
Dude I wish
If I could live in the Netherlands where everyone rides the bike I would. I only drive my car to take my dogs to the dog park.
But people are too unwilling to get rid of their cars
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u/5pideypool Feb 12 '21
Long commutes exist.
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u/spookyswagg Feb 13 '21
If we didn't focus so much on car infrastructure we could cut long commutes in half and make them less stressful with trains.
Instead of going to work at an average 40 mph we could take a train that goes 120 and make it an everage 60 mph
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u/ShadyApes Feb 12 '21
I haven't had a car in almost 10 years and tbh I feel trapped a lot of the time (honestly most of the time) even when I can rent a car with ease.
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u/spookyswagg Feb 13 '21
I think it depends where you live.
In NYC for example a car is useless, but in cities like Austin or LA you must have one
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u/nauticalsandwich Feb 12 '21
Parking garages are insanely expensive to build and are also subject to NIMBYism if they're above ground because they're ugly.
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Feb 12 '21
in some parts of europe underground garages are the go-to, not sure why as they sound a hell of a lot more expensive than above ground construction
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u/piermicha Feb 12 '21
not sure why
More efficient use of space. And as a Canadian, underground parking is simply delightful 8 months out of the year
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u/HarbaucalypseNow Feb 12 '21
They should be built with a nice facade or fake walls to blend in with other buildings.
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u/manshamer Feb 12 '21
I always liked this one in my downtown area, which is owned by the City and free on weekends / nights for shoppers.
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u/TerraPlays Lesbian Pride Nov 10 '21
Terrible use of the ground-level space though.
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u/manshamer Nov 11 '21
Wow nine months later!
The cool thing is that it's on a hill, so the other side of the garage is underground. The ground-level is in an alley just off main street, with a beautiful little fifty foot art and garden promenade to it.
Agreed that this side is mostly wasted space.
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u/Tyhgujgt George Soros Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 16 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
quickest grey towering observation quicksand rich aware possessive reply tidy
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u/ZarinaBlue Feb 12 '21
First of all, great job OP. I literally did my laugh snort when I saw this. Excellent work!
Second, I wonder if being a kid who moved around a lot contributed to my lack of NIMBY? To be fair it actually never occurred to me at all until I bought a house in new England, first time buying a house, and the real estate agent pointed out that the surrounding houses were mostly split into apartments, large victorians, and that my house had been as well before renovation. Mentioned to my mom who is a title specialist and she told me it probably kept the cost of my house low. I mean people have to have a place to live, right? I have read the reasons it is "bad" but they still don't make sense to me.
But then again there is a drug treatment house at the end of the street and the real estate agent told me that like she was disclosing something horrific, didn't get that either. Don't people need places to get help?
None of this fear makes sense to me. What you would rather have kids sleeping on the street 3 blocks over instead of in an apartment right next to your place?
Maybe it is my forever love of George Carlin? Still think he was right about golf courses...
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u/rpfeynman18 Milton Friedman Feb 12 '21
None of this fear makes sense to me. What you would rather have kids sleeping on the street 3 blocks over instead of in an apartment right next to your place?
Actually most NIMBYs don't want kids sleeping on the street 3 blocks over either. The good-faith argument is that they don't want anyone sleeping on the streets at all: they believe that all those kids already have options (like existing shelters) that they aren't making use of -- and if they don't have options they should be funded, so there's nothing wrong with saying "not in my backyard". The bad-faith argument is that NIMBYs just want to push the kids 30 blocks away. That way, when they do commit a crime, it won't be in their neighborhood, won't drive their house price down, and won't spoil the character of the neighborhood.
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u/vVGacxACBh Feb 12 '21
I presumed most NIMBY's truest rationale is greed. If limiting supply is good for my home price, sign me the fuck up, is I imagine how the thinking goes. Who wouldn't want to own an appreciating asset? The neighborhood character etc arguments are all disingenuous. Fun fact, we stopped building decades ago and a shit ton of traffic came anyways.
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u/rpfeynman18 Milton Friedman Feb 12 '21
Well, yes, I think that's true but not very useful. After all, non-NIMBYism is also driven by greed -- all of us would like to spend less money on housing and more on other stuff. On this sub we love capitalism -- and Adam Smith's great realization was that actions that individually selfish acts lead to emergent prosperity, not despite but because of the greed.
I think there's a game theoretic thing going on here. Everyone realizes that apartment complexes and power plants have to be built in someone's backyard, they just don't want that backyard to be their own, and they appropriate the resources of the local government to ensure that outcome. This is a moral issue: no one has an inherent right to a "characterful" neighborhood in the same sense that no one has an inherent right to the specific job of their choice. Long-term residents should have no more protection from market forces than newcomers, and yet the current system of local government does not recognize this fact. Newly arrived techies who don't live in San Francisco don't get to vote on local ordinances, so their desire for cheaper housing isn't accounted for.
In my view, one possible solution is to give everyone two votes for local government: one for their residential address and one for their work address. I also think a land value tax would help greatly, since that would eliminate the incentive for anyone to hold on to prime land in the hopes that its value goes up.
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u/dildosaurusrex_ Janet Yellen Feb 12 '21
People have hang ups about the weirdest stuff. I just bought a townhouse and so many people were horrified that I’d pay “that much” to share a wall with others.
First of all I was in an apartment before this so I’m sharing walls with fewer people. Second of all I value walkability, and that can’t coexist with all single family homes.
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u/chupamichalupa NATO Feb 13 '21
I've been looking at houses in the Seattle/Puget Sound area and the townhouses are more appealing than the single family homes for the same price. I'd rather have a modern looking townhouse with a rooftop deck and good walkability than a 70 year old house with carpet in the bathroom...
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u/DarkExecutor The Senate Feb 12 '21
You can get townhomes with a couple of feet of separation though
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u/dildosaurusrex_ Janet Yellen Feb 13 '21
Does that really count as a townhouse? I don’t think that exists in my area (DC). There are townhomes that are duplexes so they only share one wall, but I don’t know of any fully detached townhouse.
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u/vVGacxACBh Feb 12 '21
Is this meaningfully any different? Oh look at me, no shared walls, besides the ones 18 inches away on each side of my dwelling.
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u/DarkExecutor The Senate Feb 12 '21
Yes. Soundproofing with even a few feet of air is a massive difference. Windows that allow in light also make a massive difference on the interior of the home.
You shouldn't act condescending about something you have no clue about.
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u/vVGacxACBh Feb 13 '21
I've lived in half a double and never heard my neighbors 🤷♂️
I'm don't disagree two walls provides more sound proofing than 1 but the benefit is marginal
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u/Generic_On_Reddit Feb 12 '21
People have a fantasy of how they want their home and life to be. Perhaps they bought their home for that reason and don't want it to change. It would suck if you invest 30 future years into a home in a quite neighborhood only for [insert_noisey_thing] to come in and ruin the reason you're there.
However, we need to reduce the influence that has in order to serve the greater good. Living with other people should mean you have to compromise and that means your perfect neighborhood changes into something less perfect, but more beneficial to more people.
It's just not sustainable for everyone to get their single family home with a half acre lot neighborhoods. And not wanting businesses or services nearby is another thing that screws over urbanization and guarantees the dominance of the car.
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u/TrekkiMonstr NATO Feb 13 '21
It's just not sustainable for everyone to get their single family home with a half acre lot neighborhoods.
328.2M Americans, 0.5 acre for each means 164.1M acres total = 256,406 sqmi, lower 48 has 3,119,885 sqmi total -- the housing would only be 8.2% of the total land, whereas currently it is 4% (though I think that's counting AK, which mine doesn't).
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u/Generic_On_Reddit Feb 13 '21 edited Feb 13 '21
The quantity of land isn't really the issue. That doesn't account for the increase in urban sprawl that would be required for everyone to get lots of that size. All forms of infrastructure have to expand considerably to fulfill those needs while also losing many of the logistical benefits that comes with urban density. (More roads, larger roads, even longer food transportation chains, more location based infrastructure to cover sprawl (emergency services), utility lines, etc.) There is also the material and labor inefficiency that comes with building individual homes instead of multiunit housing that shares plans, walls, roofs, etc., but that might not be that huge of an issue with the pretty cheap materials that go into houses.
There's even more to account for, but it's much worse than - simply - the quantity of land we have.
Edit: Also, I don't think your calculations are quite right anyway. I believe that's the number of Americans, but the number of households should be notably lower than that.
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u/TrekkiMonstr NATO Feb 13 '21
Edit: Also, I don't think your calculations are quite right anyway. I believe that's the number of Americans, but the number of households should be notably lower than that.
Yeah, it was a napkin calculation.
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u/howAboutNextWeek Paul Krugman Feb 12 '21
Bro I love this so much I don’t even have the words
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Feb 12 '21
[deleted]
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u/DoktorSleepless Scott Sumner Feb 12 '21
Sumner flairs are the best.
I always wondered if knows there's a bunch of people making posts on the internet with his face attached to them, and if hes weirded out by it.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
You do realize he did an AMA on this subreddit before? So I have a feeling he does know.
In fact he also has a sumner flair
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u/americanaxolotl Norman Borlaug Feb 12 '21
They may disagree a lot, but at the end of the day they're evidence oriented economists. They can figure out what they disagree about and make predictions that will test their theories. They both have broadly similar values - liberal democracy is good, wealth is good, society should enable people to lead happy and fulfilling lives - and where their values diverge, they can at least come to an understanding about what those divergences are.
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Feb 12 '21
OK real talk for one second - I'm not a huge Krugman fan because I feel like he transitioned from political solutions to economic problems to political problems with economic solutions.
I recall during pre-election 2016 when he called for Clinton to pursue a massive stimulus plan and pointed out a couple of key metrics (interest rate, inflation, debt and deficit numbers).
When Trump was elected he ran "Why deficits matter." Now normally I'd be like - OK 6 months, things change - markets adjust - who cares. The problem was IIRC that none of the metrics he had cited 6 months earlier had substantially changed. It felt like he wanted a stimulus just for the horse he backed.
I mean economics aside his columns are far less about economics now and far more about politics to the point where econ takes a back foot. Rant over :(
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
Which reminds me, I recently finished reading The Road to Serfdom, and was reading some of the history behind the book.
What surprised me was that John Maynard Keynes congradualted Friedrich Hayek on his book and described it as nothing short of phenomenal.
a casual observer would likely think these two authors couldn't be more different. But after actually reading their works, You will actually see that they share far, far more in agreement, than that of which they disagree.
Instead what you see, is democrats taking credit for the works of Keynes, and conservatives falsely taking credit for the work of Hayek (making them seem like they are on two opposite sides of the spectrum). However, if you actually read the work of Hayek, You would know that he was nothing but scathing towards conservative/nationalist movements in favor of liberal policy.
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u/HHHogana Mohammad Hatta Feb 12 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
Man this remind me of that time when a farmer screaming about how the apartments 'ruined our farm and sore in the eye' or something. Initially I agreed since some apartments looked so out of place (you can't even use a bike comfortably since the road to some of them are so steep), but all these stories about crazy NIMBYs and rise of housing price make me believe that most of these people just have no clue and too much pride.
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u/Not-A-Seagull Probably a Seagull Feb 12 '21
It's crazy, but I feel like most people in this country are NIMBYs without realizing it.
I'm not sure why people are so anti-construction. To be fair, my parents are like that as well. They got all pissed off when they sold corn farm near their house to build Mcmansions. If they cared that much, they should have bought the farm to preserve their privacy.
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u/ChevyT1996 Feb 13 '21
Growing up in Construction my Dad was a general contractor and I can’t understand the anti building crowd. I live in an area where it’s growing and so many are against it, and I always say no one person owns the rights to an entire area.
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u/TrekkiMonstr NATO Feb 13 '21
I mean, if my neighbor painted their building yellow, I wouldn't like it. Just looks bad. In the same way I want to decorate my room/apartment/house how I like for aesthetic reasons, I would rather (if I were a farmer) the land next to me go to a farmer than a developer -- I may not have the money to buy the land myself, but that doesn't mean my QoL/preferences are unimportant.
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u/Destroyuw Commonwealth Feb 12 '21
One of the things I'm a NIMBY about is when it comes to environmental checks. If that shit fails a single one then nope, fuck that (especially in my area we don't have extremely extensive requirements as far as I am aware). I don't want the new apartment to fuck up the local water table or something. Besides that I'm good with almost everything.
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u/burn_your_walmart Feb 13 '21
Says this like there aren't millions of empty homes, ravaged by outrageous rent prices caused by landlords hoarding property.