Affordable housing

The Sandbox Political Topics
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I saw 1.0 on the line labelled “Average number in consumer unit: Vehicles” and took to mean the expenses below were the annual cost of owning/operating one car.
Yes, some households have no cars and some have two. But, the $4,300 is the average cost of one car.

I agree that the initial cash outlay is a problem, as is borrowing power. That’s why low income people buy used instead of the more economical in the long run option of buying new and owning until it is falling apart. (My opinion on “more economical”).

But, the CES has the actual amounts they spend, including financing charges.

If you’re saying that newly built “low income” housing in the US should be multi-family buildings close to public transportation, I agree. If you’re saying that if we all used public transportation for all our trips, the public transportation network would be denser and more convenient for low income people, I’ll agree with that, too.

I disagreed with representing $10,000/yr as the hurdle needed to get into a private automobile. Lots of households find much cheaper alternatives.

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I assume that developers price lots to reflect their development costs. If lots on cul de sacs cost more for roads/utilities than than costs of lots on through streets, the buyers pay the extra.

I don’t see how that is and example of a subsidy for suburban developments in general.

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I assume that developers pay for all those longer utility runs and sidewalks and streets and recover the costs from the people who buy the houses. And, of course, single family homeowners pay the extra utility costs directly.

I don’t see any subsidy here.

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Think of municipal services. Fire protection, police ( cruising dead end roads is less than optimal), water treatment (those lawns are thirsty critters) garbage,. It’s a lot, many of which are made more expensive in low density regions. It’s just plain travel time if nothing else.

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You could say the extra costs are subsidized by the tax code. The tax code encourages us to put more money into our primary residence, so encouraging bigger houses (including cost of utilities and land tax) than we need. Starving the cities to feed the suburbs | Grist

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This is kinda what I suspected. I don’t think there’s a single solution.

Some places restrict lawn watering and have tiered water charges. I agree, it would be nice if water were priced to cost, including the cost of remote delivery, but that would be a hardship for people who can’t afford the increase and can’t cut their consumption by much.

Some places have private waste collection services that presumably charge market prices. Meanwhile, folks in the city are forced to use the city’s services, and I’ve seen complaints they aren’t getting their money’s worth–but that seems to be a problem with the city.

The cost of fire protection is presumably paid for by property tax, which is proportional to value, and houses on big lots have more to lose, but fires there are also less likely to spread.

Police are deployed disproportionately in high-crime areas, less so in suburban gated communities with private security. I’m not sure which has better response time.

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In the US we chop up metro areas into many municipalities.

Each covers its own municipal services. If low density costs more, that extra cost is borne by the people who live in those low density municipalities.

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I’ll agree that the FIT code encourages people to put more money into owner-occupied housing, whether it is a sf house in the suburbs or a luxury urban condo.

I think that capping SALT at $10,000 was a big step in the right direction. We’re at the point where only 15% of taxpayers itemize, so deductibility isn’t (shouldn’t be) an incentive for most people. I think we should eliminate the rest of SALT and also the deduction for mortgage interest to clean up the remaining 15%.

I also think that if we did those things, we’d still have suburban sprawl. High end houses and lots might be smaller. Remember, the alternative to buying in the suburbs is buying in the city, and these buyers would also lose the tax advantage of buying in the city.

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Just to nit-pick…this does vary somewhat from state to state.

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Developers getting out their money via higher priced units is a given. That does nothing to alter the maintenance. I rather doubt the builders are plowing the streets and collecting leaves and Xmas trees after they sold the properties.

And I sense that your idea of an urban area and mine are widely different. I’m thinking of cities large enough to warrant a major sports team, for instance. Not Little Rock, Des Moines, or Boise. Yes they are cities, but I don’t see building housing there as any part of the solution to the national affordable housing -

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Or even within a state. Columbus is the “largest city” in Ohio, by an insane margin, because at some point they annexed nearly all of their suburbs. The metro area continued to sprawl so the “almost all” is no longer true, but the difference is still striking IMO.

City limits
Columbus: 905,748
Cleveland: 372,624
Cincinnati: 309,317

Metro area
Cincinnati: 2,256,884
Columbus: 2,138,926
Cleveland: 2,088,251

(All figures 2020 census, but the ACS surveys and 2010 census tell the same story.)

The metro areas are almost identical, but the City of Columbus has almost three times the population of the City of Cincinnati. For cities in the same state separated by 100 miles, that’s a radical difference IMO.

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Given their similar metro populations, what did Columbus do wrong/right so that they didn’t get any NFL/MLB/NBA teams?

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I suspect that The Ohio State University (and apparently the “The” is vitally important to the name) satisfies local demand for sports entertainment.

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I don’t think an NFL team could compete with tOSU.

Of the big 5 (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS) Columbus has 2, Cincinnati has 3 and Cleveland has 3. And really, tOSU football almost counts for Columbus.

I think a good bit of it is also history. Historically Columbus was much smaller than Cleveland & Cincinnati. Columbus’s NHL and MLS teams are both much more recent additions than the Bengals, Reds (oldest pro team), original Browns, Indians, or Cavaliers. Only FC Cincinnati is newer. (And MLS in general is newer, obviously.)

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D’oh, ninja’d!

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Additional thought – if you go back 50-60 years ago, the Columbus metro population was quite a bit smaller than metro Cincinnati and metro Cleveland.

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Yep, I mentioned that as well.

There’s also saturation by sport. Ohio has two NFL teams and two MLB teams already. I think California is the only state in the country with more than two MLB teams and New York & Florida are the only states with more than two NFL teams (and New York is debatable at that). All three states are bigger than Ohio.

And Columbus is 100-140 miles from the nearest MLB, NFL, and NBA teams too.

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I only mentioned it because I got to know the names of many of the US cities through the big 3 sports (ice hockey didn’t have much presence in Australia because it doesn’t get much snow), so I was surprised Columbus was so big.

I did plan to spend the night in Columbus once on a road trip. Of course, there happened to be a tOSU game on, so I couldn’t afford any hotel within 100 miles of it and had to reroute.

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I live in the snow belt. We spend money plowing snow. We also spend money repairing/repaving roads. But, if you look at local taxes, the largest share by far is schools. Maybe the next time I see the city budget printed in the paper, I’ll make some estimate of road repair/maint per running feet of road. Right now, I’m guessing that allocating it to properties on that basis isn’t going to change peoples’ preferences for private lots.

I think this is part of it. I asked some questions about the height needed to generate enough density to support truly walkable neighborhoods. That was related to the question of whether this works anywhere in Des Moines (my first actuarial job) or if we’re talking just San Francisco and LA and Boston. I think the answers say the second. I don’t see truly walkable (most services in a 5-10 minute walk) without some significant height and substantial population in a quarter mile square.

I can see that getting rid of cars helps with “affordable”. I think you can’t forget to offset that with the price of public transportation. I can’t see getting rid of cars without some sort of urban rail (unless the walkable neighborhood is big enough to contain a lot of high rise offices). Note, also, that height costs money. Each additional floor costs more than the one below it (I think).

I still find it an intriguing idea. I’d like to see some cities actually do it. I don’t think it comes from somehow “not subsidizing” suburban, because I don’t think there is much money there. I wonder if the best approach is retro-fitting an existing high rise neighborhood with a few new buildings and a lot of remodeling, and some road closures. Or, if it means greenfield development. Or, if there are obsolete industrial areas that could be redone (I think NYC has done some of this.) It seems the third might be the most likely.

Maybe you’ve followed some projects that you’d like to share.

I don’t see building housing there as any part of the solution to the national affordable housing -

I understand that some places are very appealing. I’ve got a sister in Marin county, a really nice place. Before that, Mission Viejo south of LA. Also very nice. But, we can’t all squeeze into a few desirable strips along the coasts and expect “affordable” when we do. It’s kind of like looking for an affordable Lexus.

I was at the doctor’s this morning. /when I said I was an actuary, she said her son had gone a ways into actuarial science in college but then switched to something … quantitative analysis. Works for a consulting firm in Connecticut. Lives in Cedar Falls Iowa (nice community for Iowa, but Iowa City is better). I expect the consulting firm is in a very attractive corner of CT, especially attractive for the high income people who run it. But, Cedar Falls is affordable.

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I found cities in Germany to be very walkable that I visited - Hannover, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin. Most neighborhoods were 4 or 5 storeys tall. Grocery shopping, fresh food markets, pharmacies, bars and restaurants were all within ten minutes walk. One could catch a tram (or subway if going further) if one wanted to go to a bigger shopping district. A lot of these cities are closer in size to the Des Moines MSA (population, but without the sprawl) than SF, LA and Boston.

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