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Post by High Priestess on Jan 4, 2017 15:15:41 GMT
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Post by keith on Jan 11, 2017 17:01:12 GMT
As long as it's nearly impossible to create housing, there will be a reasonable need for rent controls. Otherwise, there is a huge benefit to artificially reducing housing supply in order to drive up prices. At least, with rent control, one is protected from supply based price manipulation over time.
If we truly live in a free market when the market demand will drive housing creation, then it all just magically works, but when you have impossible to understand planning codes and nearly every housing development requires a legislative action to get approved, you have to have something on the other side balancing things out.
It all has to happen together.
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Post by High Priestess on May 21, 2017 14:38:29 GMT
This is an interesting NYT article about how, due to the increased costs of housing, there is a move towards renting of rooms as opposed to renting of whole apartments. The article points out how boarding and rooming houses were more common in the past....and thus there is the suggestion that they should become common again, to meet the needs for lower cost housing. www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/realestate/return-of-the-sro-with-a-twist.html
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Post by High Priestess on Sept 6, 2017 21:46:38 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Sept 18, 2017 15:47:07 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Nov 9, 2017 2:49:09 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Dec 2, 2017 19:02:06 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Feb 27, 2018 10:07:54 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Apr 9, 2018 13:52:33 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Apr 17, 2018 14:34:13 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Apr 19, 2018 14:00:30 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Dec 1, 2018 4:36:59 GMT
This article has info on legal issues related to Airbnb renting in Massachusetts, and in it, you can find bald evidence of one of the most common types of discrimination in housing...discrimination so entrenched that it is literally written into city laws in many locales. massrealestatelawblog.com/2014/07/24/airbnb-rentals-raise-thorny-legal-issues/Note under "Licensing and REgistration Requirements", this bit about blood relationships which I think is clear evidence of major discrimination going on in housing laws....the bias towards nuclear families (and in opposition to intentional communities, groups of unrelated adults living together) is actually written into city law in many places:
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Post by High Priestess on Dec 13, 2018 17:29:07 GMT
This news pertains both to short term rentals, and to housing in general. As many are aware, the "housing crisis" which is effecting so many areas of the country, is often used to scapegoat Airbnb and short term rentals. Activists claim that Airbnb causes "units to be taken off the market", precious units, apparently, such that each individual one has to be protected from being able to be used as their owner sees fit. But some people have the capacity to see the larger picture, and realize that the housing crisis and dearth of housing, or of affordable housing, has not been caused entirely by Airbnb. ANd they realize that other things need to be addressed in order to fix this problem. In Minneapolis, a bold new vision -- end single family zoning. www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/minneapolis-single-family-zoning.htmlPortland and SEattle are also changing single family zoning to add multiunit buildings. I'm not sure if that's a great solution for every city or every neighborhood, but the term itself --"single family" should be questioned and revealed for the discriminatory term that it is. Many cities have explicit statutes forbidding more than X number of unrelated adults living together -- eg, a bias in favor of "single families", or nuclear families, is codified in law. My concern is more with this bias and its impact on a single household, than with limiting neighborhoods to single-unit residences. However, I think allowing duplexes and triplexes in traditionally single family home zones can also be helpful - However, I don't like this part of this political move: Calling people racist (or elitist) because they disagree with you is an abusive and highly illogical argument and it's got to stop. HOw does this relate to short term rentals? Well, I think that it would weaken one of the arguments some communities use to oppose allowing short term rentals in their neighborhood, namely, that doing so would "destroy the neighborhood character" and result in more people coming and going. Changing zoning will do that too. The future of the bigger cities in particular may be in allowing more kinds of housing and in general having more open and flexible policies, rather than rigid policies, regarding use of property.
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Post by High Priestess on Dec 17, 2018 16:32:21 GMT
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Post by High Priestess on Feb 9, 2019 1:10:03 GMT
Helps explain why government regulations and the permit process is much more to blame for housing crises, than Airbnb
A man spent $1.2 million and 4 years trying desperately to add housing to San Francisco, which desperately needs housing. But the city turned him down, because the building would cast a partial shadow on an adjacent schoolyard.
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