A political example: In March 2020, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E, which limited the amount of new office space that can be built proportionally to the amount of new affordable housing.
This was appealing to voters on Team Affordable Housing who wanted to incentivize Team Office Space to help them build affordable housing.
(“Team Affordable Housing” and “Team Office Space” aren’t accurate descriptions of the relevant political factions, but they’re close enough for this example.)
Team Office Space was able to use the simple mistake-theory argument that fewer limits on building stuff would allow us to have more stuff, which is good.
Team Affordable Housing knew it could build a little affordable housing on its own, but believed it could get more by locking in a favorable allocation early on with the Proposition.
And Team Economic Common Sense shook their head as both office space and affordable housing (which had already been receiving funding from new construction) are about to take a nosedive in the wake of its implementation.
Office construction stops in San Francisco. The development fees from office construction are a major funding source for affordable housing. The affordable housing stops being built.
(Same thing happens for all the restrictions on market-rate housing, when it’s also paying fees to fund affordable housing. The end result is that very little gets built, which helps nobody but the increasingly rich homeowners in San Francisco. Which is the exact intended outcome of that group, who are the most reliable voters.)
Heh. I guess I’m a conflict theorist when it comes to homeowner NIMBYs, but a mistake theorist when it comes to lefty NIMBYs (who are just completely mistaken in their belief that preventing development will help the non-rich afford to live in SF).
I was speaking of inequality generally, not specifically housing inequality.
The entire point was a cheap shot at people who think that inequality is inherently bad, like suggesting destroying all the value to eliminate all the inequality.
A political example: In March 2020, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E, which limited the amount of new office space that can be built proportionally to the amount of new affordable housing.
This was appealing to voters on Team Affordable Housing who wanted to incentivize Team Office Space to help them build affordable housing.
(“Team Affordable Housing” and “Team Office Space” aren’t accurate descriptions of the relevant political factions, but they’re close enough for this example.)
Team Office Space was able to use the simple mistake-theory argument that fewer limits on building stuff would allow us to have more stuff, which is good.
Team Affordable Housing knew it could build a little affordable housing on its own, but believed it could get more by locking in a favorable allocation early on with the Proposition.
And Team Economic Common Sense shook their head as both office space and affordable housing (which had already been receiving funding from new construction) are about to take a nosedive in the wake of its implementation.
Expand? I don’t see how both could be disadvantaged by allocation-before-optimization.
Office construction stops in San Francisco. The development fees from office construction are a major funding source for affordable housing. The affordable housing stops being built.
(Same thing happens for all the restrictions on market-rate housing, when it’s also paying fees to fund affordable housing. The end result is that very little gets built, which helps nobody but the increasingly rich homeowners in San Francisco. Which is the exact intended outcome of that group, who are the most reliable voters.)
Heh. I guess I’m a conflict theorist when it comes to homeowner NIMBYs, but a mistake theorist when it comes to lefty NIMBYs (who are just completely mistaken in their belief that preventing development will help the non-rich afford to live in SF).
Preventing development limits the increase in desirability, which reduces market clearing price.
It’s more negative for the rich than for the poor, and as such reduces inequality.
[Edited to remove sarcasm.]
Wouldn’t that predict that San Francisco, which has built almost nothing since the 1970s in most neighborhoods, should have low inequality?
I was speaking of inequality generally, not specifically housing inequality.
The entire point was a cheap shot at people who think that inequality is inherently bad, like suggesting destroying all the value to eliminate all the inequality.
Ah, I’m just bad at recognizing sarcasm. In fact, I’m going to reword my comment above to remove the sarcasm.