Re:Welcome to the Future: Middle-Class Housing Projects
by jedberg on Saturday April 02, 2016 @09:01PM
(#11414401)
I meant that when supply meets demand, all housing will be affordable.
But even barring that, you can still do it with only limited mandates. You can put a limit on a property that says the rent can only be X% of the median, and as long as it's possible to build housing for that price, someone will build it and make a profit on it.
One example of no restrictions working out is (was) the city of Berkeley. In 1997 they got rid of rent control. All of a sudden, tons of new buildings went up, and at first rents were very high, but then they stabilized. It all got ruined in the last year when people in SF started to move to Berkeley in droves and shove out the students, but that's really SFs fault, not Berkeley's.
But even barring that, you can still do it with only limited mandates. You can put a limit on a property that says the rent can only be X% of the median, and as long as it's possible to build housing for that price, someone will build it and make a profit on it.
One example of no restrictions working out is (was) the city of Berkeley. In 1997 they got rid of rent control. All of a sudden, tons of new buildings went up, and at first rents were very high, but then they stabilized. It all got ruined in the last year when people in SF started to move to Berkeley in droves and shove out the students, but that's really SFs fault, not Berkeley's.