News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Let’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it. Parent comment

Re:Let’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it by frgtpsswrdlame on Friday February 17, 2017 @09:27AM (#13668416)
Why is that though? I just googled it and this article seems to think it's a result of bad economic times. Here's the last paragraph

>It goes more or less without saying, then, that with an economy stuck in such a unique rut for so long, the housing prices remained similarly uniquely low as well. There was little incentive to build and invest in a city that wasn’t growing economically. Which is precisely what has helped make it so attractive to many, and such fertile ground for investors now that the economy is finally beginning to recover.

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-history-behind-berlins-...

The problem in my city is that in the city there is no middle, there's expensive apartments/townhouses and there's section 8. What I'm most interested in is how do we get mid-priced living introduced into urban areas?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Let’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it by L_Rahman on Friday February 17, 2017 @10:39AM (#13668920)
I am very interested in this problem as well and have been doing some digging. The surface level answer from some real estate people in NY is that the ROI from condos is just better than any mid-priced living.

1. I don't know if that's actually true 2. Even if it is, it might be possible to change architectural and design constraints to achieve desired unit economics 3. If it's straight up not possible to build mid-priced units with the same return, then existing condo prices don't sufficiently take into account externalities and we should use local legislation to bump their costs up and take them into account.

[ Parent | on HN ]