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Re:The end of the housing supply debate (maybe) by timr on Thursday November 09, 2017 @07:14PM (#15666913)
"See, that's the problem: anti-housing advocates have the wrong moral object in mind. There's no use caring about "neighborhoods"

Yeah, fuck 'em. For that matter, let's not care about cities or states, either. As long as the national mean rent goes down, everything is dandy, right? After all, we all know that real estate is global. Let the poor move to North Dakota. /s

When you have two affordable neighborhoods in a city, and you gentrify both, the fact that rents are a few bucks cheaper city-wide is thin gruel for the people who got evicted. Nor does it "impoverish" the rest of the city to not gentrify those neighborhoods -- they're out some small number of dollars a month.

"I believe in caring about people, not abstractions like neighborhoods"

That's obviously untrue. You believe in the long-term effects of markets, even if they screw actual poor people in the short term. That's fine, but don't pretend you're doing social work in the near-term.

All you can really say about markets is that the only thing they "care" about is the most profitable allocation of capital.

Re:The end of the housing supply debate (maybe) by quotemstr on Thursday November 09, 2017 @07:29PM (#15666994)
If you want a perpetual right to a piece of real estate, buy it. I'm a renter myself. I accept uncertainty as part of the bargain.

Part of renting is accepting that your tenure in a particular location might last only as long as your lease. If we had it your way and gave renters a de-facto property right to stay in their apartments as long as they liked, we would slow the development of cities and put pressure on the remaining housing stock. The renters benefit and the rest of society loses. That's unfair.

So, yes, "fuck 'em". Fuck people who want to be selfish and profit at society's expense. Selfishness is exactly what schemes like rent control, prop 13, Oregon's weird tax cap, and so on all enable.

Re:The end of the housing supply debate (maybe) by timr on Friday November 10, 2017 @03:57PM (#15672968)
"If you want a perpetual right to a piece of real estate, buy it. I'm a renter myself. I accept uncertainty as part of the bargain."

You must have posted this to the wrong thread, because it has nothing to do with anything I've written. There are legitimate, open questions about development policy. That doesn't mean anyone is giving renters a "de-facto property right" to live in their homes forever. How about we start with simply building affordable housing, for a change?

In any case, regardless of your Randian philosophies about what poor folks "should" do to remain in their homes, cities don't function when the people who cook your food and fix your sewers can't live near the city anymore. So these things actually do matter, and the only people currently getting screwed are the poor. We can deal with fairness for rich people once it's an observable problem.

(That said, I'll admit I tremendously enjoy how you jump from complaining about renters screwing society, to complaining about prop 13 in what...50 characters? You're Angry because you're getting screwed by pretty much everyone, it seems.)