Re:LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
by imtringued on Thursday May 27, 2021 @06:49AM
(#27301362)
>We see the same type of thing when designing transportation systems in a city.
I don't know how to describe this but sometimes people say things that drive an agenda which from a first glance support the agenda but when you dig deep down into the details you realize that there is a second message that completely contradicts the actual agenda the comment pushes.
For example, "induced demand" is something that happens on roads because they are free to use by any road user. By building wider roads you make it very cheap to drive both in terms of congestion and money. Public transport costs money, is space efficient and slow. Driving a car is inefficient, convenient, fast and when you consider the "better service" it is worth the additional cost. Therefore people will stop using public transport and start driving cars, because roads are free.
This almost contradicts the agenda because housing isn't provided for free, you have to pay for it and you have to pay a huge premium for inefficient but convenient housing (single family homes). Of course, the problem is that there is a subsidy that encourages inefficiency similar to free roads, namely property tax freezes. An old single family home may have a lower tax burden than a new apartment. It's effectively a subsidy to homeowners that haven't moved out. However, the real contradiction lies in the fact that the argument hasn't been against property tax freezes, instead the criticism is aimed at new construction, which does not suffer from the subsidy problem.
I don't know how to describe this but sometimes people say things that drive an agenda which from a first glance support the agenda but when you dig deep down into the details you realize that there is a second message that completely contradicts the actual agenda the comment pushes.
For example, "induced demand" is something that happens on roads because they are free to use by any road user. By building wider roads you make it very cheap to drive both in terms of congestion and money. Public transport costs money, is space efficient and slow. Driving a car is inefficient, convenient, fast and when you consider the "better service" it is worth the additional cost. Therefore people will stop using public transport and start driving cars, because roads are free.
This almost contradicts the agenda because housing isn't provided for free, you have to pay for it and you have to pay a huge premium for inefficient but convenient housing (single family homes). Of course, the problem is that there is a subsidy that encourages inefficiency similar to free roads, namely property tax freezes. An old single family home may have a lower tax burden than a new apartment. It's effectively a subsidy to homeowners that haven't moved out. However, the real contradiction lies in the fact that the argument hasn't been against property tax freezes, instead the criticism is aimed at new construction, which does not suffer from the subsidy problem.