In a way it is. Why are housing costs so high in Redmond, WA? The result of an influx of high income tech workers to the local housing market and the resulting shift of prices such as to eventually dilute the utility of that high salary to begin with. People in the area without a hook on that whale are of course left high and dry.
No... the reason housing prices are high and rising is that not enough housing is getting build in the places people want to live. The main reason for that is that the people who already live in those places can block construction of new housing. That, and zoning.
This is part of it yes. But after sufficient housing stock is built for the available working population, prices generally reach an equilibrium around median worker pay in the area. And if the median worker pay is now inflated by tech salaries and you are are still a line cook, you’ve been screwed. The construction market will not respond by making housing until it is cheap and unsold enough to be affordable on your line cook salary. The construction companies would sooner take jobs in more lucrative markets. If you are a line cook where most everyone in the area is paid about as much as you on the other hand, you can probably afford a local mortgage.
Housing prices in so many places are high because Californians, used to spending crazy high prices for property in tech spheres (or able to sell their property for crazy high prices because of the tech spheres) moved to other locations and caused property values in those areas to go up. Why is Hacker News trying to rewrite this?
"Californians, used to spending crazy high prices for property"
Please dig into why that statement is true and re-read your parent statement. Your analysis can't just abruptly stop there. It all goes back to housing supply.
It all goes back to tech. Tech jobs grow in the area and pay significantly higher than previous jobs. Those jobs increase people moving to the area by dramatic, non-traditional numbers outpacing how the area previously approached housing, and give the people much more buying power than the current residents, pushing those people (including me) out. The housing supply problem goes back to... tech. No community is prepared for a gold rush to happen, nor has housing plans in place to accommodate it. Nor do they normally want to accommodate it. So it turns into a big of a mess.
Please dig into why my analysis is correct. I lived through it. I had to leave friends and family. It negatively impacted mine and almost every friends life negatively (as in had to more away and start a new life).
"No community is prepared for a gold rush to happen, nor has housing plans in place to accommodate it."
laughs in Tokyo/Singapore. Sorry, I want to feel bad for incumbents in the area, but they've worked hard to create this situation, especially the landlords. People gaining wage power is a GOOD thing and arguing against it is an insane political choice even if you are in the majority.
The rest is just basic agglomeration theory [1]. You are arguing against gravity making things going down. People will always come together since Vienna, since Baghdad, and the productivity gains are supposed to be good for the country again, if it wasn't for landlord incumbents. The solution seems obvious: remove incumbent controls.
There are only one people who are truly indigenous to the Bay Area (and I'm guessing they aren't on HN right now). Everyone else came as part of a proverbial gold rush, going back to 1849, so complaining about the only gold rush that came after you is not a morally substantive position. Your complaint should be against rent-seeking capital and their political power, not immigrants (national nor international, rich nor poor).
P.S: Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for displacement. You can have gentrification and growth without displacement, what you have to accept (nay embrace) is rapid change. If you don't, displacement is inevitable.
Citation needed, my understanding was that housing prices are being driven up by real estate owners/agencies buying tons of property to either rent at extortionary prices or sit on until they sell for a higher price to the next sucker. Also stuff like the RealPage scandal where they simply illegally collude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330007
I think the idea of a law that only allows a limited number of owned properties per person and requires them to actually be using those properties would be interesting to alleviate this.
Housing prices are being driven up by the fact that we don't build enough housing. That should be the end of the discussion. What you describe is just a symptom of not having enough housing. If we just built more housing then there wouldn't be any business angle for the corporations buying up housing.
The obscenely rich entities that buy up tons of property without actually using it do so because they only stand to gain even more money on it later. Making more housing would help in the long term for sure, but these entities would still buy up most of it as it becomes available. Remember that as long as they hold the vast majority, they essentially have a captive audience and can set whatever outlandish prices they want (especially when they collude as they have done). Something to restrict the number of unused properties a person can own would still be beneficial either way.
This also goes without mentioning the restrictions on "just" building new housing (land, time, and space, particularly space located near job sites).
