[crdoconnor]

>It blows my mind that virtually every major city in the developed world is facing this same problem, yet nobody is doing anything about it. It's a pretty simple problem with a pretty simple solution.

If it's a local problem with local solutions then why did it happen to more or less every major city in the developed world at the same time? Weird parking regulations are specific to Los Angeles.

It could be that wealth inequality is the primary cause of all of this but what do I know? I'm not the kind of person who would make a ton of cash if Los Angeles building regulations were slashed.

Ironically the architect actually indirectly points this proximate cause by pointing out that land prices have skyrocketed. He just didn't think to question why.

If land prices keep going up investors' incentive to treat apartments like bars of investment gold will keep going up too. If wealth inequality gets worse, more of that money will be stashed in land (luxury apartments), causing prices to rise. All of this will happen whether or not Los Angeles parking regulations are cut.

If California rolled back prop 13, on the other hand, that would help somewhat to de-goldify land and provide enough money to the state budget to build affordable housing the old fashioned way it has always been built: by the government.

[seanmcdirmid]

Prop 13 doesn't apply to rentals.

Even if the incentives to build luxury apartments are gone, the codes still don't make other apartments all of a sudden economical. The parking garage beneath by west LA near UCLA rental is virtually empty because most people come here without cars. But they have to have it so...

But speculation is a problem, especially with Chinese investors who have already tapped out their own property tax-free markets. Just I don't think that is what is going on here.

[crdoconnor]

Prop 13 untaxed land. Untaxed land combined wealth inequality, combined with a dearth of other investment opportunities after 2008, combined with very lax regulations of international capital flows led to property hoarding on an enormous scale.

Rich investors want to hoard the kind of properties they would want to live in. Hence luxury apartments and houses that take up way too much prime inner city land - not just in Los Angeles, but Singapore, Vancouver, London, Hong Kong and many, many more.

Hoarding obviously takes supply off the market and rents are obviously driven by supply, so rents have gone up.

>Even if the incentives to build luxury apartments are gone, the codes still don't make other apartments all of a sudden economical.

If land became a lax liability rather than an asset that gives you the license to tax others, the incentives to build high rises to put ordinary people in would be much stronger.

Of course, without doing something about wealth inequality all of that money would still flee into other asset classes. Bitcoin would probably do well :)

[pmurT]

Why does everyone hate on prop13? It still allows taxes to go up, but only at the rate of inflation - it prevents normal people from being thrown out of their houses after 10 years due to tax adjustments

[TheCoelacanth]

If it only applied to natural persons' primary residences, you might have a point, but a lot of the benefit goes to commercial landlords holding vast swathes of real estate and paying practically no taxes on it. A better solution would be to allow people to defer property taxes on their primary residence until they die at which point it is taken out of their estate. That would still prevent people from being kicked out of their homes, but would also stop letting huge windfalls from property speculation go un-taxed.

[aianus]

It's a regressive tax that shifts the tax burden away from rich old retirees to poorer younger workers who had the misfortune of being born later.

[pmurT]

That is always how society works, those that existed before leverage the efforts of the young. 401k, social security, Medicare, etc

You'll benefit from this scenario at some point as well.

[aianus]

I don't find this situation comparable to those programs.

Boomers never paid any taxes on the extreme capital gains on their primary residences and I'm not holding my breath that prices will quintuple again in my lifetime. They got a huge something for nothing and the least they could do now is sell their houses at a huge profit and leave so workers with families can live closer to work.