[cameldrv]

I can’t say what was in that woman’s head, but neighborhoods that have a lot of rentals tend to have a different character independent of race. Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to live with them for many years.

Now, younger less settled people also need places to live, and the Bay Area’s solution is to send them to Stockton or something, but not everything is about race.

[rsync]

"Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to live with them for many years."

This can be generalized - beyond the housing debate - as "having skin in the game".

As someone who has been (at various times) a short and long term renter, a landlord, and a homeowner ... it rings true to me that, generally speaking, renters invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and have less at stake in the outcomes of those neighborhoods/communities.

That was certainly the case with me as a renter.

I don't think it's morally negative to segregate neighborhoods on the basis of renting vs. owning. The attempts to link this kind of segregation to past periods of literal racial segregation is, in my opinion, going to find less and less traction - especially as non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors.

[whimsicalism]

> non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors.

What about the rampant housing discrimination in home-buying (without any enforcement) [0]? What about massive racial wealth disparates?

I think it is pretty naïve to suggest that the current backlash against having "renters" has nothing to do with race. Not more naïve than suggesting it only has to do with race, but close.

[0]: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...

[rsync]

Well, we could argue about this ad infinitum ...

Or, we could take a shortcut and ask those very people what they think and what they would like.

Which is to say, let's find some non-white stakeholders (homeowners) with skin in the game in their neighborhoods and communities and ask them what they think.

I drive through some very nice, very well ordered, single family zoned nieghborhoods in Fremont - the owners of which are predominantly non-white. The same exists in many other bay area communities.

Are those people vehemently advocating for upzoning and loss of local control ? Do those people have a strong preference for owners over renters ?

Genuinely curious ...

[Lammy]

Can I also be a stakeholder if I'd like to live in a particular neighborhood but have been priced out by their "local control"?

[throwawaysea]

Thanks for sharing that article. I agree that those who are setting different financial requirements for different races or asking for different information (like identification) before showing homes are discriminating based on race, and should be investigated. Leaving those instances aside, there are also times when directing clients to certain neighborhoods based on race may not be a bad thing. For example many minorities want to seek out a community they are comfortable with (in terms of language, access to religious services, ethnic grocery stores, or even just neighbors with similar lifestyles). This is especially true for first-generation immigrants or the elderly, for whom living in a less ethnically-accommodating neighborhood may be a difficult adjustment because they may not have shared experiences with those around them.

[davidw]

How do people get any "skin in the game" if the incumbents do their utmost to impose policies that prevent that from happening?

In some cities in California, houses are "earning" more on an hourly - yes, hourly - basis than many people do:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article208678414.html

That's a bit dated, pre-pandemic, but it's likely still happening in places.

[whimsicalism]

I mean, the time derivative of housing prices has gotten higher during the pandemic, not lower.

[davidw]

In San Francisco proper, prices fell, because supply and demand are real, but those people spread out and prices are getting worse in a ton of other places, like where I live.

[whimsicalism]

> In San Francisco proper, prices fell, because supply and demand are real,

Source on real estate prices in SF falling?

[davidw]

Not huge drops, but going down at all is pretty amazing in that area. You can Google it for the details!

[karpierz]

> it rings true to me that, generally speaking, renters invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and have less at stake in the outcomes of those neighborhoods/communities.

Note that this isn't true in locations with actual renter's rights, like Switzerland.

[davidw]

"Economic segregation" is what I wrote, so not just race, but keeping those with less money away from "nice" neighborhoods and their good schools.

Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US.

And when you describe 'those neighborhoods', keep in mind that that's probably a policy. If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.

[dahfizz]

> If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.

I don't think this is possible, or even desirable.

A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are the neighbors?

A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same neighborhood are not going to have a large price difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean, then you more or less revert all property prices to the mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable" housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50% of people.

[AnthonyMouse]

You're missing the simple factor of square footage. A 1000 sq ft unit is going to be about a quarter of the price of a 4000 sq ft one for the simple reason that otherwise the larger unit would be subdivided or vice versa. So people with less money get less space, but that doesn't mean they can't live on the same street.

Also, even to the extent that values are dominated by other factors, the intention is to increase housing availability through higher supply and lower prices. All housing becoming as expensive as upper middle class housing would be a problem, but all housing becoming as affordable as existing low income housing would be great.

[dahfizz]

This only applies to "units", not houses. A similar rule could apply to lot size, but lot size only makes up a fraction of the value of a house.

[AnthonyMouse]

> This only applies to "units", not houses.

Your expectation is that a 1000 sq ft "house" on a quarter acre of land would cost on the order of the same amount as a 4000 sq ft "house" on a full acre of land?

[dahfizz]

I'm saying that houses and plots of land with houses on them are not trivially subdivided like apartment complexes are. It is rare to see a house directly across the street from a house that is 4x larger and on 4x as much land. But if you did, the price difference between those houses would be much less than 4x, because so much of the value of a home comes from the neighborhood.

Its the same exact reason why houses cost more in Boston than in Wyoming, but on a different scale. The value of a home is heavily influenced by its location.

I think its reasonable to expect this to be more true of houses than apartments. Someone who is buying a house and putting down roots is going to care more about "the neighborhood" than someone who plans to move on in a year or two.

[davidw]

It's telling that so often, in the US, we refer to "units" in things like apartments, but it's a "single family home".

[davidw]

You could at the very least, leave it to the market, rather than using government policy mostly shaped by older, wealthier people to heap more crap on people who are in less fortunate circumstances.

Where I lived in Italy, you actually had very different homes very close by - big expensive single family units right next to 10 plexes that are far more affordable.

Frankly, I think it was healthier for my kids to go to school there with both some kids from wealthy families as well as Nigerian immigrants. Their schools here are much more homogeneous.

[u678u]

> Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US.

America has the cheapest housing in the Developed world. SF is not cheap, but its still cheaper than big cities in Europe.

[davidw]

Oh, I know something about that! I own a home in Padova, Italy.

Land is mostly cheaper in the US, but Italy and most of Europe provide far more housing options, in large part because they do not impose things like single family zoning.

Padova has twice the population of the town where I live here in the US, in about the same area, and housing is cheaper.

The economy isn't great there, but that's a separate story from housing. If it were hotter, it's a place where you can simply build homes in many shapes and sizes, from small apartments to nice villas.

[adolph]

Part of real property TCO is taxes. I wonder how Italy stacks up agains comparable areas of other countries.

https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-italy-g...

[foolinaround]

some neighbourhoods are nice in and of themselves, due to their geography, proximity, etc. most however are good only because of the people that reside in it.

When people of different classes ( not races ) have different opinions on what 'good' means, there is only going to be confusion.

even a good neighborhood, once it is deemed as undesirable, will lose its values, its taxes, and soon, its schools.

[syshum]

There are dual problems with renters, my personal experience leads me to believe it is not the renters that are the problem in neighborhoods with high amounts of renters.

While it is true the renter does not have "skin in the game" it is also true that many landlord put in only the absolute bare minimum of resources to maintain the rental property.

For example my grandmother before she passed lived in a aging neighborhood, as the original residents passed the homes where sold off as investment properties. She generally had a good relationship with most of the renters however the owners of homes routinely refused to repair things, refused to have proper tree maintenance done, and other such problems that would not be the responsibility of the renter.

[tt433]

If the property is adjacent to a gentrified neighborhood but not yet pricey, the landlord can degrade service until the low income tenants leave, renovate the property, and charge new gentrified prices as well. I know of a couple buildings in the DMV area that were doing this within the last 10 years

[syshum]

Well in my families case it was what ever the reverse of gentrification is. As the original owners died off in that neighborhood the neighborhood got worse and worse, more crime, less value, etc etc etc

The owners of the properties were not waiting out the poor people hoping to strike it rich like you seem to be implying

[tt433]

Just wanted to add there's lots of factors at play besides the renters specifically

[whimsicalism]

> not everything is about race.

Sure, but we're not talking about "everything", we're talking about housing trends in American cities.