[Kalium]

San Francisco had a similar problem in recent years, where trying to build housing for the unhoused was running a cost of about a million a pop.

It's perhaps possible that this isn't a deliberate display of incompetence, but a set of systemic problems that make housing in California very expensive to build.

[Dylan16807]

They can choose anywhere to build, the government controls zoning, and they're making apartments. Doesn't that get past all the big systemic cost problems?

Though the article doesn't actually say anything about average costs or cost per type of unit, and since this is a professional news outlet they don't link their sources...

[Kalium]

> Doesn't that get past all the big systemic cost problems?

You would think so! Unfortunately, this is not the case. In SF, some of the systemic issues are planning processes voted into the city charter decades ago, so the city doesn't get to bypass them. Some of the larger issues, such as land price and CEQA, are state-wide issues that cities can't avoid.

[b112]

The people control zoning, and thus, where things are built.

[vkou]

Also, it's worth noting that building a house isn't a hole that you throw money into, it's an asset that appreciates.

[zdragnar]

That is definitely not a universal truth. Anyone who has rented out a house knows just how expensive a bad tenant is.

I have had a few friends who were in that position because they had to move but couldnt sell their houses (2008-2014 era roughly). They would have been better off taking the loss on leaving it empty after taking out loans to undo the damage done.

[scantron4]

Not if it gets trashed by the residents.

[vkou]

In a world where housing prices grow in an unbounded, absolutely detached from reality manner, it is.

[b112]

It's actually the land which goes up in value. Houses go down in value, like a new car.

Sometimes this is masked, by regular maintenance, retrofits, and repairs. But if left to pot, a house is eventually worthless, then even a cost, for the new owner has to tear it down and rebuild.

Land appreciates. A house costs.

[Retric]

Depends on the house, but houses can get more valuable much faster than the minimal maintenance costs associated with them. That’s less common in earthquake zones, but scarcity can easily drive up prices because “they don’t make them like they used to” or something interesting happened in the location etc.