[throwaway652368]

Another factor everyone is missing because it's politically incorrect to talk about:

There needs to be a way to avoid loud inconsiderate neighbors. Currently, this is done in practice by choosing an area where loud inconsiderate people are priced out. Until there's another way to do it, there will always be a demand for such areas.

Increasing supply of housing is great on paper. But imagine you're a productive citizen who gets up early, works hard, and goes to bed early. Housing prices get reduced to where anyone can afford to live anywhere? By definition, suddenly ANYONE can become your neighbor, including folks who will play loud music at all hours of the night, keep loud dogs, etc. And sure, that might violate noise laws. Good luck getting those enforced, if the laws aren't changed to have teeth!!

When dreaming up solutions to housing problems, ask yourself: "Would this solution allow a bum to move near to Bill Gates?" If the answer is yes, then your idea will not work. "Would this solution allow a bunch of high school dropouts to live alongside highly-paid software engineers doing work crucial for the economy?" If the answer is yes, your idea will have unforeseen bad consequences.

[bloppe]

Why do you assume only poor people are annoying neighbors? Rich people can afford bigger speakers, more booze, and to not have a job so they can stay up all night. I think wealth is positively correlated with the problems you describe.

[trollbridge]

Some of us have actually lived in both cheap and expensive areas. Cheap areas tend to have unemployed people on them who decide to play loud music at all hours of the day and night.

Expensive areas have people who are busy working jobs to pay for their expensive housing and go to sleep at night.

Ergo, people who value peace and quiet gravitate towards expensive areas.

[throwaway652368]

Of course there are exceptions, but on average, wealthy people are way way better when it comes to these kinds of things. Especially wealthy people who get that way by keeping themselves busy with productive labor. The upstairs neighbor doesn't need a $5000 stereo system to make your life a living hell, they can do that perfectly efficiently with a $30 subwoofer.

[loeg]

Why are most criminals men under 40? Some things just are, uncomfortable as they may feel.

[bloppe]

Well that's an easily verifiable fact, wheres "poor people are louder" is more of a belief

[loeg]

It seems like a hypothesis that is also verifiable ("... on average").

[throwaway652368]

See, this is why the housing problem is so difficult to solve. You think you're being virtuous or something by sticking up for the poor oppressed. Why don't you be even more virtuous and move yourself to Skid Row since all those poor people are really so mild and quiet and misunderstood. All you're really doing is ensuring that this problem continues indefinitely. You're the same kind of person who insisted men should be allowed to use womens bathrooms and thus ushered in Trump 2.0, hope the good-boy-points you got for that were worth it.

[bloppe]

I'm not the one with a strong conviction based on little experience

[nathan_compton]

Somehow I doubt social justice warriors are the key thing holding up housing reform. That grants a few wokescolds more power than a huge number of other economic forces.

This is kind of like blaming environmentalists when NIMBYs use environmental reviews to prevent new construction. They don't give a shit about the environment, really, but they know how to misuse the system to get what they want.

[rangestransform]

The solution is reinforced concrete walls and not any particular zoning law

[trollbridge]

Reinforced concrete walls don’t keep out noise on courtyards and also don’t work as the decibels get higher and higher. Another major nuisance is the constant sound of sirens (often at night), or domestic disturbances spilling into hallways - the front door isn’t a reinforced concrete door.

People who value peace and quiet will select places to live where the neighbours don’t engage in domestic violence or otherwise do things that result in the police coming out with sirens going.

[rangestransform]

Triple glazed windows keep the sirens out pretty well, for everything else, living in a building that poor people can’t afford seems to work

[TingPing]

Something I learned is that some cities just don’t use sirens. It’s not really necessary for low speed areas.

[throwaway652368]

Right, so that sort of thing needs to be part of whatever proposed solution to the housing problem. This will of course raise building costs etc., and the regulations will need to have teeth so people can't just build apartments out of cardboard and paint them concrete-color. Also, that concrete will need to be really thick to ward out subwoofer noises. Maybe you could get around this by banning subwoofers.