15
For the un-initiated, how to build your own https://corsirosenthalfoundation.org/instructions/
10
Want to actually lower rent in Oregon? Here's how.
(lemmy.world)
Post about Eugene but applies to every other metro area where prices are increasing.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18067704
Rent in Eugene is high for one simple reason: it's a highly desirable place to live and the people who want to live here are all competing to rent the same units. There is more demand than supply, by a lot. Period. We have under-built for decades despite consistent net migration into our city. Landlords can charge the rent they do because somebody will pay it. The only way to get lower average rents is to reverse migration into Eugene or increase the housing supply.
Why have we under-built for decades? Because city council is an elected position. Homeowners vote, tenants tend to not vote. And to make this worse, homeowners benefit from this supply & demand mismatch because it causes their property values to go up. Politicians don't listen to blocks of voters who don't vote. Eugene homeowners, the neighborhood associations, etc have all lobbied successfully for "single family only" zoning and kept development out. City Council members also tend to be homeowners because at 15K a year you basically need a second source of income to even scrape by on that salary. Tenants and homeowners have opposite goals when it comes to land value.
So tenants, if you care about rent prices, make sure you vote, and make sure your city councilors hear from you that you want more units. If you don't like the options you get at the ballot box in general elections or think there aren't enough, vote in the primaries where your vote will have an even greater impact since you'll be choosing who other people get to vote for. All you need to do in order to vote in the primaries is select a party and your ballot will be mailed to you automatically. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes, can be done online, and you can change parties whenever you want. Selecting a party doesn't mean you have to vote for that party, only that you get the chance to vote in their primary. And vote YES on Ranked Choice Voting which is a measure that will be up for vote in the November election.
What about private equity? Blackrock? "Price-fixing software"?
I know it's popular to point the finger at private equity, AirBnb, or price-fixing software or whoever, but they are drops in the bucket compared to the massive supply and demand mismatch we have. And many urban areas in America have. Price fixing software won't enable you to charge more for rent than the market will allow, because another landlord without said price fixing software will just rent at a more reasonable price and get the tenant while your unit sits vacant and burns a hole in your pocket.
What about rent control?
Rent control will just advantage people in existing units while disadvantaging anybody who moves here from elsewhere or even from in-town. It also gives your landlord great incentive to constructively evict you and means whenever you move, your rent will take a very steep hike. It just polarizes the rental market. The total amount of rent being paid stays roughly the same, it's just no longer equally distributed among the entire renting population. Rent control doesn't work. Yes, it freezes rents for some segments of the population, but it prejudices in favor of whoever happens to be in a unit right this very moment and never moves and screws over everybody else w higher rent, especially those trying to get off the street!
What about expanding the Urban Growth Boundary?
This would make more cheap land available for development at the expense of nature being harder to access and farther away. We can build up without building out. I'm not in favor of expanding the UGB personally, but it would probably help.
But I hate all these new luxury condos!
K be mad then, but it's more supply. Now people who can afford luxury condos will rent them instead of out-bidding you for other units.
But the condos are all empty?!?
As a tenant, you want vacant units. Vacant units mean landlords have to live with the threat of their units not being rented, which means they will lower prices to make sure they stay occupied. Vacant units mean more negotiating power for tenants which turns up in things like pet-friendly complexes. Every market has inefficiencies and vacant units, this is normal. Trust me, those vacant units are costing them money. If they remain vacant long enough, the price will drop. That only happens if they actually remain vacant though, which our supply & demand mismatch won't actually let happen sustainably.
What about banning corporations from owning homes?
The legal structure of an entity owning a property doesn't matter, they can't actually set prices, the market does. Just like you can't buy a $1 million house and sell it for $2 million tomorrow, neither can blackrock. If they are sitting on property, they are losing money, but that's only true if the real estate market doesn't going up because we keep refusing to build more real estate. You need corporations to build apartment complexes, they require tens of million dollars to build, which means you need investors, which means you need a legal structure for investment to occur through safely. Most single home landlords are also LLCs.
What about forcing developers to make "affordable" units?
How do you make low and medium income housing? You build new, luxury housing and wait 20 years. This is similar to rent control where it just shifts around the rent to different parts of the market. Additionally, doing this makes this place less attractive to developers. Developers want to build units that are actually going to make them money, the more red tape and regulations, the more money they waste fighting or complying with them. And it's not just the developer's decision: they have to answer to investors. Investors don't want to invest in things which don't make money. Apartment complexes cost tens of millions of dollars, you need people to invest to make that happen, so you need to make investment attractive. Investors have the luxury of investing wherever they want. Unless Eugene is "investable", they will go elsewhere and you get no units.
8
Want to actually lower rent in Eugene? Here's how.
(lemmy.world)
Rent in Eugene is high for one simple reason: it's a highly desirable place to live and the people who want to live here are all competing to rent the same units. There is more demand than supply, by a lot. Period. We have under-built for decades despite consistent net migration into our city. Landlords can charge the rent they do because somebody will pay it. The only way to get lower average rents is to reverse migration into Eugene or increase the housing supply.
Why have we under-built for decades? Because city council is an elected position. Homeowners vote, tenants tend to not vote. And to make this worse, homeowners benefit from this supply & demand mismatch because it causes their property values to go up. Politicians don't listen to blocks of voters who don't vote. Eugene homeowners, the neighborhood associations, etc have all lobbied successfully for "single family only" zoning and kept development out. City Council members also tend to be homeowners because at 15K a year you basically need a second source of income to even scrape by on that salary. Tenants and homeowners have opposite goals when it comes to land value.
So tenants, if you care about rent prices, make sure you vote, and make sure your city councilors hear from you that you want more units. If you don't like the options you get at the ballot box in general elections or think there aren't enough, vote in the primaries where your vote will have an even greater impact since you'll be choosing who other people get to vote for. All you need to do in order to vote in the primaries is select a party and your ballot will be mailed to you automatically. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes, can be done online, and you can change parties whenever you want. Selecting a party doesn't mean you have to vote for that party, only that you get the chance to vote in their primary. And vote YES on Ranked Choice Voting which is a measure that will be up for vote in the November election.
What about private equity? Blackrock? "Price-fixing software"?
I know it's popular to point the finger at private equity, AirBnb, or price-fixing software or whoever, but they are drops in the bucket compared to the massive supply and demand mismatch we have. And many urban areas in America have. Price fixing software won't enable you to charge more for rent than the market will allow, because another landlord without said price fixing software will just rent at a more reasonable price and get the tenant while your unit sits vacant and burns a hole in your pocket.
What about rent control?
Rent control will just advantage people in existing units while disadvantaging anybody who moves here from elsewhere or even from in-town. It also gives your landlord great incentive to constructively evict you and means whenever you move, your rent will take a very steep hike. It just polarizes the rental market. The total amount of rent being paid stays roughly the same, it's just no longer equally distributed among the entire renting population. Rent control doesn't work. Yes, it freezes rents for some segments of the population, but it prejudices in favor of whoever happens to be in a unit right this very moment and never moves and screws over everybody else w higher rent, especially those trying to get off the street!
What about expanding the Urban Growth Boundary?
This would make more cheap land available for development at the expense of nature being harder to access and farther away. We can build up without building out. I'm not in favor of expanding the UGB personally, but it would probably help.
But I hate all these new luxury condos!
K be mad then, but it's more supply. Now people who can afford luxury condos will rent them instead of out-bidding you for other units.
But the condos are all empty?!?
As a tenant, you want vacant units. Vacant units mean landlords have to live with the threat of their units not being rented, which means they will lower prices to make sure they stay occupied. Vacant units mean more negotiating power for tenants which turns up in things like pet-friendly complexes. Every market has inefficiencies and vacant units, this is normal. Trust me, those vacant units are costing them money. If they remain vacant long enough, the price will drop. That only happens if they actually remain vacant though, which our supply & demand mismatch won't actually let happen sustainably.
What about banning corporations from owning homes?
The legal structure of an entity owning a property doesn't matter, they can't actually set prices, the market does. Just like you can't buy a $1 million house and sell it for $2 million tomorrow, neither can blackrock. If they are sitting on property, they are losing money, but that's only true if the real estate market doesn't going up because we keep refusing to build more real estate. You need corporations to build apartment complexes, they require tens of million dollars to build, which means you need investors, which means you need a legal structure for investment to occur through safely. Most single home landlords are also LLCs.
What about forcing developers to make "affordable" units?
How do you make low and medium income housing? You build new, luxury housing and wait 20 years. This is similar to rent control where it just shifts around the rent to different parts of the market. Additionally, doing this makes this place less attractive to developers. Developers want to build units that are actually going to make them money, the more red tape and regulations, the more money they waste fighting or complying with them. And it's not just the developer's decision: they have to answer to investors. Investors don't want to invest in things which don't make money. Apartment complexes cost tens of millions of dollars, you need people to invest to make that happen, so you need to make investment attractive. Investors have the luxury of investing wherever they want. Unless Eugene is "investable", they will go elsewhere and you get no units.
ACLU has a decent overview of it. The tldr is that it's re-criminalizing posession. https://www.aclu-or.org/en/take-action-now-tell-lawmakers-we-need-real-solutions-not-more-jails
I would vote FOR 110 again in a heartbeat. Prohibition doesn't work, is a waste of taxpayer money, and churns people through the criminal justice system. It should be no business of the government what you put into your body in your own private residence. If you are breaking the law because of your drug use, then they should enforce those laws which they currently don't for various reasons.
The whole point of ballot initiatives is to go over the head of the state legislature. It is a check on their power and the two party system. They have no right to reverse a ballot initiative. If they think public opinion has changed, they can send it back to the ballot. Any oregon dem who votes to repeal 110 is losing my vote in the primary.
It's not that they're nazi-adjacent right wingers, it's that people in Eugene are getting serious compassion fatigue over some categories of crime or quality of life impacts which they blame generally on "the homeless", which, to be fair, is a group of people who cause many of these problems. For understandable reasons? Yes, many times. Is it more the government's fault than theirs? Yes, often. But it doesn't change that people have very real reasons for being upset and pointing the finger in the direction they point it, and the tactic of just shouting down these people as being anti-homeless or compassionless or bootlickers really isn't working any more.
I'm a person who says "fuck the police" at pretty much every opportunity. I also understand people's very real concerns about randomized violence in the streets caused by people in the homeless population and the city's total lack of initiative in solving anything of these problems.
It used to be only nazis and far-right people complained about "the homeless", it was a boogeyman they essentially created and vastly over-stated the impact of to further right wing agendas. That's no longer the case, mainly due to changes in the economy and drug markets. I personally have had several very uncomfortable interactions with homeless folks in this town, in two unrelated instances in a single year I have had my life threatened out of nowhere by a homeless person. There are whole parts of town I don't go to because of that, and I'm a white dude, I'm sure my experiences pale in comparison to people from other parts of our community.
Leaving lemmy.world if it doesn't defederate from threads. Fuck Meta.
In favor of defederation. If I start seeing garbage from threads in my feed, I'm switching instances. I don't want Meta pushing their divisive, hateful, misinformation all up in my feeds. Meta will kill fedi. We don't need them.
Every time I have attended a public comment session at Eugene City Council relating to the budget or EPD, I have consistently heard from citizens that they want more of EPDs budget directed to cahoots. Every time, City Council just raises EPDs budget while cutting basically every other service the city provides. It's absolutely maddening.
Going for a hike hopefully see some cool birds
tldr he killed a bill which included provisions about protecting the right of cannabis workers to organize, he referred the bill to state attorneys who rightly concluded the law wouldn't stand up in court after very similar laws were struck down elsewhere. Every other union still supports holvey, but one of them pushed for a recall over it. If recalls like this are successful, it encourages other special-interest groups to recall reps over small spats like this in the future.
Ya love to see it. Would love to see a ballot measure next election which drops the quorum requirement to something more reasonable.
We need more passionate, intelligent people in all levels of local government. And we need higher wages (or wages at all!) for these positions, otherwise they'll only be filled by upper class people with no representation by working class people.
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letsmakeafriendship
joined 1 year ago
"Eugene Pride will be without public parking for the first time in 15 years due to a time-conflict with a sold-out Ween concert"
AKA the city has a fair, transparent system for permitting these kinds of things and somebody else claimed the spot first and Eugene Pride organizers are throwing a tantrum that they aren't getting special treatment. They planned an event without making sure there was parking available, that's not anybody's fault but the planners. If you run big events, you need to stay on top of your paperwork and do your diligence.