Posts by James Bremner
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Well, lots of discussion but no suggestions as to how to make housing in Auckland and more generally around New Zealand, more affordable. Does anyone have any examples of intensification lowering the price of housing? I don’t know of any.
At Interest.co.nz BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander sees floating mortgage rates hitting 8.5% within the next three or four years. If land supply was relaxed, house prices wouldn’t increase so fast and interest rates might be able to be lower. Rates are on the way up, the Fed is making noises about winding down QE infinity, and the ass has dropped out of the price of gold over the last few months which tells you what people think of the future direction of US interest rates and the value of the US$ (up). So that makes housing even more unaffordable for people wanting to enter the market, and for many that already have floating mortgages.
So let’s just review the situation. Due to a desire to reduce urban sprawl, some cities place urban boundaries to restrain growth (in area) of a city. Populations grow and are expected to continue to do so, so for an extended period of time demand for houses grows faster the supply of houses, which can only result in increased prices. The urban boundary makes land banking and speculating on property a one way bet so lots of people pile in and prices increase even further. I don’t blame them, they are only responding rationally to the situation created by local and national governments.
Intensification is hard to do as people don’t want their neighborhoods changed or apartment block next door. I don’t blame them either, but screw them; the land that their house is on was once an open field wasn’t it?
Housing gets a lot more expensive, in Auck the median house price is now 7 times the median income, up from 3 times 30 years ago. The less well off have a much harder time buying a house or renting, the well off are better off as the value of their assets increases faster than it otherwise would have. So urban boundaries have made the less well off relatively less well off and the well off better off. I hope you like your city with less sprawl, it has exacted quite a price.
Poorer New Zealanders have been hurt by artificially restricting something New Zealand has a lot of, land, which seems absolutely nuts. NZ is only 1% built up, and has plenty of space. Auckland is already quite dense relatively. Auck is 2,400 people per sq km, Sydney and Melbourne are around 1,600 per sq km, and Sydney and Melbourne are much larger cities in terms of area and are often described as very livable cities.
The desire to have less sprawl has hurt the less well off and distorted the economy so that too much of NZ capital is tied up in non productive property, slowing economic growth and job creation and productivity growth. Building a few more roads and subdivisions and burning a bit more gas to get too and from work or the bus or train seems like a much, much smaller price to pay that the havoc that boundaries have created.
What to do? I am all for an all of the above strategy.
As much intensification as fast as possible, although I don’t think what can be achieved with intensification will ever come close meet increasing demand due to the NIMBY effect restraining how much intensification can be done.
As much expansion as needed to drop the price of land so some more affordable houses can be built on the outskirts of Auckland. Look at a map of Auckland, Auckland is on a narrow isthmus that spreads out to the north and south, there is plenty of land close to Auckland that could be used for houses without growing out that much further.
If the Auckland Council and the Govt say they will make sure enough lands will be released to maintain a good supply to keep prices in check, that will take most of the speculative money out of land and property as future gains will be much less certain.What can’t go on for ever wont. Housing can’t keep increasing as fast as it has, you either need more supply or you are going to get a nasty crash and some serious economic and social carnage when the bubble pops. And increasing interest rates are just around the corner.
I would still like to hear from the Gen Zero guy, Dr Singh, who wrote the article that prompted this thread. How does he and Gen Zero propose to address affordable housing.
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to Danielle,
Danielle, so how does Auckland get affordable housing?
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Auckland already has housing rated as "severely un-affordable" with the median house costing around 7 times the median salary, and under the proposed Unitary plan, as supported by Gen Zero, house prices and the ratio of median house to median salary is only going to keep going up. Dr Singh, how high is too high? A ratio of 9 times like Vancouver has? A median house price of $1m?
Surely any responsible plan or framework for Auckland and any city should START with how to ensure affordable housing. Housing is typically the largest cost of living for people and along with food and water, a roof over ones and ones family's head is the most critical physiological need, the basic level of need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Every day there are articles in media about the struggles of the less well off and how paying rent doesn't leave enough to buy food, so now we need food in schools. Yet the focus of the Unitary plan and Gen Zero seems to be on the highest level of need in Maslow’s hierarchy, self actualizing. Don’t get me wrong, I want all that good cultural stuff too, but surely you should get the basics right before worrying about the self- actualizing stuff?By restricting the supply of land, something NZ has lots of, land, we drive its price up to the point where housing takes a completely unnecessarily large portion of peoples wages, to a point where it places real stress on a significant portion of the population. Even for relatively well off people, just think what they could do and how much better their quality if life would be if they had to pay significantly less for a house in rent or mortgage payment.
It is a reverse Robin Hood situation. By driving up land prices, the land supply restriction policy and the costs and burdens of the RMA etc, both supported by the left, take from the poor and give to the rich. The poor struggle to get ahead, or fall behind, while those that already own property or have enough capital to land bank and speculate on property laugh all the way to the bank. Aren't lefties supposed to take from the rich and give to the poor? How did they get this one so wrong?
Auckland is on a narrow isthmus that spreads out to the north and south. Due to this geography you wouldn’t have to expand that far to the north to double the size of Auckland, so why the need to play sardines?
By being restricted in size, compact cities will always be expensive; there is no way of getting around that. But I think the basic premise that non-compact cities are bad or cultural wastelands is wrong. I lived in Houston for 9 months and liked it very much, but don’t believe me, take a look at this article where the New York Times amongst others sings Houston’s cultural praises: http://read.bi/10Of9WP It’s a great place to live (summer heat excepted).
Houston has a number of work centers, so everybody is not trying to get into and out of the CBD. Auckland should aim for the same. I lived and worked on the west side of the city, less than 5 mins from my work, the shortest commute I have ever had. I had everything I needed and there was a lot to see and do within an easy drive of where I was. When I looked out my office window, all I could see were trees; there are parks and cycle ways all over the place. There is no smog or pollution, not that I ever saw anyway. And the cost of living is very low. In Houston you can buy a perfectly nice starter house for $100k or less and $300k will buy you all the house most people will ever need, with perfectly good public schools, services, roads etc.
Due to not restricting land supply, the cost of housing and living in Houston is very low and this attracts a lot of companies so you have the best combination of low costs of living and very high job growth. Isn’t that what NZ needs to help its people have a better life? The Unitary Plan and Gen Zero will take NZ in the opposite direction, high costs of living and lower job growth.
I would like to read how Dr Singh and Gen Zero propose to address housing affordability.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
RB, the article at your link doesn't say whether the shooter saw the guy or not. Be interested to know where the WSJ guy got his info from, he seemed pretty definitive. But it has been reported that Lanza offed himself when he heard cops arriving, so he fits the description of the cowardly shooter that the WSJ article I linked to refers to.
" the right-wing “no one would die if everyone was armed” fantasy."
A load of bollocks, to be sure, and one I subscribed to for a long time to until I thought about the issue a bit more.
You only need a handful of people to have a concealed weapons license and be carrying a weapon, a few percent of the population, so there would be a decent chance that one of those people would be in a mall or other populated place and be able to intervene if a shooter turned up. Retired cops & military, hunters etc, there are a lot of people around (in the US) who know how to handle a weapon.
And yes, hitting bystanders is a huge issue, and some of these nuts wear ballistic armor, but if you could wing a guy or tie or slow him down until the cops you arrive you will save a lot of lives. Every minute is valuable in these situations.
There is no perfect solution to this problem. No one ever suggested there was. But passing laws that many will ignore (they are crazy) or creating a make believe world of gun free zones and leaving people defenseless when there are crazies and guns (and always will be) doesn't seem like a hell of a good idea either. -
Here is an interesting article that adds some insight to the subject.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323723104578185271857424036.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Most interesting part.
Finally, it must be acknowledged that many of these attacks today unfortunately take place in pretend "gun-free zones," such as schools, movie theaters and shopping malls. According to Ron Borsch's study for the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato, active shooters are different from the gangsters and other street toughs whom a police officer might engage in a gunfight. They are predominantly weaklings and cowards who crumble easily as soon as an armed person shows up.
The problem is that by the time the police arrive, lots of people are already dead. So when armed citizens are on the scene, many lives are saved. The media rarely mention the mass murders that were thwarted by armed citizens at the Shoney's Restaurant in Anniston, Ala. (1991), the high school in Pearl, Miss. (1997), the middle-school dance in Edinboro, Penn. (1998), and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2007), among others.
At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer's next shot was to kill himself.
So that explains why there were only 2 dead in Oregan last week, but the media being in favour of gun control hasn't reported that. Adam Lanza fits the profile described above as he shot himslef as soon as he heard the cops arriving. Imagine if the headmaster at Newton had had a gun (even one firing blanks or rubber bullets) and been able to engage Lanza rather than throw herself at the gunman and get killed. It would seem that it would be much less likely that we would be mourning 26 deaths.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to BenWilson,
Leaving children in a vunerable position is hardly working towards a better world. Taking sensible precautions is the sober juducious thing to do.
My understanding is that over the last few years gun sales have increased quite dramatically while crime has fallen. Cause and effect? I'm not sure, I know that there is plenty of discussion that there is a link. The "guns always bad" line of thinking isn't necessarily accurate.
The last time I looked at the stats, NZ had a higher rate of home invasion crime that the US, and I would attribute that to NZ's strict gun laws and the fact that if you were to defend yourself from a home invader, you would probably spend longer in jail than the invader. Is that such a sensible approach? A number of defenseless people in NZ have meet horrible ends as result of that approach.
We don't live in a perfect world and we have to make sensible decisions within the framework of what is possible to try to arrive at the best solution. Some of those decisions require a clear eyed view of reality and some hard decisions about the course of action that leads to the least harm. -
Long time no PAS.
Some kind of ban on assault weapons always seems like a logical solution to some of the guns problems the US has, and as has been previously pointed out, there was one for a while, but it was allowed to expire without any fanfare (in the middle of the 2004 election season no less) as I believe it was fairly universally judged to not have had any impact, there was certainly no fuss about it when it expired.
I can’t see any kind of gun control onstitutional amendment passing whatever might come out of Washington as it will never get the 2/3rds or 3/4ths of states required for ratification of an amendment. While it might pass in CA or MA or NY, there is no way southern, rural or mid western states will pass that. For better or worse it just won’t happen. Best to focus efforts and energy in more productive areas.
And as an example that these issues are usually too complicated for simple sweeping solutions, if I lived anywhere outside a large city in Arizona, New Mexico or western Texas or anywhere close to the border or on the drug highways north out of Mexico and well into the US, I would most definitely want some serious firepower (i.e. something like a Bushmaster) to protect myself and my family, because the drug cartels and traffickers most certainly have more then peashooters on them. A handgun with a few rounds isn’t going to be any use. So how do you handle that situation fairly? You can’t leave people defenseless.
On the mental health aspect of this, I think a logical change would be a law so if a principal identifies a child as displaying some of the characteristics (as defined by a board of shrinks) that these kind of loner mass shooters have, the principal would be required to inform the local police so that they can visit the family and have a discussion and help educate the parents of the potential dangers of their child and to make sure that any weapons they have are securely locked away at all times etc.
Parental accountability is a big issue in some of these mass shootings. The mother was just crazy to take her son, with his issues, to a range and teach him how to use a semi automatic weapon and have the cache she had at home. If she hadn’t been shot, the mother should have been held accountable for what she did. Likewise Dylan Klebold’s and his friend in Columbine had huge stashes of weapons, ammunition and bomb materials in their rooms and houses. Where the hell were their parents? Obviously you can’t hold a parent accountable for their child’s behavior, but if their gross negligence is judged to have been a major contributing factor to an event like this, then they should be held criminally liable. That should wake a few parents up.
Another obvious thing to do is to make it more difficult to get into schools and especially into classrooms. Heavier doors into buildings and classrooms that can be bolted closed so that they can’t be shot open or kicked in would have made a huge difference in Newton and at the Virginia tech shooting a few years ago. Anything that slows the shooter down while law enforcement gets there saves lives.
And of course having a few teachers with a weapon is an obvious solution. Sounds crazy and shouldn’t be needed but we don’t live in a perfect world and never will. There are a couple of ex army guys at my son’s school. I would be very happy for them to have a weapon and a bullet proof vest locked away somewhere at school ready to deal with a crazy guy. It is child like magical thinking to believe that if we declare somewhere a gun free zone, that everything will be wonderful. All you have done is told the world, and every nutter in it, that this place is an easy target. How the hell is that smart or responsible? -
Hard News: European Horror Stories, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Rich, states in the US could go bankrupt as Illinois and California are in the process of proving.
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I have subscribed to Stratfor for about 10 years as a way to get better information than you can from the media. I think the idea of Stratfor as a "secret CIA" is a joke (as much of a joke as Stratfor's website security apparently!!) It is just a source of good info for those of us wonkish people who like good info. Big deal.
Stratfor has some really interesting and insightful commentary, and I note that in the past I have seen RB site Stratfor in a few of his commentaries on Public Address, so therefore it can't be a total neocon, fascist, right-wing wankfest can it?
I have read all Friedman books and found his approach to strategic analysis as interesting as the actual results the approach produces.After reading him for a decade, it is clear to me that Friedman probably votes Democrat, believes that over the course of history Govt has had a central role in economic and technological development and for sure is no neocon, if anything he is an anti neocon. He tactfully but strongly criticized Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the neocon approach to world affairs in general, he is much more in the balance of power realist view. So as far as I can deduce Friedman and therefore Stratfor is no stereotypical far right wing “US supremacist, US take over the world” kind of guy. So I don’t know why all but the most extreme lefties would have a big problem with him or his views. Without a doubt he has some good sources, who may now be revealed, but so what? What is wrong with good sources and good info?
But regardless of Friedman’s views, this hack is a crime and as with any crime hopefully someone or some people will go down for it. Serves the bastards right.
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The Euro was a load of bollocks from day one, you can't have one monetary policy with multiple different fiscal policies, it can't and never will work over a period of time, it is an impossibility. Either countries with fiscal policies different (looser) from the majority leave the zone or all countries adopt the same fiscal policies, it has to be one or the other.
The Euro project is and always was an ego driven political construct about creating a European super state to enable Europeans to collectively still be internationally significant and relevant and be able to challenge the US global "hegemony". The Eurocrats were never shy about expressing this as their objective and they never gave a damn about democracy and the will of the people of the various European countries, whether they wanted to participate in this grand project or not. A cynic would say that the Germans are trying to achieve with the Euro what they couldn't achieve with Panzers and Stukas 60 years ago.
The troika's 'austerity" medicine being forced down Greece's throat only partly addresses Greece's problems. Without a doubt the Greek government spent for too much money for far too long without undertaking necessary reforms while they had the time, to address, for example demographic change by raising the age when pensions kick in (paging John Key...), and that needs to be addressed, but like in a business, you can't cut your way to prosperity, you need to grow the top line, to generate revenue / economic activity and tax revenues. Nothing that I am aware of that the troika is making Greece do is growth oriented. The poor bastards in Greece are in for a miserable time for quite a while.
A sobering example of the consequences of bad political and economic policies. Unfortunately there are plenty of such examples of disastrous policies around the world in recent times. The Fed's easy money policy of the 2000s and continuing today, the US Congress in the 1990s making banks give housing loans to people who couldn't afford them, land use restrictions that force up the price of real estate to absurd levels, the current US Administration’s “money grows on trees” approach to its budget. Sadly the list goes on... Even if you could get rid of these bad policies tomorrow, their impacts will be with us for a quite some time.