is this too much affordable rental housing for san diego?

[tucker…]

Will it also help pop the housing bubble? OR just help more illegals get goverment housing?

http://www.sdhc.net/giaffordhousingnews1a.shtml

Any comments?

[powayseller]

I’m not sure how rental housing affects the value of housing. I think the City of San Diego has good intentions, but wonder how they will pay for affordable housing plus all those promised retirement benefits.

[nhamlin]

I challenge the assertion that the City of SD has good intentions. Imagine you want to drive up the cost of housing. How would you go about it? You would:

1) Downzone large areas of town such as Hillcrest, North Park, and Beach Areas.
2) Require many years and $ Millions in legal fees and environmental impact statements to build a project of any size before moving dirt to build housing.
3) Increase parking requirements, set back requirements, and decrease floor area ratios.
4) Divide the city into a multitude of planned districts each with endless arbitrary requirements that give planners unlimited opportunities to delay or reject projects.
5) Increase fees for permits to $35,000 per unit. Thats before you move any dirt or buy any concrete. The rent required for an apartment project to support the cost of fees is roughly $250 per month.
6) Give most of the revenue from property taxes to Sacramento and the cost of fire police and schools to the city. Give sales tax revenues to the city. See how long it takes a big box store to get permits and then see how long it takes to get a residential project permitted. Guess which takes longer?

City officials claim to be concerned about housing. If they were really concerned they would search for ways to reduce the costs to those who provide housing.

When the time from land acquisition to commencement of construction goes up cost and risk go up. Developers are forced to spend huge amounts of time and money before they even know if they can build. Even if they succeed in building the project, they may begin during a strong market and finish the project in a weak market.

Norman Hamln
[email protected]

[Bugs]

Proposition 13 basically makes residential development a net loss to a city because of the limitations in future tax increases regardless of how much the infrastructure costs increase. In California, the local governments HAVE to get their infrastructure paid for in advance. There are some areas of the nation where the taxes are reassessed on an annual or bi-annual basis, and on top of that their tax rates are higher. In a few areas the tax rate is almost double what it is here. Can you imagine what would happen to property values if the property tax assessment got tied directly to the current value into perpetuity? People would be unable to anticipate how much they’d have to pay in 10 years. That would put a real crimp in price growth expectations.

[Anonymous]

Looks like about 750 units added in 2006. Compared to a few thousand converted from rental to condo so rental supply goes down, rents go up. EXCEPT, rents haven’t gone up much more than inflation since 2003. As I stated in another thread, renters don’t have the banks to help keep down their monthly payments like homebuyers. Rents are a pure function of what the market will bear. Apparently a median of $1,200 is what the market will bear.

As the supply of rental goes down, look for larger household sizes (or outmigration), rather than increases in rents.

Speaking of illegals, did anyone watching Extreme Home Makeover last Sunday notice the Oklahoma framing contractor and framers appeared to be immigrant hispanics and the commentary was that they built with a much smaller crew than normal and still got the 5000 sq ft home framed in 3 days. Gotta keep those illegals out, they set a bad example for us all by working way too hard.

[midnight286]

I resent the comment about helping ‘more illegals get goverment housing.’ First off, if you think someone making < minimum wage could afford to live in these apartments, you have no idea what it is like to scrape by on that wage. Secondly, what's wrong with having someone who pays taxes, as many illegal immigrants who make decent wages do, receive government help? Just because they are not naturalized citizens doesn't mean they aren't contributing to this society. I think you had better be careful about posting comments in this forum that could be considered political, at best, racist, at worst.

[tucker…]

Your fooling yourself. Its section 8 housing. The govement pays most of the rent.
Next illegals take AMERICAN jobs away from AMERICANS!
Why do you think we have so many people on welfare.We americans are forced to work and pay for the lazy americans on welfare, and illegal alliens think having a american job is ok.

Just picture this. I am in a house and have a heart attack and have to go to the emergency room. Do you know i have to be driven in a ambulance for 15 to 20 miles away from my house. Just because i live 10 miles from the border.
Lets not go in healthcare cost.Or the cost of my Automobile insurance.

Hey how about this let get all the illegals here in america to fight in iraq.
If they are to old or young lets have them build a 15 foot concrete wall around america, and keep the construction boom going,cause most of them are the unskilled workers that are going to need assistance when the housing boom ends ,and all the fruit is imported in from mexico.

Then they will look in the hills of mexico and ask. ask why the hell did i leave, Maybe i should have gone to india, thats where all the AMERICAN jobs are going.

No I want welfare, free medical, and education and a drivers licence.

sir midnight 286
I have pitty for you when you get laid off from your job and a illigal is there in line for your old job and takes half the salary. You say yeh right this will not happen. But it does every day. Dont you know they are trying to change english into spanglish.

Just look at the president when he tries to speak spanish.
thats all i have to say about that.

From imperial beach ca 10 miles from border

[Californiabrownbear]

Tucker, you beat me to the punch. I typed a similar response only to lose my wireless connection and lose my response.

2 of my neighbors live 10 to a house. That’s how you can live on < minimum wage and survive. How many people seriously live on less than minimum wage? Those guys in front of Home Depot sure aren't working for less than minimum wage although I'm sure they are paying SS tax, self employment tax, fed and state income tax, the good contributors to society that they are. I'm sure they're spending much of their money here to keep our economy strong and providing others with jobs. I resent someone being labeled a racist for disagreeing with the use of public funds to finance those residing in the US illegally. I resent the rising health care costs, insurance costs, and law enforcement resources used to combat the massive influx of illegals. I also resent those that hire illegals and perpetuate the lawbreaking.

[barnaby33]

Hey guys this is way off topic. Lets keep it about housing, and please stay away from the immigrant bashing. Its easy, its populist, its in many ways irrelevant to the topic we come here to discuss.

Josh

[powayseller]

As a European citizen who came here legally as a child and learned English at age 9, I have the right to say that people should use the legal channels of applying for citizenship when they come here, and they must learn to speak English. However, our President wants the illegal citizens here, so we must stop thinking of them as illegal. Either our President is doing something illegal (they all do), or we need to accept this is the way it will be: illegals do the jobs that Americans don’t want.

But stop complaining about them. They are hard workers, and they contribute more to the economy than they take away. If they were a problem, the President wouldn’t be in favor of them being here. Yet, he doesn’t want to grant them citizen status either. The economy works better when there is a black market for labor.

If the US gov’t really wanted to stop illegals, they would enforce employment laws. When I got my first job out of college in the late 1980’s, I had to provide proof of legal alien status, and the HR dept. made a copy of my green card. I don’t think anyone does that anymore.

I hope this puts a stop to anymore talk about illegals. Just remember: the gov’t wants them here because they contribute more than they take away. And I see no impact on housing. Any illegal contractors who lose their jobs will go back home. End of story.

[Californiabrownbear]

It’s ironic to me that people who show so much discernement and skepticism with the NAR/NAHB party line can completely buy into the liberal “they do work no one else will, they pay taxes like we do, they are just here to work, etc.” talking points. Granted, many illegals are here to work and if I lived in a country with such a disparity between rich and poor I’d do everything possible to get into the land of opportunity.

I also agree that Bush advocates amnesty and has done nothing to curb illegal immigration. I have worked with a number of colleagues from Russia, UK, India, China, etc. who spent years trying to emigrate legally to the US and Bush has slapped them in the face by proposing amnesty for illegal immigrants. Wages for 2nd generation immigrants are now lower due to the arrival of recent illegal immigrants who are willing to work for lower wages, so this helps educated workers like myself procure goods and services at a lower price. But uneducated or lower wage workers cannot capitalize on these lower costs due to their declining purchase power.

[4plexowner]

There is almost always a bigger picture going on than the details we focus on. In my opinion the biggest picture in human history is ALWAYS money. So, if you want to understand the world you have to understand money.

Start by reading “The Creature From Jekyll Island” – don’t be intimidated by its size – this is MUST reading if you want to understand today’s world.

Inre immigration into the US (legal or illegal): This country is about to experience a HUGE shortfall of taxpayers to support the about-to-retire baby boomers. When social security was founded there were 30 payers for every payee. The current ratio is 3 to 1 and declining. America needs new blood to pay taxes and, since Americans aren’t having enough babies, the new blood can only come from foreign countries.

How many attempts have been made in the past three years to make illegal immigrents ‘sort-of-legal’ by granting driver’s licenses, etc? There have been at least two attempts in California and I believe other states have also made efforts (all unsuccessful?). These attempts are just the first step in making the illegals taxable (ie, the government doesn’t care about their citizenship status as long as they pay taxes).

Illegals are also tied to money because American corporations need to cut costs. Their biggest cost is labor so illegals help them increase their profit margins. Our government is currently being run for the benefit of corporations and leaving the borders open is just one of the perks being given to corporations by our government.

Sorry to inform you that in the big picture, illegals are not a benefit to our society as Americans. They ARE a benefit to the corporate-fascist powers that have taken control of this country. Illegal workers will help them paper over the holes in the system and keep it going for a little while longer.

Sorry for ranting about illegals but they are just another aspect of the money game that is being played right now. Housing is currently the biggest aspect of this same money game.

Please, please, please educate yourself about our monetary system! Until we understand the problem we will be unable to implement a solution. And in my opinion, a dishonest monetary system is at the HEART of all the problems we are currently experiencing.

Don’t believe me? Perhaps you’ll believe the founding fathers who wrote a quaint piece of paper (called the US Constitution) wherein they declared that the only legal money would be silver and gold. When’s the last time you saw any honest money in circulation?

[Author]

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