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kleinbl00  ·  2168 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How to fix America's housing crisis

It's not a bad idea? But it's not a complete idea.

Municipalities finance things with ten and twenty year bonds all the time. If a municipality were to build a development with the intent of operating it for twenty years, then sell the property and use the proceeds to finance additional projects, you'd get most people to agree to it (particularly if the operation and planning were put out to bid, rather than operated by bureaucracy). "Luxury" generally means better finishes and bigger rooms; finishes need to be changed out every 20 years or so anyway and if you design the floorplans so you can mash two 800sfs into a 1600sf you've got a ready-made "luxury" remodel when you go private market.

Rent control isn't a solution, it's an externality. You're taking the problem of supply and demand and forcing it to squish somewhere else. The traditional method of dealing with rent control is "fuck you we're condos now, buy in or move out." You will never get anyone to sign off on the idea that the owner of a property can't convert it from rental to sales.

Magically waving your hand and abolishing setbacks and parking requirements is fucking stupid, however. These are vital to the livability of any neighborhood. If you want parking requirements to relax, you have to build viable mass transit so that people don't need that many cars. Solve that problem first - if there's plenty of street parking on a block with 20 houses, build a 4-unit apartment and watch it all disappear.