Cities with No Children

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seattle

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-rents-growing-at-among-slowest-rates-in-country-as-apartment-boom-reaches-record/

Don't have time to read it, but has this really helped with lowering the COL for residents, are prices down?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
ITA. There is plenty of affordable housing in parts of DC that yuppies don't want to live in.

And if yuppies go there (some already are, of course - yes, EOTR) that will push out the current low income residents. More gentrification is not the answer to making housing more affordable.

What is your suggestion for lower income residents? Are you saying we should build public housing in large quantity, which would naturally be concentrated in lower cost parts? Do you suggest we should give incentive to market rate landlords or developers to build at a loss/rent at a loss or somehow motivate them to be more self-sacrificing? NYC had not solved this problem despite insane rate of new construction and incredible density and zoning laws. The poor also get pushed out into more distant or more unsafe parts due to gentrification there.

The only way to make housing more affordable is to make someone pay for it, simple as that. Who will pay for it? Solve this problem and get back to us.

I want more affordable housing for people at both low income and at middle income levels.

Some people DO think that more private high end development will filter down, step by step, to even low income levels.

Some people think that the number of intervening steps is too great and the effects too indirect and too slow.

I am not absolutely certain which is correct (and part of the issue here is that we assume all new private development is high rises on a limited number of parcels and ignore what can be done with ADUs, with multiplexes as Minneapolis is doing, etc) , but for a variety of reasons I think its worthwhile to address low income housing more directly. Partly via density bonuses to developers in exchange for adding committed affordable housing. Partly by making it a condition of private development on govt owned land (not a trivial amount of the new development in the region) And partly with govt subsidies - as you may know DC, Arlington, Alexandria, and I think MoCo all spend govt funds on committed AH. DC spends more - in part because DC has so much more private development and so more tax revenue - another reason private development is good.

Also I don't think new subsidized housing has to be concentrated in low income parts. Govts will do that because land is cheaper and sometimes opposition is lower. But its a matter of political will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seattle

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-rents-growing-at-among-slowest-rates-in-country-as-apartment-boom-reaches-record/

Don't have time to read it, but has this really helped with lowering the COL for residents, are prices down?

Its slowed rent increases - given inflation its probably been an inflation adjusted decrease in rent.

One of the odder things about these discussions, if supply makes rents lower than they would otherwise have been, people say its not worth doing because it doesn't actually make the city "cheap" by whatever definition they are using.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous NYC had not solved this problem despite insane rate of new construction [/quote wrote:

Between 2000 and 2016 NYC housing stock grew by 8%. The population grew by 6.6 % and employment grew by 16.5%.

The rate of housing construction in NYC has not only NOT been insane, it has NOT kept up with job growth.

People tend to look at cranes in the most popular neighborhoods in cities, and they get mistaken ideas about the actual magnitude of housing supply, which is usually growing much less than they think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

I agree that limiting supply is not sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

1. They build with as much "luxury" as they do because we limit supply so much. If auto producers faced a legal limit on total cars produced they would only produce luxury cars. Increase supply, increase competition, there will be fewer luxury touches added

2. Even so, new housing is costly to build. Markets in the US produce affordable housing when we allow housing to age. There are plenty of old apts in the DC area that are too expensive, because housing is scarce. Build more supply, get more people from those older buildings into the new ones, and the landlords of the older ones will need to cut rents to fill them

3. DC and some suburbs have actual inclusionary zoning requirements - to build more high end units, they have to build income limited units as well.

4. The same NIMBYs who oppose market rate units, generally also oppose new committed Affordable Housing - you won't get more low income housing by preventing new supply.

Where is that land of benevolent high rise builders? You cannot increase supply without giving government incentives, which usually means some sort of subsidized housing. You cannot force developers to take a hit to build. They are not non profits. In NYC building developers get tax breaks if they allocate certain percentage of housing to mid income, they don't want low/no income as they want steadily employed law obedient people, just not high earners, they want MC. But this housing is very hard to get, there are long waitlists and lotteries and qualification requires certain level of earned income, but not more than cut off. I know people who live in these places, there used to be entire buildings and compounds, but nobody is building this anymore. Developers give only a few units away in exchange for tax breaks and this costs the city and its taxpayers.

That's addressing point 1.

2. this is a classic chicken and egg problem. To make older units cheaper, new units have to be affordable and abundant. In order of new units to be affordable and abundant developers need to get paid.
3. To build limited income units you need incentives for developers and this costs money to the city. Developers are not going to build enough for a lot of limited income families unless there is profit in it. And building housing low income projects creates social problems, the name of the game these days is mixed housing.
4. To have new supply, someone has to build it, these people need to make money or be somehow compensated. This has to come from someone, are you ok with your RE taxes or income taxes raising up by a lot to have more of this housing built? Are you ok to be that landlord who invested in buying and improving property to give it away for a loss or way below market to forgo that retirement plan or college fund for your kids? What have you done or are willing to do to take away from yourself to improve the housing situation for others? Things cost money, I am not hearing any solutions to that.

I don't think you understand the RE market in DC. Developers are chomping at the bit to build. They are constrained by local zoning codes, that make it more costly. When we waive those, via PUDs in DC or DSUPs in Va, we make them jump through hoops - and after that people still file lawsuits to stop the development. Look at what has happened with Brookland Manor, or with McMillan, or the battles in Alexandria about the Robinson's Terminal properties.

You do NOT need subsidies to get developers to build more market rate housing.

So, you are saying that in DC market rate housing is affordable for low and mid income? Or are you saying that affordable below market housing is actually profitable for developers to build?

No, I am saying that developers will build new market rate housing aimed mostly at upper middle income people. This in turn will impact the market for middle income housing in older buildings.

So middle income people may not be able to afford market rate units in McMillan (some low income people will get the committed AH units there) but those units will draw people who otherwise would be competing for units built 5 or 10 years ago - and that opening those units up will draw in people who might have lived in 20 year old buildings, etc an so on. Impacting the rental market at each level down the line. This is called "filtering"

It's highly dependent on the area, there isn't much of the lowering of prices happening in older buildings in already desirable areas, because there is always more demand from people to live there for other reasons, better amenities, more decent schools, safer, more police presence, better transit, closer commute, etc. It's not only about shiny new towers that attracts people, especially families with kids we are talking about. If rents fall down in 30 year old building, for example, guess what happens? Then people from less desirable area who were forced there, or would otherwise move there change their minds and move back. Your assumption is that people want newer or larger, but some only would live in specific areas or only desire a certain type of housing, like TH or SFH, especially families, many of whom are not from overseas or NYC and do want lower density for raising a family. It's not one rule applies to all.

When neighborhood becomes desirable, then prices rise all over the board and it happens to new or up and coming areas as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

I agree that limiting supply is not sustainable.

Then who is going to pay to make more supply of family size affordable homes? If developers are building this housing, then that's what's profitable, so someone else has to subsidize the alternative or force them to do otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

+2

I always chuckle when people tell me it's better for the environment when they essentially waste energy 24/7. Lobbies are on with lights 24/7. Elevators for a 5 floor condo building. Etc.

That and they are crappily just thrown up so quickly with the worst construction, throw in a fresh paint job and some laminate floors, and it's "luxury" for a cheap price of $3500 a month!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seattle

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-rents-growing-at-among-slowest-rates-in-country-as-apartment-boom-reaches-record/

Don't have time to read it, but has this really helped with lowering the COL for residents, are prices down?

Its slowed rent increases - given inflation its probably been an inflation adjusted decrease in rent.

One of the odder things about these discussions, if supply makes rents lower than they would otherwise have been, people say its not worth doing because it doesn't actually make the city "cheap" by whatever definition they are using.

It's not going to help people who want to live in Dupont/Kalorama for the price of Anacostia or Lyon Village for the price of Mt.Vernon. Lots of posters are people who want yuppie areas or sprawling new homes with best schools inside beltway burbs, but cannot pay, not those who are impoverished trying to just put a roof over their kid's heads and not be shot. It's like those who want to drive a Tesla for the price of Honda Civic, so they wonder and speculate when law will change and luxuries will go cheap. Here is the news, living in posh established desirable parts of any city is a luxury, even if it's an older crappy building, buying a tear down in a prime suburban area with short commute and building a brand new home is a luxury. It's not all because of some malicious political zoning interests, it's how it's always been, there were always expensive parts of DC, people bitched they could not afford, even when most of it was unlivable, and they didn't precipitously dropped in price just because new areas got gentrified or new apartments got built.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

That's precisely what the landlords and companies owning old buildings are doing. They are not dropping prices, they freshen up and they keep renting. Demand doesn't seem to die just because there are newer condos going up. These new condos are more expensive. And new condos going in other areas are not the competition when people want to or need to live in specific areas for work or school or commute or just because they like it better.


Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

+2

I always chuckle when people tell me it's better for the environment when they essentially waste energy 24/7. Lobbies are on with lights 24/7. Elevators for a 5 floor condo building. Etc.

That and they are crappily just thrown up so quickly with the worst construction, throw in a fresh paint job and some laminate floors, and it's "luxury" for a cheap price of $3500 a month!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

+2

I always chuckle when people tell me it's better for the environment when they essentially waste energy 24/7. Lobbies are on with lights 24/7. Elevators for a 5 floor condo building. Etc.

That and they are crappily just thrown up so quickly with the worst construction, throw in a fresh paint job and some laminate floors, and it's "luxury" for a cheap price of $3500 a month!

That's precisely what the landlords and companies owning old buildings are doing. They are not dropping prices, they freshen up and they keep renting. Demand doesn't seem to die just because there are newer condos going up. These new condos are more expensive. And new condos going in other areas are not the competition when people want to or need to live in specific areas for work or school or commute or just because they like it better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.


That assumes that if rents went down in NYC by even 1%, lots more people would move there. It assume a homogeneity of preferences for urban living that is unrealistic - in English - even if NYC were cheaper, there are lots of people who do NOT want to live there.

second if that DID happen - more people living in NYC - it would reduce green house gas emissions, because NYC is the most GHG efficient place in the USA.


Similar things apply to DC.

Developers build what's profitable for them, which is luxury condos, not affordable housing. This helps nobody. Would you move from a 3K a month rowhouse rental or an older building 2 bedr apartment to a 3K a month one bedroom luxury apartment in the same area?

Ding Ding! In DC, when people talk about adding to the housing stock, they're really just talking about building more luxury condos. They never EVER actually build affordable housing.

+1

And a lot of new housing stock is small apartments (300-400 sq ft studios), shitty construction, and insane prices. It's not sustainable, IMO.

+2

I always chuckle when people tell me it's better for the environment when they essentially waste energy 24/7. Lobbies are on with lights 24/7. Elevators for a 5 floor condo building. Etc.

That and they are crappily just thrown up so quickly with the worst construction, throw in a fresh paint job and some laminate floors, and it's "luxury" for a cheap price of $3500 a month!

You know that you can probably power all the lights in that lobby for the better part of a week with the energy in one gallon of gas, right? Also, modern elevators are counterbalanced and so they don't really use as much energy as you might think.

I'm not trying to justify every technique of modern building construction, but your claim that large buildings are inefficient is silly. The transportation energy reductions from density and the efficiency gains from shared walls trump pretty much anything you can do to a modern single-family home to make it more efficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I always chuckle when people tell me it's better for the environment when they essentially waste energy 24/7. Lobbies are on with lights 24/7. Elevators for a 5 floor condo building. Etc.

I chuckle when NIMBYs think that the energy for elevators is a big deal. One of the advantages of biking is you get to understand the topography of the region better. Folks commuting even to the inner suburbs are going far more than 5 flights - and they are doing so in their heavy, inefficient SUVs, not an electric elevator with counterweights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I always chuckle when people tell me it's better for the environment when they essentially waste energy 24/7. Lobbies are on with lights 24/7. Elevators for a 5 floor condo building. Etc.

I chuckle when NIMBYs think that the energy for elevators is a big deal. One of the advantages of biking is you get to understand the topography of the region better. Folks commuting even to the inner suburbs are going far more than 5 flights - and they are doing so in their heavy, inefficient SUVs, not an electric elevator with counterweights.

You realize some of those homeowners can easily ride a bike, metro in, and just as energy efficient, right? No one needs a giant SUV if you own a home...