We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

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05/13/2021 10:01

Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

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Anonymous wrote:So tired of these threads getting derailed by NIMBYs in upper NW who are convinced that the whole conversation is about middle class people who are bitter that they can't afford a SFH in Cleveland Park. We don't even want to live there! I don't care about your house. I mean, from a policy perspective, I think we should up zone large swaths of NW DC, especially along major thoroughfares, but not because I personally want to live there -- just because a lot of that part of town is underutilized for no good reason.

But when I say "we need more housing in DC, both affordable low income housing and affordable middle income housing), I'm mostly thinking about, like Michigan Park, Brookland, Kingman Park, SE waterfront east of Navy Yard, and Wards 7 and 8. Like I'm not heavily invested in making sure people can get into "the Wilson triangle" or whatever. We just genuinely need more housing (both rental and owned) that is affordable to people who make less than 100k a year, or even 150k a year increasingly, because we need somewhere for teachers, firefighters, restaurant workers, small business owners, etc. to live. We're not talking about colonize your little enclave in CCDC. We're just saying there is simply insufficient inventory in DC to provide housing to people at all income levels, and that's bad for the city.

Everyone saying, "then go where the housing is cheaper" is being disingenuous. It's one thing for a middle income couple with a couple kids to say "Yeah, let's move to Odenton - more space, decent schools, less expensive." That's fine and that will always happen. But that can't be your entire housing plan, lol. Especially not in DC where traffic gets worse everyday and people are super short sighted about public transit. I mean, it's barely working in NYC, but at least public transit there can handle bringing most of the low and middle income workers in from outer boroughs and suburbs every day. DC's infrastructure can't do that, full stop.

If you think the answer to lack of housing in DC is "move outside the city" then I hope you are also in favor of vastly expanding the metro system and investing in other rail and transit options. But usually the same people who don't want to increase density also think that answer to traffic and congestion is just more Easy Pass lanes.

It's like talking to very small children, honestly.

Adding housing units isn't going to reduce housing prices at all. If anything, it will drive them up. It's like you're just picking and choosing which parts of economics you like, and ignoring the rest.

DP. Ok so where exactly do you want people to live end how would you like them to commute into the city? I thought PP’s post was spot on.

It’s because they took Intro to Micro Freshman year and learned nothing else, but unfortunately have developed an entire worldview and policy framework around an elementary misunderstanding of how economics works.

So please enlighten us and tell us the solution, other than living in a flooded basement with a baby to save up for a SFH in PG county like one poster suggested.

The solution depends on what the problem is. From my understanding, you believe the problem is that you cannot afford to buy a home in a neighborhood you want to live in. I don’t see that as a problem at all. You believe that you have a right to purchase property anywhere you want. I don’t.

If instead what you are telling me is that there are no reasonably affordable housing units to rent, then there are plenty of well established levers can be pulled to address that issue.

I’ve gotta agree with this. How have we gone from ensuring people have an affordable place to live to ensuring that people have a right to buy what they want where they want it.

I’ve seen the word entitled thrown around quite a bit and I think it fits here.

There is definitely a societal interest in supporting policy to provide affordable housing but why do people think they have a right to buy a house?

Remember the GGW screed from the guy who was mad he couldn't afford 16th Street Heights and was forced to move to Rockville? Remember when his story was punctured by the fact that his new house cost somewhere in the vicinity of $500K. It was pointed out to the author that no amount of "missing middle" or "gentle density" or whatever the day's buzzword is would have made 16th Street Heights affordable to him, and that houses in that neighborhood last sold for $500k about 25 years ago. The GGW response was the usual stammering that comes when their arguments are shot down (this happens all the time in that comments section; they usually delete comments that prove them wrong).

That crowd loves to set up false choices for themselves -- yes, there are other options between 16th Street Heights and moving to bum-f&* Rockville (an area that is far less walkable than 16th Street Heights) -- and others in an attempt at urbanist martydom.

I am the original PP in this sub thread, and if you actually read my post, you’d see that I am specifically annoyed that this thread is just a bunch of people who live in Ward 3 saying “You’re just mad you can’t afford to live in Ward 3. Move to the suburbs.”

I. Don’t. Want. To. Live. In. Ward. 3.

I want affordable housing within a reasonable commute of my job in DC. That means we either need more low and middle income housing in DC proper, or we need to aggressively invest in better transportation from the suburbs. That’s it. But as I pointed out in my original post, the same people who tell me to “just move to PG County” also get mad if we suggest the construction of light rail or additional metro lines, dedicated express bus lanes, etc.

What happens to your vaunted Wilson pyramid when you can’t hire any teachers because they moved to Richmond or Philly or Frederick or whatever because they could find a place to raise a family that was less than a 90 minute commute both ways from your kid’s school?

A large contingent of teachers at my kids WOTP DCPS school live in one of the many, many *massive* apartment buildings that line Connecticut Avenue between Calvert Street and the DC/Maryland border. I'd say more than half. They all walk to school. Yet those buildings are invisible in the eyes of the urbanist crowd. It's like they don't exist, or they don't count because they aren't new shiny buildings or something (built by the developers that GGW is astroturfing for, maybe).

So your unhinged rant is really off the mark. No one is asking you to live in Ward 3. I'm pretty sure none of the people in other wards would want you as a neighbor, either.

Yup. I have personally lived in one of those buildings on Davenport when I was younger. The building is still there. The problem is that now that after the GGW crowd was adamant that more huge apartment buildings were important and necessary, they themselves have decided that they personally do not want to live in them.

I think it is a combination of astroturfing for developers, as you say (they have refused to reveal their funders but have a lot of developers on their Board), but also just extremely motivated self-interest. People in their 20s want cheaper apartments to rent and think allowing developers to build thousands of units of Studio "luxury" apartments will somehow make their apartment cheaper because "economics". Now that these people are in their 30s, they don't want to live in those massive buildings that they created so they are now focused on wanting to buy a house and trying to claim that their right to buy a house where they want to live is a "right" and "justice" or something.