Cities with No Children

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except they never actually build affordable housing. Literally the only thing they build are luxury condos for rich people. It's funny and strange how the rhetoric from affordable housing advocates and big real estate developers is exactly the same.

The more new luxury condos they build for rich people, the fewer existing non-luxury condos those rich people are going to outbid non-rich people for.

So basically it’s trickle down economics, except with housing. It’s so odd hearing leftie housing affordability people espousing right wing theories.

I'm an economist and this is a total mischaracterization. Housing filters down because most people only need to live in one house. "Trickle down economics" is really just a statement about tax multipliers, because people whose taxes are reduced consume more goods and services, which leads to greater employment and therefore economic activity. Just not the same thing at all.

Please don't make false equivalences like this if you haven't at least minimally thought them through. We economists only have so much time to combat the misinformation that people spread using our theories as justification.

It's not a false equivalency because, in both cases, the idea is that if you help rich people, eventually average people will benefit too.

Also, not to point out the obvious, but if you actually did make housing cheaper, by increasing the supply (which would take a huge increase in the supply) more people would just move here and bid the price of housing back up. Prices would not actually go down. You'd just end up with a more crowded city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's not a false equivalency because, in both cases, the idea is that if you help rich people, eventually average people will benefit too.

Also, not to point out the obvious, but if you actually did make housing cheaper, by increasing the supply (which would take a huge increase in the supply) more people would just move here and bid the price of housing back up. Prices would not actually go down. You'd just end up with a more crowded city.

Why?

As for more crowded city:

1900 278,718
1910 331,069
1920 437,571
1930 486,869
1940 663,091
1950 802,178
1960 763,956
1970 756,510
1980 638,333
1990 606,900
2000 572,059
2010 601,723
2017 693,972

So I think there's room. The city isn't full.

[Anonymous]

The obvious answer here is to increase the supply of housing -- by so much that no one will want to live here.

Tear down all the single family homes, beginning with all the gorgeous old rowhouses. Replace them with modern-day tenement housing. Pack as many people in as humanly possible so that everyone is mean because they don't have enough space to live (just like in NYC!) and so that the entire infrastructure -- the schools, the electrical grid, the water system, the transportation system and everything else -- is on the verge of collapse.

Only then, when DC is ugly, horrible place to live, and when no one in their right mind will want to live here, will you finally control housing prices.

Mission accomplished! Yay!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not a false equivalency because, in both cases, the idea is that if you help rich people, eventually average people will benefit too.

Also, not to point out the obvious, but if you actually did make housing cheaper, by increasing the supply (which would take a huge increase in the supply) more people would just move here and bid the price of housing back up. Prices would not actually go down. You'd just end up with a more crowded city.

Why?

As for more crowded city:

1900 278,718
1910 331,069
1920 437,571
1930 486,869
1940 663,091
1950 802,178
1960 763,956
1970 756,510
1980 638,333
1990 606,900
2000 572,059
2010 601,723
2017 693,972

So I think there's room. The city isn't full.

I KNOW! Why have all these people convinced themselves that there is an affordable housing crisis? It's bizarre. The city is way smaller than it used to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I KNOW! Why have all these people convinced themselves that there is an affordable housing crisis? It's bizarre. The city is way smaller than it used to be.

I don't understand how people can keep insisting that there is no housing shortage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The obvious answer here is to increase the supply of housing -- by so much that no one will want to live here.

Tear down all the single family homes, beginning with all the gorgeous old rowhouses. Replace them with modern-day tenement housing. Pack as many people in as humanly possible so that everyone is mean because they don't have enough space to live (just like in NYC!) and so that the entire infrastructure -- the schools, the electrical grid, the water system, the transportation system and everything else -- is on the verge of collapse.

Only then, when DC is ugly, horrible place to live, and when no one in their right mind will want to live here, will you finally control housing prices.

Mission accomplished! Yay!

Fortunately nobody is proposing to do anything of the sort. But your dislike of apartments is evident.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The obvious answer here is to increase the supply of housing -- by so much that no one will want to live here.

Tear down all the single family homes, beginning with all the gorgeous old rowhouses. Replace them with modern-day tenement housing. Pack as many people in as humanly possible so that everyone is mean because they don't have enough space to live (just like in NYC!) and so that the entire infrastructure -- the schools, the electrical grid, the water system, the transportation system and everything else -- is on the verge of collapse.

Only then, when DC is ugly, horrible place to live, and when no one in their right mind will want to live here, will you finally control housing prices.

Mission accomplished! Yay!

Fortunately nobody is proposing to do anything of the sort. But your dislike of apartments is evident.

I know this idea of increasing housing supply is like a religion to its advocates, and there's no evidence anyone could ever present that would change their mind, but there is a fundamental contradiction in their arguments.

An area is expensive because lots of people want to live there. Some people get shut out because of the prices are too high. If you create more housing in the area -- enough to actually affect the prices -- more people will show up to buy them, including all those people who had been shut out. That will bid up prices. So prices won't actually go down -- this might go up beyond what they would have otherwise been, and you'll just have more people all trying to live in the same area.

Prices won't go down until the area becomes less desirable. Have you every gone to one of those beach towns that are horribly overbuilt? And you just want to get out of there because there are too many people and it is so ugly? It's like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny, the first thing I thought of when I read the title of this thread was how I experienced Capitol Hill when we first bought there (1996).

I remember telling my ILs (who lived in NoVa) that the only time I see children is when I come to visit them.

And now the Hill is crawling with kids. Not just babies - teens too. A lot of us are just stubborn and stayed out once we had kids.

Yes, we love those anecdotal exceptions that somehow invalidate actual studies using hardcore data.

Let me guess, out of 10 babies on the Hill, maybe 1-2 will still be a teenager living on the Hill. Most of the rest will be in the burbs or perhaps now also in other parts of DC, namely NW.

That's the same thing with Manhattan.

But what some of you smug college educated liberals are also wholly ignoring in your biases is that the number of poor families is rapidly declining in the high cost big cities. But since you never see those families or that demographics beyond as service workers or cleaners in your house and you don't care about them or their kids, they obviously don't count as real people in your mind, so your personal experience of seeing more yuppies pushing strollers around the Hill is much more valid and real than the overall decline in numbers of youths across all of DC or NYC, which is likely driven by the rapid gentrification pushing out poorer households and their kids to be replaced by childless single professionals and dinks. That's why the average household size is shrinking, even if the total number of households increases.

My NW zip code is more expensive that most in Cap Hill, and it has been since the 90s. Carry on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I know this idea of increasing housing supply is like a religion to its advocates, and there's no evidence anyone could ever present that would change their mind, but there is a fundamental contradiction in their arguments.

An area is expensive because lots of people want to live there. Some people get shut out because of the prices are too high. If you create more housing in the area -- enough to actually affect the prices -- more people will show up to buy them, including all those people who had been shut out. That will bid up prices. So prices won't actually go down -- this might go up beyond what they would have otherwise been, and you'll just have more people all trying to live in the same area.

Prices won't go down until the area becomes less desirable. Have you every gone to one of those beach towns that are horribly overbuilt? And you just want to get out of there because there are too many people and it is so ugly? It's like that.

Prices won't go down until supply exceeds demand.

Those beach towns are so crowded, nobody goes there anymore.

[Anonymous]

This whole debate boils down to the frustrated expectations of 30-year old white guys.

It's always some guy who moved to Washington from Pennsylvania. Back home, he grew up in a big house in a nice neighborhood. His parents made a lot of money. He studied hard and went to a good school and then moved here.

But he went into a profession that pays peanuts and he realized he's never going to be able to afford a place like where he grew up. He has champagne taste and a beer budget. Now he is lobbying politicians to fix everything for him, to make things more like they were back home. He wants them to change the zoning laws to create more units so that he can live in neighborhoods he'd otherwise never be able to afford and so he doesn't have to have long commutes or worry about crime. All the people worried about shady real estate developers and overcrowded schools and disappearing green space and ugly condo developments can take a hike.

You want to know what white privilege looks like? This is what white privilege looks like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
An area is expensive because lots of people want to live there. Some people get shut out because of the prices are too high. If you create more housing in the area -- enough to actually affect the prices -- more people will show up to buy them, including all those people who had been shut out. That will bid up prices. So prices won't actually go down -- this might go up beyond what they would have otherwise been, and you'll just have more people all trying to live in the same area.

So lets say the amount of housing in the District doubled. Instead of housing for 750k people you have housing for 1.5 million. Lets say prices/rents for apts/condos drop by 5%.

Are there 750k people currently living in the rest of the metro area who would move to DC (to apts/condos) because its now 5% cheaper than it was? I mean lots of people living in the suburbs work in the suburbs, and are going to need a huge discount to reverse commute. Some work in DC, but don't want to live in a condo or apt.

Maybe there are 750k people who live in the suburbs, who either already live in apts/condos or would be interested in doing so, and who work in DC. But even among those, there are plenty who just like the suburbs more.

Now maybe if rents/prices went down by 20%. you would get more. That only shows there are limits to the rent/price decrease. Its VERY unlikely there would be no price decrease - because that implies all the new units would be filled even if prices/rents only went down by one percent say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole debate boils down to the frustrated expectations of 30-year old white guys.


All the people worried about shady real estate developers and overcrowded schools and disappearing green space and ugly condo developments can take a hike.

No. There are people of a range of ages, of different races, of different genders and orientations who are concerned about this.

The NIMBYs though are mostly old white people afraid of change.

DC can build more schools and lots of its schools have excess capacity (perhaps PP is signaling they live in upper Ward 3).

No new developments happen on parks, and private green space is not a park. Many new developments create more useable open space.

Plenty of old buildings are ugly, and new ones that are not.

Developers are no more shady than any other business, nor more shady than the developers who build the preciouse detached SFHs generations ago. Certainly no more shady than people who speculate in existing housing, who benefit when supply is limited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It's not a false equivalency because, in both cases, the idea is that if you help rich people, eventually average people will benefit too.

So its impossible that ANY policy that helps upper middle class people (not rich people, they don't move to 1BR condos in Shaw - they are the folks in the big houses in Cleveland Park fighting change) could also help lower middle class or poor people?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole debate boils down to the frustrated expectations of 30-year old white guys.

It's always some guy who moved to Washington from Pennsylvania. Back home, he grew up in a big house in a nice neighborhood. His parents made a lot of money. He studied hard and went to a good school and then moved here.

But he went into a profession that pays peanuts and he realized he's never going to be able to afford a place like where he grew up. He has champagne taste and a beer budget. Now he is lobbying politicians to fix everything for him, to make things more like they were back home. He wants them to change the zoning laws to create more units so that he can live in neighborhoods he'd otherwise never be able to afford and so he doesn't have to have long commutes or worry about crime. All the people worried about shady real estate developers and overcrowded schools and disappearing green space and ugly condo developments can take a hike.

You want to know what white privilege looks like? This is what white privilege looks like.

He grew up in a big house in a nice neighborhood in suburban Pennsylvania, so he wants the city to change zoning laws so that he can live in a condo in a high-rise in DC (in response to which, people tell him to go live in "Anacostia") - and that's what white privilege looks like? That doesn't even make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole debate boils down to the frustrated expectations of 30-year old white guys.


All the people worried about shady real estate developers and overcrowded schools and disappearing green space and ugly condo developments can take a hike.

No. There are people of a range of ages, of different races, of different genders and orientations who are concerned about this.

The NIMBYs though are mostly old white people afraid of change.

DC can build more schools and lots of its schools have excess capacity (perhaps PP is signaling they live in upper Ward 3).

No new developments happen on parks, and private green space is not a park. Many new developments create more useable open space.

Plenty of old buildings are ugly, and new ones that are not.

Developers are no more shady than any other business, nor more shady than the developers who build the preciouse detached SFHs generations ago. Certainly no more shady than people who speculate in existing housing, who benefit when supply is limited.

Problem is, DC proper itself is relatively small. The rich areas of DC will never change, the only other areas of DC they can take now is near Anacostia. There's that new Parkland neighborhood being built near the Minnesota Ave Metro station. But of course, it deals with kicking out poor black folks from their neighborhood.