Cities with No Children

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

When you're an economist with a model, it's easy to assume that the vacancy rate will remain unchanged because however many units get built, people (from somewhere) will move into them. But how would that work out in real life? There's a good reason why the old "assume there's a can opener" economist joke is a cliche.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Says who?

[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.

it's really mostly liberal male urban planners who are perplexed why the real world doesn't work like their utopian urban planning textbooks

David Albert having a SFH in the city make their heads explode too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Says who?

Says the NIMBYs in places like Kalamora and Georgetown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Says who?

Says the NIMBYs in places like Kalamora and Georgetown.

They can say whatever they want. Whether that's what actually happens, is a different question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

it's really mostly liberal male urban planners who are perplexed why the real world doesn't work like their utopian urban planning textbooks

David Albert having a SFH in the city make their heads explode too

Alpert. And I think that the urban planners have a pretty good understanding that the real world doesn't work like their textbooks, and if they don't, all it takes is one ANC meeting with a bike lane on the agenda.

[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 think you just need to pack up and move to NYC. Really. There is nothing else I can say, you have to try it out for yourself, live the apartment life yourself, raise kids there if you even have any, until then you will not know what it's like and all your "arguments" are nothing more than mental masturbation. I live there and raise a family there in an apartment, and I had wasted enough time explaining what it's like and why and why not. You don't want to listen to anything anyone says and you have offered no attempt to answer any of the questions, mainly the MONEY question. Who will pay and/or take profit cuts and how to mitigate the simple fact that RE is an asset, privately owned and that government cannot build anything in whatever quantity wherever they want and continue spending to maintain housing for those who cannot pay.

Another aspect of money question has to do with type of new apartment construction, clearly not geared towards families and the whole public school situation. Family apartments that can COMPETE with private homes are very expensive to build and maintain. You need more convenient and connected neighborhood, larger sqft, practical floor plans, great sound insulation and family friendly building and neighborhood amenities. All of this costs more to developers and prices for these apartments are very high. People who have options for rowhouse/SFH living for the same or cheaper price would choose the latter, so developers build smaller units and skimp on family friendly factor. Only in NYC where people are desperate enough you would have families crammed into small apartments with no amenities, even walkups in exchange for reasonable commute, because privacy and space means far away from the city. The tendency of families is still to move further out vs. be crammed and you cannot force people do to otherwise, even in NYC, where many do end up going for the burbs or move out of NYC altogether. Even lifetime NYers who raise kids and grandkids in the city opt to increase their living space, they often buy adjoining apartments, they sell and buy bigger units, they remodel, etc. They also often move to outer boroughs like Brooklyn where they can at least afford rowhouse living for the same price.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why people think that apartments, let alone families in apartments, are only a thing in New York City and nowhere else in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why people think that apartments, let alone families in apartments, are only a thing in New York City and nowhere else in the world.

I don't think anyone is arguing that

What people are arguing is that the United States and what Americans want is very different than want people want and/or put up with in SE Asia where I agree people living in giant apartment/condo towers is very common.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why people think that apartments, let alone families in apartments, are only a thing in New York City and nowhere else in the world.

I don't think anyone is arguing that

What people are arguing is that the United States and what Americans want is very different than want people want and/or put up with in SE Asia where I agree people living in giant apartment/condo towers is very common.

Ah. People are arguing that Americans don't want to live in apartments, except in New York City.

I would roll my eyes, but that wouldn't be polite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

it's really mostly liberal male urban planners who are perplexed why the real world doesn't work like their utopian urban planning textbooks

David Albert having a SFH in the city make their heads explode too

We restrict supply, we get high prices. Works exactly like my econ textbooks said.

And there is nothing wrong with a person buying a SFH in the city. Its pushing for policies that privilege that, or otherwise interfere with good solutions, that is the problem. Its about policies, not about private choices.

Also the attacks on individuals, esp on DA, here in an anon forum, are repulsive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live there and raise a family there in an apartment, and I had wasted enough time explaining what it's like and why and why not.

Have you considered posting on a NYC message board, and not a DC area one?

[Anonymous]

I think you just need to pack up and move to NYC. Really.

I live in NoVa. In an apt. I don't need to move to NYC.

You don't want to listen to anything anyone says and you have offered no attempt to answer any of the questions, mainly the MONEY question. Who will pay and/or take profit cuts and how to mitigate the simple fact that RE is an asset, privately owned and that government cannot build anything in whatever quantity wherever they want and continue spending to maintain housing for those who cannot pay.

I have answered that repeatedly. We need both more market rate housing and more committed AH. Developers are eager to build market rate, and do, and will build at lower prices when market conditions push in that direction (and they will still make money). Committed AH can be financed in many different ways.

Another aspect of money question has to do with type of new apartment construction, clearly not geared towards families and the whole public school situation. Family apartments that can COMPETE with private homes are very expensive to build and maintain. You need more convenient and connected neighborhood, larger sqft, practical floor plans, great sound insulation and family friendly building and neighborhood amenities. All of this costs more to developers and prices for these apartments are very high.

Even with current prices many families live in apts in DC, Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church (enough that in Falls Church the failure of planners to adequately forecast the number of new school kids from new market rate apts became an issue)

in exchange for reasonable commute,

Since you do not live in the DC area , you may not be aware of the commute considerations impacting people in greater DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why people think that apartments, let alone families in apartments, are only a thing in New York City and nowhere else in the world.

If you look at the world at large, apartment living is more prevalent in dense cities where employment is city-centric and there aren't many residential areas where one can have a private home without having to go far out. Is this not true?

There are tons of people living in low rise and rural circumstances all over the world. You make it sound like most people prefer to live in 30-story towers and it's all by choice and that's how most of the world lives. Heavily populated cities provide fewer options for private home ownership, that's all there is, so if you must live there, your choice is apartment living. Given choices like most American cities offer due to lower density, not every family would choose apartment living.

In general people do not like to be severely crowded, it causes stress. Ideal living is when you are still in close enough proximity to others to enable advantages of living within a community but not too close that you feel squeezed and have zero privacy. For this reason people love walkable suburbs with smaller lots, rowhouse communities and large luxury apartments. The reason people live in crowded circumstances is usually lack of other choices or other choices being even worse economically or safety wise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why people think that apartments, let alone families in apartments, are only a thing in New York City and nowhere else in the world.

If you look at the world at large, apartment living is more prevalent in dense cities where employment is city-centric and there aren't many residential areas where one can have a private home without having to go far out. Is this not true?

There are tons of people living in low rise and rural circumstances all over the world. You make it sound like most people prefer to live in 30-story towers and it's all by choice and that's how most of the world lives. Heavily populated cities provide fewer options for private home ownership, that's all there is, so if you must live there, your choice is apartment living. Given choices like most American cities offer due to lower density, not every family would choose apartment living.

In general people do not like to be severely crowded, it causes stress. Ideal living is when you are still in close enough proximity to others to enable advantages of living within a community but not too close that you feel squeezed and have zero privacy. For this reason people love walkable suburbs with smaller lots, rowhouse communities and large luxury apartments. The reason people live in crowded circumstances is usually lack of other choices or other choices being even worse economically or safety wise.

Who said anything about 30-story towers? The discussion is about apartments. You can certainly have apartments without 30-story towers.