Overriding local zoning to allow multi-family units in suburban neighborhoods in VA
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Anonymous
Which poor areas with significant numbers of abandoned properties do you suggest as good alternatives for new housing in Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax? |
Anonymous
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Many of the people advocating for more density in SFH neighborhoods are people of color who want access to the schools. They don't have inherited wealth and want to get more affordable access, if possible.
I've found that most of the white people crowing about density are the petit bourgeosis landlords who own a couple units of housing. They want to redevelop to multi-units to make more money and maybe stick a couple units on AirBnB. |
Anonymous
They really, really, really don't want to be EOTP. |
Anonymous
Except there are a TON of white people - including families enrolled in DCPS and charters - living EOTP. I don't have data to back me up, but I wouldn't be surprised if 60%+ of housing transactions EOTP over the last 5 years were purchases by white people. The move to add density to SFH neighborhoods is largely being driven by advocates for communities of color and anti-poverty movement. Look at Mayor Bowser's plan to up-zone Ward 3 - it's all in an effort to add affordable housing. It sure as hell is not being done to placate white people. |
Anonymous
Have you been EOTP lately? |
Anonymous
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Economist here, I posted far up-thread about this proposal. Just wanted to chime back in on the whole "If building more housing reduces prices, then why are the densest cities in the U.S. also the most expensive?" question. This is a somewhat technical answer, but if people actually claim to want answers to the questions they ask, then this is what they get. Feel free to ask questions, I'm not a complete expert but this is a topic of interest to me so I'm happy to delve into the literature.
Urban economists have a long history of building stylized models of cities, then using what are called comparative statics to analyze how things propagate through the model when you change just one thing at a time. Because cities are not simple to model, and these models are designed to be tractable, they have to make a lot of simplifying assumptions. But, that makes it easier to understand what is going on in the model. One of the most unintuitive (but largely necessary) of these assumptions is that there are no housing market frictions. That is, they model housing consumption as something that people have complete freedom to choose an amount of in any location. In other words, I can in principle live in any size house in any place (though I will have to pay for it), while the "optimal" house size that consumers will choose for any place is something that arises in equilibrium. If we think that zoning regulations are binding, that is akin to saying that people cannot in fact consume the amount of space that they would consume in equilibrium. In the context of upzoning, this is usually meant to assume that people are required to consume more land if they live in a particular location than they might otherwise choose. What follows is loosely based on Brueckner (1987). In the classic monocentric city model, identical people (same preferences, same income) consume a combination of housing and everything else, and they pay commuting costs to get to work in the city center that are increasing in distance. Because everyone is ex ante identical and because housing markets are competitive, everyone achieves the same utility wherever they live. But, closer-in residents consume less housing (live in denser conditions). This is because the price per square foot of closer-in housing ends up being higher, since people are willing to pay to avoid commuting costs. Moreover, the larger the city, the more dense its center becomes, and the higher the prices in the center become, absent regulatory restrictions. Loosely speaking, in this baseline model, you can think of removing a binding zoning constraint in part of the city by upzoning as similar to adding a bunch of potentially usable space to the city in that one particular location with one particular commuting cost (this isn't quite exact, but the mechanics operate the same way). Assume, for simplicity, that we have a "closed city" with no migration from other cities. Then, upzoning means that there is now, in effect, more space to populate that is closer to the city. But, the "size" of the city (distance of its furthest resident to the center city) is pinned down by the marginal cost of commuting further (which is constant) equaling the marginal benefit of commuting further (value of increased possible consumption of housing and other things). So, what happens is that the city actually shrinks in space (i.e. less exurban expansion). The most distant person can consume the same amount of housing as before, but they commute less, and that means that they must be better off. Therefore, because everyone achieves the same utility as that most distant person, everyone must be better off. This "reduction in city size" effect is partially offset, however, because land prices actually fall, and that allows everyone who lives in the non-upzoned area to afford a bit more housing. But, on net, everyone is better off, prices fall everywhere, and most people actually get to consume more housing because we have freed up land that was not being put to its most productive use. That remains true even though the places with the densest housing are also the most expensive. This model is very simple, so you might ask what happens when you change a few things: - If you add migration across cities to the model, then larger cities are larger either because they offer higher incomes (likely), better non-housing amenities (likely in many cases), or lower commuting costs (unlikely). The cities that end up being largest are the most expensive and the densest cities. The mechanics of what happens under upzoning still work the same way. However, since people migrate to the places where zoning regulations are relaxed, the utility benefits of upzoning (though still positive) may be much smaller for local residents. This is because the benefit of upzoning in one city is now shared among residents of all cities. - If you add congestion costs (increasing density increases commuting costs), then the shape of the location-price curve will look different, and the city may look more compact in equilibrium. However, the basic results of the model still hold. The gains from upzoning are likely to be smaller because they are offset by increased commuting costs, but the comparative statics still hold. - If you change the model to allow people to have different incomes, then all else equal, people with higher incomes will tend to live further away from the urban center. That matches pretty well to U.S. cities of the 1970s and 1980s when that model was developed, but it doesn't match European cities, nor the trend in American cities of today. However, this can be easily explained by the existence of local amenities within a city (e.g. restaurants, the symphony, etc.), which draw higher-income people who are able to consume those amenities back into the city (Gaigne et al 2017; See and Lin 2018). All else equal, high-amenity locations will have higher prices, and if the highest-amenity locations are also dense, then this will exacerbate the relationship between high density and high price. However, the comparative statics of upzoning do not change. - One argument that has been commonly made in recent literature is that increased density may actually _make_ people more productive because of what are called agglomeration effects. For example, car manufacturers may find it easier to find and retain the people people for each job opening in a city that is dense with car manufacturers. And, engineers and inventors may be able to learn from each other more easily. As shown by Eeckhout, Pinheiro, and Schmidheiny (2014), these effects are likely to benefit both high-skilled and low-skilled workers within the city. And, if this is the case, then upzoning may actually lead to increased productivity, and therefore higher incomes and increased welfare overall, even though the most productive cities may still have the highest housing costs. Hsieh and Moretti (2019) suggest that this effect is quite large, claiming that supply restrictions have lowered aggregate growth in the U.S. by more than one third since the 1960s. Hope this helps clear some things up! |
Anonymous
Nothing at all unfair or unjust about this. Some people don't want to live packed like sardines. Why should you get to tell me how I should live? And this option is open to all those that can afford it, including plenty of people of color who live this way now and enjoy their single family homes and the space that comes with them. Maybe I would love to have a beach front property in Hawaii. You know what - can't afford it. I don't expect the government to change the laws so that I can. |
Anonymous
Not under government control: -Whether a property fronts on a beach -Whether a property is in Hawaii Under government control: -Zoning laws |
Anonymous
Yes, I don't expect the government to change the Zoning laws so that more people can afford to live on the beach in Hawaii. Especially if there are already existing home there. |
Anonymous
Right, whereas it is entirely reasonable to expect the government to change the zoning laws so that more people can live in close-in areas - especially given that it's that's fiscally prudent, good for the environment, desired by many people, and advances property rights. |
Anonymous
And it would be one thing to work from the inside out, but it is an entirely different thing to say that every neighborhood must allow multifamily housing of some sort. Especially if housing is already developed. I find that urban dwellers are becoming increasingly authoritarian in their views and really wish to impose their world on others. |
Anonymous
We're talking about allowing property owners to build duplexes on their property if they so choose. One thing that isn't, is authoritarian. Another thing that isn't, is imposing somebody's world on somebody else. Telling property owners that they may only build one-family residences on their property, on the other hand... |
Anonymous
I think we are coming at this from different angles. Most of our suburban neighborhoods (single family homes) were built in planned or semi-planned ways. So to now have people come in and build duplexes or other forms of multi-family housing screws with the neighbors. Indeed, this would be imposing your world on others. These aren't one off properties, these are established neighborhoods with tight controls (some more controlling than others). You know, you can only paint your house one of these six earth tone colors... So to now say you can build an entire extra dwelling is a bit extreme. This is what people will fight. And to me it all comes from urban dwellers wanting to force density on people who do not want it. They chose the single family homes for a reason. |
Anonymous
| I live in a neighborhood with a nearby apartment complex that results, essentially, a split neighborhood with one side making about twice as much money as the other. The apartments are billed as "luxury" and are not affordable housing. But there is a major cultural difference between someone who squeezes a family of four into a $2k/month two bedroom apartment and someone with a family of 4 in a house with a $5k/month mortgage. Almost all of the cultural problems in the school, on the bus, and even around the neighborhood streets are caused by the apartment dwellers. Lack of respect for rules like parking spaces zoned for certain permits, bullying on the buses, theft (luckily the theft is all within-apartment so far and hasn't spread to SFH), and even a couple of times I have been road-raged on by people who live in the apartments elsewhere around town only to later see their car pulling into the apartments! So no, please, keep cheaper housing away from me. All people are not created equal, unfortunately. |
Anonymous
Agree. There are plenty of options in the DMV area for people who like 'urban' living. Not even just in DC. Some of us like the suburbs. Some of us prefer rural living. The point is, the urban-lovers don't have to force their choice on the rest of us. |