Agreed. But Jawando won’t build more housing in a thoughtful way — he’ll use that rhetoric as an excuse to refrain from building smart housing. Vote Glass! |
Nothing that Jawando voted against was smart. |
Agree to disagree, but hard to frame a candidate who doesn’t vote to build more housing as pro-housing. |
You can be pro-housing without voting for bad bills. |
Yes, and being pro-housing typically entails voting for good housing bills (or proposing your own), which Jawando hasn’t done. |
You don't like the housing production fund or the conversion of the Chevy Chase library to mixed use? Or did you not like allowing more density near metro stations? Or maybe you don't like renter protections? There's an arrogance to YIMBYism that's totally unjustified by what it has produced. REITs and privately held development companies have done really well. Housing production hasn't done quite as well. |
I love renter protections and appreciate how strong Jawando has been on that issue. I also think they need to be coupled with incentives for more housing production. When supply goes up, demand will go down and prices will follow. It’s all part of a balanced approach. |
We’ve done a lot of incentives and they haven’t caused production to increase. Maybe the incentives are too friendly to people who want to drag their feet. I don’t think we should do any more Friedson-style incentives with long timelines to start building. I could be open to incentives with shorter windows but only if they’re paired with sticks for people who don’t do anything. |
If supply goes up, supply goes up. It might or might not have the intended effect on housing because they will not be perfect substitutions. This is why we should properly plan and zone housing instead of trying to do serious things by acting like a college sophomore that just discovered libertarianism via his weed dealer. |
Zoning reform is good. You might find this research article insightful. https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units |
Also seems important to distinguish between two arguments about housing in this thread: a) more housing production won’t make housing more affordable/accessible, and b) existing MoCo housing policy is not effective at producing more housing. If you believe a), b) is irrelevant. |
They’re somewhat related. More housing production can make housing more affordable/accessible. But under what conditions will builders add enough inventory to cause prices to fall? In Austin, for example, rents went up 35 percent in two years before builders added enough inventory to bring prices back down. Our long-term rent trend is about 2.1 percent annual rent increases. Austin experienced more than 14 years of increases (at our rate) in just two years. Even after the housing production boom, Austin’s prices have still risen more in the past 10 years than prices here have. I would not trade our housing market for Austin’s (though I would trade the rest of our economy for Austin’s), because consumers there are worse off than they were a decade ago. Incidentally, slumping prices in Austin have led to a slump in construction, calling into question whether supply booms are sustainable. Because it’s possible for more supply to bring down prices by adding inventory, at least for a short time, (b) is very much relevant, especially because (b) has real financial costs to the county and therefore taxpayers. We should want areas like North Bethesda to have more housing (and labs and offices). North Bethesda had a little boom about a decade ago, but then prices fell a little, and construction fell off. Builders in that area cited soft demand and poor road infrastructure as reasons for the stop in construction. Every builder has to decide whether to add supply or wait. In areas like Bethesda, Glenmont, Wheaton, and Silver Spring, where we have made big infrastructure investments, we’re better off if developers decide to build. The question is how to make them build without having to experience rapid price increases first. The county’s housing policy has failed to bring prices down, but at the same time rents have been stable here relative to rents in places that have added enough supply to bring prices down. Elected and appointed officials have said they want to bring prices down, but what we have instead is a slow but steady rise in rents. That’s still the case despite the various incentives. Therefore, it’s fair to say the housing policies advanced by Friedson have failed. They’re delivering nothing more than the market delivered on its own but at a high cost to the county’s budget. |
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Housing won’t become more affordable until steps are taken to prevent individuals and shell companies from snatching up homes as soon as they hit the market and flipping them to rentals. Then these PT real estate moguls or for-profit companies essentially control FMV for rent while driving up sales prices with their speedy purchases.
Tearing down SFHs and throwing up multi unit housing or plopping tiny homes in backyards won’t fix the problem. They’ll just enrich certain people and corporations while crowding neighborhoods and schools AND driving down values, fueling the continued exodus of the wealthiest taxpayers. A lose-lose “solution.” |
A lot more could happen with the completion of the site at the now demolished White Flint mall: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1217123.page https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1217123.page |
There are a few nursing homes or senior living built by the Strathmore metro stop or condo living added in anticipation of Woodward High school which is up and open on nearby Old Georgetown Road. |