Do you have any advice re: fighting popups/popbacks, etc?
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Anonymous
We should ban sales of new cars. That way only affordable used cars will be on the market. |
Anonymous
no. our neighborhood is gentrifying but we've been there forever. |
Anonymous
Imagine a line of rowhouses. A developer buys one, and guts it. The developer adds a floor or two (the popup), then extends the building in the back, into what had been the backyard (the popback). Sometimes they add a second building in the back of the backyard. Basically the developer tries to cram as many condo units as humanly possible onto a lot that had been designed for a single home. They sometimes put six condos where a house had been. The whole thing makes a mockery of zoning laws. They are almost always extremely ugly -- the developer makes no effort to match the architecture of the neighborhood. And they are comically large, towering over their neighbors. Also, all of this is pretty much only allowed in historically black neighborhoods. You will never ever see anything like this in wealthy white neighborhoods which have banned such developments. Advocates try to portray this as increasing the affordability of housing, but that's just spin. These are luxury condos they're building. They can cost $1 million each. They're not for average people. It's a great business for developers. They can buy a house for $500,000. Spend $500,000 or $1M on construction. And have six condos they can sell for a total of almost $6 million. Pretty good profit. |
Anonymous
They don't have them in Iowa, Jethro, don't worry about it. If you don;t know, your opinion wouldn't be worth much anyway. |
Anonymous
Is this a joke? DC wasn't shrinking then because of crowding. This was the infamous white flight. In 20 years, 300,000 white people left DC. It had nothing to do with crowding. It had everything to do with racial animosity. |
Anonymous
There was departure from center cities in other metro areas with few blacks, IIUC. While race played a role, the desire to have more sq ft per person also was a factor. Why do you think asking "is this a joke" "are you for real" are compelling arguments? |
Anonymous
Building up. Typically a rowhouse in DC where a developer will add 1-2 stories and turn into condos. |
Anonymous
They are done in accordance with zoning laws.
I find some of them attractive.
One of the most controversial was built down the black from a LARGER apt building. Of course when you have entire block of them, they no longer tower over their neighbors at all.
The only white neighborhood that stoppeed them was Lanier Heights, IIRC. That was of course a mistake, and should be undone. But most of the places where pop ups are done now are already white.
Actually they tend to run about 800k for a 2BR, less for smaller or less well located ones. If the 500k rowhouses were NOT popped up, they would still be flipped, and renovated, and generally would sell for one million or quite a bit more. To me an 800k 2BR condo, or a 600K one bedroom condo, is more affordable than a 1.3 million buck SFH. Some people think that banning popups would prevent flipping and gentrification. I do not believe that is the case. |
Anonymous
Not everyone with kids wants a single family home. We live happily in a condo building with other families with children - three of the four condos have kids. |
Anonymous
I didn't write the "are you for real" comment -- that was someone else. And is it totally bizarre to suggest people left DC because of crowding. This is a famous chapter DC history and to suggest it had to do with crowding, it just strange (and completely wrong). Do you think people left in the wake of the '68 riots because they wanted a bigger backyard? Also, I don't care about convincing anyone of anything. The whole idea that housing prices go up so much in DC because of limited housing supply it just nonsense -- it's the Federal Reserve that's doing it -- but people believe whatever they want to believe. No one ever changes their mind about anything. |
Anonymous
DC's population dropped sharply BEFORE the riots - it declined by 40,000 between 1950 and 1960. From all I can gather people DID move to the suburbs for more space, as they did elsewhere. Note, that the decennial census hides that DC likely peaked in population during WW2 (when conditions were so crowded that people "hot sheeted" - one person used a bed at night, and their shift working roommate used it during the day) and even in 1950 it had likely not all been worked off. As for the Fed, why have their policies not led to high housing prices in Flint, or Detroit? And why are RENTS high in DC? While year to year housing sales price fluctuations are heavily driven by interest rates, the larger issues of housing affordability are much more driven by demand. |
Anonymous
An exception to every rule. Let me guess: You're doing it because you want your kids to go to Murch/Deal/Wilson? I cannot imagine living with my children in a condo. They have such boundless energy they'd be bouncing off the walls. It would be like getting a border collie or some other high-energy dog and forcing it to live in a closet. |
Anonymous
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https://ggwash.org/view/31818/an-alien-notion-800000-dc-residents
The 1950 census found 14.1% of the District’s 224,142 occupied housing units to be “overcrowded” (with over 1 person per room). By 2011, that figure had fallen by 2/3, to 4.7%, similar to the 5.3% of homes in 1950 that were extremely overcrowded (more than 1.5 occupants per room). This crowding meant that on average, every apartment and house in DC had one more person living inside: households were 50.2% larger! In 1950, 3.2 people occupied each dwelling unit. In 2007-2011, the number of persons per household had fallen to 2.13, so the city’s population still fell to 617,996. That decline would have been much steeper had the city not built 74,760 new housing units: the city’s population would have plunged to 477,422, and the nation’s capital would be less populous than Fresno. Household size shrank nationwide as families changed. In 1960, married couples with children outnumbered single-person households almost three to one. In 2010, singles easily outnumbered nuclear families nationwide, and by 5.57 to one in DC. |
Anonymous
Different people are different and different children are different. Not sure why that concept is hard to grasp. |
Anonymous
SOME BORDER COLLIES LIKE LIVING IN THE CLOSET! |