We need to build more: gentrification caused by blocking housing construction (not the opposite!)

[Anonymous]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/anti-growth-alliance-fueled-urban-gentrification/617525/

The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives’ Theory About Gentrification
The ‘gentrification-industrial complex’ isn’t who anti-growth progressives think it is.

The cause of the drop should hardly be surprising. The pandemic has radically decreased demand for big-city living while also increasing the quantity of available apartments.


Yet this basic fact, plain for all to see, flies in the face of much received wisdom about the factors that cause urban housing prices to go up or down. Among some leftists and liberals alike, as well as the politicians who court them, the idea that developers of pricey apartments and condo buildings are to blame for high housing prices has long been an article of faith. In this telling, new luxury housing is the reason that former working- and middle-class neighborhoods in their cities have become fancy enclaves. (“You know exactly what a gentrification building looks like,” read a recent viral tweet.) Fighting the construction of such housing would not only reverse the trend of unaffordability, but from the perspective of politicians and activists would also demonstrate support for working-class residents in the process. Since the spring, the pandemic has prompted a steady flow of stories about how urban life will change forever. But COVID-19’s most lasting impact on cities might be in helping put to rest this most persistent of myths about the relationship between housing supply, the cost of living, and that four-letter word of urban politics: gentrification. Not only is it a simplistic analysis that absolves nearly anyone who isn’t a developer of responsibility for the problem, but in portraying new housing as the proximate cause of gentrification it exacerbates the very housing crisis it seeks to solve.

It's just supply and demand. DC needs WAY. MORE. HOUSING. We need to build a lot more.

And the reason we don't build more is that zoning law makes it illegal to build more new housing.

What we need to do: upzone the whole city. Allow pop-ups. Stop historical districts from slowing down housing. Allow replacing single-family-homes with 6-unit apartment buildings all over the city but especially in Ward 4.

Yes, that will make homeowners property values go down. That's the core reason we have gentrification! That's what NIMBYism IS.

Build more. Upzone. Or face a housing shortage and a city that's unaffordable for everyone except the very rich.

[Anonymous]

Rather - it's already unaffordable except for the very rich. To fix that, we need to make it easier for mid-level developers to build. Because in the current environment where housing is so scarce, only luxury developers can make the effort to get through zoning hurdles to build.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rather - it's already unaffordable except for the very rich. To fix that, we need to make it easier for mid-level developers to build. Because in the current environment where housing is so scarce, only luxury developers can make the effort to get through zoning hurdles to build.

We are involved with several developments in DC. The amount bureaucratic cost and time needed to proceed on a project makes it cost effective only if the resulting units are sold/rented at ”luxury" level prices. I don't pretend to know what he right balance, is but if DC or any other city wants lower cost housing units, they have the lower the barrier to entry for developers. Competition = lower prices. As is, our projects are run by a large team of experienced managers and contractors. This team is very expensive to hire and retain. Their purpose is not to build a good quality structure - we build similar quality buildings elsewhere without needing this much administrative fire power. This situation benefits no one. Even the DC employees themselves don't enjoy the roadblocks they are required to erect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/anti-growth-alliance-fueled-urban-gentrification/617525/

The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives’ Theory About Gentrification
The ‘gentrification-industrial complex’ isn’t who anti-growth progressives think it is.

The cause of the drop should hardly be surprising. The pandemic has radically decreased demand for big-city living while also increasing the quantity of available apartments.


Yet this basic fact, plain for all to see, flies in the face of much received wisdom about the factors that cause urban housing prices to go up or down. Among some leftists and liberals alike, as well as the politicians who court them, the idea that developers of pricey apartments and condo buildings are to blame for high housing prices has long been an article of faith. In this telling, new luxury housing is the reason that former working- and middle-class neighborhoods in their cities have become fancy enclaves. (“You know exactly what a gentrification building looks like,” read a recent viral tweet.) Fighting the construction of such housing would not only reverse the trend of unaffordability, but from the perspective of politicians and activists would also demonstrate support for working-class residents in the process. Since the spring, the pandemic has prompted a steady flow of stories about how urban life will change forever. But COVID-19’s most lasting impact on cities might be in helping put to rest this most persistent of myths about the relationship between housing supply, the cost of living, and that four-letter word of urban politics: gentrification. Not only is it a simplistic analysis that absolves nearly anyone who isn’t a developer of responsibility for the problem, but in portraying new housing as the proximate cause of gentrification it exacerbates the very housing crisis it seeks to solve.

It's just supply and demand. DC needs WAY. MORE. HOUSING. We need to build a lot more.

And the reason we don't build more is that zoning law makes it illegal to build more new housing.

What we need to do: upzone the whole city. Allow pop-ups. Stop historical districts from slowing down housing. Allow replacing single-family-homes with 6-unit apartment buildings all over the city but especially in Ward 4.

Yes, that will make homeowners property values go down. That's the core reason we have gentrification! That's what NIMBYism IS.

Build more. Upzone. Or face a housing shortage and a city that's unaffordable for everyone except the very rich.

Sounds like an amazing place to live + work (not)

[Anonymous]

Previous post is a non-DC person, obviously. It’s ok, you can stay in your red area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rather - it's already unaffordable except for the very rich. To fix that, we need to make it easier for mid-level developers to build. Because in the current environment where housing is so scarce, only luxury developers can make the effort to get through zoning hurdles to build.

We are involved with several developments in DC. The amount bureaucratic cost and time needed to proceed on a project makes it cost effective only if the resulting units are sold/rented at ”luxury" level prices. I don't pretend to know what he right balance, is but if DC or any other city wants lower cost housing units, they have the lower the barrier to entry for developers. Competition = lower prices. As is, our projects are run by a large team of experienced managers and contractors. This team is very expensive to hire and retain. Their purpose is not to build a good quality structure - we build similar quality buildings elsewhere without needing this much administrative fire power. This situation benefits no one. Even the DC employees themselves don't enjoy the roadblocks they are required to erect.

This is totally the problem. Zoning laws are so restrictive that they basicallly make it illegal to build new housing unless you have a LOT of money to spend on getting past zoning hurdles.

The whole YIMBY movement is trying to fix zoning law to allow building more housing.

[Anonymous]

Pop ups are hideous

[Anonymous]

Architect here. Most of the cost of new housing in dc is dealing with the totally insane bureaucracy. It’s shameful. There should be a lot more public outrage about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Previous post is a non-DC person, obviously. It’s ok, you can stay in your red area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rather - it's already unaffordable except for the very rich. To fix that, we need to make it easier for mid-level developers to build. Because in the current environment where housing is so scarce, only luxury developers can make the effort to get through zoning hurdles to build.

We are involved with several developments in DC. The amount bureaucratic cost and time needed to proceed on a project makes it cost effective only if the resulting units are sold/rented at ”luxury" level prices. I don't pretend to know what he right balance, is but if DC or any other city wants lower cost housing units, they have the lower the barrier to entry for developers. Competition = lower prices. As is, our projects are run by a large team of experienced managers and contractors. This team is very expensive to hire and retain. Their purpose is not to build a good quality structure - we build similar quality buildings elsewhere without needing this much administrative fire power. This situation benefits no one. Even the DC employees themselves don't enjoy the roadblocks they are required to erect.

This is totally the problem. Zoning laws are so restrictive that they basicallly make it illegal to build new housing unless you have a LOT of money to spend on getting past zoning hurdles.

The whole YIMBY movement is trying to fix zoning law to allow building more housing.

This. I know people who work in housing development in DC and are trying to provide opportunities for POC and smaller developers to gain access to properties and funding in the city. It's incredibly hard, and there are a series of structural barriers that work together to make it difficult. And DC politics is structured around these binaries (black versus white, poor versus UMC, progressives versus capitalists) but good policy doesn't break down along those lines that cleanly. I'm a hardcore progressive and have learned that I sometimes need to go hard in support of development because the alternative isn't "no development". It's just richer, whiter, more gentrified development. So you need to fight hard for more affordable housing, more family housing, more housing built by local developers and especially local POC. Because if you fight that stuff, all you've done is kick the can down the road, and it will be picked up by one of the huge national or regional developers who will turn it into luxury condos for young urban professionals, rent their commercial space to banks and chains, and take all their profits out of DC.

OP is right -- we have to build much, much more. So why not find ways to do it so that the money stays in DC and it benefits actual residents? There are organizations working on this, but we have to support them. The knee-jerk response to oppose all development won't get us anywhere, unless you love $3500/mo one-bedroom condos and Amazon and bars that sell $22 cocktails, and don't care about families or affordability or community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/anti-growth-alliance-fueled-urban-gentrification/617525/

The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives’ Theory About Gentrification
The ‘gentrification-industrial complex’ isn’t who anti-growth progressives think it is.

The cause of the drop should hardly be surprising. The pandemic has radically decreased demand for big-city living while also increasing the quantity of available apartments.


Yet this basic fact, plain for all to see, flies in the face of much received wisdom about the factors that cause urban housing prices to go up or down. Among some leftists and liberals alike, as well as the politicians who court them, the idea that developers of pricey apartments and condo buildings are to blame for high housing prices has long been an article of faith. In this telling, new luxury housing is the reason that former working- and middle-class neighborhoods in their cities have become fancy enclaves. (“You know exactly what a gentrification building looks like,” read a recent viral tweet.) Fighting the construction of such housing would not only reverse the trend of unaffordability, but from the perspective of politicians and activists would also demonstrate support for working-class residents in the process. Since the spring, the pandemic has prompted a steady flow of stories about how urban life will change forever. But COVID-19’s most lasting impact on cities might be in helping put to rest this most persistent of myths about the relationship between housing supply, the cost of living, and that four-letter word of urban politics: gentrification. Not only is it a simplistic analysis that absolves nearly anyone who isn’t a developer of responsibility for the problem, but in portraying new housing as the proximate cause of gentrification it exacerbates the very housing crisis it seeks to solve.

It's just supply and demand. DC needs WAY. MORE. HOUSING. We need to build a lot more.

And the reason we don't build more is that zoning law makes it illegal to build more new housing.

What we need to do: upzone the whole city. Allow pop-ups. Stop historical districts from slowing down housing. Allow replacing single-family-homes with 6-unit apartment buildings all over the city but especially in Ward 4.

Yes, that will make homeowners property values go down. That's the core reason we have gentrification! That's what NIMBYism IS.

Build more. Upzone. Or face a housing shortage and a city that's unaffordable for everyone except the very rich.

Sounds like an amazing place to live + work (not)

Im talking about the development "vision". Because NY is doing SO well, lets aim for that? Gross. And I was born in Washington Hospital Center. You?

[Anonymous]

It’s sad to see DC trash it’s historical neighborhoods just so more 20-somethings can squeeze in without paying market rates. Guess what - I can’t afford to live in Palos Verdes or The Hamptons. Doesn’t mean I get to buuld a bunch of trashy apartments to make those places affordable to me. Can’t afford DC? Move to some other city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad to see DC trash it’s historical neighborhoods just so more 20-somethings can squeeze in without paying market rates. Guess what - I can’t afford to live in Palos Verdes or The Hamptons. Doesn’t mean I get to buuld a bunch of trashy apartments to make those places affordable to me. Can’t afford DC? Move to some other city.

GET OFF MY LAWN

Says Karen who bought a house for $100K in 1989.

[Anonymous]

You want slums? Maybe Jared will invest here after Trump leaves office...

Seriously though. Integrated affordable housing is what we should all want not slums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad to see DC trash it’s historical neighborhoods just so more 20-somethings can squeeze in without paying market rates. Guess what - I can’t afford to live in Palos Verdes or The Hamptons. Doesn’t mean I get to buuld a bunch of trashy apartments to make those places affordable to me. Can’t afford DC? Move to some other city.

I wish people would make up their minds whether those apartments are trashy apartments or luxury apartments.

Market rate depends on the supply and demand, it should go without saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad to see DC trash it’s historical neighborhoods just so more 20-somethings can squeeze in without paying market rates. Guess what - I can’t afford to live in Palos Verdes or The Hamptons. Doesn’t mean I get to buuld a bunch of trashy apartments to make those places affordable to me. Can’t afford DC? Move to some other city.

The 20 something demographic is the development crowd. Everyone else values liveable cities.

[Anonymous]

This is DC. It has nothing to do with zoning and everything to do with corrupt city employees.

Case in point: I am friends with the developers who tore down the dilapidated house at the corner of Connecticut and Nebraska with the intention of building an six-unit condo building. In other words, David Alpert's wet dream, a SFH in evil Ward 3 turned into six luxury condos. But they had never developed a property in DC before, only in Maryland. It took them 18 MONTHS not to get their permits in order, but to find the right person they needed to bribe to get the permits. The building is now almost done. It could have been done a few years ago, but was held up by typical DC corruption.

This is why no one wants to build like this in DC. Unless you are a developer who has lined Muriel Bowser's campaign war chest, you have no hope of profit or even mere completion.