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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]New York City is expensive because lots of people want to live there.

Many other people don't live there because it is expensive. They live somewhere else.

If you tried to reduce housing prices in New York City by increasing the housing supply and you actually did build enough units to affect prices, you would encourage more people to move there because now it would be within their budgets. That would push prices back up.

In that scenario, I don't know what is accomplished, unless the goal is to encourage as many people as possible to live in New York instead of somewhere else. [/quote]

You cannot build more housing without fixing the infrastructure and adopting it to handle more population. It's already at its very max, highways are in need or repair and much expansion, too many cars/trucks. Subways are overcrowded and cannot handle all the population needing to use them, even bike lanes and sidewalks are crowded. The electric grid is stressed, and the water/steam system and sewage needs constant maintenance.  Building more housing doesn't solve the problems, you have to build the supporting elements of the city to withstand the tremendous population growth, or things will crumble and fixing them would become expensive and taxes on population will grow, QOL will suffer too.  Also with all the new towers going up all over NYC in the recent years prices had not gone down enough to reasonable levels. These new apartments are going for far more than older buildings offerings. Public housing is also in much need of maintenance.  Since someone has to pay for this, COL isn't going to go down. [/quote]

Details! The important thing -- the thing we should be really concerned with, as a society -- is encouraging as many people as possible to live in New York City. [/quote]

The recent blackouts during heat wave and floods in subways and closures apparently escaped your attention if you are even remotely serious.  I take it as sarcasm  :wink: [/quote]

Sarcasm indeed. I don't understand this mantra about increasing the housing stock in order to cut housing prices. I don't think it would ever work and it would have all sorts of unintended consequences, as you point out. I also don't understand why we'd want policies to encourage people to live in NYC (or Washington, for that matter). Why do I care if someone chooses to live in NYC or DC instead of Boston or Miami? [/quote]

Boston has issues with limited supply and high prices as well.  But given the jobs in NYC and DC, people are not going to move to Miami instead. In the case of DC they will move further out in the DC area -  more sprawl, more stress on infra including roads, more auto reliance, more green house gases. [/quote]

Before people move further out, there is this thing going on, called Gentrification. There are enough lower priced neighborhoods in city proper and closer in residential/burb places that are tempting for those not needing best schools or too worried about safety.  Majority of DC was unlivable for many people just 20 years ago. Not so today. Some areas in MD and VA were mostly for lower socio-economic groups and recent immigrants, not so today. The point is, DC, as majority of other US cities has space. [/quote]

1 where do the people who are displaced go? Do they disappear into the ether?  As far as I can tell they move further out, into sprawl.   (of course if you think DC was unliveable at a time when  570,000 people lived in DC, I guess maybe those people do not count to you)

2. Do we want a DC with no more poor people, with fewer AA's?  [/quote]

They don't disappear, many blend in, I don't see any of these areas becoming predominantly one type of demographic, they are usually mixed.  Being a mixed neighborhood is a better thing IMO, than being predominantly AA or predominantly white, or predominantly Hispanic, don't you think?  Many residents would move out. It becomes harder for some to resist temptation to sell their now more expensive home and cash out and move somewhere even cheaper or it becomes harder for some to continue living a lifestyle that's not compatible with new residents.  Those who are not wanting to cash out and who adopt to newcomer's lifestyle habits stay and thrive an take advantage of improving schools and amenities and increased affluence.  The problem is with lower income renters that are not protected, but many are protected and only get pushed out when failing to comply or causing problems for new residents.  I am not sure why you feel like safeguarding some areas poverty and blight is the answer to accommodating poorer demographics, it's not helping them. [/quote]

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