Reply to MOCO - County Wide Upzoning, Everywhere

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There's lots of neighborhoods in DC where the housing density has gone up dramatically in recent years. Without exception, they are far, far more expensive now than they were before. Housing prices in our neighborhood didnt take off until they started building condos everywhere. [/quote]

What is your neighborhood?

Do you think that the way to make housing more affordable is to NOT build more housing?[/quote]

Reading through this thread it looks like the YIMBY plan is to make housing more affordable is by eliminating housing. [/quote]

I’d also like them to be more clear, are they trying to build more affordable (or attainable) housing, or are they trying to make housing more affordable?

The second implies that they are trying to decrease property values, which I think that many of them are actually trying to do.  They want to saturate the market until our property values decrease.[/quote]

Well, no, the point is to make housing more affordable for more people. If your property values are high because there's a housing shortage, then yes, fixing the housing shortage will lower your property values. However, I don't think it should be a goal of county housing policy to keep your (or my) property values high. The goal of county housing policy should be housing. [/quote]

Why do you assume that if we build more housing, prices will fall? That's never been true in the DMV.

If you really do think building more housing will result in lower prices, you should tell us exactly how much lower they'll be (and when they'll be lower) so we can laugh in your face when none of that actually happens. [/quote]

Please look at the cities that have built tons of housing (Austin), do your research, and quit the snarky (uninformed) nonsense. There is plenty of evidence (and common sense), you just refuse to understand it because you are a selfish NIMBY.[/quote]

Austin is a horrendous city with ridiculous traffic and it is very ugly. MOCO doesn’t want to be like Austin and it is a terrible idea to copy their policies. [/quote]

DP.  While I disagree that Austin is horrendous, I think that many of the examples utilized by those advocating for greater densities are poor comparators.

The DC metropolitan area is centered on DC.  MoCo is a suburban-to-exurban jurisdiction of that area.  The area encompasses or has elements of three state/territorial-level jurisdictions (four or five, if you count south-central PA and the eastern panhandle of WV),  each with its own interests and authorities.  The type, location relative to city center and extent of housing offered by the changes to code in Austin are somewhat dissimilar to that proposed in MoCo. 
Despite input from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the efforts towards MoCo zoning change are poorly coordinated with other regional entities, allowing any fallout to become something of a free rider issue (fallout most directly on MoCo residents while benefit of housing pressure relief benefitting other close-in jurisdictions -- PG, DC, Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria & Falls Church -- without their residents "paying" for it).

These, and likely many other factors, make Austin a poor comparator.  Montgomery Planning has cherry picked their examples, and have failed to highlight any of the difficulties encountered to the extent that they present marginal benefits (and they had to stretch a bit, there, presenting some as not-that-bad counters to presumed downsides).

One could go the other way and point to something like Camden, NJ or Chester, PA in the mid 20th century vis-a-vis Philadelphia, and the effects on those communities through the later part of that century.  A few elements here and there of similarity to that proposed for/to the situation of MoCo, but ultimately a poor comparator.[/quote]

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