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Metropolitan DC Local Politics
Reply to "Is there a coherent argument that loosening zoning laws will lead to affordable housing in DC? "
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct. There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes. As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left. But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?[/quote] [b]The Federal Reserve has looked at this. It found if you have a place considered a desirable place to live and you add to the housing supply, that doesn't reduce prices because the additional housing supply encourages more people to move there because, again, it's considered a desirable place to live. [/quote][/b] Yes, but that's not what Bowser says. Surely she knows more about economics than the Federal Reserve. [/quote] This isn't macro econ, its housing econ. And the Fed study (oddly not linked to here) was only one study - there are others showing the precise opposite. It depends on how you structure the study, esp if you focus on the price in the immediate area only, and on how much time you give for supply to respond. The general consensus among housing economists is that supply does bring price down. Mayor Bowser is not wrong to follow that approach, which is also followed by the Metro Washington Council of Governments and most other local govts around here (except for MoCo - see how well THEY are doing) [/quote] The key word is "desirable." If you add supply in Detroit, yeah that's going to cut housing prices. If you add supply in NYC (or DC) it does nothing for prices because the number of units added will always be exceeded by the number of people who want to live there. This is why NYC can be one of the most densely populated cities in the Western Hemisphere, and still be extremely expensive. [/quote] +1[/quote]
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