Reply to We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Adding more housing units will make housing affordable. Just look at Navy Yard.

It's probably the most densely populated neighborhood now in the city. It's almost nothing but condos.

And 600 square foot condos there cost....more than the single family homes that were knocked down to make way for them?  Wait, that wasnt supposed to happen. I thought increasing density was supposed to push prices down? [/quote]
[b]
Density suppresses increases in housing prices - this has been thoroughly documented in research. It's a settled matter.

The SFHs in Near Southeast were knocked down when 395 was built, the redevelopment of Navy Yard displaced mostly warehouses and night clubs, but that's neither here nor there. You're examining this from the wrong perspective. The question you should be asking is how much more expensive SFHs in Navy Yard would be if those condos hadn't been built.[/b][/quote]

Heh. This is all nonsense. Increasing density drives housing prices up because it creates economies of scale for businesses. When lots of people are packed into an area, restaurants and bars and boutiques want to be there too because they want foot traffic. People in turn want to live near walking distance of those restaurants and bars, which drives up demand to live in that area, which increases prices. That creates more incentive to build housing there, which draws even more businesses, which leads more people to want to live there, which further drives up housing prices.

But this entire upward spiral in prices was driven in the first place by the fact that condos created a critical mass of people to allow gentrification to take off. If those condos weren't there in the first place, single family homes in Navy Yard would be cheap today, because there wouldnt be much incentive to leave there, except that it's cheap.

You can read about what the recent changes in Navy Yard have meant here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b6843312f4c145efbef65a8942fb987b

To quote:

"It may even be the most gentrified neighborhood in the nation. Since 2000, the median household income in Census tract 72 has increased ten-fold; the percentage of people with a college degree has increased ten-fold; and the average home value has increased three-fold. Although racial change is not technically included in the measure of gentrification (which focuses on economic changes), it is often part of the popular definition. Thus, it is worth noting that the Black population of this tract decreased from 95% in 2000 to 24% in 2018. And the White population increased from 3% to 68%." [/quote]

Increased density CAN increase housing prices, but increasing density in Ward 3 (which is where I live) would almost certainly not. Houses here already routinely sell for more than $1 million. I don't think two- or three-bedroom condos in small buildings would sell for that much per unit. Adding density in an already expensive neighborhood doesn't bring any of the downsides of gentrification -- you aren't displacing people by raising rents, and there are already high-end services and amenities there, so your theory that more appealing businesses will flood the area, driving prices up, doesn't seem to apply.

So how, exactly, would allowing for non-SFH uses on, say, my block in upper NW (near Wisconsin Avenue, currently all single-family homes) lead to higher prices? It might make my kids' school more crowded, and make it noisier near my house, but I don't really have the right to prevent that sort of thing just because I happened to have the money to live here already. [/quote]

This argument seems a little disingenuous to me.

The push to "increase density" is driving up housing prices, and pushing black and brown people out, across the city -- everywhere but Ward 3. You seem to think that's okay so long as you also favor increasing density in Ward 3. But everyone knows Ward 3 is never going to increase density to any appreciable extent, regardless of what you or say or do. So the bottom line result is that "increasing density," while pretending to help people, is actually hurting them everywhere in the city except in Ward 3, where the increasing density cause is DOA.

But, for the sake of argument, if they did increase density in Ward 3, then yes you'd see sky-high prices. That's because schools EOTP mostly suck. People will pay anything to get their kids into middle and high schools in Ward 3, so if new condos go on the market, you'll see 600-square foot condos going for $1 million. If a 600 square foot condo goes for $1 million, the guy next door in the 2,000 square foot house will think his house is suddenly worth *at least* triple that, if only based on the price per square foot.  
[/quote]

As it happens, I do not favor increasing density in neighborhoods where that would lead to displacement, I only favor it in neighborhoods like mine, where you could easily change the zoning and fit a lot more people in, and where we're already close to good public transit. The fact that the cause appears to be DOA is a political problem, not an iron law; the main thing to do about is to just ignore the people up here who oppose it and push through a plan regardless. Maybe you wouldn't get reelected, or maybe you would.

But you will not see 600-square-foot condos going for $1 million suddenly if you built them here, just because of the relatively desirability of the schools -- if that were the case, single-family houses in Tenleytown would already be selling for more than they are. There's a limit to how much people are going to pay just to get into DCPS schools that they think are better than other DCPS alternatives. It would make more sense for most of the hypothetical buyers of these condos to pay $1.3 million for a house in Bethesda than to pay $1 million for a small condo in D.C.[/quote]

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