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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
[quote]It's not going to help people who want to live in Dupont/Kalorama for the price of Anacostia or Lyon Village for the price of Mt.Vernon.
[/quote]

I want housing prices to stop increasing in real terms, and to go down as much as the market, with less constraints will allow. Maybe thats 5% (adj for inflation) or maybe its 10% or maybe its 20%. We don't really know, too many factors at play.

[b]Housing prices increase with inflation and inflation is going up. Tell this to people who are moving to lower COL cities where prices are often twice what they used to over a decade ago. I have friends all over and also lived all over, RE is the thing people consider an investment and they need to live somewhere. Most Americans have most of their networth buried in their primary residence. Earned income wealth is deteriorating as salaries are not catching up, so all people have left is what they have in their home, hoping it will keep up with inflation.  For people to be able to sell their homes to afford end of life care at a nursing home, prices have to rise.  If they stagnate or go down, then there is a problem when everything else is rising. [/b]

[quote] Lots of posters are people who want yuppie areas or sprawling new homes with best schools inside beltway burbs[/quote],

I have spefically said that the supply of large new SFHs is limited.   That is why I think the future is multifamily.

[b]Not for everyone, you cannot force people to live in type of housing they consider crammed or not comfortable, multifamily is not the only type of housing historically available all the world. Some people want nature and land, some want more privacy.  Have you directly experienced living in an apartment with kids or had grown up in one yourself? I had done both and there are downsides to this type of situation and many sacrifices many people are not willing to make. A world where everyone is forced to live in a certain type of housing, especially close proximity to others or limited sq.ft or limited outdoors usually is a domain of dystopian sci fi novels and for a reason.  [/b]

[quote]It's like those who want to drive a Tesla for the price of Honda Civic, so they wonder and speculate when law will change and luxuries will go cheap. [/quote]

But we don't have laws limiting the supply of cars like that. Nor should we.

[b]We are talking about luxury here, which applies not only to goods but also to places to live as it's historically been the case. You cannot put everyone in identical homes, rich would naturally have sprawling quarters with more luxury and poor would live in squalid conditions. All I hope we would aspire to improve is conditions of the very poor and destitute and provide adequate shelter/food/basic medical care. After that it's all luxury and you must pay. If you want a luxurious condo in a posh district, you gotta hustle and make more money, that's all there is to it. Nobody is entitled to luxury housing beyond very basics. Sadly, many don't even have basics, which is what you should concentrate on, but that's not a topic of this conversation[/b].

[quote]Here is the news, living in posh established desirable parts of any city is a luxury, even if it's an older crappy building, buying a tear down in a prime suburban area with short commute and building a brand new home is a luxury. [/quote]

Not sure why you are conflating tear downs with old apts in Ward3.  And the current shortage of housing in places like DC is extreme and really is driven to considerable degree by zoning.

[b]it's driven by desire of people to live in some areas and avoid others.  Desirable suburbs are often source of complaint on DCUM, people want cheap tear down lots, not happening. People want cheap luxury condos in posh city parts, not happening. Built as many highrises in parts these people don't want to live in, are you solving THEIR problems? [/b]

[quote]It's not all because of some malicious political zoning interests, it's how it's always been, there were always expensive parts of DC, people bitched they could not afford, even when most of it was unlivable, and they didn't precipitously dropped in price just because new areas got gentrified or new apartments got built.[/quote]

Because gentrication is, in fact, a difficult process (and one that does not actually create new housing, unlike development) and the supply of new apts in recent years has been behind the growth in employment.

[b]Development of cheaper housing can only happen in cheaper parts where land is cheap, AND people have to want to move there en masse to support desirable amenities and schools, and even then problem won't be solved. If jobs are growing, rents are not going to go down significantly which is what you want. They may stagnate some with more supply [i]temporarily[/i], but creating more jobs doesn't usually lead to lower COL. [i] Show me an example of rapidly growing prosperous city where cost of housing is actually getting cheaper?[/i]
[/b]
I still do not see in the thousands of words you have typed, a justification for keeping artificial limits on development.  All this stuff - go gentrify somewhere - the housing market is SO complicated - you're a whiner who wants luxury cheap - is just the standard lines we hear when some unjustified, indefensible zoning restriction is being defended.

Lower housing prices, shorter commutes and less auto reliance, more tax revenues for localities, less gentrification pressure, are all good things, and none of the get off my lawn, go suffer, high rents are the law of God stuff changes that. [/quote]

I am not justifying the limits and honestly don't see how this would affect anyone whining about high housing costs in highly desirable city and suburban parts.  I lived in a very expensive area and new condos went up, it didn't make rents for older homes cheaper. New condos were more expensive and they also brought more amenities which citizens living in older housing found very desirable and didn't want to move.  Land was expensive and there were no affordable homes built there, developers wanted profit.  There were lots of cheaper newer condos built in up and coming parts of the city over that time that I observed. They didn't affect me as I had no interest in living there, they also didn't move enough people out of my area to lower COL for us.  [b] Now, if you also consider following two parts to stay on topic of this thread,  things get more complicated:[/b]

1) Not everyone wants the same type of housing. You may not be able to pay enough for some people to live in an apartment. 
2) Not everyone wants to live in any neighborhood and people have jobs all over the place and job centers are spread out.
3) Families want amenities that new condo tower builders tend to ignore and that cheaper land areas simply don't provide at least not for a while. Families want safety, established already gentrified areas, decent public schools, which takes a while to ramp up, playgrounds/activities and businesses welcoming to children and reasonably affordable. New condo construction tends to attract the childless and businesses around tend to reflect this. For this to change in a city of DC density, where families have many options of various housing is a far fetched goal, you think just changing zoning in some places will change this?[/quote]

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