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] It should not mean that a developer takes a big house, makes four $800,000 condos out of it, and sells them to people who qualify for that high of a mortgage.  [/quote]

We have multiple housing cost problems and multiple tools.  We have publicly financed housing - Alexandria is putting money into preserving and creating committed AH at various income levels as is DC (and there has just been a big proposal in Md)

But yes creating more market rate units also helps - [b]where do those households who buy the 800K condos (thats only in a few parts of DC of course, condos in most parts of Alexandria are not nearly that expensive)  come from?  They otherwise would have bought something else, and older condo or a small house.  And pushed someone else out, who would then have bought someplace older or further out, displacing someone else[/b].

Yuppies do not spontaneousl generate.   Adding new housing, even at the top of the market, has knock on effects.

It also provides tax revenues to help fund AH, as well social services.

This goes back to the original question of this thread, here:

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]

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