Reply to MoCo seeking feedback on proposal to limit single family zoning

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "MoCo seeking feedback on proposal to limit single family zoning"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Argh, we have to have this conversation again?

It is possible to unintentionally encourage effects that are racist through actions that are not intended to.

For instance, policies that prioritize single family home ownership in a place with rapidly scaling home prices encourages racial segregation because of a historical racial wealth gap.

No one is trying to be racist, in fact in many cases the thought is that encouraging home ownership is a way to build wealth. but in a time of rising prices where a buyer  has to bring more and more money to the table to buy a house, and BIPoC people may not have the same generational resources (read, parents who don’t need financial support and can actually sometimes give money) as white people, the inequities are perpetuated, and more expensive houses are purchased by those who have more generational resources who tend to be white and richer, blah blah.

Didn’t we have the structural racism talk in 2020?

Policies that are designed to keep neighborhoods SFH and bias to home ownership have an unintended effect of perpetuating housing segregation, which has downstream effects on opportunities (for instance, access to good schools and jobs) for people. Diversifying neighborhoods with different home types (including renters!) is one tool to try to spread the opportunity around to people who don’t have access to generational wealth, and take one step to correcting for systemic racism inherent in society.

So no one is saying that you are racist for saving for and buying a house. What this is saying is that a reason a policy like this is good is because it is one of many steps to break down racial advantages, and opposing it may have the effect of contributing to the perpetuation of racial inequities.

[/quote]

You have no proof of any of that, nor do you have any proof that upzoning will have any affect on those issues.  Seems that no one can predict any outcomes, positive or negative.  Therefore, it’s a terrible reason to change zoning.

This is just YImBY fantasy housing, and it’s a simplistic “common sense” based argument, like not wearing a sweater will make you sick, when we actually know about germ theory. It’s the housing equivalent of telling people not to shave or it will grow in thicker.

The YIMBYs have no clue what they are doing, and I mean that very literally.

People, start here:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-nimby-is-a-yimby

There is a lot more literature out there.  I should compile it and push it out.[/quote]

A quote:

[i]what is called the “logic” of Econ 101 is often a fairy tale, a story about a world that could theoretically exist rather than the world that actually does exist. In the “Econ 101” fairy tale about housing, more housing helps everyone no matter what kind of housing it is. Thus it does not make any sense to oppose development, and we should relax zoning codes (and forget about historic preservation, which is pure nostalgia, or rent control, which is a doomed attempt to interfere with market forces) to maximize the number of available units.
The story is insidious because it makes intuitive sense. Like many Econ 101 tales (e.g., raising the minimum wage kills jobs), it has a superficially compelling logic, and it is only when you think a bit harder (i.e., when you get past the “101” class) that you realize it might be false. There is no necessary economic reason why increasing the total number of housing units in a city helps make housing more affordable for poor residents.[/i][/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics