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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous RT][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Condos mean more people in a given area. Which means more bars and restaurants. Which means more people want to live there. Which drives up the prices of those condos. Which drives up the prices of houses developers need to buy and tear down in order to build more condos. Which means even more people in a given area. Which means more bars and restaurants, which means more people want to live there, which drives up the prices even further.

People understood intuitively before we changed the term “gentrification” to “upzoning.”[/quote]

[b]There isn’t a coherent explanation of how changing zoning laws reduce housing prices. [/b]Typically the opposite happens — prices go up, by a lot. [/quote]

There is, and it's based on supply and demand. Just like "gentrification" and "upzoning" are different things, so "there is no explanation" and "I don't like the explanation" are different things, too.[/quote]

So what’s the explanation? [/quote]

https://googlethatforyou.com?q=housing%20zoning%20supply%20demand[/quote]

‘If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.’ —Albert Einstein[/quote]

Very weird that no one can explain how upzoning reduces housing prices[/quote]

Either you've testified at public hearings about housing policy, in which case you've heard plenty of pro-housing people explain this plenty of times, or you're a person who has a lot of time to post on DCUM, in which case a person might wonder how come you don't have the time to testify at public hearings.

Either you sincerely want to know, in which case you can go educate yourself, or you don't sincerely want to know, in which case feel free to waste your own time.[/quote]

DP.  I've heard a lot of people offer theories of how upzoning causes prices to fall, but it doesn't matter if no one builds.  In the case of Montgomery County, there is a lot of approved density that isn't getting built because it doesn't pencil.  Upzoning residential areas isn't going to change that and is more likely to suppress very high density construction because those projects will face more competition from lower density projects that are cheaper to build but can get the same price as a very high-density project. [/quote]

I don't think anyone has said that re-zoning, [u]by itself[/u], will make housing more affordable for more people. Obviously there also has to be building following on the re-zoning.

I will note that there is no "approved density" that isn't getting built. Builders don't build "density". Builders build housing. Now, would zoning changes lead builders to make different decisions about where to build housing? Yes, that's the whole point.[/quote]

OK. There’s a lot of approved housing that isn’t getting built. You have to make silly semantic arguments because the facts are really bad for your position. The problem isn’t zoning. The problem is developers aren’t building because they think the market in Montgomery County is poor. Anything built here is at a disadvantage to things built in DC and especially NOVA because those places have more jobs, so it’s higher risk. [/quote]

"Approved housing" isn't fungible. As a matter of fact, your argument supports re-zoning. Builders aren't building approved housing, under the current zoning, because it doesn't pencil out. Assuming we want builders to be building housing (which I do, though you may not), that's a reason to change the zoning, to give builders more options for projects that do pencil out.[/quote]

Nothing is going to pencil out at scale without more jobs. You think you’re going to get 50 quads to replace the 200-unit high-rise that’s not getting built? YIMBYs in this county have done it a great disservice by promoting jobless urbanism while also supporting policies that are hostile to business. [/quote]

The builders who can do 200 units are few and far between. Many of them have big investments in CRE or multi-family that are getting crushed, losing many millions of equity in current structures.

However, there are a lot more crappy little builders in this area who can do 2-4 unit flips. That's who give donations of a couple thousand to each Council member to get up-zoning. These guys can't handle a big project like 200 units, but they can toss together a crew and local bank + hard money financing to pump out 4 unit garden apartments.

So yeah, that's the game. [/quote]

You don’t get market changing housing deliveries without the developers who can deliver 200 units. [/quote]

The issue with 200+ units is that all the kids there need to go to one school. At least with garden apartment you are spreading the numbers across a bunch of schools/infrastructure.

The County needs to be careful with up-zoning; these ticky-tack flippers will want to pile garden apartments into the same 3-4 neighborhoods inside the Beltway and put even further strain on the same 2 high school pyramids. The County should parcel it out evenly across MoCo, perhaps even by putting limits on a single HS pyramid (e.g., once BCC catchment gets 75 units approved, no more will be approved until every MoCo HS pyramid hits the 75 threshold).

There's a real risk of concentration on infrastructure if the County doesn't do this carefully. Flippers are going to aim for the land with highest return and quickest chance of sale - they move in a herd. [/quote]

Back to central planning...

The "ticky tacky flippers" are flipping currently, and it's fully allowed currently. In which case, I think they should be allowed to build a building with 2-3-4 units instead of one gargantuan McMansion. It also wouldn't be "garden apartments", it would just be a basic duplex, triplex, or fourplex building. [/quote]

At least the McMansion doesn’t utterly overwhelm the existing schools. MoCo has a school supply problem at all levels. [/quote]

Montgomery County also has a housing supply problem, and I think that housing is even more important than schools.[/quote]

DP.  I disagree, in a way.

Housing is more important than schools in the same way that food is more important than housing.  Kind of a hierarchy of needs thing.

However, just as the [i]need[/i] for housing might eclipse the [i]preference[/i] for a particular cuisine or brand of food where other food is available, the need for adequate public facilities such as schools might be more important than the preference for additional housing of a particular type where other housing (hi-rise instead of triplex, townhouse a modest distance away, rental instead of a purchase, etc.) is available.

There's a calculus to it, to be sure, depending on where on the spectrum of need and preference these might fall.  There is enough housing stock available and enough properties on which such housing could be built with current zoning that the school overcrowding factor is the more pressing element in many localities, especially closer in, where the policy change is aimed.  It also is far less flexible than housing inventory, taking greater lead times to address, and it is directly negatively impacted by the even greater housing inventory envisioned in the upzoning under consideration.  The same may well be the case for other essential public services.

Montgomery Planning and the County Council should be taking a more holistic and community/resident-inclusive approach.[/quote]

People can't live in housing that could be built. The housing has to actually be built in order for people to live in it.[/quote]

That DP to whom you responded (07:42 was someone else).  This is missing the point and/or is a response that cherry-picks housing to be built.

There is both housing that is now available and housing that could be built under current zoning (a very large amount under-built close to Metro).  People [i]can[/i] live in the currently available housing.  They may [i]want[/i] alternatives to that in the same areas, and I don't begrudge them that interest, but I would say that the need for public services, like schools, trumps that interest in localities where current capacities are not adequate.

While one could say that the same people who would move into newly zoned/built multiplex properties would then just fill that existing capacity, resilulting in the same level of overcrowding, this would ignore the market dynamic based on that desire for those alternatives -- without the zoning change, many families will choose to live slightly farther out in areas that aren't currently overcrowded.  This would result in marginally longer commutes and the various ills that might come from that, but I would say that those ills are of less consequence, in both the short and long terms, than the ills of inadequate public facility capacity.

MoCo should address the situation in a way such that we are sure that capacities of public facilities like schools are made adequate by the time that the additional housing of interest comes online.  That has been ignored/under-addressed, now, for far too long, and we shouldn't be trusting, then, that the various agencies will change to make it work without a more directly coordinated approach.[/quote]

Oh, we're back to the "there is no housing shortage, it's just people who want to live in areas/housing they can't afford" ideas.[/quote]

Nice hyperbole/strawman you use, there...

There is a shortage of the kind of housing that is desired. [b] There are enough currently unoccupied units to meet current need, but it may not be of the type desired in the locations most desired (either for home by individuals or for growth by county policy makers).[/b]  Some of those locations might absorb additional housing with current levels of public facilities/school capacities, but many would not.  We ahould not he encouraging population growth in areas where these are lacking.

Instead, let's address getting that housing going in all of those areas by ensuring adequate levels of public facilities/school capacities, only triggering the allowance when that has been accomplished/is easily foreseen in the immediate future.[/quote]

It's kind of meaningless to say that there is currently enough unoccupied housing to meet current need (aside from the fact that people don't want to and/or can't afford to live in that housing).[/quote]

Again, a strawman, there.

The post I'd started with in this exchange ("DP.  I disagree, in a way...") was pointing out that while housing [i]as a need[/i] is more important than education (just as food is more important than housing), [i]a preferred type/location[/i] (within a region) of housing, given a budget, is not more important than the [i]need[/i] for adequate public facilities, including schools that are not overcrowded.

When evaluating relative priorities, you might have a different opinion (or say that adequate public facilities, themselves, represent a preference instead of a need), but then we simply disagree (and while the need for housing trumps the need for schools, housing preference may not trump the preference for adequate facilities; again, it's a calculus).  I'd say that characterizing preference for a type of housing as need in this particular evaluation, however, is incorrect.[/quote]

Eh. If you're going to recategorize housing needs as housing preferences, you should also recategorize school needs as school preferences. "Adequate" housing is just as much as matter of opinion as "adequate" facilities.[/quote]

Same DP.  Not sure why you bothered to write that, unless just to get a word in to leave a misimpression of my thoughts, as I had already said as much in the post to which you replied:

"When evaluating relative priorities, you might have a different opinion ([b]or say that adequate public facilities, themselves, represent a preference instead of a need[/b]), but then we simply disagree (and while the need for housing trumps the need for schools, housing preference may not trump the preference for adequate facilities; again, it's a calculus)."

From my view, that which is being advocated in relation to upzoning is closer to addressing a preference, given the current alternatives available, when compared to that which should be addressed from a schools/public facilities standpoint where those schools/facilities are at capacity or, in many cases, overbooked.  That upzoning, in such cases, just sets up for an underserved (or further underserved) community.[/quote]

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