Reply to D.C. has the highest ‘intensity’ of gentrification of any U.S. city, study says

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree with the folks who say that we have to build more/denser housing supply in the form of large buildings, but I think that we also need to find ways to build more housing that's similar in character to rowhouses/small multifamily.  Not townhomes that are still in car-dependent separated developments (what's built now), but actual walkable and transit-oriented mixed use urbanism.  The problem is that zoning makes it almost impossible to increase density in a lot of suburbs or in more suburban neighborhoods, and there's no land to build anymore of this kind of housing in already-urban neighborhoods.  So a lot of lower-income folks, many of whom don't have cars or can't afford them, are displaced into neighborhoods that are built around cars in a way that systematically reduces their access to social services, social networks, etc.

Apartment/large building living is a very poor substitute for even attached home living for a lot of people.  Clearly more people will need to choose to live in large buildings in the future if we want to keep close-in areas affordable.  Not everyone will be able to afford to live in as close proximity to downtown as they might prefer. But even setting aside the loss of proximity associated with displacement by gentrification, there is a real loss of lifestyle associated with with being displaced from classic rowhouse neighborhoods.  Meanwhile, the supply of that kind of housing is actually declining pretty rapidly, leading attached house prices to rapidly outpace inflation with little end in sight. It's not hard to understand why even people who don't appear to be financially harmed by gentrification might be unhappy about that loss of lifestyle.[/quote]

Correct.  We need both denser housing around transit, and denser housing in current single-family more suburban areas.
We also need denser housing in row home areas.  
Steps we should take:
- Make it easier to build high around metro stops.  We’re actually doing ok at this in some areas of DC.  But in too many cases local opposition blocks construction or reduces height.
- Upzone single family suburban areas to build more densely
- upzone row house areas to allow pop ups or replacing two story row houses with 4 story row houses.

Answer is really: build more housing everywhere.  More more more.  Upzone everywhere.  There is a huge supply crunch.[/quote]

Oh, hi developer! Please don't include me in your "we need" pop-ups. Also, please stop with the phone calls and mailings. I'm not selling my house to you.
However, there's a big artery 2 blocks away, that happens to be very close to metro, and it's full of boarded 2-story buildings already zoned to be massive multi-units. So let get on that first - build all the 6 story buildings 2-5 blocks from metro that can be built.[/quote]

PP here.  Not a developer. At all.   Just a YIMBY.

If we want lower priced homes in the DMV there is one big step we can take: upzoning, which will increase supply.  Supply supply supply is the biggest problem.  You don’t get to complain about pop ups and also complain about high prices or rents.  Because they’re two sides of the same coin.
Height is still a problem in DC- look at the building near eastern market that got two floors chopped off of it because abutters complained to the zoning board.

ggwash.org
City lab
Strongtowns.org 
All have more good things to read.[/quote]

Can someone explain why we need unfettered population growth in DC?   Not everyone who wants to graduate college & move to DC deserves a low-priced apartment in a great part of town. 
I love that the GGWash crowd will decry the concept of "induced demand" when it comes to building roads and highways, but refuses to see development as a type of "induced demand" that lures people to the DC region.  We have enough jobs, and enough people.  Let the prices rise so that demand cools, and we can preserve the current quality of life with turning the city into Manhattan.[/quote]

Speaking as an economist, there are two problems, really variants on the same problem.  Both of them arise from the fact that allowing housing prices to increase is a transfer of wealth from potential homeowners to existing homeowners.

The first problem is about productive efficiency.  If our hypothetical goal is to maximize the productive output of our economy, then we want the people to live in DC who have a comparative advantage in combining their own labor and knowledge with other local inputs (the labor and knowledge of others who live here, natural resources, etc.) to produce output.  Of course, some of our local inputs exist in many other cities, but many of them just don't, especially because we're the seat of the Federal government which is fixed here.  In a highly stylized model of the economy, when housing supply can adjust so that prices remain constant, people move to the city if they would prefer it to their next best alternative city.  That means that the people who are unusually good at making use of DC's resources generally move here, because they can make more money here.  But when prices rise because housing supply is fixed, some of those people instead decide to move to places were housing costs are lower, even though they would actually be more productive if they chose to live here.  They are, in essence, misallocated.  So, allowing housing prices to increase rather than building more housing is really not just a transfer of wealth to current owners, it actually reduces the amount of output in the economy, i.e. the amount of wealth to go around.  This is what economists call a deadweight loss.

The second problem is intergenerational, and it's in some ways a more insidious problem.  Letting housing prices rise is a wealth transfer from younger people to older people, because existing owners tend to be older.  Younger people are still in a position to develop their human capital (e.g. education) in order to take best advantage of the opportunities available to them.  But, by making housing more expensive in cities like DC, you make it less attractive for those young people to get the education that would make them more productive in places like DC in the future.  Later on, when those people are older, they are less productive because of their lower human capital, and it is much more difficult for them to adjust.  So, in effect, high housing costs in places like DC can have very long-lasting impacts.

There is some pretty good suggestive evidence that this is part of what's going on in America with our growing urban-rural divide and our declining rates of migration.  In essence, it's so expensive to break into a city like DC that people just stay home, where they make much less money and they have fewer opportunities. That's a potentially large loss, because some of those rural kids might otherwise do great things one day.  The problem here is potentially even worse, because DC has such a unique economy that can benefit from unique talents.[/quote]

Hi Matt Yglesias![/quote]

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