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][quote=Anonymous]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]

The Federal Reserve has looked at this. It found if you have a place considered a desirable place to live and you add to the housing supply, that doesn't reduce prices because the additional housing supply encourages more people to move there because, again, it's considered a desirable place to live. 
[/quote]

Where do the people who move there come from?

see this

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/06/housing-supply-debate-affordable-home-prices-rent-yimby/591061/

[i]A new working paper by economist Evan Mast of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research may help move the ball on this issue. Mast’s work suggests that even expensive new units in wealthy areas help relieve pressure on rents across the market, including in less-affluent neighborhoods. And that process doesn’t need to take years to unfold.[/i]

....

[i]These findings suggest that housing markets aren’t nearly as segregated as some might fear, if you work your way down the migration chain far enough. His model suggests that for every 100 luxury units built in wealthier neighborhoods, as many as 48 households in moderate-income neighborhoods are able to move into housing that better suits their needs, vacating an existing unit in the process. Somewhere between 10 and 20 of these households are coming from among the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods, vacating units and reducing demand where housing is most likely to be affordable for working families.

This suggests that even pricey new units could free up a lot of existing housing. Accounting for possibilities like units sitting vacant, out-of-town movers filling the units, or units being used as second homes/pied-a-terres/safe deposit boxes in the sky, Mast’s model still indicates that for every 100 new market-rate units built, approximately 65 equivalent units are created by movers vacating existing units. If the migration chain is as robust as this paper finds it to be, as much as half of theses newly vacated units could be in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. This new supply, combined with less demand, could play a major role in easing pressure on rents in the short run.[/i][/quote]

Give rich people what they want, and there will be dregs for average people! In the far suburbs! Awesome. [/quote]

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