Anonymous wrote:What do you think all of the townhomes, pseudo townhomes, and condos are? That’s middle housing and DMV is an outlier that it is actually building it.

What you socialists forget though is the market. Many don’t want to live with shared walls and overcrowded streets, far from jobs. At least not at the minimum price point that these things can be built for. That’s why there is a lack of housing at an entry level.

That and starter homes are a terrible investment and for condos basically entrapment.

In other areas, when home prices exceed what the majority of the market can pay, developers are building smaller to meet the price point.

Again it’s the market. Not just zoning, which is relatively permissive when it comes to density around here.

Never mind you or anyone else can buy in Anacostia right now. Super affordable. The problem is everything else, like safety and schools. Not zoning.

Anonymous wrote:Remote work (accelerated by Covid and dim-witted CEOs finally realizing that paying for large office space doesn't help productivity and employee engagement along with climate change focus that realizes millions of people commuting to work everyday doesn't help the global warming cause) will change everything over the next 20 to 30 years. People will move to suburbs, ex-urbs, rural areas and still have a good paying job. This will depress existing cities even further and make lots of housing more "affordable" there, by default.

Anonymous wrote:MoCo passed the accessory dwelling regulation last year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable housing, but also middle-income ones, and even luxury homes. I agree with virtually every word of Hayley Bonsteel’s excellent piece for The Urbanist titled “How to Finetune Rep. Macri’s Single-Family Rezone Bill.” I have long been opposed to single-family zoning (not housing), for a number reasons but largely because of its malicious history. Bonsteel is correct in that we must return to our abundant housing roots.

However, abolishing single-family zoning will barely move the needle on our housing crisis. We can’t duplex and triplex our way out of this—though it’s a good step since we do need more diverse types of housing, and rapidly. The decades long fight just to add, and then liberalize accessory dwelling units, or re-legalize duplexes and small apartments in now single-family zones, will pale in comparison to the needed shift.

We sit at the threshold of a decades long housing crisis, and a steepening climate crisis (one our mayor seems wholly unprepared to take on). The region includes some of the smartest and most sophisticated companies in the world, but rather than come to terms with the depth of the scale of this crisis, we put on blinders.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/01/29/housing-action-on-a-truly-massive-scale/

(2020)

About Seattle, but every word applies to the DC area EXCEPT that Seattle is farther along on zoning reform than we are.

We first need to upzone single family home lots.
That means Takoma Park. And Bethesda. And Ward 3 DC. Allow duplexes, triplexes, pop ups, and ADUs.

Then we need even more homes than that.

And if we don’t do all these things, average people will be priced out of anything within 90min of DC.

So many affordable homes in NE, SE, pg county-many are on the metro or Marc lines! What We need are good schools.

Anonymous wrote:

We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable housing, but also middle-income ones, and even luxury homes. I agree with virtually every word of Hayley Bonsteel’s excellent piece for The Urbanist titled “How to Finetune Rep. Macri’s Single-Family Rezone Bill.” I have long been opposed to single-family zoning (not housing), for a number reasons but largely because of its malicious history. Bonsteel is correct in that we must return to our abundant housing roots.

However, abolishing single-family zoning will barely move the needle on our housing crisis. We can’t duplex and triplex our way out of this—though it’s a good step since we do need more diverse types of housing, and rapidly. The decades long fight just to add, and then liberalize accessory dwelling units, or re-legalize duplexes and small apartments in now single-family zones, will pale in comparison to the needed shift.

We sit at the threshold of a decades long housing crisis, and a steepening climate crisis (one our mayor seems wholly unprepared to take on). The region includes some of the smartest and most sophisticated companies in the world, but rather than come to terms with the depth of the scale of this crisis, we put on blinders.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/01/29/housing-action-on-a-truly-massive-scale/

(2020)

About Seattle, but every word applies to the DC area EXCEPT that Seattle is farther along on zoning reform than we are.

We first need to upzone single family home lots.
That means Takoma Park. And Bethesda. And Ward 3 DC. Allow duplexes, triplexes, pop ups, and ADUs.

Then we need even more homes than that.

And if we don’t do all these things, average people will be priced out of anything within 90min of DC.

Anonymous wrote:

We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable housing, but also middle-income ones, and even luxury homes. I agree with virtually every word of Hayley Bonsteel’s excellent piece for The Urbanist titled “How to Finetune Rep. Macri’s Single-Family Rezone Bill.” I have long been opposed to single-family zoning (not housing), for a number reasons but largely because of its malicious history. Bonsteel is correct in that we must return to our abundant housing roots.

However, abolishing single-family zoning will barely move the needle on our housing crisis. We can’t duplex and triplex our way out of this—though it’s a good step since we do need more diverse types of housing, and rapidly. The decades long fight just to add, and then liberalize accessory dwelling units, or re-legalize duplexes and small apartments in now single-family zones, will pale in comparison to the needed shift.

We sit at the threshold of a decades long housing crisis, and a steepening climate crisis (one our mayor seems wholly unprepared to take on). The region includes some of the smartest and most sophisticated companies in the world, but rather than come to terms with the depth of the scale of this crisis, we put on blinders.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/01/29/housing-action-on-a-truly-massive-scale/

(2020)

About Seattle, but every word applies to the DC area EXCEPT that Seattle is farther along on zoning reform than we are.

We first need to upzone single family home lots.
That means Takoma Park. And Bethesda. And Ward 3 DC. Allow duplexes, triplexes, pop ups, and ADUs.

Then we need even more homes than that.

And if we don’t do all these things, average people will be priced out of anything within 90min of DC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you think all of the townhomes, pseudo townhomes, and condos are? That’s middle housing and DMV is an outlier that it is actually building it.

What you socialists forget though is the market. Many don’t want to live with shared walls and overcrowded streets, far from jobs. At least not at the minimum price point that these things can be built for. That’s why there is a lack of housing at an entry level.

That and starter homes are a terrible investment and for condos basically entrapment.

In other areas, when home prices exceed what the majority of the market can pay, developers are building smaller to meet the price point.

Again it’s the market. Not just zoning, which is relatively permissive when it comes to density around here.

Never mind you or anyone else can buy in Anacostia right now. Super affordable. The problem is everything else, like safety and schools. Not zoning.

I was with you until “socialist” and then I stopped reading because I am sick of seeing random insulting statements aimed at literally everyone else responding on this board. That’s so rude and aggressive. Go away.

Anonymous wrote:What do you think all of the townhomes, pseudo townhomes, and condos are? That’s middle housing and DMV is an outlier that it is actually building it.

What you socialists forget though is the market. Many don’t want to live with shared walls and overcrowded streets, far from jobs. At least not at the minimum price point that these things can be built for. That’s why there is a lack of housing at an entry level.

That and starter homes are a terrible investment and for condos basically entrapment.

In other areas, when home prices exceed what the majority of the market can pay, developers are building smaller to meet the price point.

Again it’s the market. Not just zoning, which is relatively permissive when it comes to density around here.

Never mind you or anyone else can buy in Anacostia right now. Super affordable. The problem is everything else, like safety and schools. Not zoning.

We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable housing, but also middle-income ones, and even luxury homes. I agree with virtually every word of Hayley Bonsteel’s excellent piece for The Urbanist titled “How to Finetune Rep. Macri’s Single-Family Rezone Bill.” I have long been opposed to single-family zoning (not housing), for a number reasons but largely because of its malicious history. Bonsteel is correct in that we must return to our abundant housing roots.

However, abolishing single-family zoning will barely move the needle on our housing crisis. We can’t duplex and triplex our way out of this—though it’s a good step since we do need more diverse types of housing, and rapidly. The decades long fight just to add, and then liberalize accessory dwelling units, or re-legalize duplexes and small apartments in now single-family zones, will pale in comparison to the needed shift.

We sit at the threshold of a decades long housing crisis, and a steepening climate crisis (one our mayor seems wholly unprepared to take on). The region includes some of the smartest and most sophisticated companies in the world, but rather than come to terms with the depth of the scale of this crisis, we put on blinders.