Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 18:56     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.



Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.

While I appreciate that you like to post in an authoritative voice, you just don't know what you are talking about. It may be worth your while to understand where Fortune 500 companies are HQ'd in our region. I think that will provide you a better understanding of the regional economy.
https://wtop.com/business-finance/2018/05/15-dc-area-companies-make-fortune-500-fairfax-county-dominates-list/#:~:text=The%20District%20has%20two%20Fortune,Fannie%20Mae%20and%20Danaher%20Corp.&text=The%20top%205%20companies%20on,UnitedHealth%20Group%20(%24201.2%20billion).


Are...are you aware that people in the Washington, DC region, which is the capital of the United States, also work for employers other than Fortune 500 companies? (I can think of at least one.) Do you have actual numbers on the *total* workforce in each place, comparatively?

Honestly, this is just typical of how everything goes with YIMBYs. You are just deeply uninformed, but somehow quite aggressive in your insistence in knowing what you speak of. The fact that you have come to certain conclusions without checking their basis should concern you. I would assume that you likely have been duped by someone with an agenda and therefore, I would suggest that you go back to your sources that shape your views and critique them more closely.

DC
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DCLFN

MoCo
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDMONT0LFN

NoVA (Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAARLI0LFN
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAALEX5LFN
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAFAIR5LFN

It is telling that the ill informed YIMBY offers no response.

Just so that we are clear, not even including military jobs or Loudon and Prince Williams Cos, which would drive the numbers up sharply. there are more than twice as many civilian jobs in NoVA than in DC. There are 25% more civilian jobs in Montgomery County than DC and there are even 20% more jobs in Prince Georges Co than DC.

In addition, and I am sorry for bursting your bubble, but regardless of where anyone lives in this region, there is no substantial difference in commuting time. The average commuting time of someone in DC is 30.8 minutes, for Fairfax VA it is 32.3 minutes and in Montgomery Co it is 34.7 minutes. So the density of DC provides no substantial benefit to its residents in terms of convenience for commuting. Shocker, I know.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B080ACS011001
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B080ACS024031
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B080ACS024033
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 18:10     Subject: We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
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.


I hate to say this because it outs me as a white parent contributing to segregation, but this is true. What's the difference between a townhome near Landover metro and the same townhome in Columbia or Urbana? One has a reasonable commute to DC and the others have good schools. Density is part of the equation but it's not all.


Educating kids of educated parents just isn’t hard. Do y’all really think the teachers in public school in Columbia are better than the teachers in Landover? They’re not. They have a lot more to work with and a lot less to deal with. I have a friend who could not pass the certification test and had to go another route to get certified. She doesn’t teach in PG, so...
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 12:05     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:The only way you can tell whether housing is expensive is by comparing its price to people's incomes. If the average home in DC cost $10 million but the average income in DC was $20 million, housing would be dirt cheap.

Salaries in DC are very high on average (there are gym teachers for DCPS that make six figures). And that's why housing here isn't as expensive as people like to think. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies says housing prices in DC are comparable to places like Richmond, Virginia once you take into account how much people make.

https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/home-price-income-ratios



+1
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 11:17     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.



Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.

While I appreciate that you like to post in an authoritative voice, you just don't know what you are talking about. It may be worth your while to understand where Fortune 500 companies are HQ'd in our region. I think that will provide you a better understanding of the regional economy.
https://wtop.com/business-finance/2018/05/15-dc-area-companies-make-fortune-500-fairfax-county-dominates-list/#:~:text=The%20District%20has%20two%20Fortune,Fannie%20Mae%20and%20Danaher%20Corp.&text=The%20top%205%20companies%20on,UnitedHealth%20Group%20(%24201.2%20billion).


Are...are you aware that people in the Washington, DC region, which is the capital of the United States, also work for employers other than Fortune 500 companies? (I can think of at least one.) Do you have actual numbers on the *total* workforce in each place, comparatively?

Honestly, this is just typical of how everything goes with YIMBYs. You are just deeply uninformed, but somehow quite aggressive in your insistence in knowing what you speak of. The fact that you have come to certain conclusions without checking their basis should concern you. I would assume that you likely have been duped by someone with an agenda and therefore, I would suggest that you go back to your sources that shape your views and critique them more closely.

DC
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DCLFN

MoCo
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDMONT0LFN

NoVA (Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAARLI0LFN
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAALEX5LFN
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAFAIR5LFN

Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 10:58     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.


Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.

While I appreciate that you like to post in an authoritative voice, you just don't know what you are talking about. It may be worth your while to understand where Fortune 500 companies are HQ'd in our region. I think that will provide you a better understanding of the regional economy.
https://wtop.com/business-finance/2018/05/15-dc-area-companies-make-fortune-500-fairfax-county-dominates-list/#:~:text=The%20District%20has%20two%20Fortune,Fannie%20Mae%20and%20Danaher%20Corp.&text=The%20top%205%20companies%20on,UnitedHealth%20Group%20(%24201.2%20billion).


Are...are you aware that people in the Washington, DC region, which is the capital of the United States, also work for employers other than Fortune 500 companies? (I can think of at least one.) Do you have actual numbers on the *total* workforce in each place, comparatively?
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 10:36     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.


Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.


Does anyone know what the proposed square feet of office space for Tysons will be once the redevelopment is completed?
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 10:21     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.


Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.

While I appreciate that you like to post in an authoritative voice, you just don't know what you are talking about. It may be worth your while to understand where Fortune 500 companies are HQ'd in our region. I think that will provide you a better understanding of the regional economy.
https://wtop.com/business-finance/2018/05/15-dc-area-companies-make-fortune-500-fairfax-county-dominates-list/#:~:text=The%20District%20has%20two%20Fortune,Fannie%20Mae%20and%20Danaher%20Corp.&text=The%20top%205%20companies%20on,UnitedHealth%20Group%20(%24201.2%20billion).
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 01:21     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.


Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.


The economic growth in this region is in Northern Virginia. DC had a lot of office space and jobs, but Va has more and is growing faster. Just a function of size and politics. Va’s laws are more stable and favorable to corporations.
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2021 00:39     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.


Umm no Tyson's is not the center of the DC region's economy by any measure.

Tyson's has 28.3 million square feet of office space, which is big by suburban standards.

Downtown DC has 150.3 million square feet of office space which is enormous by any measure and the fourth largest in the country.

And that number for DC doesn't count the considerable office space just across the Potomac in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor nor in the Crystal City-Alexandria corridor both of which are much more adjacent and convenient to downtown DC than to Tysons. And that doesn't count Bethesda which for all intents is barely more than a mile from the DC line but is 6 miles from downtown DC but which is also adding a lot of new commercial office space.

Now it may well be true that a lot of money is being made in Tyson's but both office markets pre-covid had been adding a lot of new square footage in the previous decade so I'm not even sure Tyson's was gaining at the expense of DC - most of what I've read on this has suggested Tyson's was gaining at the expense of poorly located and aged exurban office space which is now mostly worthless.

To the extent that it matters Tysons has about 30,000 residents though many of those folks really live on its fringes - DC has added twice that many people in just the last decade.
Anonymous
Post 05/02/2021 19:19     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.

This is correct and it’s quite fascinating the levels of ignorance people have and yet they try to speak so authoritatively. It’s also very clear that they have never actually commuted during rush hour in the suburbs enough to adequately understand traffic patterns. I personally know several people who commute by car every day from Bethesda/Potomac to Tysons. This person might also be surprised to know that the same number of people enter and exit the Bethesda metro every morning.

This DC centric view of our region is so crazy. Pre-COVID there were about 600k civilian jobs in MoCo, 500k in DC and 1.5 million in NoVA.
Anonymous
Post 05/02/2021 19:13     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.



Virtually everyone I know who lives in the suburbs is only there because they couldnt afford DC. They've move into the city in a second if they could.


I'll bet many of them live in Ashburn, etc. because they couldn't afford a SFH or a rowhouse in DC. This "suggestion" isn't going to change that; it'll make those places less affordable.

Someone who moved into a SFH in Ashburn most likely isn't going to move back to DC to live ain a small condo. Not before retirement, at least.



Have you ever driven into DC from the suburbs during rush hour? It sucks. There's a lot of people who would move in if only to cut their commutes. And there's SO many more people in the suburbs than DC -- 5,000,000 vs. 690,000 -- that it wouldn't take very many of them to absorb any new housing. People who think increasing density is going to lead to even slighter lower housing prices are going to be very disappointed. It will make no difference whatsoever.
Anonymous
Post 05/02/2021 17:49     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.


If this were true, we wouldn't have rush hour in one direction each work day.

Yes, there are some jobs in the suburbs, but i don't buy "most."


Factually false. Tysons is, in substance, the center of the DMV business community. Sorry.
Anonymous
Post 05/02/2021 17:49     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There's five million people in the suburbs. There's <700,000 in DC. Don't you think a whole lot of people in Virginia and Maryland would like a shorter commute? Any new housing built in DC is going to be absorbed by people in the 'burbs. I guess that will open up new places in Gaithersburg and Ashburn and places like that. Yay?

There are also significantly more jobs in the suburbs than in DC. Most people that live in the suburbs work in the suburbs and there is actually a lot of commuting from DC to the suburbs.



Virtually everyone I know who lives in the suburbs is only there because they couldnt afford DC. They've move into the city in a second if they could.


I'll bet many of them live in Ashburn, etc. because they couldn't afford a SFH or a rowhouse in DC. This "suggestion" isn't going to change that; it'll make those places less affordable.

Someone who moved into a SFH in Ashburn most likely isn't going to move back to DC to live ain a small condo. Not before retirement, at least.
Anonymous
Post 05/02/2021 17:34     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

Homes in DC are now being bought by pension funds, private equity firms and other investment groups. Build all the homes you want. You're not going to be able to outbid a friggin pension fund.
Anonymous
Post 05/02/2021 17:17     Subject: Re:We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

The only way you can tell whether housing is expensive is by comparing its price to people's incomes. If the average home in DC cost $10 million but the average income in DC was $20 million, housing would be dirt cheap.

Salaries in DC are very high on average (there are gym teachers for DCPS that make six figures). And that's why housing here isn't as expensive as people like to think. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies says housing prices in DC are comparable to places like Richmond, Virginia once you take into account how much people make.

https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/home-price-income-ratios