Anonymous wrote:For some reason my quote button disappeared, but for PP who would be happy in an apartment building given space to build a boat and bike im the woods...hahahahaha. No, you wouldn't be happy, those are far suburbs or rural requirements.

Fortunately, most of the rest of what you want can be accomplished with rowhomess or multi-unit buildings with outdoor space, and a lot of peole are willing to compromise a bit on their wants for location or affordability (e.g. i wanted a garage or shed, we don't have space, but I'll live). I really do think zoning for more of these in close-in areas with good schools is a great idea. I don't understand why having mixed housing types in a nice neighborhood automatically makes it a worse neighborhood.

Agreed! I don’t even think it would depress home values because the value of SFHs on larger lots would likely go up if developers knew they could subdivide them and sell multiple units out of them.

Plus the generalized fear of having neighbors from a lower SES class is ridiculous at best and racist at worse. As though people people trying to buy small, affordable homes in good school districts are going to rob you or something. They are embracing YOUR values by wanting to live in your neighborhood. They are trying to buy in. What threat do they pose?

For some reason my quote button disappeared, but for PP who would be happy in an apartment building given space to build a boat and bike im the woods...hahahahaha. No, you wouldn't be happy, those are far suburbs or rural requirements.

Fortunately, most of the rest of what you want can be accomplished with rowhomess or multi-unit buildings with outdoor space, and a lot of peole are willing to compromise a bit on their wants for location or affordability (e.g. i wanted a garage or shed, we don't have space, but I'll live). I really do think zoning for more of these in close-in areas with good schools is a great idea. I don't understand why having mixed housing types in a nice neighborhood automatically makes it a worse neighborhood.

We bought into the DMV market during the Great Recession. Paid "only" $300k for a very nice, 4-bedroom townhome in a middle class neighborhood. We were the only bidder so there wasn't any escalation in the price. We would have rented otherwise. Those were the days to be a buyer in the DMV! A seller not so much...

Anonymous wrote:Much of ward 3 is zoned for SFH's only.
If we allowed anyone who wanted to to build triplexes on any lot now zoned for SFH:
- Real estate prices would go way up.
- Costs of individual units would go way down.

It might take a few years for the 2nd to happen.

But we need more houses. Many more houses. It's the only way to make it cheaper to live here.

What I f we don’t want cheap housing in nice neighborhoods?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to build more 4-8 story apartment buildings downtown and near transport nodes than exacerbate sprawl by only allowing densification of suburbs.

All zoning should be densified and multiple use. Copy Japan's 12-zone model. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Permitting needs to be simplified. By-right development within zones, and use of appropriately certified and bonded third-party inspectors, with digital records of progress inspections and code compliance.

UNTAX homes & the buildings that support living & working. Exempt building values from property taxes.

The options are not status quo vs 4 story buildings. The options are status quo vs these gargantuan, monstrously and oversized buildings.

It’s telling that your real objective is just “property rights”. You’re just a libertarian hiding behind messaging to make it sound like you care about justice.

I'm not hiding it...property rights presage any "justice". I'm perfectly willing to tax the heck out of those government-enforced property rights, provided we exempt the building value.

The Single Tax on land values frees humanity from rentiers, equalizes historical inequity, houses the homeless, feeds the hungry, and cares for the sick. Why do we tax the houses and housers, the feeders, and the carers? Because we don't raise enough money from the Land-Lords.

I think your libertarian fantasies have been indulged enough.

I'd be glad to live in a 2BR + Den home in a 12 story building if it's got easy access to:
a place to grill and eat outdoors
a place to keep bicycles and kayaks and canoes where they won't be stolen
a place for my kids to run and play with sticks and dirt
a place for my kids to climb and swing and play with other
kids
(these have to be free from harrassment by addicted and unpoliced homeless and distant from their uninspected 'homes' and latrines.)
a place to grow corn and pumpkins and peppers and tomatoes
a place to build stuff like boats and furniture and gadgets
a place to ride bikes in the woods
schools that focus on empowering learners and meeting each student's needs rather than "narrowing the gap", which necessarily de-emphasizing supporting those at the top of the gap.


All of this leads to the suburbs. Far suburbs, really.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to build more 4-8 story apartment buildings downtown and near transport nodes than exacerbate sprawl by only allowing densification of suburbs.

All zoning should be densified and multiple use. Copy Japan's 12-zone model. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Permitting needs to be simplified. By-right development within zones, and use of appropriately certified and bonded third-party inspectors, with digital records of progress inspections and code compliance.

UNTAX homes & the buildings that support living & working. Exempt building values from property taxes.

The options are not status quo vs 4 story buildings. The options are status quo vs these gargantuan, monstrously and oversized buildings.

It’s telling that your real objective is just “property rights”. You’re just a libertarian hiding behind messaging to make it sound like you care about justice.

I'm not hiding it...property rights presage any "justice". I'm perfectly willing to tax the heck out of those government-enforced property rights, provided we exempt the building value.

The Single Tax on land values frees humanity from rentiers, equalizes historical inequity, houses the homeless, feeds the hungry, and cares for the sick. Why do we tax the houses and housers, the feeders, and the carers? Because we don't raise enough money from the Land-Lords.

I agree DC needs more middle income housing. While we are building more townhomes and condos, the townhomes are still often out of reach for true middle income people (HHI <150-180k). And most condos in the city are not built for families (few units with more than 2 bedrooms, emphasis on amenities likely to appeal to childless professionals but not necessarily to families). All the incentives in DC are to build high end units with a small footprint so as to squeeze as much profit as possible out of real estate.

There are some incentives for low-income and subsidized units, but developers seek to merely qualify for the bare minimum of these, and middle income folks often don’t qualify.

It us very hard to find adequate housing in DC for a middle income family. Close in suburbs are often no better because while there is more family housing, it is largely less dense and therefore no more accessible. Far out suburbs are cheaper and have family housing, but long commutes are particularly hard on families due to childcare needs and the importance of family time on the health and well-being of kids and marriages. And mid-income people are often less able to work remotely because they are more likely to work in service jobs (teaching, non-doctor healthcare roles) or customer-facing industries (food, retail, events).

So yes, we need more duplex and triplexes, more pop ups, more 3+ bedroom apartments, more townhouses near public transit.

Notice I’m not even saying we need this stuff near “good” schools or in more desirable neighborhoods. Families will accept middling schools and less perfect neighborhoods if they can just get on the property ladder. Right now, other than EOTR, and a handful of far NE and SE neighborhoods WOTR (many of which have poor transit options) there are very few options. And prices in places like Hyattsville, Silver Spring, and Mt. Rainier are rapidly moving out of reach as well.

If your only options for housing in DC for a family of 4 with an HHI of 150k involve an hour plus commute, people will just choose to leave.

Anonymous wrote:Better to build more 4-8 story apartment buildings downtown and near transport nodes than exacerbate sprawl by only allowing densification of suburbs.

All zoning should be densified and multiple use. Copy Japan's 12-zone model. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Permitting needs to be simplified. By-right development within zones, and use of appropriately certified and bonded third-party inspectors, with digital records of progress inspections and code compliance.

UNTAX homes & the buildings that support living & working. Exempt building values from property taxes.

The options are not status quo vs 4 story buildings. The options are status quo vs these gargantuan, monstrously and oversized buildings.

It’s telling that your real objective is just “property rights”. You’re just a libertarian hiding behind messaging to make it sound like you care about justice.

Better to build more 4-8 story apartment buildings downtown and near transport nodes than exacerbate sprawl by only allowing densification of suburbs.

All zoning should be densified and multiple use. Copy Japan's 12-zone model. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Permitting needs to be simplified. By-right development within zones, and use of appropriately certified and bonded third-party inspectors, with digital records of progress inspections and code compliance.

UNTAX homes & the buildings that support living & working. Exempt building values from property taxes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

NP here. You clearly do not understand the statistics you are citing. The civilian labor force says nothing about where jobs are located. It is based on place of residence. It's no surprise at all that jurisdictions with a higher population have a larger labor force, but that tells us literally nothing about where any of those people work.

A 2013 Census Bureau report on this topic, based on 2010 population data, estimated that the daytime population of DC increases by about 79%, close to half a million people. A couple VA jurisdictions see their daytime populations increase slightly, but nothing remotely close to DC. Most other jurisdictions in the region have a smaller daytime population than their nighttime population, suggesting a net outflow of commuters.

https://census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2013/acs/2013_McKenzie_02.pdf

You say I used the wrong data but then do not actually cite any data. I specifically used civilian labor force data to exclude military. However if you must, you can review the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data which shows that NOVA still has more jobs than DC proper.

https://www.bls.gov/cew/

You also refuse to address the point about average commute times. Why does it take people in DC the same amount of time to get to work as people in the suburbs. If there is no benefit to your maniacal push for more density then what’s the practical point?

Anonymous wrote:

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.

"Single-family homes take up a lot of space in the District"


https://ggwash.org/view/71576/heres-how-much-of-dcs-housing-consists-of-single-family-homes

How accurate is this, really? The city says my home is a SFH and I share a wall and so does everyone for blocks and blocks around me. Or am I misunderstanding something about this discussion?

This is not generated by the city but by “advocates” who are trying to claim that there is too much SFH in the city so they are intentionally misrepresenting what is SFH. Basically they are lying.

What you will find is also a constant bait-and-switch where townhomes are considered important “missing middle” housing in some contexts and then bad SFH in other contexts.

These YIMBYs have a problem with honesty and it’s really tiresome. Most people support more housing but their whole schtick is that social justice is only possible unless you let developers can do whatever they want to maximize their profits.

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.

"Single-family homes take up a lot of space in the District"


https://ggwash.org/view/71576/heres-how-much-of-dcs-housing-consists-of-single-family-homes

How accurate is this, really? The city says my home is a SFH and I share a wall and so does everyone for blocks and blocks around me. Or am I misunderstanding something about this discussion?

Anonymous wrote:

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

NP here. You clearly do not understand the statistics you are citing. The civilian labor force says nothing about where jobs are located. It is based on place of residence. It's no surprise at all that jurisdictions with a higher population have a larger labor force, but that tells us literally nothing about where any of those people work.

A 2013 Census Bureau report on this topic, based on 2010 population data, estimated that the daytime population of DC increases by about 79%, close to half a million people. A couple VA jurisdictions see their daytime populations increase slightly, but nothing remotely close to DC. Most other jurisdictions in the region have a smaller daytime population than their nighttime population, suggesting a net outflow of commuters.

https://census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2013/acs/2013_McKenzie_02.pdf

I’m fine with all the poors leaving the area. Stop your whining, move back home.