Evidence has demonstrated this effect in numerous cities now.
I understand why it sounds weird to say, 'building a bunch of fancy new townhouses and skyscrapers will make housing more affordable!' but it simply appears to be true.
I understand why it sounds weird to say, 'building a bunch of fancy new townhouses and skyscrapers will make housing more affordable!' but it simply appears to be true.
Reposted from
Senator Tina Smith
So proud of the great work happening in Minneapolis, which shows that boosting housing supply helps make homes more affordable.
Comments
Where I'm from in Louisiana, this wouldn't fix anything the state over, or in the rest of the Gulf Belt.
There is no way to quickly collapse prices with unconstitutional land reforms or a Georgian land value tax. And if you it would lead to a great depression.
This seems like a really shallow observation about supply and demand, tailored to defang arguments for "affordable", and preferably, public housing.
This is a conspiracy theory, you need real evidence here that the vac rates are a lie.
We need to be careful about housing. Boomers will be dying off. We don't need a glut in the market or people will be complaining about that. And keep private equity out of it. They are the real problem, not inventory.
See also the refusal to grasp that a good solution to people lacking enough money to live is to give them money.
The limiting factor in subsidized housing is the subsidies. There’s a limited pool of money, so there’s limits to what we can build.
The unsubsidized ones we can build a lot more of, and should. These are usually financed by bank construction loans, not local housing authorities.
because the real world lived experience, I mean actual reality for millions in Boston, NY, SF etc etc is tht lots of fancy new townhouses and skyscrapers have been built and
RENTS HAVE GONE UP
as you may know, people often value experience over reality
Science is good!
Stendhal:
a man comes home and catches his wife in the very act with her lover
She brazenly denies it, finally saying: I can see you no longer love me, as you would rather believe the evidence of your own eyes the what I tell you
Pretty straightforward.
It’s also a strong reason why cities like Vienna where the city is an active participant in the housing market (not just the low income market) as both developer and landlord are so affordable for housing…
I wouldn't even qualify to rent the apartment I've been in 15 years if I tried to meet income requirements today.
Can’t do that in LA or New York.
Given such anemic housing construction, it doesn't sound like that would be enough to reduce rents in an 800k person city
Top Cities and Unincorporated Areas for Production 2020 through 2021
1. San Francisco: 869 units/year
2. Oakland: 526 units/year
3. Fremont: 232 units/year
4. San Jose: 208 units/year
5. Santa Clara: 177 units/year
Austin (the other "it totally works, guys" example) had massive tech layoffs and people moved to the suburbs or back out of state.
Wealthier people are going to buy or rent the most convenient housing; if that's stuff that would otherwise be affordable, no it isn't.
So give 'em the luxury condos and townhomes they want.
Extreme nerd alert: this is evidenced in Magic cards. They started printing hyper-premium super-shiny versions of cards, and those cards are exponentially more valuable than the "normal" versions...but the "normal" versions also end up going down.
I dislike crypto, so instead I'll hang onto old dual lands and be happy with that.
I counted 5 huge unfinished residential skyscrapers in one section is downtown the other day.
...I still don't want to see any skyscrapers here, though. Eight stories is quite enough and I don't want to lose our sky.
That's a shocker...
And there's no point to doing them vs building an actual apartment building.
2: fill every empty residence
3: convert as many empty building into residences
4: open abandoned big box stores established encampments to keep their communities and live indoors
5: convert all empty buildings into residences
6: convert all empty buildings into residences
7: c
TBH I was somewhat skeptical of filtering before seeing this research. I thought there were plausible alternative explanations.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3929243
2. The prospect of increased traffic makes people insane and they will do almost anything (other than building transit) to avoid it.
And yes, that is the trade off to getting affordable houses and people off the streets, sorry.
Also, it means less dollars chasing older housing stock which keeps it affordable.
Respectfully, the idea that rich people are buying large numbers of apartments and leaving them empty is a bit of an urban legend. It does happen but not enough to drive prices or vacancy rates.
https://bsky.app/profile/katzfus.bsky.social/post/3lcfwwdzrcc22
also, housing doesn't just get built overnight. for every project there are often multiple years of planning and construction. so and increases in supply due to rising rents / sales prices are quite gradual.
that's clearly true. but it does't mean NYC is building enough.
I don't like that profit incentive is required to here, but I don't think things will improve in the US without it
So please join me in soaking blackrock/stone/my landlord by supporting lots more housing
https://santacruzlocal.org/2023/05/05/homeless-services-money-part-3/
"The laws of supply and demand do not apply in this special zone" is a very difficult thing to believe.
blackrock and tech bros don't have the cash, they can hold tens of thousands on the books, not millions.
realpage causes 4% rise, but only works because of dearth
https://bsky.app/profile/emilygadabout.bsky.social/post/3lcfyffp3zs2y
in a lot of these areas, even small and decrepit housing is expensive, because supply is so tight. the only way to make new housing that is cheaper than tiny, decrepit housing is to make tinier, shittier housing, which nobody wants
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49p0wf;brand=ucpress
that would mean rich people would have to put up with construction & poorer neighbors everywhere in a city, so it doesn't happen
Sometimes, solutions can be that simple
"You see where this line crosses that other line? That's why people are homeless. We can only really move one of the lines, so we should do that."
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691211329/sixty-miles-upriver?srsltid=AfmBOooN008LoNtnlTeuZY0bJDo69SLgr6XKBpWC5G4K4rX88sHLXJmJ
Whenever a “tech bro” moves into a shiny new “luxury” home, they vacate another, once working class home, returning it to a less affluent family.
I mean... the rich shits are renting second places *already*, so let them, and build more places for other people to rent.
Laws need to change to make it more expensive to sit on empty units than to write off the "loss."
"Look, we just don't have room for you. Why don't you try the next town over?"
If everyone converted their housing to AirBnB the price would plummet and rents would sky rocket.
Also, I would argue that there are some unique scenarios (like certain neighborhoods of SF and NYC) where AirBnB demand is almost/ effectively infinite.
I’m just speaking to the effect of Airbnb on rents, esp in supply-constrained neighborhoods.
My pov from direct experience is that high Airbnb concentration in key inventory-constrained neighborhoods can materially drive up rents.
People buy second/third homes in other cities, not their home city.
And when there’s a building boom, construction costs go up as well.
So it would seem that this _is_ how it works in a capitalist economy. It’s why Tokyo has remained very affordable, for a longer-lived example (you can rent a home there for $600 USD).
Sounds amazing! Think of all the programs that can be funded to benefit current residents!
Of course, it's not true: Santa Cruz isn't building anything.
California Cities: no thanks
Section 8 is a federally funded subsidy program.
The 20% of units at affordable rents in this development are subsidized entirely by the market-rate tenants. These projects will receive no government subsidy at all.
Curious to see how the dynamic changes in areas with falling or flat-lined population vs growth, or wealthy enclaves like Palo Alto or Aspen with extremely dramatic income disparities
2. There should be noblaw preventing you from building apartments and privileging single family homes
3. Most land in most cities is SFH only. There's only so many strip malls to convert
The multi-family homes being built near where I live are actually more expensive than the homes they are replacing. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone building affordable housing in the Westside of LA. because it isn't profitable.
https://bsky.app/profile/khaaledayman.bsky.social/post/3lez3dhi7z22z
Yeah there's a bunch of other structural issues to address, but more housing is a great place to start.
We tried to get fancy with it (need to build *affordable* housing!), and let it stop us from building... More housing.
https://ggwash.org/view/68373/a-tale-of-two-20003s-high-rises-or-high-rents
The new TSMC plant is supposed to come with a lot of new neighborhoods, but that's been slow to get started.
https://bsky.app/profile/torrleonard.bsky.social/post/3lciqvl6dzc2p
A glut of fancy new laptops makes old ones so cheap, people throw them away instead of bothering to sell them.
Launch of a fancy new iPhone means two models ago sells for 10% of new.
It sounds weird to expect otherwise for housing.
A 6000 square foot lot can house 24 families or one family.
Many cities only allow families who can afford the whole 6000 square feet, and zone out those who can afford 250.
All indications are that urban living is pretty good for the environment and human social needs...
still, i live in an area that has been going crazy w/yuppie catchers for a while and rents here aren't going down.
i suspect the yuppies are coming from other areas.
Now you want people to believe it about housing, something everyone needs to not freeze.
When whole towns become yuppie-boxes, like Dallas or DC, this logic falls apart.
https://www.vermontpublic.org/podcast/brave-little-state/2024-09-06/is-vermonts-motel-program-a-magnet-for-out-of-staters-experiencing-homelessness
- All new builds/teardowns are giant luxury condos/apartments that 95% of residents could only dream of living in, or
- Zero new units built.
This is the gripe...
Maybe the need for housing is so big that we see an effect ‘even’ with non-affordable houses.
Nice to see there is a trickle down effect, but still might be interesting to look at purposefully affordable housing
Then again, the government could also build them themselves (although that also brings its own risks).
If you require developers to exclusively build affordable housing, they won't build at all, driving prices even higher. If government builds it directly, that costs billions.
Ratchet effect in action. If we deregulate developers, they'll build everywhere!
Absurd.
Allowing cities to build more housing via zoning reforms is widely popular among all parities (and both renters and homeowners), and is paying off in several places.
Baffling how little attention it’s getting. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/05/29/strong-support-across-partisan-lines-for-policies-that-boost-housing
Another example of Republicans being able to frame the narrative on them being the party of less rules.
Ask the Dem politicians who just lost winnable races about zoning reform and they’ll say the opposite because we live in the upside where pee pee is poo poo and politicians don’t care about the people they serve.
(Genuine question)
They have skyrocketed since. But we're finally building some more, so they are leveling out, with lots of "first two months free!" promotions.
No increase for me, even though my house is < many apts.
I guess the lesson is, even adding high end housing does this. Which doesn't mean don't add affordable housing directly.
It's not rocket science....
All housing is built to the same code, and with the exception of maybe slightly better countertops, the only real difference between normal and "luxury" is the rent.
I think about this a lot.
The only real (and depressing) difference is that housing scarcity is a choice of our own making. There's nothing natural about it.
https://bsky.app/profile/smith.senate.gov/post/3lcfvtcewyc22