vital political priority to get blue states to stop refusing to build housing. not only giving up electoral college votes to the GOP but clearly pushing many people to the right
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Watching the fight over housing in Massachusetts, especially in very blue, and very affluent Boston suburbs is depressing. If I hear one more reference the the "threat to the character of the community" I'm going to vomit.
Constant invocations about how it'll turn the town into Somerville - like that's an urban hellscape instead of a wealthy and vibrant part of the urban core.
Lack of available, affordable housing, increased insurance costs, bills, it's difficult to save for a 1st home. Wages rose like $0.30/hr, while wealthy folks' incomes have risen exponentially. Wages aren't keeping up with corp greedflation, causing resentment w/in the electorate and they blamed Dems
Our outgoing governor here in WA, Jay Inslee, pushed a big housing bill through as one of his last acts. I’ve seen a pickup in construction here the last several years. I think our new Dem gov, Ferguson, will carry this on. As you say, essential.
In the UK, the previous Conservative government's poor record on housing over 14 years since 2010 was seen as pushing people to the left (renting / public housing being correlated with voting Labour, and home ownership with the Conservatives...)
I agree with you but I'm concerned it will be difficult to meaningfully accelerate building housing when our country is about to have a significant portion of its building labor force deported
If this is the building that Mike Pesca was complaining about, his top concern was that the front of the building juts out past all the other houses on the block. The rendering doesn't show it, but he said it mostly blocked the sidewalk.
There are some design straws that break the camel's back on many building projects. If developers would address the reasonable objections, maybe they'd get less pushback? 🤷🏽
My opinion is that none of these are reasonable objections and the most reasonable sounding ones are just pretexts for the real reasons, which is they don't want more traffic and competition for parking.
hey I can see some reasonable objection to a 12 stories on what is not a wide street.
but the opposition wants nothing. no newcomers, no more housing, no more people looking for street parking - only rising home values.
Sure. And Bloomberg's PS downzoning was ridiculous.
But I do see some value in height limits based on street width on cincept. But if were going to have them, they should be regularized and not designed to raise home values of favored constituents.
It's plenty wide. It's hard to perceive it with two lanes of free SUV storage. We ought not build all our dense housing on arterials like 4th Ave. The Vue on 16th st is about 14 stories high. It's totally fine. What people object to is having to search for parking. It triggers the scarcity mindset.
When they do road remillings and they've removed all the cars, I get all emotional for what better uses we could have for all that extra space. I had a car. They don't scale. The cargo ebike is the convenience king for city living.
I can't. If we can't build two blocks from a subway stop, where can we? "Waaah, this building is too tall, mah neighborhood character" is not a valid argument in most places, and especially not here.
I'm just arguing for a more regularized system.
if a 70ft wide right of way, within 1/2 mile of transit means 120ft is allowed as of right.
great, lets just do that EVERYWHERE
I ride past it all the time on the way to horse back riding lessons with my youngest. A ten min ebike ride and I pass this at the 5 min mark. It's 5 mins from 2 train lines in a dense res neighborhood a block and a half from a major commercial strip. It's a no-brainer.
I sincerely wish the left realized that new infill market rate housing in dense areas can beget a virtuous cycle of progressive policies. I am car less (for convenience) and I want more car free neighbors as it means more amenities within walking distance. I don't view new neighbors as pollution!
But during that 18 month period where I got a used car when Covid first hit and I had to park on the street (and circle the block to find free parking since no paid parking is available) my brain was rewired as I'd view every other car looking to park as the enemy. It makes you reactionary.
This resistance and reaction to this project is so stupid. I knew when I first saw the flyers in Windsor that it must be dumb. Build it tall and make it as affordable as possible.
I think whoever called out that the 100% affordable, shorter option is always fake is right.
the biggest hard lesson I've learned as a lefty who studied urban planning and went into housing is that, in these fights, the group whose priorities most align with what ours should be is, ironically, the developers
"developers are amoral profit-seeking assholes" and "developers are not the reason housing is absurdly expensive" are two facts that are not in contradiction but a lot of people struggle to acknowledge both
people don't understand that developers and landlords are different roles.
like many roles in the world, you can have one actor fulfill multiple roles, but (anecdotally) most of the times it isn't! even if that was the majority of cases, you could split them up!
I live right next to this proposal. It's a straight up nuisance right now. I can't keep my windows open at night cause the loading trucks are too loud. There's a floodlight that's shines all night like the Great Gatsby.
but every old person in my building has a "housing not highrise" sticker
I live directly across from the project. I recently told another parent that I wanted the building to be as tall as possible and he looked at me like I was a demon.
Well said... Part of a care economy/ethic is truly caring about the financial burden people are facing... Not just donating 50 dollars to a food pantry while supporting NIMBY policies
Here in the Tampa metro area there are new apartments and condos going up everywhere. Same in Raleigh. And the locals bitch and moan in both places about the usual stuff, but the housing is going up regardless. The NIMBY roadblocks of blue cities are absent, but the locals aren't exactly happy.
It hasn't really helped too much in BC (where this is an existential problem), but the provincial government has legislation in place that allows them to take control over housing development from municipalities that aren't building enough. It's a start at least.
Katherine Einstein has great research backing this up: the people coming to these meetings are richer, whiter, and own homes way out of proportion to the community.
Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes.
I'm really concerned that there will be a big push among Big Community Meeting to add even more roadblocks, hearings, etc. I think there's a real risk that some people/organizations that people are disconnected from government and the solution is to do even more "community outreach" than before
i've said this on here multiple times, but I always think about a wealthy boss I had a few jobs ago who left in the middle of the work day to go to a city zoning meeting to stop a building being constructed because it'd block her view. We weren't making much money, and she complained to us about it.
Community should take place before new developments with new rules happen in a neighborhood. If you want people to think differently about housing you have to do a lot of educational work. The conversation is about what a community can do to add housing rather than rage against a specific project.
oh, former Santa Cruz County supervisor? That explains it. You people are why I can't afford to live in the East Bay community where I was born and raised.
I'll inherit a house in Richmond worth more than half a million dollars, but I'd rather be able to afford a condo so I can be near my parents in their golden years. But "neighborhood values!" We can't densify housing, that'll ruin the vibes! Thanks, assholes.
I don't want people to think differently about housing, I want it to not matter what people think about my housing in the same way it doesn't matter what they think about my car or my computer.
Lol, tell that to neighborhoods all over Boston, whose longstanding regular meetings have been a very important and underreported cog in the historic decrease in violent crime (as well as countless quality of life issues plaguing the neighborhood over the years)
I agree that they're bad for all the reasons described but being real they aren't democracy, theres no vote involved. Always feel like this focus on community meetings misses the bigger picture, local politicians who do actually approve projects being in the grip of realtors & landlords
I just don’t think there’s any deterrence left against “antisocial selfishness”. It’s not “lack of exposure”, it’s a willingness to tune out anything that doesn’t center one’s own interest and no one else is saying that’s wrong.
Fundamentally I agree with you. Some people we can maybe shift with strategic seeding of facts, or instituting programs they know come the government. For many, no hope.
Actually punishing antisocial greed might work, but it was Biden who got applauded during a SotU promising crackdowns on Covid relief fraud, only to have its DOJ silently quash that idea over costs
Your generation 1) experienced their own homes exploding in value, and it is a single step of thought to realize that’s happening if you want to buy, too; 2) has kids who probably want to buy!
I agree w you & think you’re right, it just boggles that the dots don’t get connected
It boggles! Absolutely my kids can't live here right now. Nor could my mother's caregivers, even though her memory care place was very high end. Even though my family has had financial resources, I can't help but see the impact on everyone else and I'm unclear as to how some remain blind.
I'm going to ask you right this moment to think about who is in this reply thread. Never mind, it's me. I'm a boomer. At this point it does no good to point fingers at us, as most like you need us to help get us out of this fix. It was fun, OK boomer, when we were splinters under a liberal lead.
there is an unfortunate belief among many older people that housing unaffordability is due to young people's unwillingness to save rather than structurally baked in by shortage, such that land prices guarantee that only the top ~5% richest savers/heirs will be able to afford a home in a given metro
We want to blame big moneyed corporate interests. It's hard to accept the person getting the underserved windfall is just some person who bought it 20 years ago (or in some cases, just 5 years ago).
They/we are just humans, working as humans do, in a system, to build their own and their families' wealth. My plumber neighbor bought his house in 1953. They held onto it, and then reverse mortgaged to pay for care so they could stay in it. That's the other piece, in-home care for aged. Complex.
In other words, chicken and egg, older people use their houses to finance retirement because moving out used to be impossible, and because the area has generated so much new tech wealth they could coast without having to actually get some of that wealth. Some of these older people were plumbers.
I live on the SF Peninsula. Have lived here most of my life. I've seen this. I agree, if people are depending on their house value to fund their retirement, this will be hard. But also, if we build more houses, prices all over will fall, people can downsize (now that we've fixed the tax base issue)
The thing is, your house goes up in value, but if you sell it, you still can't afford to live anywhere else. We bought our "starter home" 10 years ago, right as the local market took off. We're probably never moving. Anywhere in our area would be massively more expensive.
“I worked hard and saved to buy my home in this community; and the people who support denser, less-expensive housing development are trying to get the benefits of living here without earning it first” is an *extremely* common talking point.
That's absurd. Far more public good is seized by the people building mansions to the far edge of their property and using ADU laws to expand their home offices. "Earning it," after decades of excess tech profits driven recently at least by low interest rates and free VC money, has no meaning.
Spot on. I did a doctoral dissertation on how public hearings were literally created to consolidate public resources (land) in order to increase wealth for a precious few. See the Land Enclosure Act of 1801.
And we still hold public hearings today with inequity built right in.
Even though they're frequently boring, I really recommend watching your local city council meetings if they get archived online, because you'll notice the same people show up to speak on a bunch of different resolutions
I made this observation a few weeks before the election. This is the NIMBY election. Everything from the deranged conspiratorial language used in the campaign to the actual NIMBYism (kick out the immigrants). And the process is controlled by the loudest most annoying cranks
There were 700k “excess homes” in 2000 and 1.3M excess in 2020.
The problem is the rich have too much money and bought millions of properties for AirBnB and second homes.
Also, it’s impossible to build affordable homes once land becomes expensive.
not sure what this "excess" refers too, but it's not at all impossible. most of Tokyo is pretty cheap, and it's because they regularly permit more new builds than the entire state of California
Irrespective of EC or whatever, we need more housing. Reality is that everyone wants to live on the coasts and they will keep coming. Without more housing supply prices and disorder will just keep rising.
Oh for sure. The weirdness is their consistency about it; Trump visibly became an even worse person over the last four years and it's like only Mormons noticed (and only some at that)
The Mormon Church is pro-immigration for reasons of self-interest. It's their main source of domestic growth (from Latin America) and missionary work means many Mormons have exposure to other countries.
Did a stint applying for zoning variances. FWIW, we found it helpful to let the NIMBY mob exhaust itself with their objections to ruining their views (of other people's property), etc. and finally suggesting things they would like less but we WERE zoned for: rehab clinics, halfway houses, etc.
I remember when I was in LA and some dickbag was campaigning against mixed zoning bc adding multi-family housing to single-family neighborhoods would turn those neighborhoods into low value wastelands like [checks notes] Larchmont, Franklin Village and Los Feliz wait no that can’t be right
I live in the DC burbs & they love building townhomes & condo style townhomes, but the former usually start at over $650k & the latter at around $500k. They are still out of reach for so many, but the developers are happy & the municipality gets a bigger tax base. It's a real issue with no champion.
The real estate industry shills bleating about the mythical trickle down effect of building market rate housing for yuppies first should take a seat. Between them and the NIMBYs the result is making cities whiter and richer.
We could have clear rules about land use, zoning, permitting etc and let people proceed if the plans comply, but instead we let elderly cranks hold up projects indefinitely.
on top of which, many blue states and cities have structural budget issues (debt, pensions) which can only really be solved by population growth and are exacerbated by population decline
It's very tough without statewide action. Local reforms just push development on to the next town.
My city wants to limit sprawl, nice idea. So you up zone and infill, but the neighboring town doesn't care and so everyone who wants a house moves there and the market can't adapt.
In Philly, we are getting overbuilt. the buildings are too big for the existing infrastructure and at odds with the character of the neighborhood. Rent and property taxes go up, and there's hideous, ugly congestion. Rich neighborhoods get setbacks, greenspace, and public art with theirs
Also the most vulnerable people in red states might actually want to find havens where have rights, it would be nice if they had some prayer of being able to relocate even if they are not trust fund babies.
There's a risk NIMBYs embrace Republicans, and there are many NIMBYs in blue states.
We have to get smarter about growing our housing stock. Public transportation needs to be everywhere.
I see council members in my town in a blue state under attack on these issues. I think it lost is a seat on the council.
Media environment on the subject really isn't great.
this is the point of CA's tactic-- it's mandated statewide, which shields the locals. as someone who works on this locally, we actually love it when we can just shrug and say "blame the state!" unless and until it starts to bite the legislators, keep on and carry on
Yeah same thing in Mass, but encountering lots of local opposition, and even towns going in breach of compliance willfully and good council people feeling a lot of pressure.
yeah CA has had to ramp up both enforcement and consequences, but has been doing both at least moderately effectively. if the outcome of noncompliance is "your zoning laws are invalid and builders can build housing at any scale" local jurisdictions can either comply or be bypassed, either is fine
Scott Wiener has won his state senate seat by bigger margins each time, and pushing the envelope on YIMBY housing policy is by far his single biggest defining issue.
albeit D11 is arguably a bit atypical-- but attempts to gin up statewide initiatives to roll back housing element policy have also gotten no traction as yet. there are definitely nimby legislative districts but the state seems to broadly support housing production, at least market-rate
If the Trump administration doesn’t fix this in 2 to 4 years, they’ll be blamed as the incumbent and voted out, yes? Assuming the electoral system functions
And, worse still, these shitty and expensive apartments and the single-family housing we *do* build is all horrifically car-centric, meaning that the people living in it are more inclined towards conservative, zero-sum thinking and hating their neighbors.
Yeah this. Someone posted that NY went from like 45 reps in 1940 to 25 now, IL lost a bunch as well, and this is all because of lack of housing growth. They’re murking themselves electorally.
And cities need to build more transit options so people can get to and from that new housing–and not having to own a car is a huge savings. In D.C. anyway, much of the area near Metro stops is built out (#NotAll…).
build all the houses you want, it doesn't help anything if people can't afford to buy them, or if they're competing with corporate entities that offer cash.
and can people stop fucking referring to the 'left' in fighting housing? this is NIMBY shit, has nothing to do with the left.
This is demonstrably untrue though. Jurisdictions that allow more housing of any type see lower prices, full stop. Rents went down in Austin by 6% last year. Corporate investors are a tiny, tiny share of the overall market.
NIMBYs are not only on the left but the left is the problem in blue cities.
There was a great fucking picture pre-Covid of protestors complaining about a proposed building blocking the sun...while they all were standing in the shade because the sun was too hot that day.
I don’t disagree we need more housing. The problem I see at least in Boston though is placing priority on building new housing but it’s in areas and for prices that cause them to remain empty. People can’t afford 4,000+ a month rent.
I get that but also why build yet another building in that same neighborhood when you couldn’t completely fill the first one, or the second. It’s building just to build at that point without taking a hard look at what you’ve already got in stock and not recognizing the impact to surrounding areas
These projects are planned years in advance based on conditions at the time, and it’s expected to take ~2 years to fill all the vacancies. Liberalizing the process would get these buildings done faster and cheaper - more responsive to community needs. Would also help smaller developers.
I’m not disagreeing with building more if it’s done so with the intent to fulfill the market need and done so with forecasted considerations to communities and their resources. I’m disagreeing that is the only solution, there are other avenues that can be explored and used simultaneously.
We could incentivize restoration, hold property owners accountable for ensuring good living conditions, implement caps on rent increases, do conversion of empty office spaces and build affordable housing over approving more luxury condos or hotels that destroying community spaces in its wake.
Like many cities, there is little urban planning. And unlike many cities, there isn’t much land left so to make it worthwhile to buy a 1/2 acre for $1 million in Newton (for ex), they build a big house or expensive townhomes. The ideas I would look at are…
1) definitely office space conversion, although i have heard it is more difficult than one would guess and
2) look at “brown spaces” around the city and close in that could be redeveloped like Boston Landing was but maybe more affordable (not sure how expensive that area is)
Not just here in the US, I think a recent poll shows 60% of Canadians are opposed to their current immigration level and a lot of it is due to their housing crisis. Ditto with Portugal citizens turning against digital nomads.
As someone who moved away from an expensive blue state (where my landlord raised my rent by $400 a month year over year) to a very affordable red state, I second this
I agree, but it's important to consider that not all housing is "good housing". Overrunning areas with housing that is too big can actually depress future investment in those areas.
I've found this list of zoning changes are a good place to start:
I keep thinking that if Rs do something like Opportunity Zones but not an outright scam like that was and focus it on housing in red states even if it's barely successful dems lose their chance on that issue forever
I'm glad the elite persuasion method has been seeing results because oh boy is it frustrating trying to get this stuff done when 3 of your key constituencies hate the necessary thing you're trying to do despite the chaos and misery it's causing across politics
One thing I think of constantly is here in Des Moines freaking Iowa, on one of the busiest stretches of road in the city, there was a massive fight to keep these *half million dollar* condos from being built. So effed.
I kind in central KY, and our problem is the exact opposite -- we desperately need affordable housing, but despite pretty much any proposal for apartments and townhomes being approved, they're always LUXURY buildings.
The only affordable units are in the developments where only elderly can rent/buy.
Even in our ostensibly liberal areas, new people are a threat and something to be prevented, regardless of their race or economic status. This is the logic of weird American ideas of the frontier homestead (apartment buildings make Americans sad to look at), but also the logic of the automobile.
Depends on where you live & what kind they are. My son is on his HOA--these are condos--mostly homeowners; some renters. Lots of whites & Hispanics; some Indians and other Asians. V. mixed. Texas.
Thank you. I was reading all this going “this is just a thread about bigotry.” I don’t understand why anyone is pretending that for way too many people, the basis for our whole society is just…. “Who am I and why am I better? Who can I shit on and how?”
Last year I went to Toronto with my mother for nephews graduation. When we got near downtown, she was confused about the tall buildings with little shelves sticking out. She has lived in Denver and Phoenix, and literally could not imagine that those buildings are apartments, with balconies.
There’s a certain vague thought that Californians coming to Texas for cheaper living are making Texas more liberal but actually the evidence says the opposite
it's sort of complicated, they were california conservatives so they add to the republican base but don't have innate support for the extreme right wing ideas that don't have any purchase in CA. classic progressive ballot measures/conservative top of the ticket voters
In NYC at least, the freakout over crime, homelessness, and migrants would be blunted if landlords couldn’t jack up rent as much as they wanted. Hardly any housing for the bottom ~90% has been built in decades
For owners of stabilized units, allowed rent increases have trailed increases in costs since de Blasio, so yours is a false narrative. Plus, city programs are so screwed up that we have a lottery apartments we haven’t been able to rent for four month because of bureaucracy.
The people who block affordable housing measures though? Homeowners who want to keep their homes at inflated prices for when they ultimately sell. We just saw a statewide ballot proposition go down in California.
IMHO especially the younger male demo.. it's not just Joe rogan, it's the fact that they're in their mid twenties and still living at home or with roommates
There was never a time in America when mid 20s home ownership was common. You’re supposed to have a roommate in your mid twenties as you’re building your life. Obviously it’s not possible to build like it was, but we can’t perpetuate the myth owning a home at 24 was ever the standard.
I think the GI bill did foster a lot of homeownership at that age. Which also brought us feminism redux as women found themselves trapped in car-dependent suburb with babies and no car
Oh yeah, but thats when you start thinking about it, how much money will I need, how much income, etc. Seeing that stuff double pushing your timeline from "maybe when I'm in my early thirties" to "shit who knows" is the problem.
At the risk of touching on a sensitive matter: you seem to diverge with many of your colleagues in the TAP/AELP/antitrust sphere on this. Is there a reason there's such a divide? The issue sets feel complimentary and yet on Twitter there's a very visceral hatred of YIMBYs and I just can't grok why.
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completely memoryholed how the construction industry ground to a halt three years ago
https://bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com/post/3lah67qphm22p
segment starts at 9:10
https://www.mikepesca.com/thegist/episode/33254336/talking-zoning-without-zoning-out
but the opposition wants nothing. no newcomers, no more housing, no more people looking for street parking - only rising home values.
But I do see some value in height limits based on street width on cincept. But if were going to have them, they should be regularized and not designed to raise home values of favored constituents.
(poorer, more immigrant)
The largest offenders are 1 and 2 family zoned areas.
if a 70ft wide right of way, within 1/2 mile of transit means 120ft is allowed as of right.
great, lets just do that EVERYWHERE
as if designed for favors, pay-offs and corruption....
oh wait.
I think whoever called out that the 100% affordable, shorter option is always fake is right.
like many roles in the world, you can have one actor fulfill multiple roles, but (anecdotally) most of the times it isn't! even if that was the majority of cases, you could split them up!
but every old person in my building has a "housing not highrise" sticker
Background story: The programs and services in the building the NIMBYs want to save got transfered to a new building two blocks away.
Really astonishing the level of rebuilding we're gonna have to do.
Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes.
https://sites.bu.edu/kleinstein/files/2017/09/EinsteinPalmerGlick_ZoningPartic.pdf
like wtf do you mean i have to spend an entire day at these things??
Just build more stuff.
"your backyard or your kneecaps, your choice"
Massachusetts Comprehensive Permit Act: Chapter 40B back in the 60s finally being used, and now $5 billion
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-affordable-homes-act-smart-housing-livable-communities
I agree w you & think you’re right, it just boggles that the dots don’t get connected
Let me count the reasons 🙄 (almost all boomer caused...)
https://cityobservatory.org/housing-cant-be-affordable_and_be-a-good-investment/
And we still hold public hearings today with inequity built right in.
The problem is the rich have too much money and bought millions of properties for AirBnB and second homes.
Also, it’s impossible to build affordable homes once land becomes expensive.
My city wants to limit sprawl, nice idea. So you up zone and infill, but the neighboring town doesn't care and so everyone who wants a house moves there and the market can't adapt.
We have to get smarter about growing our housing stock. Public transportation needs to be everywhere.
The result so far are some unsuccessful NIMBY challengers in the primary, but no sign of party switching over this issue.
Media environment on the subject really isn't great.
Or at least more apathy on their part, and more turn out by Democrats
It is in their interest to keep the housing supply suppressed.
Most issues in the US can be traced back to corporate influence.
our planning and building codes are a mess - and entitlement processes only make things worse.
https://bsky.app/profile/holz-bau.bsky.social/post/3l63yixnbgh2p
It's *all* bad.
and can people stop fucking referring to the 'left' in fighting housing? this is NIMBY shit, has nothing to do with the left.
NIMBYs are not only on the left but the left is the problem in blue cities.
(its also why I dont see any solution to this crisis)
https://bsky.app/profile/torrleonard.bsky.social/post/3ld4jrtdpgk2i
would love to have more places people can live well
2) look at “brown spaces” around the city and close in that could be redeveloped like Boston Landing was but maybe more affordable (not sure how expensive that area is)
I've found this list of zoning changes are a good place to start:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/10/31/the-6-zoning-reforms-every-municipality-should-adopt
https://pinnacleonfleur.com/
The only affordable units are in the developments where only elderly can rent/buy.
Literally, every HOA meeting I've attended has some version of this from a bunch of the neighborhood homeowners.
Every time.