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Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

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Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#11

Post by jayd16 »

These article are pretty ridiculous and I see this political bent more and more on here.

The article/book makes a huge leap in assuming progressive cities are somehow worse at housing. The reality is people actually want to live there.

The most densely populated cities in the US, and in general all cities, lean left politically. Finding new housing is important but we're really losing perspective on how successful these policies have been historically.

Its a silly as writing an article about NASCAR crashes. They must be terrible drivers.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#14

Post by hedvig »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

> a shortage of new construction, a lack of tenant protection "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction. High rents are a signal to developers that there is money to be made constructing new housing. If it's not possible to make the money, they won't do the construction, which is what rent control causes. You get a population of existing residents with…

Why aren't there developers that are willing to make 17% margins instead of 20% margins? You know what I'm saying. Related Group has always been happy to and does to this day build luxury units that get scooped up by elite Venezuelans and Russians. Who will build non-luxury units? The owners will claim they're luxury for the next 40 years, so there's no real trickle down effect.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#16

Post by hristov »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

> a shortage of new construction, a lack of tenant protection "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction. High rents are a signal to developers that there is money to be made constructing new housing. If it's not possible to make the money, they won't do the construction, which is what rent control causes. You get a population of existing residents with…

This is not how rent control works in any city in the US that I know of. Everywhere I know of rent control only applies to significantly older buildings. Which means that new buildings can charge much higher prices, which means that rent control actually encourages new buildings.

The only time some type of rent control applies for new buildings is when they are specifically built as "affordable housing". This usually happens when a developer is required to build affordable housing to pay back for some favor he/she received from the city.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#17

Post by mrep »

shse wrote: post #5

Cities are full. US population has doubled since 1960. If we get rid of zoning we will end up with overpopulated cities like Hong-Kong, Jakarta, Moscow, Tokyo.

No they are not, look at the varience in population density of us cities [0] and it's pretty obvious lots of them can expand. The real problem is that jobs are highly local and people want to live in an area where their are lots of job opportunities. Thus, cities with lots of good job opportunities beget more job opportunities like how Amazon chose New York instead of a smaller city.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#18

Post by dragonwriter »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #3

> a shortage of new construction, a lack of tenant protection "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction. High rents are a signal to developers that there is money to be made constructing new housing. If it's not possible to make the money, they won't do the construction, which is what rent control causes. You get a population of existing residents with…

> "Tenant protection" -- especially rent control -- is a nontrivial cause of the shortage of new construction.

Sure, tenant protection is, but “especially rent control” is wrong: that's just a tenant protection that conservatives/libertarians tend to think is vulnerable to argument. Minimum habitability standards do more to create a lack of affordable housing, but winkingt the argument that that isn't a necessary cost is perceived to be harder, even by the folks who'd really prefer the complete absence of regulation.

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#19

Post by shse »

ajmurmann wrote: post #13
shse wrote: post #5

Cities are full. US population has doubled since 1960. If we get rid of zoning we will end up with overpopulated cities like Hong-Kong, Jakarta, Moscow, Tokyo.

That sounds amazing!

That’s how it will look like https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AoPpFfXwx_o

Re: Why affordable housing is scarce in progressive cities

#20

Post by Domark »

jayd16 wrote: post #11

These article are pretty ridiculous and I see this political bent more and more on here. The article/book makes a huge leap in assuming progressive cities are somehow worse at housing. The reality is people actually want to live there. The most densely populated cities in the US, and in general all cities, lean left politically. Finding new housing is important but we're really losing perspective on how successful th…

The problem is, I've been hearing about these problems since I lived there in 1995.

1995 would have given an intelligent species enough time to build a money-losing, poor-people housing skyscraper or two. Yes building vertically in crowded places is a challenge and expensive but those are just excuses.

Since 1995 they could have figured out a way to get the job done, so now we have to examine what the problems are.

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