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To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

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Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#141

Post by jim-jim-jim »

unethical_ban wrote: post #10

It is critical that any housing solution incorporate equity, in my opinion. Taking away home ownership so we can all pay apartment owners for our entire lives is wrong.

People are being fact weenies to your post, but your point is fundamentally sound and showcases foresight. Some new construction is rent-only because its corporate backers rightly assume it will let them wring residents for all they're worth. If things continue to trend this way, then merely building more is not a sustainable solution to the housing squeeze.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#142

Post by yterdy »

ericd wrote: post #117
Sebguer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the possibility of housing stock consolidating, and price-fixing, which can keep rents artificially inflated by just keeping capacity off the markets. Example: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

I'm somewhat familiar with YieldStar and other dynamic rent-setting systems. I don't think it qualifies as price fixing, in that only a small percentage of the available stock uses it. If a large percentage used it, then maybe there'd be a case for it, since I'm guessing it uses advertised rents of nearby availabilities in addition to the in-building measures, so it'd be playing off of itself. But that wasn't the cas…

I see it as a form of a stand-alone complex. There are multiple companies engaging in this behavior, independently, but resulting in what resembles a concerted effort. However, for renters (and their representatives in government), the concern isn't so much that it's an accident of spookily aligned intent/incentives as it is that 1) it's clearly pushing up rents (beyond affordability), and 2) the companies engaging in it are aware that something they are doing is helping to drive these increases.[1]

I'll also note that a falling occupancy rate is not mutually exclusive with the alleged practice of property managers warehousing inventory to prop up pricing. I also wonder how much the common practice of offering "new renter specials", rather than simply lowering rents to meet demand, contributes to ever-increasing "market rates."

1:https://web.archive.org/web/20220127071929/https://www.entra...

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#143

Post by ianburrell »

HWR_14 wrote: post #110
ticviking wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting question to ask is why do we always seem to grow by increasing density rather than establishing new small towns? Leon Krier's Drawing For Architecture contrasts over-expansion both with excessive density and excessive sprawl and by duplication. It seems to me that if it were legal to do so there are plenty of tiny towns that could grow to the size of a small city like Arlington or Buffalo.

> why do we always seem to grow by increasing density rather than establishing new small towns? By "establishing small towns" I assume you mean suburbs. It seems to be the opposite. Cities with tons of flat land around them (e.g. Houston) tend to expand their footprint and maintain density. It's mostly areas that cannot (e.g. SF, LA, NYC) that increase density. Once you hit natural limiting boarders, you have to buil…

I was noticing that west coast cities have higher density than rest of country. One cause is that many had big booms in the 20s and 50s which gave them walkable suburbs. Second is natural and legal boundaries that slowed growth. Bay Area and Los Angeles are surrounded by mountains. Third is that land prices were high and it was most profitable to squeeze in houses.

The problem the west coast has is not replacing housing once things got full and prices increased.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#144

Post by hayst4ck »

osigurdson wrote: post #35

I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…

Housing can not be both an investment and affordable.

This might sound like a complex or intricate statement, but it is deceptively simple.

If you graph housing price over time, is the graph increasing or decreasing? If it is increasing then housing is a good investment and therefore becoming less affordable, if it's decreasing then housing is not a good investment because it is becoming cheaper and therefore more affordable.

It is supply and demand. As long as supply is restricted homes will increase in value, and if homes increase in value, that's a pretty good indicator supply is not increasing.

This is in aggregate, of course.

Homeowners want their homes to appreciate in value, and many, particularly old people, are using homes as their main vehicles of investment, so of course any policy to increase supply is bad for them. This creates an incredibly powerful political force.

How do you fight that political force?

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#145

Post by anonymouskimmer »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #70
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we don't have teleportation there are network effects to concentration. I don't like it though, and would take a pay cut to move to a more roomy area.

It's not just about the money/jobs though. People have roots. They have family and friends, they have kids in schools, they have communities.

This is a good point. But the flight to cities with jobs does add to it.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#146

Post by khazhoux »

bgm1975 wrote: post #135
khazhoux wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems that where ever this happens, many people oppose merely allowing multiunit because they don't want to live in multiunit, even though it doesn't actually impact where they live No, that's not the reason at all. It's concerns over traffic, impact on already-packed schools, and overall crowding.

Nah, those are code words. What they mean is they’re terrified it might negatively affect their home value (or for some, its racially motivated). Most of these people only care about other people until they think it might negatively effect their perceived wealth. Ask a hope owner if they’d support a bill that would shave 25% of their home value to help…starving children (and we’ll assume the program is proven success…

Traffic, no room in schools, and other crowding issues are not code words. They are quite literal concerns. Rather than argue that people are being disingenuous, I would rather someone explain how traffic would be offset or how many more schools would be built.

Or I guess we can just cry racism and greed and that’s that.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#147

Post by Gigachad »

hayst4ck wrote: post #144
osigurdson wrote: post #35

I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…

Housing can not be both an investment and affordable. This might sound like a complex or intricate statement, but it is deceptively simple. If you graph housing price over time, is the graph increasing or decreasing? If it is increasing then housing is a good investment and therefore becoming less affordable, if it's decreasing then housing is not a good investment because it is becoming cheaper and therefore more af…

This can be solved with subdivision, sure grandmas land is now worth 3M. But we will build a mid rise apartment building on it that regular people can afford.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#148

Post by Gigachad »

unethical_ban wrote: post #123
raldi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know people can rent single-family houses and buy apartments, right?

"Buying apartments" is not something that happens for most places in the United States, so no. Condos and townhomes exist, but are not what I call the norm compared to houses and apartments for rent. I know people can rent single-family homes, but I am also against institutional home-ownership. My point is that living-quarters ownership should be more universal. >Nobody's trying to "take away homeownership" When hous…

Why is this? In Australia, buying an apartment is an extremely common thing, it’s not as common as buying a house but still a normal thing.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#149

Post by runarberg »

an_account wrote: post #21
imglorp wrote: post #7

It needs to be affordable as well as multi unit. There is a massive influx in many burbs of "luxury apartments" with rents $2500+ and I'm not talking downtown NYC. That's more than most mortgages.

“Luxury” is often a marketing term used for very much not luxury apartments. There’s nothing “luxury” about a 900 sqft apartment that happens to have decent stainless steel appliances and a modern look. New apartments (like new cars) are always priced higher than older buildings, but give it a few years and prices drop.

I usually use the terms “luxury apartment” and “arbitrarily high rent” to mean the same thing. A luxury apartment is simply an apartment with higher rent, that is the only “luxury” about it.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#150

Post by rayiner »

ticviking wrote: post #15
rayiner wrote: post #2

> We don't have the space to incorporate a city, or urbanized living, within this small village of a community that we have," says Julie Lee, president of a neighborhood civic association and founding member of Arlingtonians for Upzoning Transparency, a group fighting the plan. Comments to these zoning fights are full of gems like this. Arlington is about the size of Buffalo NY and 50% denser. It hasn’t been anything…

An interesting question to ask is why do we always seem to grow by increasing density rather than establishing new small towns? Leon Krier's Drawing For Architecture contrasts over-expansion both with excessive density and excessive sprawl and by duplication. It seems to me that if it were legal to do so there are plenty of tiny towns that could grow to the size of a small city like Arlington or Buffalo.

As others have said, that’s what we do. The area west of Arlington, VA is a great example. In the movie houseboat it’s depicted as “the country.” Even when I was growing up in the 1990s, it was heavily farmland after you got west of Reston. Today, Reston is a major employment center and all the farmland in Loudoun county has half a million people.
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