4 ms·

Seriously. I manage a building in Cambridge and get notifications about zoning changes all the time. And definitely can't afford to live there any more.

bhickey 10y ago
The city council is currently considering an expansion of inclusionary zoning. The gist is that 20% of new apartments in buildings with six or more units will be reserved for people earning between 50-80% of median income. Put concretely, a school teacher with a stay at home spouse and two kids would be ineligible for one of these units. Since there's no concomitant increase in density, we should see two things: 1. Overall construction should decrease relative to where it would have been. Projects that were previously viable are now underwater. Even worse, if the cap rate fluctuates entire classes of projects become nonviable. 2. Market rate housing will become more expensive at a faster rate. The market is clearing at levels that people at 50% median income can't afford, so setting aside units strictly reduces the market rate supply without any demand reduction. The Terner Center at Berkeley has an interesting policy tool that simulates the impact of various policy choices: http://ternercenter2.berkeley.edu/examplecities/index.html http://ternercenter2.berkeley.edu/examplecities/index.html
- scythe 10y ago
  >The gist is that 20% of new apartments in buildings with six or more units will be reserved for people earning between 50-80% of median income. Put concretely, a school teacher with a stay at home spouse and two kids would be ineligible for one of these units. Are these developments really as "welfare cliff"-y as they seem? As in: if your income goes up, are you kicked out of the house? Although, most of what I've read suggests that laws which increase cost (such as affordable housing requirements) have a tiny impact relative to laws which increase development time (such as the Telegraph Hill Dwellers calling for a stay of ~everything at council meetings); the latter are far more damaging. On your tool: if you move the affordability requirement from 10% to 25% and reduce the time to approval from 6 months to 4 months, you still build more housing!
  - rspeer 10y ago
    > As in: if your income goes up, are you kicked out of the house? I went to a City Council debate where this was a big issue. Theoretically, yes. But the city doesn't actually want to kick people out of their houses. But there was some concern that people had already pulled some shenanigans to make their finances temporarily suck so that they could get a house in Cambridge.
    - scarmig 10y ago
      Friend of mine did something similar in San Francisco. Got a low-work part time job that paid in the affordable housing range for a year or two; he had accrued a large down payment; and he managed to win the BMR lottery. Bought a place in North Beach, tripled or quadrupled his income the following year. That makes it sound a lot more cynical than it actually was--he originally chose the badly paying job for the lifestyle it allowed him--but it's definitely an abuse of a system that doesn't even function well when it's not being abused.
    - rspeer 10y ago
      I should clarify: I used the word "house" sloppily. We're talking about renting apartments here; no subsidy would get you an actual house.
  - bhickey 10y ago
    Permit delays introduce huge costs. While a developer is durdling around waiting for building approval they still need to finance the damn thing. At current interest rates every month in delay should work out to something like a 0.3% increase in costs. When we're talking about developments hovering on the border of profitability, this can make or break a project.
    - mtanski 10y ago
      If you think about the current incentives for the DOBs that makes sense. Their KPI is essentially number of inspections, violations, plan re-views. How quickly the permits get done is usually not on the list. It's not uncommon in NYC to go for more then a year through a permitting process for 1 to 3 family reno. That's one of the reason there was so much illegal construction happening here in the past.

bhickey 10y ago

The city council is currently considering an expansion of inclusionary zoning. The gist is that 20% of new apartments in buildings with six or more units will be reserved for people earning between 50-80% of median income. Put concretely, a school teacher with a stay at home spouse and two kids would be ineligible for one of these units. Since there's no concomitant increase in density, we should see two things: 1. Overall construction should decrease relative to where it would have been. Projects that were previously viable are now underwater. Even worse, if the cap rate fluctuates entire classes of projects become nonviable. 2. Market rate housing will become more expensive at a faster rate. The market is clearing at levels that people at 50% median income can't afford, so setting aside units strictly reduces the market rate supply without any demand reduction. The Terner Center at Berkeley has an interesting policy tool that simulates the impact of various policy choices: http://ternercenter2.berkeley.edu/examplecities/index.html http://ternercenter2.berkeley.edu/examplecities/index.html

scythe 10y ago
>The gist is that 20% of new apartments in buildings with six or more units will be reserved for people earning between 50-80% of median income. Put concretely, a school teacher with a stay at home spouse and two kids would be ineligible for one of these units. Are these developments really as "welfare cliff"-y as they seem? As in: if your income goes up, are you kicked out of the house? Although, most of what I've read suggests that laws which increase cost (such as affordable housing requirements) have a tiny impact relative to laws which increase development time (such as the Telegraph Hill Dwellers calling for a stay of ~everything at council meetings); the latter are far more damaging. On your tool: if you move the affordability requirement from 10% to 25% and reduce the time to approval from 6 months to 4 months, you still build more housing!
- rspeer 10y ago
  > As in: if your income goes up, are you kicked out of the house? I went to a City Council debate where this was a big issue. Theoretically, yes. But the city doesn't actually want to kick people out of their houses. But there was some concern that people had already pulled some shenanigans to make their finances temporarily suck so that they could get a house in Cambridge.
  - scarmig 10y ago
    Friend of mine did something similar in San Francisco. Got a low-work part time job that paid in the affordable housing range for a year or two; he had accrued a large down payment; and he managed to win the BMR lottery. Bought a place in North Beach, tripled or quadrupled his income the following year. That makes it sound a lot more cynical than it actually was--he originally chose the badly paying job for the lifestyle it allowed him--but it's definitely an abuse of a system that doesn't even function well when it's not being abused.
  - rspeer 10y ago
    I should clarify: I used the word "house" sloppily. We're talking about renting apartments here; no subsidy would get you an actual house.
- bhickey 10y ago
  Permit delays introduce huge costs. While a developer is durdling around waiting for building approval they still need to finance the damn thing. At current interest rates every month in delay should work out to something like a 0.3% increase in costs. When we're talking about developments hovering on the border of profitability, this can make or break a project.
  - mtanski 10y ago
    If you think about the current incentives for the DOBs that makes sense. Their KPI is essentially number of inspections, violations, plan re-views. How quickly the permits get done is usually not on the list. It's not uncommon in NYC to go for more then a year through a permitting process for 1 to 3 family reno. That's one of the reason there was so much illegal construction happening here in the past.