8 ms·

It's not just housing policy that's gone wrong, it's transit policy. We haven't built good public transit in our cities, and now that cars are filling all avai

by mhneu 10y ago

It's not just housing policy that's gone wrong, it's transit policy. We haven't built good public transit in our cities, and now that cars are filling all available roads, even houses far away from cities are too expensive for how long commutes are. We wish we had a train system in many cities that allowed the middle class to live 40-60 minutes away from their jobs. Ultimately however the main problem is wealth inequality. If median income had increased with GDP since 1980, instead of all gains going to the 0.01%, you would be able to afford to live in the suburbs of San Diego.

forrestthewoods 10y ago
Inequality is not the problem. The problem is there are more people who want to live somewhere than there are houses. With perfect equality there would still be more people than houses. The one and only fix is more houses. That's it. Any other solution is just picking winners and losers different ways. But no matter which way you pick the same number of people win and the same number lose.
- unclebucknasty 10y ago
  >The one and only fix is more houses Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The heart of the problem in many parts of the country is that we fund our schools with property taxes. Hence, a cycle of better schools and increased demand in concentrated areas, which causes the supply-demand imbalance and price increases. Compounding this is the fact that people in such areas actively block "higher density" housing, which naturally means fewer houses per acre. Building more houses would help to a limited extent, but the shortage would still exist and resistance is stout. Hence, the shortage of housing is just a symptom of how we fund education, which is the real problem. >Inequality is not the problem Inequality absolutely enters here because if wealth/income were more evenly distributed, then funding for schools would be more evenly distributed, thus alleviating concentrated housing demand in small areas with better schools and driving up prices.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your comment. Public schools in dense cities tend to be almost universally bad--in spite of often being funded at significantly higher per-student levels than even relatively tony suburbs that have high-performing schools. If you look at Massachusetts public high schools for example, the one public high school in Cambridge (where housing has gotten very expensive) has some of the highest per-pupil spending and is in the bottom tier of test results.
    - unclebucknasty 10y ago
      Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs with any significant consistency. I'd want to see the actual numbers. For instance, where is this funding coming from for the cities? And, where is the suburban tax money going? And, what's the history? Were these schools neglected for years, then the state recently started pouring in money? I mean, maybe there are some exceptions (perhaps partially gentrified cities where some tax base is moving back into cities at inflated prices?), but these would generally be outliers. Since wealthier people have fled most major cities for the burbs, the tax base and educational investments have generally followed them. You see this over and over again in communities throughout the country. For example: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools...
      - ghaff 10y ago
        OK. For Massachusetts 2015, to pick a town and a city that each have one high school and are both expensive property values. Cambridge (expensive city) $27,569 per pupil Concord (expensive suburb) $17,517 per pupil http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx Rankings Cambridge Ringe and Latin was 214 out of 340 Concord Carlisle High was 27 out of 340 https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3 https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3 Not cherry-picked data. A lot of the difference is that cities, even expensive ones, are cities. A lot more diverse student body. A lot more students with problems at home. More disruption, etc. You can spend more money but the average student in the city school almost certainly has less parental involvement and less of a home environment that's conducive to learning than in the tony suburb. The linked article (and decades of debate) notwithstanding, it's also hard to really correlate spending per pupil with educational outcomes past a certain point--especially as measured on standardized tests. Poorer cities do spend less. Two Lawrence high schools have the worst test results in Massachusetts. But its spending, $14,475 per pupil, is still only a bit less than Concord.
- mtbcoder 10y ago
  The fix is to make more areas desirable to live in by reducing income inequality and stimulating local economies (which in turn creates more desirable locations). Simply saying build "more houses" in clustered cities along the coasts doesn't solve anything in the long run. Cities are in it for the long run.
  - forrestthewoods 10y ago
    San Francisco is not nearly dense enough. It can support a lot more housing. Easily. It's just NIMBYs and cronies in the way. Despite having significant growth opportunity San Fran is already twice as dense as Seattle. Therefore Seattle has room for explosive housing growth. It would need more changes than just housing of course. But that's to be expected and totally doable. Cities are huge economic multipliers. We don't need more cities yet. The ones we have are perfectly great! We need to more efficiently use what we already have. This housing crisis isn't affecting just "top tier" cities. It's not just New York and San Fran. It's Seattle. It's Denver, Austin, and Portland. It's even Nashville! Every city, top to bottom, needs to be doing more. And they need to start now as the longer they wait the more expensive the infrastructure adjustments become.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      >It can support a lot more housing So long as you also build all the transportation, schooling, utility, and other infrastructure needed to support it.
      - forrestthewoods 10y ago
        All the city needs to do is literally nothing. Just stand back and stay out of the way. Sadly this is one of the hardest things for a bureaucracy to do.
        ghaff 10y ago
        Because schooling and public transit and such will just happen automagically?
- cynicalkane 10y ago
  There are two fixes, which must be done simultaneously: more housing and more transportation infrastructure. Our modern economy wants to centralize in cities, and not doing so is leaving free lunch on the table. Also keep in mind that more people in cities = cheaper suburbs for those who prefer it.
  - forrestthewoods 10y ago
    Improved transportation infrastructure is a valid way of increases the number of homes available to job centers. Increased centralization in cities is a bit of a problem. But cities are such an economic multiplier that it's difficult not to. That's a tougher nut to crack.
- Svenskunganka 10y ago
  I believe there's another option; make the cities more attractive (and affordable) to live in for the middle class. You can see this across European cities, which is explained really well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSxPzafO_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSxPzafO_k It's easy to say and hard to do, but concerns like a good neighborhood or decent commute when looking for living arrangements in the cities is definitely not as common in Europe as it is in the US.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    The cities are attractive, too attractive, that's why prices are so high. We do not have a demand shortage. We have a supply shortage.
    - Svenskunganka 10y ago
      I'd say that every major city across the continents have a supply shortage, that's the nature of cities, but I haven't heard of any city in Europe not affordable to live in for the middle class. Surely the good 'ol supply & demand are influencing the pricing, but I believe there must be something external that has caused this.
      - CountSessine 10y ago
        Yes - that's because they don't have a supply problem; they don't do stupid things like zone their cities to prioritize single family detached homes. European cities are dense and if we want North American cities to be similarly liveable, we need to rezone to allow greater density and increased supply.
        candiodari 10y ago
        Can Americans stop with the "surely it's better elsewhere" crap ? No it's not better in Europe. Either you go to a capital or second tier city with jobs, and pay ridiculous rates. Buy, rent, doesn't matter. Or you go to a normal city and commute in. That adds 2-4 hours to your working day and 50-150 euros to your (effective) monthly rent, but provides you with a much better place to live. Or of course you go to rust belt equivalent communities. Northern Spain. Southern Italy. Very cheap, beautiful even, housing for no money whatsoever. And not a chance in hell of finding a job there.
- paublyrne 10y ago
  Yes but there is also the issue of unoccupied or semi occupied properties which needs to be addressed. When an owner can make more money airbnbning a property to visitors than fulltime local tenants this hurts the city.
kansface 10y ago
> Ultimately however the main problem is wealth inequality. If median income had increased with GDP since 1980, instead of all gains going to the 0.01%, you would be able to afford to live in the suburbs of San Diego. The problem of income inequality is one and the same as the housing crisis - ie, the wealth gap is nearly entirely explained by real estate.
- mhneu 10y ago
  No, the wealth gap is not explained by real estate. The problem is that the 0.01% -- households worth more than ~$100M -- have received almost all the wealth gains since 1980. That's not just real estate -- it has to do with globalization as well as tax and policy decision. So the very rich have gotten much richer, while median incomes (I.e. middle class incomes) have not increased. See Fig 1 of this paper: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf
  - sobani 10y ago
    According to [1] the return from 1980 to now is 57.5 fold. So anyone who started with 'just' 2M would have ended up with more than 100M. It's not surprising that those who started with the most, also got the most gains. [1] http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm
- hsitz 10y ago
  Can you give a cite to any statistics or resources that suggest that real estate fully explains the wealth gap? The ultra-wealthy tend to have much higher percentage of their assets in securities than real estate. So that real estate explains the entire wealth gap sounds curious, although perhaps not impossible. I just have no idea how that could be.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >wealth gap is nearly entirely explained by real estate. 1) Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981. 2) This set off a wave of anti-union action - http://www.alternet.org/story/154595/how_ronald_reagan_broke_the_air_traffic_controllers_union--and_why_that_fight_still_matters http://www.alternet.org/story/154595/how_ronald_reagan_broke... - causing the great decoupling of wages and productivity: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_1947-2009.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Producti... 3) ...which caused staggering levels of wealth inequality: http://www.bankers-anonymous.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wealth-inequality.jpg http://www.bankers-anonymous.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/... 4) And all that accumulated wealth ended up being lent back in the form of loans (e.g. student loans), mortgages as well as bidding up the price of real estate which your grandma - a 'boomer' profited a small amount from - which is why this is actually all her fault.
Fricken 10y ago
It ultimately boils down to simple supply and demand. Want to live in a nice, walkable medium density neighbourhood with good amenities? Sorry, America stopped building those 60 years ago. Why did we stop building them, and why can't we build more now? The answer to that is long, convoluted and tragic.
- nopinsight 10y ago
  Do you have an article or other links from which we can learn more about the reasons? A summary of the long answer would be helpful too. Since the demand for such cities is quite high--a large number of middle class voters would like to live in one--would a mobilization of political will enable us to change to situation somewhat, at least over the medium to long term?
  - m0llusk 10y ago
    Strongtowns.org might be a good place to start.
    - Redoubts 10y ago
      Cool link, thanks!
tobylane 10y ago
London, cities in Europe in general have good transport but not great housing options. London just overtook the pre war population (within a green belt set just after the war). Nearly everywhere is within a mile of a station, only one tiny spot is four miles away. It's all about affordable housing. We as a country are building half of what we need.
- vidoc 10y ago
  London as more than decent public transportation indeed, plus it has this rather extreme car policy we all know about (which by the way I am sure the super rich actually love!). The thing is, I've always wondered why public transportation is so outrageously expensive there. Actually, even with the Oyster card, the rates strike me as rather extreme. I'd love to hear a Londonese on this.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    It's partly because the underground is 154 years old, which carries with it its own set of maintenance headaches, partly because of the "public private partnership" programs from 2000s onwards that were set up as a means to extract money from the system and partly because they pay reasonably good wages.
    - vidoc 10y ago
      Do most londonese share this feeling of mine that it's kinda expensive or this is just me being a bit dumb? :)
      - ido 10y ago
        It certainly surprised me as a tourist- for example Berlin's network is not much less extensive but cost a fraction to use.
      - user5994461 10y ago
        The other places I've been were not qualified of "expensive" because they had dramatic discounts for the privileged ones. e.g. student 18-25 age 10€ - worker 25-65 age 50€ - no work 25-65 free pass if you send a paper to request it.
spacemanmatt 10y ago
The dearth of quality education drives the housing inequality significantly. Funding schools adequately would have a profound effect on property values.

by mhneu 10y ago

forrestthewoods 10y ago

Inequality is not the problem. The problem is there are more people who want to live somewhere than there are houses. With perfect equality there would still be more people than houses. The one and only fix is more houses. That's it. Any other solution is just picking winners and losers different ways. But no matter which way you pick the same number of people win and the same number lose.

unclebucknasty 10y ago
>The one and only fix is more houses Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The heart of the problem in many parts of the country is that we fund our schools with property taxes. Hence, a cycle of better schools and increased demand in concentrated areas, which causes the supply-demand imbalance and price increases. Compounding this is the fact that people in such areas actively block "higher density" housing, which naturally means fewer houses per acre. Building more houses would help to a limited extent, but the shortage would still exist and resistance is stout. Hence, the shortage of housing is just a symptom of how we fund education, which is the real problem. >Inequality is not the problem Inequality absolutely enters here because if wealth/income were more evenly distributed, then funding for schools would be more evenly distributed, thus alleviating concentrated housing demand in small areas with better schools and driving up prices.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your comment. Public schools in dense cities tend to be almost universally bad--in spite of often being funded at significantly higher per-student levels than even relatively tony suburbs that have high-performing schools. If you look at Massachusetts public high schools for example, the one public high school in Cambridge (where housing has gotten very expensive) has some of the highest per-pupil spending and is in the bottom tier of test results.
  - unclebucknasty 10y ago
    Hmm. It's a little hard to imagine that per-student funding in high-density city schools outstrips that for truly wealthier and presumably sparser suburbs with any significant consistency. I'd want to see the actual numbers. For instance, where is this funding coming from for the cities? And, where is the suburban tax money going? And, what's the history? Were these schools neglected for years, then the state recently started pouring in money? I mean, maybe there are some exceptions (perhaps partially gentrified cities where some tax base is moving back into cities at inflated prices?), but these would generally be outliers. Since wealthier people have fled most major cities for the burbs, the tax base and educational investments have generally followed them. You see this over and over again in communities throughout the country. For example: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools...
    - ghaff 10y ago
      OK. For Massachusetts 2015, to pick a town and a city that each have one high school and are both expensive property values. Cambridge (expensive city) $27,569 per pupil Concord (expensive suburb) $17,517 per pupil http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx Rankings Cambridge Ringe and Latin was 214 out of 340 Concord Carlisle High was 27 out of 340 https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3 https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MA/schoolrank.aspx?level=3 Not cherry-picked data. A lot of the difference is that cities, even expensive ones, are cities. A lot more diverse student body. A lot more students with problems at home. More disruption, etc. You can spend more money but the average student in the city school almost certainly has less parental involvement and less of a home environment that's conducive to learning than in the tony suburb. The linked article (and decades of debate) notwithstanding, it's also hard to really correlate spending per pupil with educational outcomes past a certain point--especially as measured on standardized tests. Poorer cities do spend less. Two Lawrence high schools have the worst test results in Massachusetts. But its spending, $14,475 per pupil, is still only a bit less than Concord.
mtbcoder 10y ago
The fix is to make more areas desirable to live in by reducing income inequality and stimulating local economies (which in turn creates more desirable locations). Simply saying build "more houses" in clustered cities along the coasts doesn't solve anything in the long run. Cities are in it for the long run.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  San Francisco is not nearly dense enough. It can support a lot more housing. Easily. It's just NIMBYs and cronies in the way. Despite having significant growth opportunity San Fran is already twice as dense as Seattle. Therefore Seattle has room for explosive housing growth. It would need more changes than just housing of course. But that's to be expected and totally doable. Cities are huge economic multipliers. We don't need more cities yet. The ones we have are perfectly great! We need to more efficiently use what we already have. This housing crisis isn't affecting just "top tier" cities. It's not just New York and San Fran. It's Seattle. It's Denver, Austin, and Portland. It's even Nashville! Every city, top to bottom, needs to be doing more. And they need to start now as the longer they wait the more expensive the infrastructure adjustments become.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    >It can support a lot more housing So long as you also build all the transportation, schooling, utility, and other infrastructure needed to support it.
    - forrestthewoods 10y ago
      All the city needs to do is literally nothing. Just stand back and stay out of the way. Sadly this is one of the hardest things for a bureaucracy to do.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        Because schooling and public transit and such will just happen automagically?
cynicalkane 10y ago
There are two fixes, which must be done simultaneously: more housing and more transportation infrastructure. Our modern economy wants to centralize in cities, and not doing so is leaving free lunch on the table. Also keep in mind that more people in cities = cheaper suburbs for those who prefer it.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Improved transportation infrastructure is a valid way of increases the number of homes available to job centers. Increased centralization in cities is a bit of a problem. But cities are such an economic multiplier that it's difficult not to. That's a tougher nut to crack.
Svenskunganka 10y ago
I believe there's another option; make the cities more attractive (and affordable) to live in for the middle class. You can see this across European cities, which is explained really well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSxPzafO_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSxPzafO_k It's easy to say and hard to do, but concerns like a good neighborhood or decent commute when looking for living arrangements in the cities is definitely not as common in Europe as it is in the US.
- closeparen 10y ago
  The cities are attractive, too attractive, that's why prices are so high. We do not have a demand shortage. We have a supply shortage.
  - Svenskunganka 10y ago
    I'd say that every major city across the continents have a supply shortage, that's the nature of cities, but I haven't heard of any city in Europe not affordable to live in for the middle class. Surely the good 'ol supply & demand are influencing the pricing, but I believe there must be something external that has caused this.
    - CountSessine 10y ago
      Yes - that's because they don't have a supply problem; they don't do stupid things like zone their cities to prioritize single family detached homes. European cities are dense and if we want North American cities to be similarly liveable, we need to rezone to allow greater density and increased supply.
      - candiodari 10y ago
        Can Americans stop with the "surely it's better elsewhere" crap ? No it's not better in Europe. Either you go to a capital or second tier city with jobs, and pay ridiculous rates. Buy, rent, doesn't matter. Or you go to a normal city and commute in. That adds 2-4 hours to your working day and 50-150 euros to your (effective) monthly rent, but provides you with a much better place to live. Or of course you go to rust belt equivalent communities. Northern Spain. Southern Italy. Very cheap, beautiful even, housing for no money whatsoever. And not a chance in hell of finding a job there.
paublyrne 10y ago
Yes but there is also the issue of unoccupied or semi occupied properties which needs to be addressed. When an owner can make more money airbnbning a property to visitors than fulltime local tenants this hurts the city.

kansface 10y ago

> Ultimately however the main problem is wealth inequality. If median income had increased with GDP since 1980, instead of all gains going to the 0.01%, you would be able to afford to live in the suburbs of San Diego. The problem of income inequality is one and the same as the housing crisis - ie, the wealth gap is nearly entirely explained by real estate.

mhneu 10y ago
No, the wealth gap is not explained by real estate. The problem is that the 0.01% -- households worth more than ~$100M -- have received almost all the wealth gains since 1980. That's not just real estate -- it has to do with globalization as well as tax and policy decision. So the very rich have gotten much richer, while median incomes (I.e. middle class incomes) have not increased. See Fig 1 of this paper: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf
- sobani 10y ago
  According to [1] the return from 1980 to now is 57.5 fold. So anyone who started with 'just' 2M would have ended up with more than 100M. It's not surprising that those who started with the most, also got the most gains. [1] http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm
hsitz 10y ago
Can you give a cite to any statistics or resources that suggest that real estate fully explains the wealth gap? The ultra-wealthy tend to have much higher percentage of their assets in securities than real estate. So that real estate explains the entire wealth gap sounds curious, although perhaps not impossible. I just have no idea how that could be.
crdoconnor 10y ago
>wealth gap is nearly entirely explained by real estate. 1) Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981. 2) This set off a wave of anti-union action - http://www.alternet.org/story/154595/how_ronald_reagan_broke_the_air_traffic_controllers_union--and_why_that_fight_still_matters http://www.alternet.org/story/154595/how_ronald_reagan_broke... - causing the great decoupling of wages and productivity: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_1947-2009.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Producti... 3) ...which caused staggering levels of wealth inequality: http://www.bankers-anonymous.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wealth-inequality.jpg http://www.bankers-anonymous.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/... 4) And all that accumulated wealth ended up being lent back in the form of loans (e.g. student loans), mortgages as well as bidding up the price of real estate which your grandma - a 'boomer' profited a small amount from - which is why this is actually all her fault.

Fricken 10y ago

It ultimately boils down to simple supply and demand. Want to live in a nice, walkable medium density neighbourhood with good amenities? Sorry, America stopped building those 60 years ago. Why did we stop building them, and why can't we build more now? The answer to that is long, convoluted and tragic.

nopinsight 10y ago
Do you have an article or other links from which we can learn more about the reasons? A summary of the long answer would be helpful too. Since the demand for such cities is quite high--a large number of middle class voters would like to live in one--would a mobilization of political will enable us to change to situation somewhat, at least over the medium to long term?
- m0llusk 10y ago
  Strongtowns.org might be a good place to start.
  - Redoubts 10y ago
    Cool link, thanks!

tobylane 10y ago

London, cities in Europe in general have good transport but not great housing options. London just overtook the pre war population (within a green belt set just after the war). Nearly everywhere is within a mile of a station, only one tiny spot is four miles away. It's all about affordable housing. We as a country are building half of what we need.

vidoc 10y ago
London as more than decent public transportation indeed, plus it has this rather extreme car policy we all know about (which by the way I am sure the super rich actually love!). The thing is, I've always wondered why public transportation is so outrageously expensive there. Actually, even with the Oyster card, the rates strike me as rather extreme. I'd love to hear a Londonese on this.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  It's partly because the underground is 154 years old, which carries with it its own set of maintenance headaches, partly because of the "public private partnership" programs from 2000s onwards that were set up as a means to extract money from the system and partly because they pay reasonably good wages.
  - vidoc 10y ago
    Do most londonese share this feeling of mine that it's kinda expensive or this is just me being a bit dumb? :)
    - ido 10y ago
      It certainly surprised me as a tourist- for example Berlin's network is not much less extensive but cost a fraction to use.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      The other places I've been were not qualified of "expensive" because they had dramatic discounts for the privileged ones. e.g. student 18-25 age 10€ - worker 25-65 age 50€ - no work 25-65 free pass if you send a paper to request it.

spacemanmatt 10y ago

The dearth of quality education drives the housing inequality significantly. Funding schools adequately would have a profound effect on property values.