6 ms·

I'm not up on the sources, but a moderately pro-development candidate for Cambridge City Council has often quoted a statistic saying that there are only two way

by rspeer 9y ago

I'm not up on the sources, but a moderately pro-development candidate for Cambridge City Council has often quoted a statistic saying that there are only two ways to bring down house prices: 1. Make the city suck 2. Get the housing vacancy rate to 5.5% And of course he says this to encourage everyone to work toward #2, and the way to do that without displacing anyone is to build new housing. I don't really understand the opposite logic, which the NIMBYs like to use, saying that building new housing will drive the price up. I mean, I am not some kind of libertarian free-market cheerleader, but it shouldn't be that controversial to say that a market exists, that the way to bring down the price in the face of overwhelming demand is with supply. People point to how expensive newly-built market-rate housing is, but that's a symptom of the shortage. People want to live in good cities. If there's not a new home for them, they'll pay even more for a home someone lives in, so prices go up and a community gets displaced.

kurthr 9y ago
Actually, you get double bonus wherever you add housing, because you'll never add enough transportation or parking as necessary so that neighborhood will also start to suck! Also, housing people is a net drain on the tax base so the city services get worse or taxes increase. Win, win! Yeah, that's why NIMBY... on the other hand add transit, jobs, or retail somewhere and house prices go up locally with it because people want to live there (reduce their commute and buy $#&+) and it pays enough taxes. Retail moves where people flow. It takes planning and not just building.
- Brotkrumen 9y ago
  So people move to reduce their commute, effectively their use of roads, but that shorter commute will not reduce their use but increase it? Tough proposition. You also posit that people hold parking at a premium and that new house will not try to capture that premium. Mhhhh
- ch4s3 9y ago
  > Also, housing people is a net drain on the tax base so the city services get worse or taxes increase I'm not sure what you're talking about here. It's far cheaper to provide services at higher density, far cheaper. You need fewer meters of sewer, conduit, etc. Transit lines can be shorter with fewer connections. Additionally, if you bring more people into a municipality, you generate more taxes through increased property values, increased sales tax revenue, and income taxes if you municipality does that.
- kevinburke 9y ago
  This is actually not true in California where new housing pays property taxes at 2017 rates. Thanks to Prop 13 there are a lot of homes worth more than a million dollars that are still paying $5,000 or less per year in property taxes.
bhickey 9y ago
You probably remember a few years back when the well-heeled Green candidate ran on a platform of bussing in homeless. https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/3pd9k3/my_notes_on_the_abc_forum_thursday_oct_15/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/3pd9k3/my_note...
- rspeer 9y ago
  Those are my notes! That candidate was amazing. Of course I didn't vote for him, but at least he was honest about his plan to lower the rent.
  - bhickey 9y ago
    I enjoyed his cynical schtick: a JD/PhD from West Cambridge pretending to be a blue collar guy.
ACow_Adonis 9y ago
I don't see many people mentioning a proportional value-based land tax, which would probably be about the first thing a traditional economist would recommend? Brings down prices, hurts land-banking, increases density, generates revenue for infrastructure, captures public benefit from value increase, etc...
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  The biggest stakeholders (landowners, especially corporate ones) don't want a value based tax, the only way it'll happen is if the rest of the state decides that the circus going on in the city is causing enough problems that taxes are happening with or without the city on board. I don't see this happening in CA.
- rspeer 9y ago
  Hurts grandmas/grandpas who lucked into houses with high property values, who could be rich but don't want to be because they have personal reasons not to move. These are incidentally severely overrepresented among voters, and their votes are amplified by how easy it is to paint someone following the economic wisdom as an evil grandma-displacer. It's much more politically convenient to displace young minorities. Nobody will really speak up for them, and they won't vote against you because you displaced them and they live somewhere else now!
  - nradov 9y ago
    One solution would be to defer tax payments and put a lien on the property instead, payable upon change of ownership. That way no one will be forced out of their home, and the government can even use those liens as collateral if they need to borrow funds for current operations.
    - ensignavenger 9y ago
      Allow those liens to compound over enough time, and eventually they become more than the value of the home. Also, many of these voters want to leave their property to their children, not the government.
maxsilver 9y ago
> I don't really understand the opposite logic, which the NIMBYs like to use, saying that building new housing will drive the price up. It actually fits the "logic" of the model you mentioned. If you build more housing, the city "sucks less", more people want to live there, so the price goes up. This is especially true with modern development, since it exclusively builds luxury units, which make that part of the city really suck less, and therefore drives prices really high, really fast. -- Sure, in the very long run, building new housing lowers prices. But in all short-to-medium timeframes, new housing greatly increases all housing prices in the particular area development occurs, which is why you get so many local residents (even renters) opposed to it.
- rspeer 9y ago
  It would seem to me that, even in that case, building new housing increases the housing price in that local area, while not building new housing increases the housing price everywhere. Is there an alternative plan to make housing prices decrease? The long term is at least better than never. I know there's the whole thing where you designate certain units as subsidized affordable housing and have people on a lottery/waiting-list to get it, and having some of that probably helps in the short term, but at least in Cambridge the subsidies are becoming unsustainable. Even people making six figures end up needing subsidized housing.
  - nradov 9y ago
    One alternative plan would be to subsidize economic development in underpopulated cities. It's not healthy for our societies long term to squeeze everyone into just a few geographically constrained areas.
- kevinburke 9y ago
  The phenomenon you’re describing perfectly describes “we are adding new supply but not enough to keep up with demand” and I think you’re getting the causation wrong. The California LAO has published reports showing areas with more new housing had less displacement, for example.
nradov 9y ago
It's not a simple supply versus demand curve. Sometimes adding a little more housing without flooding the market does end up increasing prices due to gentrification that changes the characteristics of a neighborhood. Building more housing does "make the city suck" for people who prefer quiet, privacy, and unobstructed views. In some areas it probably makes sense to build regardless of their objections but that will have to be resolved through a democratic process.
ensignavenger 9y ago
If the new housing replaces old housing, without adding any /many new units, it can certainly increase prices (new brand new apartment often costs more than a 20 year old one). That isn't what you are talking about here, but some NIMBYs may think that is what is going on in some situations- in those cases, education is key to persuasion.

by rspeer 9y ago

kurthr 9y ago

Actually, you get double bonus wherever you add housing, because you'll never add enough transportation or parking as necessary so that neighborhood will also start to suck! Also, housing people is a net drain on the tax base so the city services get worse or taxes increase. Win, win! Yeah, that's why NIMBY... on the other hand add transit, jobs, or retail somewhere and house prices go up locally with it because people want to live there (reduce their commute and buy $#&+) and it pays enough taxes. Retail moves where people flow. It takes planning and not just building.

Brotkrumen 9y ago
So people move to reduce their commute, effectively their use of roads, but that shorter commute will not reduce their use but increase it? Tough proposition. You also posit that people hold parking at a premium and that new house will not try to capture that premium. Mhhhh
ch4s3 9y ago
> Also, housing people is a net drain on the tax base so the city services get worse or taxes increase I'm not sure what you're talking about here. It's far cheaper to provide services at higher density, far cheaper. You need fewer meters of sewer, conduit, etc. Transit lines can be shorter with fewer connections. Additionally, if you bring more people into a municipality, you generate more taxes through increased property values, increased sales tax revenue, and income taxes if you municipality does that.
kevinburke 9y ago
This is actually not true in California where new housing pays property taxes at 2017 rates. Thanks to Prop 13 there are a lot of homes worth more than a million dollars that are still paying $5,000 or less per year in property taxes.

bhickey 9y ago

You probably remember a few years back when the well-heeled Green candidate ran on a platform of bussing in homeless. https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/3pd9k3/my_notes_on_the_abc_forum_thursday_oct_15/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/comments/3pd9k3/my_note...

rspeer 9y ago
Those are my notes! That candidate was amazing. Of course I didn't vote for him, but at least he was honest about his plan to lower the rent.
- bhickey 9y ago
  I enjoyed his cynical schtick: a JD/PhD from West Cambridge pretending to be a blue collar guy.

ACow_Adonis 9y ago

I don't see many people mentioning a proportional value-based land tax, which would probably be about the first thing a traditional economist would recommend? Brings down prices, hurts land-banking, increases density, generates revenue for infrastructure, captures public benefit from value increase, etc...

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
The biggest stakeholders (landowners, especially corporate ones) don't want a value based tax, the only way it'll happen is if the rest of the state decides that the circus going on in the city is causing enough problems that taxes are happening with or without the city on board. I don't see this happening in CA.
rspeer 9y ago
Hurts grandmas/grandpas who lucked into houses with high property values, who could be rich but don't want to be because they have personal reasons not to move. These are incidentally severely overrepresented among voters, and their votes are amplified by how easy it is to paint someone following the economic wisdom as an evil grandma-displacer. It's much more politically convenient to displace young minorities. Nobody will really speak up for them, and they won't vote against you because you displaced them and they live somewhere else now!
- nradov 9y ago
  One solution would be to defer tax payments and put a lien on the property instead, payable upon change of ownership. That way no one will be forced out of their home, and the government can even use those liens as collateral if they need to borrow funds for current operations.
  - ensignavenger 9y ago
    Allow those liens to compound over enough time, and eventually they become more than the value of the home. Also, many of these voters want to leave their property to their children, not the government.

maxsilver 9y ago

> I don't really understand the opposite logic, which the NIMBYs like to use, saying that building new housing will drive the price up. It actually fits the "logic" of the model you mentioned. If you build more housing, the city "sucks less", more people want to live there, so the price goes up. This is especially true with modern development, since it exclusively builds luxury units, which make that part of the city really suck less, and therefore drives prices really high, really fast. -- Sure, in the very long run, building new housing lowers prices. But in all short-to-medium timeframes, new housing greatly increases all housing prices in the particular area development occurs, which is why you get so many local residents (even renters) opposed to it.

rspeer 9y ago
It would seem to me that, even in that case, building new housing increases the housing price in that local area, while not building new housing increases the housing price everywhere. Is there an alternative plan to make housing prices decrease? The long term is at least better than never. I know there's the whole thing where you designate certain units as subsidized affordable housing and have people on a lottery/waiting-list to get it, and having some of that probably helps in the short term, but at least in Cambridge the subsidies are becoming unsustainable. Even people making six figures end up needing subsidized housing.
- nradov 9y ago
  One alternative plan would be to subsidize economic development in underpopulated cities. It's not healthy for our societies long term to squeeze everyone into just a few geographically constrained areas.
kevinburke 9y ago
The phenomenon you’re describing perfectly describes “we are adding new supply but not enough to keep up with demand” and I think you’re getting the causation wrong. The California LAO has published reports showing areas with more new housing had less displacement, for example.

nradov 9y ago

It's not a simple supply versus demand curve. Sometimes adding a little more housing without flooding the market does end up increasing prices due to gentrification that changes the characteristics of a neighborhood. Building more housing does "make the city suck" for people who prefer quiet, privacy, and unobstructed views. In some areas it probably makes sense to build regardless of their objections but that will have to be resolved through a democratic process.

ensignavenger 9y ago

If the new housing replaces old housing, without adding any /many new units, it can certainly increase prices (new brand new apartment often costs more than a 20 year old one). That isn't what you are talking about here, but some NIMBYs may think that is what is going on in some situations- in those cases, education is key to persuasion.