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I see a lot of discussion of YIMBY policies like building more market-rate housing. My intuition favors these kinds of policies, but when I've tried to find hig

by gradys 8y ago

I see a lot of discussion of YIMBY policies like building more market-rate housing. My intuition favors these kinds of policies, but when I've tried to find high quality evidence that they actually achieve objectives like: - Lower housing prices overall - Lower housing costs for low-income households (heading off the concern that only building market-rate housing could hypothetically lower the price of luxury housing without meaningfully reducing housing costs for low-income households) - Fewer people have to leave the area because of high housing costs ... I haven't been able to find much. What are the best sources that say that YIMBY policies and especially pro- market-rate housing policies actually work? Or the converse - that affordable housing quotas or similar policies tend to make housing less affordable overall.

anonuser123456 8y ago
Tokyo/Japenese housing regulation is often cited as evidence for this hypothesis. https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-...
- pkaye 8y ago
  The Japanese are used to living in tiny accommodations. If we follow their route we could probably reduce costs a lot. Get rid of parking spots. No outdoor patio. Can easily reduce the square footage by 50%.
  - jaredklewis 8y ago
    As far as I can tell, they basically don't build Japanese apartments without outdoor patios. No one has dryers, everyone hangs their clothes outside. But to your point, my anecdotal impression is that even though the average 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom in Japan Tokyo is smaller than an equivalent in the US, the price per sq foot in Tokyo is also much less than in New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Hard to find reliable, cross-country data but this blog post [1] pegs price for rental square foot for SF at $4.75 and Tokyo at $2.79. It's also true about the parking, but again regulations are at play here. Minimum parking requirements are the norm, not the exception in the US. Developers can’t build less parking even if they want to. Even a giant metropolis like San Francisco didn't start to eliminate minimum parking requirements until the late 90s [2]. 1. https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/what-is-1500-worth-worldwide-rent-per-square-foot-around-the-globe/ https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/what-is-1500-wor... 2. https://www.livablecity.org/parking-history-sf/ https://www.livablecity.org/parking-history-sf/
esbranson 8y ago
I'll try my best... (I don't know what I'm talking about.) A quote I pulled from Google Books:[1] "Impacts and Outcomes of Affordable Housing Schemes "[...] However, a recent review of the literature [...] suggests that both benefits and costs of inclusionary zoning schemes have been overstated: "[...] but only modest amounts of affordable housing have been produced through IZ programmes." By way of definitions via Google Search: "Inclusionary zoning (IZ) is an affordable housing tool that links the production of affordable housing to the production of market-rate housing. ..." [1] Urban Planning and the Housing Market: International Perspectives for Policy and Practice. Nicole Gurran, Glen Bramley. Springer, 2017. Page 344. Google Books ID xmomDwAAQBAJ.
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closeparen 8y ago
I’m not sure how to engage with this question. The overwhelming majority of homes in capitalist countries were built for profit and sold at market rate under regulatory regimes that didn’t prohibit this. A human settlement can only exist because it was, at some point, permitted to intensify its built environment with economic and population growth. Every affordable dwelling with neighbors in its line of sight is evidence of YIMBY policy working out well at some scale. We just didn’t call it YIMBY policy until a political bloc showed up opposing it and declaring the city full. What exactly is is that you’re looking for evidence of?
epistasis 8y ago
> YIMBY policies like building more market-rate housing It's important to note that, at least for California, the only YIMBY victory has been this SB-35 Planning and zoning: affordable housing: streamlined approval process [1] So I think it's really important to stress that "marketrate only" is not a YIMBY ideal. That's something else. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

by gradys 8y ago

anonuser123456 8y ago

Tokyo/Japenese housing regulation is often cited as evidence for this hypothesis. https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-...

pkaye 8y ago
The Japanese are used to living in tiny accommodations. If we follow their route we could probably reduce costs a lot. Get rid of parking spots. No outdoor patio. Can easily reduce the square footage by 50%.
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  As far as I can tell, they basically don't build Japanese apartments without outdoor patios. No one has dryers, everyone hangs their clothes outside. But to your point, my anecdotal impression is that even though the average 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom in Japan Tokyo is smaller than an equivalent in the US, the price per sq foot in Tokyo is also much less than in New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Hard to find reliable, cross-country data but this blog post [1] pegs price for rental square foot for SF at $4.75 and Tokyo at $2.79. It's also true about the parking, but again regulations are at play here. Minimum parking requirements are the norm, not the exception in the US. Developers can’t build less parking even if they want to. Even a giant metropolis like San Francisco didn't start to eliminate minimum parking requirements until the late 90s [2]. 1. https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/what-is-1500-worth-worldwide-rent-per-square-foot-around-the-globe/ https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/what-is-1500-wor... 2. https://www.livablecity.org/parking-history-sf/ https://www.livablecity.org/parking-history-sf/

esbranson 8y ago

I'll try my best... (I don't know what I'm talking about.) A quote I pulled from Google Books:[1] "Impacts and Outcomes of Affordable Housing Schemes "[...] However, a recent review of the literature [...] suggests that both benefits and costs of inclusionary zoning schemes have been overstated: "[...] but only modest amounts of affordable housing have been produced through IZ programmes." By way of definitions via Google Search: "Inclusionary zoning (IZ) is an affordable housing tool that links the production of affordable housing to the production of market-rate housing. ..." [1] Urban Planning and the Housing Market: International Perspectives for Policy and Practice. Nicole Gurran, Glen Bramley. Springer, 2017. Page 344. Google Books ID xmomDwAAQBAJ.

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closeparen 8y ago

I’m not sure how to engage with this question. The overwhelming majority of homes in capitalist countries were built for profit and sold at market rate under regulatory regimes that didn’t prohibit this. A human settlement can only exist because it was, at some point, permitted to intensify its built environment with economic and population growth. Every affordable dwelling with neighbors in its line of sight is evidence of YIMBY policy working out well at some scale. We just didn’t call it YIMBY policy until a political bloc showed up opposing it and declaring the city full. What exactly is is that you’re looking for evidence of?

epistasis 8y ago

> YIMBY policies like building more market-rate housing It's important to note that, at least for California, the only YIMBY victory has been this SB-35 Planning and zoning: affordable housing: streamlined approval process [1] So I think it's really important to stress that "marketrate only" is not a YIMBY ideal. That's something else. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...