6 ms·

NY has not been putting up housing at an insane rate. Housing in NY is actually being constructed at one of the lowest rates in the last century. Adjusted for b

by tmh79 7y ago

NY has not been putting up housing at an insane rate. Housing in NY is actually being constructed at one of the lowest rates in the last century. Adjusted for business cycles (we're in a peak now), NY is building less housing than they have build in ~100 years, and Manhattan is at its lowest density since the 1890s. The current period is only a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when basically no new housing was constructed.

m_ke 7y ago
Manhattan has a glut of luxury condos that are sitting vacant but Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint and LIC have seen a boom (https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york-city-outward-1540742400 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york...) over the past few years. Commercial real estate has gone up a lot as well and has led to a ton of vacant retail space. My father had a carpentry shop in bushwick and just had his land lord triple their rent.
- shuckles 7y ago
  The right metric is new homes per capita by which NYC is about as bad San Francisco.
- tmh79 7y ago
  They have seen a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when literally zero new housing was built, they have not seen a boom relative to 1900 - 2009, especially when accounting for business cycle. I understand that you are seeing what you perceive to be a lot of housing construction, but relative to historical trends and population/household size trends, there is very little housing construction happening in NYC.
  - m_ke 7y ago
    The "boom" is relative to all of 2000s. Look at the number of permits in 2015 [1], especially in the outer boroughs. My argument, as someone who grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, is that building new housing doesn't really drive the prices down. I have a lot of friends who had to move or shut down their small businesses because of the rising costs. [1](https://www.buildingcongress.com/advocacy-and-reports/reports-and-analysis/construction-outlook-update/NYC-residential-building-permits-surged-past-56000-in-2015-a-67-percent-increase-from-the-height-of-the-previous-building-boom.html https://www.buildingcongress.com/advocacy-and-reports/report...) [2](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/dob-development-report.html https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/dob-development-r...)
    - tmh79 7y ago
      "building new housing doesn't really drive the prices down" there is a lot of empirical evidence against this claim, and almost no evidence for it. Rising costs in cities are due to a few factors: (1) lack of new housing, (2) changing economic conditions in which high paying jobs are moving from the suburbs to the cities (to be fair, there is a small factor in very few cities of super rich people buying housing and not living in it, but that is largely confined to Manhattan, London, and suburban Vancouver, but is not broadly an issue in housing affordability) From after WWII through the 80s, American cities were largely in this strange largely racism induced recession (white flight to the suburbs) which caused a historical aberration of cheap housing and commercial space in cities. That trend was a very short counter trend blip in the 5000 year history of real estate in cities. The way forward is to build a lot more housing in cities, as its eminently clear that lots of people want to live in them, that living in cities is better for the environment than the alternative, and that our economy would be doing much better if the desired urbanization was actually allowed.
      - njarboe 7y ago
        I love cities, think they are great, and live in the Bay Area myself. I don't know how old you are, but much of the flight to suburbs was due to the building of freeways and the fear of nuclear attack on cities. Younger people did not grow up with bomb shelters and duck and cover drills at schools, so living in a big city is not something they fear. If we have a nuke or two blow up a few cities today, there might be flight out of the cities once again. I sure hope that doesn't happen.
        tmh79 7y ago
        White people didn't leave cities because of the threat of nuclear attacks, they left because there was an incredible amount of racial unrest, violence, and rioting. There is a lot of research on the issue [0]. Climate change is a much larger threat to anyone under 30 than nuclear annihilation is, and the balance of evidence we have says that urban lifestyles (car free/car light, living in a multi family home) has a smaller carbon footprint than traditional suburban living. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

by tmh79 7y ago

m_ke 7y ago

Manhattan has a glut of luxury condos that are sitting vacant but Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint and LIC have seen a boom (https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york-city-outward-1540742400 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york...) over the past few years. Commercial real estate has gone up a lot as well and has led to a ton of vacant retail space. My father had a carpentry shop in bushwick and just had his land lord triple their rent.

shuckles 7y ago
The right metric is new homes per capita by which NYC is about as bad San Francisco.
tmh79 7y ago
They have seen a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when literally zero new housing was built, they have not seen a boom relative to 1900 - 2009, especially when accounting for business cycle. I understand that you are seeing what you perceive to be a lot of housing construction, but relative to historical trends and population/household size trends, there is very little housing construction happening in NYC.
- m_ke 7y ago
  The "boom" is relative to all of 2000s. Look at the number of permits in 2015 [1], especially in the outer boroughs. My argument, as someone who grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, is that building new housing doesn't really drive the prices down. I have a lot of friends who had to move or shut down their small businesses because of the rising costs. [1](https://www.buildingcongress.com/advocacy-and-reports/reports-and-analysis/construction-outlook-update/NYC-residential-building-permits-surged-past-56000-in-2015-a-67-percent-increase-from-the-height-of-the-previous-building-boom.html https://www.buildingcongress.com/advocacy-and-reports/report...) [2](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/dob-development-report.html https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/dob-development-r...)
  - tmh79 7y ago
    "building new housing doesn't really drive the prices down" there is a lot of empirical evidence against this claim, and almost no evidence for it. Rising costs in cities are due to a few factors: (1) lack of new housing, (2) changing economic conditions in which high paying jobs are moving from the suburbs to the cities (to be fair, there is a small factor in very few cities of super rich people buying housing and not living in it, but that is largely confined to Manhattan, London, and suburban Vancouver, but is not broadly an issue in housing affordability) From after WWII through the 80s, American cities were largely in this strange largely racism induced recession (white flight to the suburbs) which caused a historical aberration of cheap housing and commercial space in cities. That trend was a very short counter trend blip in the 5000 year history of real estate in cities. The way forward is to build a lot more housing in cities, as its eminently clear that lots of people want to live in them, that living in cities is better for the environment than the alternative, and that our economy would be doing much better if the desired urbanization was actually allowed.
    - njarboe 7y ago
      I love cities, think they are great, and live in the Bay Area myself. I don't know how old you are, but much of the flight to suburbs was due to the building of freeways and the fear of nuclear attack on cities. Younger people did not grow up with bomb shelters and duck and cover drills at schools, so living in a big city is not something they fear. If we have a nuke or two blow up a few cities today, there might be flight out of the cities once again. I sure hope that doesn't happen.
      - tmh79 7y ago
        White people didn't leave cities because of the threat of nuclear attacks, they left because there was an incredible amount of racial unrest, violence, and rioting. There is a lot of research on the issue [0]. Climate change is a much larger threat to anyone under 30 than nuclear annihilation is, and the balance of evidence we have says that urban lifestyles (car free/car light, living in a multi family home) has a smaller carbon footprint than traditional suburban living. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight