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Everything You Think You Know About Housing Is Probably Wrong
- mancerayder 7y agoThis is a big problem. To address the country’s monumental housing crisis and also become less automobile- and carbon-dependent, America needs to densify its job-rich metro areas so that more people can afford to live there and walk, bike and take public transit to get to work and back. According to a much-cited report by the McKinsey Global Institute, California is 3.5 million houses short. Housing shortages exacerbate home prices and homelessness and cause all sorts of other ripple effects on commute times, economic productivity, health and family life. But opposition to density has only stiffened as the gulf widens between the 1 percent and everyone else. Well-to-do NIMBYs, congenitally opposed to new developments, have lately been joined by anti-displacement tenant activists — advocates for poor and working-class residents who might ordinarily want more housing but have come to fear that nearly all development brings gentrification that prices the most vulnerable out of neighborhoods. In cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston, this new alliance means even initiatives promising some subsidized housing have become lines in the sand. Interesting bedfellows. In NYC the anti-gentrification crowd currently has the upper hand and is derailing up-zoning and other initiatives. It sounds like, in California there are the NIMBYs as well as the anti-gentrification crowd.