5 ms·

Grouping young professionals and tourists together under short term residents is a little bit ridiculous. This type of thinking seems to dominate housing discus

by cactus2093 5y ago

Grouping young professionals and tourists together under short term residents is a little bit ridiculous. This type of thinking seems to dominate housing discussions, that young people (or any incoming immigrants to a city/neighborhood) are a nuisance that must be put up with, and the good, ideal state of the neighborhood would be for nothing to ever change and everyone to stay where they are. You need more housing supply in Bed Stuy with or without Airbnb. It's reasonable to try to limit Airbnb so it doesn't get too out of hand, but it's definitely not the major driver of demand today. And you won't avoid gentrification by pretending that the demand is somehow not legitimate and can be easily controlled so that you never need to build anything new.

deregulateMed 5y ago
We knocked down a 1930s depression house to put up a half million dollar home. My property tax is 5x my neighbors. Who's complaining? My neighbors who have fantastic schools and pay trivial taxes?
- skystarman 5y ago
  I'm assuming you're in California. Their property tax laws are absolutely insane but good luck ever changing it.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Who's complaining? We know more about gentrification than starting the discussion from scratch. What is your experience with the downsides of gentrification?
antihero 5y ago
I think one problem at least is that if an area gets filled with young professionals with cash to burn, the businesses in the area either start realising they can start charging premium rates for things or they get bought by people who do. In addition to this, as the area becomes more desirable and affluent, landlords realise that they can increase the rents. This means that over time, the area becomes unaffordable for those who have lived there for decades, unless there's something like rent control introduced.
- cactus2093 5y ago
  > unless there's something like rent control introduced. s/rent control/more housing/ and then yes. Or perhaps do both, even better use housing vouchers instead. But you'll never rent control your way to a functional, affordable city. It can be a better bandaid than doing nothing at all but it's too untargeted and has too many downsides. And it very much falls into that same trap of thinking that young people aren't real residents who also need housing.
  - antihero 5y ago
    More housing seems to be very difficult though - developers are much more interested in building luxury flats that they can sell to people who aren't even going to live there, because that is a better return on their investment. Local councils are struggling horribly to build because land is so expensive. Local council budgets are strangled enough as it is, and social housing is quite costly. This sort of scale has to be driven at government level and the tories have a vested interest in keeping house prices as high as possible so that their voter base sees a return on their investment.
    - cactus2093 5y ago
      This is complete nonsense in so many ways. Multi-unit housing is mostly illegal to build, and even projects that do meet zoning requirements can get blocked by endless red tape. Fix that and housing becomes cheaper to build and it won’t all be “luxury”. Also, “luxury” is just a nimby boogeyman and doesn’t mean anything. Older housing is still very expensive, because there is simply not enough housing. Even if new housing does come with a small premium over older, people move out of older housing into the newer housing freeing up space in the slightly less expensive older units for lower income residents, and the market as a whole gets less expensive as you build enough housing to meet demand.
inlikealamb 5y ago
Young people ARE a nuisance that must be put up with when en masse. I live in an area that went through the full extent of gentrification, from being colloquially referred to as a "slum" to being a place where single-family homes go for $1M+. The first wave of gentrification were college students because they are the group that would pay $1,000/mo per bedroom in a 4-bedroom house (which is a common way for developers to flip a property into a rental). They did not give two shits about the neighborhood, and would constantly litter, trespass, and be noisy at all hours of the night... and as the density of students living in the area increased, it got worse (careless landlords renting to them is also part of the problem). Apartments change hands every year, so you're not even consistently dealing with the same nuisance neighbors. I agree that neighborhoods need to change, but they need to change in a way that isn't unbridled gentrification. We need diverse multi-generational communities of families, young people, and old people because we keep each other in check (same goes for race and class). In my experience gentrification creates waves of homogenization.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nohuck13 5y ago
Honest question. What would a well-meaning, well-informed anti-gentrification activist find here to argue with? I assume these people exist. And anecdotally, I'm 100% sure that the anti-gentrification protesters in my neighborhood include a lot of the young people you posit are the target of the anti-gentrification protests. So, honestly asking: - are we all just disagreeing on the basic economics that supply drives down prices at the neighborhood level? - are young professional people in older rental apartments arguing that gentrification is _caused_ by the building of "high-end" units, which in turn price even _them_ out? - something else entirely? What would an intellectually honest, no-skin-in-the-game argument be?
- cactus2093 5y ago
  Best I can tell, the best good-faith summary of the progressive stance on housing/gentrification would be that we can't afford to wait until supply & demand sorts this out. If most people can afford up to $1500 rent, but the cost of the median unit has gone up to $4000, realistically in the very best case scenario it might take 10-15 years until supply increases lower the median price to that level. And there are people hurting right now so we can't afford to wait that long. Granted, I've never actually heard anybody say that, but that's an intellectually honest claim that seems in line with their views and that I think that is reasonably true. If they would say that, and they would commit to increasing supply in the long term in addition to proposing short term relief measures, I think we could have a much more productive debate. The frustrating part is that what the vast majority of these people actually say, is that supply & demand have zero bearing on housing. And they've been saying this for decades. Failed progressive policies are a big part of why we have a housing shortage. It's like if there was a small spark of a wildfire, and I were to claim that water won't work, we better just wait and see what happens. So we wait and let the fire keep getting bigger, and keep saying water won't work. At some point it actually becomes true that water alone won't work, once it is so far out of hand that there's possible way to deploy enough water to bring it under control. But the takeaway for the next time there are new sparks somewhere else should not be that water doesn't work!
smelendez 5y ago
I think they specifically meant young professionals renting for a single month, then moving on to other more permanent housing, and being replaced by another young professional doing the same thing.

deregulateMed 5y ago

We knocked down a 1930s depression house to put up a half million dollar home. My property tax is 5x my neighbors. Who's complaining? My neighbors who have fantastic schools and pay trivial taxes?

skystarman 5y ago
I'm assuming you're in California. Their property tax laws are absolutely insane but good luck ever changing it.
wolverine876 5y ago
> Who's complaining? We know more about gentrification than starting the discussion from scratch. What is your experience with the downsides of gentrification?

antihero 5y ago

I think one problem at least is that if an area gets filled with young professionals with cash to burn, the businesses in the area either start realising they can start charging premium rates for things or they get bought by people who do. In addition to this, as the area becomes more desirable and affluent, landlords realise that they can increase the rents. This means that over time, the area becomes unaffordable for those who have lived there for decades, unless there's something like rent control introduced.

cactus2093 5y ago
> unless there's something like rent control introduced. s/rent control/more housing/ and then yes. Or perhaps do both, even better use housing vouchers instead. But you'll never rent control your way to a functional, affordable city. It can be a better bandaid than doing nothing at all but it's too untargeted and has too many downsides. And it very much falls into that same trap of thinking that young people aren't real residents who also need housing.
- antihero 5y ago
  More housing seems to be very difficult though - developers are much more interested in building luxury flats that they can sell to people who aren't even going to live there, because that is a better return on their investment. Local councils are struggling horribly to build because land is so expensive. Local council budgets are strangled enough as it is, and social housing is quite costly. This sort of scale has to be driven at government level and the tories have a vested interest in keeping house prices as high as possible so that their voter base sees a return on their investment.
  - cactus2093 5y ago
    This is complete nonsense in so many ways. Multi-unit housing is mostly illegal to build, and even projects that do meet zoning requirements can get blocked by endless red tape. Fix that and housing becomes cheaper to build and it won’t all be “luxury”. Also, “luxury” is just a nimby boogeyman and doesn’t mean anything. Older housing is still very expensive, because there is simply not enough housing. Even if new housing does come with a small premium over older, people move out of older housing into the newer housing freeing up space in the slightly less expensive older units for lower income residents, and the market as a whole gets less expensive as you build enough housing to meet demand.

inlikealamb 5y ago

Young people ARE a nuisance that must be put up with when en masse. I live in an area that went through the full extent of gentrification, from being colloquially referred to as a "slum" to being a place where single-family homes go for $1M+. The first wave of gentrification were college students because they are the group that would pay $1,000/mo per bedroom in a 4-bedroom house (which is a common way for developers to flip a property into a rental). They did not give two shits about the neighborhood, and would constantly litter, trespass, and be noisy at all hours of the night... and as the density of students living in the area increased, it got worse (careless landlords renting to them is also part of the problem). Apartments change hands every year, so you're not even consistently dealing with the same nuisance neighbors. I agree that neighborhoods need to change, but they need to change in a way that isn't unbridled gentrification. We need diverse multi-generational communities of families, young people, and old people because we keep each other in check (same goes for race and class). In my experience gentrification creates waves of homogenization.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nohuck13 5y ago

Honest question. What would a well-meaning, well-informed anti-gentrification activist find here to argue with? I assume these people exist. And anecdotally, I'm 100% sure that the anti-gentrification protesters in my neighborhood include a lot of the young people you posit are the target of the anti-gentrification protests. So, honestly asking: - are we all just disagreeing on the basic economics that supply drives down prices at the neighborhood level? - are young professional people in older rental apartments arguing that gentrification is _caused_ by the building of "high-end" units, which in turn price even _them_ out? - something else entirely? What would an intellectually honest, no-skin-in-the-game argument be?

cactus2093 5y ago
Best I can tell, the best good-faith summary of the progressive stance on housing/gentrification would be that we can't afford to wait until supply & demand sorts this out. If most people can afford up to $1500 rent, but the cost of the median unit has gone up to $4000, realistically in the very best case scenario it might take 10-15 years until supply increases lower the median price to that level. And there are people hurting right now so we can't afford to wait that long. Granted, I've never actually heard anybody say that, but that's an intellectually honest claim that seems in line with their views and that I think that is reasonably true. If they would say that, and they would commit to increasing supply in the long term in addition to proposing short term relief measures, I think we could have a much more productive debate. The frustrating part is that what the vast majority of these people actually say, is that supply & demand have zero bearing on housing. And they've been saying this for decades. Failed progressive policies are a big part of why we have a housing shortage. It's like if there was a small spark of a wildfire, and I were to claim that water won't work, we better just wait and see what happens. So we wait and let the fire keep getting bigger, and keep saying water won't work. At some point it actually becomes true that water alone won't work, once it is so far out of hand that there's possible way to deploy enough water to bring it under control. But the takeaway for the next time there are new sparks somewhere else should not be that water doesn't work!

smelendez 5y ago

I think they specifically meant young professionals renting for a single month, then moving on to other more permanent housing, and being replaced by another young professional doing the same thing.