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> The housing crisis won’t be solved by electing new city council members in old cities alone. The incentives for incumbent homeowners to restrict the supply of

> The housing crisis won’t be solved by electing new city council members in old cities alone. The incentives for incumbent homeowners to restrict the supply of new housing are too strong. The bigger problem is that zoning law is created at the state level and then applied by each municipality, but housing prices are related to the housing stock of a metropolitan region of many municipalities. For every expensive city that is (relatively) developer friendly (say Cambridge MA or Boston MA, which both grew population by over 10% in the past decade) there is a ring of NIMBY inner suburbans like Newton MA, Arlington MA, Weston MA, who viciously oppose even a single apartment building[0]. [0] https://www.preserveweston.org/the-weston-whopper/ https://www.preserveweston.org/the-weston-whopper/

twobitshifter 5y ago
Do most states have statewide zoning? Or did you mean to say “not created at the state level”?
- helen___keller 5y ago
  my understanding is states determine zoning laws, which municipalities apply. For example, MA state zoning law determines that cities and towns need a supermajority vote to change their zoning plan, so it's usually politically infeasible for cities and towns to change their zoning except as maybe the occasional once-in-a-generation thing. As a result, most development around here happens through zoning variances, which have to be approved by the local zoning board and are subject to all sorts of hearings and generally get very held up compared to by-right zoning.
shados 5y ago
> there is a ring of NIMBY inner suburbans Which makes sense when you think about it. Imagine you live in Boston, and things are changing and being built up. You don't like it. People tell you "If you don't like it, leave". You're like "Ok" and move to Arlington. Fast-forward and the same thing happens again. You're gonna push back, because the whole reason you were there was to avoid it. Sometimes I feel like having longer term planning would help. It wouldn't help with the problem today, but if I knew that in 10 years there would be skyscrapers across the street, I could decide if I'm ok with it or not and leave if the latter. Sure, my property value would probably go down somewhat, but I wouldn't wake up on a Monday to the project starting.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  > Sometimes I feel like having longer term planning would help. It wouldn't help with the problem today, but if I knew that in 10 years there would be skyscrapers across the street, I could decide if I'm ok with it or not and leave if the latter There is long term planning, it's just at the municipal level which doesn't solve the problem; Boston and Cambridge have long term plans to build tons of office buildings and attracts lots of high paying jobs. The inner suburbs have long term plans to essentially change nothing but maybe revitalize one little corner of town. The end result is where we are today, that housing prices across the board doubled in the past decade.
  - shados 5y ago
    Yes, there's an overarching plan. But I can't tell what they're going to build across the street. I'm in Cambridge, and the time between the neighborhood hearing and the jackhammers starting was a couple of weeks last time it happened here. Since everything in Cambridge is done with special permits, you can't even look at the zoning map to be able to tell. That's not a "plan". That's a strategy at best.
    - helen___keller 5y ago
      > Since everything in Cambridge is done with special permits, you can't even look at the zoning map to be able to tell. That's less of a planning issue and more of a natural result of game theory. Updating the zoning map is much more difficult (supermajority vote) than issuing zoning variances, and the process of zoning variance appeals offers the city a chance to wring favorable concessions from developers. (of course, as it happens these concessions and the appeals process come at cost to the developer, which over the long term translates to less construction and higher per-unit prices. I'd like to see the state find a way to change the way this works, but I'm not holding my breath!) All of this to say that planning exists, but it might not be available to the public easily or at all.
webmaven 5y ago
> For every expensive city that is (relatively) developer friendly [...] there is a ring of NIMBY inner suburbans [that] viciously oppose even a single apartment building. It obviously isn't ideal, but how problematic is it to have a ring or belt that constrains the dense core from sprawling? Other cities have them, for a variety of motivations (eg. cities in Oregon such as Portland all have an urban growth boundary to protect surrounding farms and forests). As long as there is somewhere nearby that can increase density it should work out.

twobitshifter 5y ago

Do most states have statewide zoning? Or did you mean to say “not created at the state level”?

helen___keller 5y ago
my understanding is states determine zoning laws, which municipalities apply. For example, MA state zoning law determines that cities and towns need a supermajority vote to change their zoning plan, so it's usually politically infeasible for cities and towns to change their zoning except as maybe the occasional once-in-a-generation thing. As a result, most development around here happens through zoning variances, which have to be approved by the local zoning board and are subject to all sorts of hearings and generally get very held up compared to by-right zoning.

shados 5y ago

> there is a ring of NIMBY inner suburbans Which makes sense when you think about it. Imagine you live in Boston, and things are changing and being built up. You don't like it. People tell you "If you don't like it, leave". You're like "Ok" and move to Arlington. Fast-forward and the same thing happens again. You're gonna push back, because the whole reason you were there was to avoid it. Sometimes I feel like having longer term planning would help. It wouldn't help with the problem today, but if I knew that in 10 years there would be skyscrapers across the street, I could decide if I'm ok with it or not and leave if the latter. Sure, my property value would probably go down somewhat, but I wouldn't wake up on a Monday to the project starting.

helen___keller 5y ago
> Sometimes I feel like having longer term planning would help. It wouldn't help with the problem today, but if I knew that in 10 years there would be skyscrapers across the street, I could decide if I'm ok with it or not and leave if the latter There is long term planning, it's just at the municipal level which doesn't solve the problem; Boston and Cambridge have long term plans to build tons of office buildings and attracts lots of high paying jobs. The inner suburbs have long term plans to essentially change nothing but maybe revitalize one little corner of town. The end result is where we are today, that housing prices across the board doubled in the past decade.
- shados 5y ago
  Yes, there's an overarching plan. But I can't tell what they're going to build across the street. I'm in Cambridge, and the time between the neighborhood hearing and the jackhammers starting was a couple of weeks last time it happened here. Since everything in Cambridge is done with special permits, you can't even look at the zoning map to be able to tell. That's not a "plan". That's a strategy at best.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    > Since everything in Cambridge is done with special permits, you can't even look at the zoning map to be able to tell. That's less of a planning issue and more of a natural result of game theory. Updating the zoning map is much more difficult (supermajority vote) than issuing zoning variances, and the process of zoning variance appeals offers the city a chance to wring favorable concessions from developers. (of course, as it happens these concessions and the appeals process come at cost to the developer, which over the long term translates to less construction and higher per-unit prices. I'd like to see the state find a way to change the way this works, but I'm not holding my breath!) All of this to say that planning exists, but it might not be available to the public easily or at all.

webmaven 5y ago

> For every expensive city that is (relatively) developer friendly [...] there is a ring of NIMBY inner suburbans [that] viciously oppose even a single apartment building. It obviously isn't ideal, but how problematic is it to have a ring or belt that constrains the dense core from sprawling? Other cities have them, for a variety of motivations (eg. cities in Oregon such as Portland all have an urban growth boundary to protect surrounding farms and forests). As long as there is somewhere nearby that can increase density it should work out.