4 ms·

> Only if they only upzone your neighborhood, because if they upzone all of them then developers can buy any of them at existing prices instead of having to all

> Only if they only upzone your neighborhood, because if they upzone all of them then developers can buy any of them at existing prices instead of having to all bid on an artificially scarce subset. And yet some neighborhoods are more desirable than others. Is this not already obvious from the state of the market today? Developers go where the most money can be made—the neighborhoods which are already valuable. > Where does the money to sell "below market value" come from? Tax breaks, duh. You put money back in developers pockets. By the way, you don't need to separate the projects. You combine them. You make luxury units possible with a mandate that a percentage of the building be affordable. New York already does this. Why is this so hard to understand?

mypalmike 5y ago
You're condescension isn't helping your case.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> And yet some neighborhoods are more desirable than others. Is this not already obvious from the state of the market today? Developers go where the most money can be made—the neighborhoods which are already valuable. This is just a non-sequitur. Of course some neighborhoods are more valuable than others. But if you have twelve similarly-valuable neighborhoods within reasonable distance of each other, and you only upzone some of them, those will increase in value at the expense of the others. Also, developers frequently choose the least valuable neighborhoods, because development makes the neighborhood more valuable, so they go where they can buy low and sell high. > Tax breaks, duh. So now the middle class gets to pay taxes to subsidize housing they're not eligible to live in, while not being able to afford the housing they are eligible to live in. > You combine them. You make luxury units possible with a mandate that a percentage of the building be affordable. Which dramatically increases the cost of the program because the opportunity cost of having more high value housing is so much larger than the cost of building lower cost housing in lower cost areas. You also end up with the bizarre result and perverse incentive that people not eligible for affordable housing have to live somewhere worse than people who are, so making more money makes your life worse. This also increases housing costs for the middle class because you under-produce luxury housing so the people who would have bought the luxury housing are now bidding against the middle class for ordinary housing.

mypalmike 5y ago

You're condescension isn't helping your case.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> And yet some neighborhoods are more desirable than others. Is this not already obvious from the state of the market today? Developers go where the most money can be made—the neighborhoods which are already valuable. This is just a non-sequitur. Of course some neighborhoods are more valuable than others. But if you have twelve similarly-valuable neighborhoods within reasonable distance of each other, and you only upzone some of them, those will increase in value at the expense of the others. Also, developers frequently choose the least valuable neighborhoods, because development makes the neighborhood more valuable, so they go where they can buy low and sell high. > Tax breaks, duh. So now the middle class gets to pay taxes to subsidize housing they're not eligible to live in, while not being able to afford the housing they are eligible to live in. > You combine them. You make luxury units possible with a mandate that a percentage of the building be affordable. Which dramatically increases the cost of the program because the opportunity cost of having more high value housing is so much larger than the cost of building lower cost housing in lower cost areas. You also end up with the bizarre result and perverse incentive that people not eligible for affordable housing have to live somewhere worse than people who are, so making more money makes your life worse. This also increases housing costs for the middle class because you under-produce luxury housing so the people who would have bought the luxury housing are now bidding against the middle class for ordinary housing.