7 ms·
New York Is Full. And it’s the housing market’s fault
- alexlesuper 3y agoI think zoning is a big part of the problem. Before WW2, it was much easier to build the housing that new immigrants needed when they arrived. Toda, there is miles of red tape and zoning regulations that keep new neighborhoods from forming and maturing. It's a real shame.
- madengr 3y ago[dead]
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoWhere are you going to build housing in the boroughs?
- ok_dad 3y agoUpwards
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThe bigger problem is there is only one New York City, and zoning is one issue that prevents another New York City from coming into existence.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoEveryone wants to live in NYC and they can’t. So I guess your ideas are to build more desirable cites to live in to take the pressure off of NYC?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoYes, there is no comparable city to NYC in the US, especially with the subway and density.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThat’s true. But there are lots of cities in the USA that aren’t considered very desirable and so have surplus housing.
- genman 3y agoMaybe those cities are not desirable for a reason?
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoMaybe, but if so it sounds like city desirability can’t merely be improved Sony eliminating zoning then.
- yuyuyi 3y ago[flagged]
- ChumpGPT 3y ago>I think zoning is a big part of the problem. I don't think so. The problem is simply to many refugees for the infrastructure/system to absorb. Do we build 10's of 1000's of housing units for future refugee's and immigrants every year, where are the funds for these units procured? My grandfather slept in a park on a bench when he arrived after WW2 as a DP. No one provided him with anything, he had to look for work, find a way to feed himself and finally he managed to split a room in a rooming house with 2 other people. He said the bed they slept in was always warm because someone was getting up to go to work and someone came home from work and was going to sleep. Many families lived the same way. What's interesting is they had no social assistance or help of any kind. Today there is a belief these types of people should be provided with everything. It just isn't plausible.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Today there is a belief these types of people should be provided with everything. It just isn't plausible. Living standards were lower back then and WW2 USA was far less wealthy than it is today. Now it can afford to provide humane present-day conditions to people until they can find work and housing themselves. Just count the money the US spent on the war on terror and the war on drugs, it's more than the GDP of some countries. Refugees don't want hand-outs, they want opportunities to work and provide for themselves. If you deny them decent opportunities and humane living conditions from the start, they're guaranteed to turn to crime to survive, then everyone looses.
- SenAnder 3y agoI don't know about WW2 USA, but 1970s USA was wealthier - wages have not kept up with house prices [1], car prices, education, gas [2], or rent [2,3]. But GDP is up... [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/fgkb83/its_even_worse_than_i_thought_housing_prices_vs/ https://old.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/fgkb83/its_... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/439mr8/eli5what_has_changed_in_the_last_40_years_so_that/ https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/439mr8/e... [3] https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-...
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoHouston, Tx is a good counterexample to the generic "zoning is the problem" idea.
- bombcar 3y agoHouston has zoning by other names (mainly land covenants).
- xboxnolifes 3y agoHouston has zoning if we define zoning as "rules that define where you can build, what you can build, and what auxiliary details you must include". They just don't call it zoning. More importantly, near everyone arguing for change in zoning aren't saying that zoning should be abolished, just changed. So, Houston is not a counter-example.
- ungruntled 3y agoI’m sure there is a lot more available space than the city lets on. You can see residential luxury high-rises where most of lights on every floor are off at night. Nobody is living in them. 10s of empty rent controlled units in each of many buildings where those units stay empty for years. The city may be struggling to house these migrants, but I’m sure there is a strong incentive to keep normal housing units unavailable so friends of politicians can fill their low demand hotel rooms and supply catering at very favorable rates.
- colonCapitalDee 3y ago> You can see residential luxury high-rises where most of lights on every floor are off at night. Nobody is living in them. Most people turn their lights off at night?
- 1over137 3y agohttps://archive.is/kjhyN https://archive.is/kjhyN
- soderfoo 3y agoThe inept Federal government is at fault and has been for decades. The incompetence and inaction demonstrated by the legislative branch on issues clearly within their purview (e.g.immigration) is stupefying. This behavior would surely result in termination in the private sector, why is it continuously tolerated in by voters?
- chrisco255 3y ago- gerrymandering districts to ensure perma majorities for established candidates for either party - easy to blame the other 400 or so Congress members for all the problems - a relative malaise and sleepy cynicism in the population in general when it comes to politics - the executive branch is equally inept, inconsistent, and corrupt
- moneycantbuy 3y ago“I don’t know if you guys understand what’s going on right now,” Adams said at a press conference this month. “There’s no housing, folks. There’s no housing.” well there ever be enough affordable housing again?
- readthenotes1 3y agoNot with Texas shipping immigrants north
- thedrbrian 3y agoNew York is a sanctuary city. They want to help
- halfmatthalfcat 3y agoNo, sanctuary cities are munis that state they won’t treat illegal immigrants, refugees, etc like shit that are already there. They aren’t trying to necessarily _recruit_ and/or ask for more. States shipping them there are abusing the empathy of these cities.
- casefields 3y agoSounds like an invitation to help border states. Tough luck.
- Simulacra 3y agoIs it possible to say that a city is "full" and how would a government enforce that? What I see in the news is that there is a large influx of immigrants to New York City at the moment. The City is required to house them. Besides taxes and zoning, which could reduce the number, how else can the government reduce the number of people in the city?
- tayo42 3y agoWhere is new wave of migrants coming from? It feels like it's always on the US to accept them all. Where's the rest of the first world in this?
- SonOfKyuss 3y agoTake a look at Europe if you really think this is exclusive to the US
- ChumpGPT 3y agoThe US takes in more immigrants every year than any other nation on earth.
- wwtdtgotiatl 3y agoThat is so ridiculously wrong it barely deserves a reply. The US is ~3 per 1000 NOM, its not high at all whether we are talking advanced economies or global South
- ChumpGPT 3y agoWhich country takes in more? Name one country that has taken more?
- yuyuyi 3y ago[flagged]
- haldujai 3y agoIt’s not as simple as you’re saying but you’re also a bit off for the record. Annual net migration per 1000: Of all countries the US ranks #39. Of developed countries with a population > 10M the US ranks #8 (#9 if you include Saudi Arabia but that’s obviously misleading). The countries ahead of us are Australia, Canada, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, UK and Italy. Of developed countries with a population > 5M the US ranks #14. This adds New Zealand, Switzerland, Singapore, Norway, Ireland and Austria. Normalizing to population also comes with various considerations. For further perspective: in terms of foreign born population the US is #1 with about 50 million in total as well as annually with 2 million per year (countered by 1 million emigrants to get your total of a net 3/1000). This is a whopping 15% of the US population, 18% of the total migrant population in the world and 28% of the migrant population in high income countries. Normalizing to population the migrant proportion is 14% in all high income countries and 12% in developed countries. While these numbers are also challenging to interpret as all of these nations have different immigration needs and migrant patterns I wouldn’t call the US “not high at all”. Feel free to correct me if I missed a country.
- lordfrito 3y agoNYC has a population of 8.8 million people and only 300 sq miles of land [1], which works out to about 30,000 people per square mile, or 46 people per acre. That's about 90 sq ft per person. Sounds tight to me. Seems like the problem is that the land is pretty much full. How is that the housing markets fault? How many people should NYC be capable of handling, and who gets to decide that? Can't NYC be free to decide it's big enough? What's preventing people from moving elsewhere? Plenty of land in this country. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_Cit...
- ahazred8ta 3y agoAbout 950 sqft of land per person, but only a small part of that would be residential.
- hgsgm 3y agoStill, pretty much every city in the country has more room to fill in density.
- reducesuffering 3y agoHave you heard of "Not In My BackYard?" It means people in SF/NYC say they're already so big enough, they should build somewhere else. It means people in small towns say they should stay a small town, and go build where there's already big cities. It means people don't build housing enough and people go homeless.
- lordfrito 3y agoWell I mean no one wants to see people being homeless, but if you migrate to a city with no available housing doesn't that suggest you should try moving somewhere else? I mean it's hard even getting a hotel room in some places. You make sure you have a reservation before you go. I can see a point complaining about how we don't have the right kind of assistance programs for refugees. But complaining that it's the city's fault or the market's fault there's no room for people who come with no plan doesn't seem fair. I mean there's a lot of land in this country. Plenty of room for everyone. Just not in one place. Suggesting we force people to use their land to build more housing seems pretty dystopian to me. Force me to build upwards on my land? Seems like a great scifi story premise, so many people you're forced to house and feed strangers that never stop showing up. Anyhow like I said, America is a big country. Plenty of places to live. Not exaggerating.