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The solution has always been to build more housing. Onerous zoning laws are preventing supply and demand from coming into balance. Single-family zoning needs to

The solution has always been to build more housing. Onerous zoning laws are preventing supply and demand from coming into balance. Single-family zoning needs to be banned. It's not actually that complicated, and to your point, it doesn't involve reporting your neighbors to the authorities.

wtallis 3y ago
How much single-family zoning is there in New York City?
- arcticbull 3y ago
  A surprising amount, but of course that's not the only way of impeding construction. See San Francisco's shadow aversion. New York City is around 15%. Note that Manhattan has among the lowest prevalence of single-family zoning in the US, and a density of almost 70,000 people per square mile. 83% of the Bay Area is zoned single-family and has a density of just 400 people per square mile. [edit] If you look at NYC-adjacent counties, Bergen, Fairfield, Nassau, and Westchester the numbers get far worse. About 56% of all housing near rail stations in these counties is classified as detached single-family houses. [1] [1] https://rpa.org/latest/lab/our-region-needs-more-housing-end-single-family-zoning https://rpa.org/latest/lab/our-region-needs-more-housing-end...
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > About 56% of all housing near rail stations in these counties is classified as detached single-family houses. That could be totally fine. Many people like living in detached housing and having that near rail service to a major city seems like a good thing. If the concern is zoning that precludes other uses, that’s a different thing, but a mere observation that X% of housing in some area is of a particular, often very desirable, type isn’t conclusive to me. If you want public transport to be seen as something everyone uses, it’s probably good that outlying counties like Westchester have detached SFRs in addition to the 44% higher density housing.
    - acdha 3y ago
      If detached single family homes are so popular, you wouldn’t need the government to prevent people from building what they want. Those rules were designed to ensure that certain neighborhoods were only for “the right kind of people”, not because Moses came down from the mountain with a single-family zoning plan.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        They are wildly popular. It's not the government preventing people from building what they want (though that's the proximate mechanism). It's people who live there and voted in the government and advocated for those policies. This is not a government problem, but a people's preferences problem.
        acdha 3y ago
        You have to consider selection bias here: people live where they can afford to, not necessarily where they’d like. You aren’t seeing what people who were excluded on price or racial lines would want, and you’re not seeing how many people truly want only that style versus not disliking it enough to organize a political movement, since depending on the area that can require things like supermajorities and even nullifying covenants in deeds. This also hits the tension cities have for balancing the interests of long-term residents against the future. Lots of places have this dynamic now where old retirees block any changes either because they’re opposed to change or fearful of losing the equity which is most of their retirement, but anyone looking at the city finances knows that they need more residents, especially of working age, and that includes lower income families if you want to be able to have service workers, city employees, etc. actually live there. This is especially true in places like California where old residents pay far less in taxes but have equally high, if not higher, expectations for city services.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    > and has a density of just 400 people per square mile. Oh wow, that's low enough to count as rural in the UK.
cyberax 3y ago
> The solution has always been to build more housing The US has more than enough housing, and very cheap at that. You can buy a house for $1 in some places. However, toxic policies lead to over-concentration of housing in a small number of cities. This drives up prices in a never-ending spiral. You can't ever build enough housing in dense cities. It will ALWAYS be expensive.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > You can't ever build enough housing in dense cities. It will ALWAYS be expensive. Interesting, Tokyo hasn't seen house prices increase since 1995 in either nominal or real-dollar terms. One of the most affordable major metros in the US is Houston. One thing they have in common is no real constraints on zoning. > The US has more than enough housing, and very cheap at that. You can buy a house for $1 in some places. The problem is supply and demand have to be co-located. You can't commute from Iowa or Detroit to the Bay Area or Manhattan for work. Studies show the US is short about 5-6M homes thanks to a decade of under-building. [1] > However, toxic policies lead to over-concentration of housing in a small number of cities. This drives up prices in a never-ending spiral. Concentration of housing is good, actually. It's far more efficient in every way, it's environmentally friendly and gives us access to all sorts of services and social groups. Concentration of talent makes the Bay Area the Bay Area. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-has-a-shortfall-of-6-5-million-single-family-homes-due-to-a-decade-of-under-building-report-says-2fb86d08 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-has-a-shortfall-of-6-5...
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Yeah the existence of a cheap house doesn’t make housing cheap, or even scalable at that cheap price, since things are priced at the margins, if suddenly a few people flocked to cheap town it’s prices will go up fast.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      A $100000 house going up to $105000 is not the same as a $1000000 house going up to $1050000. Moreover, land cost outside of big cities is pretty much nothing. It's cheap to build new housing as needed.

wtallis 3y ago

How much single-family zoning is there in New York City?

arcticbull 3y ago
A surprising amount, but of course that's not the only way of impeding construction. See San Francisco's shadow aversion. New York City is around 15%. Note that Manhattan has among the lowest prevalence of single-family zoning in the US, and a density of almost 70,000 people per square mile. 83% of the Bay Area is zoned single-family and has a density of just 400 people per square mile. [edit] If you look at NYC-adjacent counties, Bergen, Fairfield, Nassau, and Westchester the numbers get far worse. About 56% of all housing near rail stations in these counties is classified as detached single-family houses. [1] [1] https://rpa.org/latest/lab/our-region-needs-more-housing-end-single-family-zoning https://rpa.org/latest/lab/our-region-needs-more-housing-end...
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > About 56% of all housing near rail stations in these counties is classified as detached single-family houses. That could be totally fine. Many people like living in detached housing and having that near rail service to a major city seems like a good thing. If the concern is zoning that precludes other uses, that’s a different thing, but a mere observation that X% of housing in some area is of a particular, often very desirable, type isn’t conclusive to me. If you want public transport to be seen as something everyone uses, it’s probably good that outlying counties like Westchester have detached SFRs in addition to the 44% higher density housing.
  - acdha 3y ago
    If detached single family homes are so popular, you wouldn’t need the government to prevent people from building what they want. Those rules were designed to ensure that certain neighborhoods were only for “the right kind of people”, not because Moses came down from the mountain with a single-family zoning plan.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      They are wildly popular. It's not the government preventing people from building what they want (though that's the proximate mechanism). It's people who live there and voted in the government and advocated for those policies. This is not a government problem, but a people's preferences problem.
      - acdha 3y ago
        You have to consider selection bias here: people live where they can afford to, not necessarily where they’d like. You aren’t seeing what people who were excluded on price or racial lines would want, and you’re not seeing how many people truly want only that style versus not disliking it enough to organize a political movement, since depending on the area that can require things like supermajorities and even nullifying covenants in deeds. This also hits the tension cities have for balancing the interests of long-term residents against the future. Lots of places have this dynamic now where old retirees block any changes either because they’re opposed to change or fearful of losing the equity which is most of their retirement, but anyone looking at the city finances knows that they need more residents, especially of working age, and that includes lower income families if you want to be able to have service workers, city employees, etc. actually live there. This is especially true in places like California where old residents pay far less in taxes but have equally high, if not higher, expectations for city services.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  > and has a density of just 400 people per square mile. Oh wow, that's low enough to count as rural in the UK.

cyberax 3y ago

> The solution has always been to build more housing The US has more than enough housing, and very cheap at that. You can buy a house for $1 in some places. However, toxic policies lead to over-concentration of housing in a small number of cities. This drives up prices in a never-ending spiral. You can't ever build enough housing in dense cities. It will ALWAYS be expensive.

arcticbull 3y ago
> You can't ever build enough housing in dense cities. It will ALWAYS be expensive. Interesting, Tokyo hasn't seen house prices increase since 1995 in either nominal or real-dollar terms. One of the most affordable major metros in the US is Houston. One thing they have in common is no real constraints on zoning. > The US has more than enough housing, and very cheap at that. You can buy a house for $1 in some places. The problem is supply and demand have to be co-located. You can't commute from Iowa or Detroit to the Bay Area or Manhattan for work. Studies show the US is short about 5-6M homes thanks to a decade of under-building. [1] > However, toxic policies lead to over-concentration of housing in a small number of cities. This drives up prices in a never-ending spiral. Concentration of housing is good, actually. It's far more efficient in every way, it's environmentally friendly and gives us access to all sorts of services and social groups. Concentration of talent makes the Bay Area the Bay Area. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-has-a-shortfall-of-6-5-million-single-family-homes-due-to-a-decade-of-under-building-report-says-2fb86d08 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-has-a-shortfall-of-6-5...
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Yeah the existence of a cheap house doesn’t make housing cheap, or even scalable at that cheap price, since things are priced at the margins, if suddenly a few people flocked to cheap town it’s prices will go up fast.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    A $100000 house going up to $105000 is not the same as a $1000000 house going up to $1050000. Moreover, land cost outside of big cities is pretty much nothing. It's cheap to build new housing as needed.