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> The macro picture is still supply and demand and we have to intervene there if we want housing to be more affordable in the places people want to live. legali
by maxsilver 2y ago
> The macro picture is still supply and demand and we have to intervene there if we want housing to be more affordable in the places people want to live. legalizing a variety of housing is very much a step that your local city council can take.
We already did this ages ago -- most cities have already made all the changes you are requesting, years or even a decade ago. Your talking points are like 10 years behind the times, housing is already legal in 99% of the US right now. (basically everywhere that isn't SF / Bay Area). And you can see brand new 5+1s all over every city, as proof of it. (so much so, that press even writes about it - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s-new-apartment-buildings-all-look-the-same https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-ameri... )
Yes, neighbors complain and complain, and it's easy to focus on them, cause they're loud and annoying. But they don't win -- they complain, and then the investors win anyway, and still get to build almost anything they propose. (I'm in the Midwest, and I can count on one hand the number of times an investor lost a proposal -- they get to develop anything they want 99%+ of the time)
> People are so desperate for some bogeyman to blame. Institutional investors! RealPage! Short Term Rentals!
Well, because those are actual issues, and "NIMBYism" isn't. "NIMBYism" is maybe 2% of the overall housing problem, while private equity, investors, illegal hotels ("Short Term Rentals"), pricing collusion ("RealPage"), and such are, collectively, probably ~50%+ of the problem.
There's dozens of problems at play with crazy-high housing prices. "NIMBYism" doesn't even rank among the top ten of them.
- davidw 2y ago> We already did this ages ago -- most cities have already made all the changes you are requesting, years or even a decade ago No, they did not. This is divorced from the reality of most cities.
- maxsilver 2y ago> No, they did not. Yes, they did, and you can see it in the metrics. If "new housing" is "not legal", how are we at a 30-year-high in new residential construction? - https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-housing-starts-surge-13-month-high-2023-06-20/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-housing-starts-surge-1... and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-20/us-housing-starts-surge-to-a-more-than-one-year-high https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-20/us-housin... Note that we're also at a nearly 50-year record-high on urban apartment construction as well https://www.axios.com/2023/09/07/apartment-building-construction-record-high https://www.axios.com/2023/09/07/apartment-building-construc... -- the kinds of dense multi-family units that urbanists insist cities "haven't legalized".
- davidw 2y agoOregon was the first state in the nation to re-legalize middle housing in 2019, only 5 years ago, with HB2001, which is the kind of reform we're talking about. Most states have not caught up. The governor of Arizona just vetoed their own housing bill. Building apartments where it was already legal to build apartments is great, and we're seeing it help curb rents in some places, but there's so much more to it than that.
- senordevnyc 2y ago[dead]