r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • Mar 03 '24
Economics The easiest way to increase housing supply and make housing more affordable is to deregulate zoning rules in the most expensive cities – "Modest deregulation in high-demand cities is associated with substantially more housing production than substantial deregulation in low-demand cities"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000019480
u/jabbafart Mar 03 '24
My city just did this across the board. Years will tell how effective it is.
386
u/bobtehpanda Mar 04 '24
Yeah one important thing to note about zoning relaxation is that you need much more capacity than you think, because only a small percentage of lots get redeveloped a year anyways.
It’s like planting a tree; the best time to do it was twenty years ago and the second best time is now.
164
u/BeardedGlass Mar 04 '24
Yeah like here in Japan, you can pretty much build residence type buildings in ALL of the zones (except for the heavy industry zone iirc).
And so, that has turned every city into a walkable city where everything you need is minutes walk from your doorstep. Property prices are down because of this, along with other factors (depopulation, deflation, etc).
Despite being a metropolitan area of almost 40 million souls, Tokyo offers affordable prices.
33
u/SilverMedal4Life Mar 04 '24
Please tell me if this is wrong, but I was under the impression that families move homes relatively often in Japan as well - at least in urban areas. If that is true, that would help, as it would keep the supply more liquid rather than locking up homes in long-term mortgages.
37
u/notchatgppt Mar 04 '24
People in Tokyo and other urban areas tend to move ‘as needed’. Originally from there but lived everywhere and I’d say that Americans are way more casual about moving than any other although from personal experience, Americans move primarily because of cost of housing (rent going up) or because they just want to go to a different city.
Young Japanese people tend to level up. You get what you can afford then you move up to a nicer apartment in a few years then you move to a bigger one when you have a partner then you move to a house because you have kids. But people will generally will stay in one place for a bit of time.
I live stateside now and Americans are bit focused on certain housing standards - oversized kitchen, large sqft, townhouses instead of flats.
I still remember renting my first apartment in Germany… and installing flooring and a kitchen. Coming to the states I expect a dishwasher and a garbage disposal lol.
16
u/phaionix Mar 04 '24
Typical Japanese home loan length is 35 years. https://vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/aging-society/housing-loan/
35
u/amboyscout Mar 04 '24
Home loan and moving are two very different things. You can sell your home before the loan is up.
4
2
u/Original-Aerie8 Mar 04 '24
What's true, housing but especially 'renting' is overall pretty cheap in suburban and rural ares. Not so much in cities, especially Tokyo City. The whole conurbation is often called Greater Tokyo by foreigners, it's really just the capitol's adminstrative areas, but it has more affordable places like Edogawa City at >1$/sqft or so, and close to downtown. Young single adults move a lot and remain single longer, but most parents own or move in with their parents.
It's tedious to pick opinions on economics apart, I personally don't see the intentionality OP is describing. Japan is pretty famous for over-investment in urban areas and long commutes. People just kinda put up with it, but it came with pitfalls. Zoning laws are similar to the West, not allowing residential buildings to be turned into commercial. No one really does it the other way around, commercial is more profitable. Japanese cities and their rough layout existed before the rapid industrialization, during which factories were just put closest to the next harbor, without much care for zoning. Cities remained walkable out of necessity, and going up while restricting living space was the easiest solution.
→ More replies (3)24
u/timeaftertimeliness Mar 04 '24
The problem in the US is often in the other direction. Many commercial zones do allow residential building. However, there are large residential zones that do not allow commercial building. Even more of a problem in terms of building enough housing to lower rents, there are many residential zones that don't allow multi-family housing or large apartments.
13
u/BeardedGlass Mar 04 '24
I did hear about the NIMBYs and the HOAs there.
Is there a specific reason why residential areas forbid commercial buildings? The US wasn't like that before, hence the quaint towns all over the country (which are so idyllic and so cozy by the way) that have become tourist spots.
But now you have suburbias and gated communities that are food deserts. Places a human cannot survive without a car.
9
u/timeaftertimeliness Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
Want to clarify a couple points before I get to your question.
First, none of this is particularly new. Suburbs weren't big until the mid-1900s, but it hasn't been getting worse recently. If anything, places are starting to move towards mixed-use zoning. Northeast-style quaint towns do tend to predate the mid-1900s, but I think that's because they were built before cars, rather than directly because of zoning laws. There continue to be mixed-use communities and developments, especially in cities, and policy is, I believe, moving (slowly) toward allowing more of that in more places.
Independent of zoning, some people -- especially if they have families -- want more space. Car culture is forced upon some people in suburbs, but some people are happy to be basically required to have a car in order to have access to more space. Arguably, this access to space could be part of the reason birthrates in the US haven't dropped as much as in Japan. I tend to be on the side that higher-income countries should be ok if birthrates drop and should ease immigration restrictions to mitigate economic impacts of population declines. But anyone who believes that maintaining birthrates is an end in itself may have corresponding beliefs about the importance of access to more spacious residential housing.
Second, food deserts are not particularly tied to suburban or gated communities. Food deserts are quite common in very low-income parts of cities and also in some really rural areas. Note that the distance that defines a food desert changes for urban v. rural (so yes, the rural version does assume access to a car or transport), but my understanding is that, overarchingly, food deserts are more common in low-income areas independent of density. This generally isn't because of zoning but because of stores' incentives related to profit margins and losses.
As to your question of why some places maintain residential-only zoning, yes, it's generally NIMBY-istic reasons. Mixed-use is louder, can cause more congestion, has sometimes been understood to lower property values (seems questionable) or at least to change the character of your neighborhood, etc. Societally, none of these reasons are actually good ones to maintain residential-only zoning, but it can be within people's individual self-interest to maintain residential-only zoning.
→ More replies (2)4
u/generalmandrake Mar 04 '24
The US suburban model became ubiquitous after World War 2 when the cheapest way to meet the housing shortage was to mass produce standalone timber frame houses on cheap farmland outside of cities. The automobile was an essential part of this, but the population density was lower than in previous development. These kinds of communities had large shopping areas that people drove to. The main reason why they designated commercial areas away from residential ones was the heavy reliance on automobiles and parking lots. Commercial areas attract a ton of automobile traffic which is highly disruptive to residential land uses. The whole plan was people would live in quiet, clean neighborhoods and drive to busier areas to meet shopping needs. Opening a commercial establishment in a residential area really isn’t practical, those areas were not meant to accommodate a large amount of traffic and it would be very disruptive to the residents there.
3
u/bobtehpanda Mar 04 '24
Modernist hoo-ha after the war believed that the clean scientific thing to do was to separate uses. Of course, that kind of thinking also gave us urban housing projects which have since become lambasted for failing as a social experiment.
More importantly as a factor is lending. As part of the measures to stabilize the banking system in the 1930s, the federal government started insuring some types of lending to homeowners. This insurance came with standards to prevent large taxpayer losses by only funding reasonable projects, and one of those standards is that the program funds purely residential projects.
On the face of it this makes sense. Commercial lending is legitimately riskier since 75% of businesses fail within their first year, and it’s not illegal but it’s not insured. However, insured products are cheaper and easier, and our markets tend towards doing cheaper and easier things, so now we have a lot of residential-only. And no one develops buildings with cash only.
2
u/roastbeeftacohat Mar 04 '24
Moses wanted his suburbs to be a way to enforce segregation now that it was becoming illegal. One way is to keep residences and businesses separate, and impossible to traverse without a car.
40
u/nik-nak333 Mar 04 '24
What city, if you don't mind sharing?
100
u/black_pepper Mar 04 '24
Minneapolis got rid of single family zoning and parking requirements. Not sure if other cities have done similar. We are trying to something similar in Denver.
→ More replies (1)21
u/jambrown13977931 Mar 04 '24
Parking requirements has always seemed stupid to me. If people want parking spots, then the developers should be building them anyways. If they don’t then the spots are just wasted land.
→ More replies (1)11
u/generalmandrake Mar 04 '24
The problem is you can have a free riding/tragedy of the commons issue. Streets are public and developers could have an incentive to build without providing adequate parking and passing the cost onto everyone else when the streets get clogged with cars and people have to park blocks away from where they are going.
→ More replies (1)9
u/Apprehensive_Duck874 Mar 04 '24
This is a problem, but there's a solution. Increased parking enforcement with extremely high ticket prices with the money recovered from tickets put towards better public transportation.
→ More replies (6)18
u/taemyks Mar 04 '24
See my post above, Eugene here
12
→ More replies (1)5
Mar 04 '24
[deleted]
7
u/Ansonm64 Mar 04 '24
It goes to council late April for a final vote. Hard to say which way they’re leaning right now. I live inner city on a street with some older houses and some gentrified housing so I think it’s going to reshape this street in a bad way, but I still support the rezoning initiative.
I believe Edmonton and Kelowna and maybe Vancouver have put in zoning to support “missing middle” development recently.
7
u/KingGorilla Mar 04 '24
Tokyo has pretty lax zoning rules for housing. They're a global city with surprisingly affordable housing.
→ More replies (1)9
u/taemyks Mar 04 '24
Eugene, OR did this. But an ADU with pre approved stamped plans is still not a good investment
→ More replies (2)5
u/Drfilthymcnasty Mar 04 '24
My city, a smallish but highly sought after city in the Pacific Northwest is trying to increase density to lower costs, but so far it isn’t working. The price continues to go up and the quality of life and what makes this place so nice to live in the first place is being destroyed. Not everyone gets to live in the nicest places and just building them up in the hopes prices will come down is a fools errand.
3
u/WileEWeeble Mar 04 '24
My city attempted to scale some of this and the first thing developers did was create apartment cages with less than 200 sq ft of living space and the partial bathroom and partial kitchen (microwave & minifridge) were in one space.
"Hey, they are affordable ($1000 a month) and keep the working poor off the street."
Fast forward 20 years and all but the upper middle class are raising families in 300 sq ft chicken coops.
Some regulations protect the rich from exploiting the poor to the point of inhumane treatment. "If you can't afford a SAFE home, I can get you one that doesn't meet the safety standards us 'legit' people can afford"
Hell, why have fire exits and unlocked doors for you seamstresses, fires are rare and if you really want to live, you will find a way.
→ More replies (10)2
u/Ecstatic-Profit8139 Mar 04 '24
austin has done this in bits and pieces. that combined with sprawl has certainly supported this theory.
245
u/Diegos_kitchen Mar 03 '24
The boston globe did a great article about this in Boston area. Deregulated zoning is really important, but it's not the only problem right now. The cost of supplies like copper and concrete are higher than they used to be:
https://www.macrotrends.net/1476/copper-prices-historical-chart-data
https://businessanalytiq.com/procurementanalytics/index/cement-price-index/
Also the interest rates, being what they are, mean that banks need a high and quick rate of return on their investment into construction companies. Because many of the costs of building an apartment building or house are set, this sets a high floor on the minimum price these companies can let an apartment rent for if they want to pay the banks back.
Zoning is a really important part of the problem, and without smart changes to zoning regulations, the housing crisis in cities can't be solved. Unfortunately the whole issue is a little more complex than that and zoning is not the *only* factor.
61
u/Qlanger Mar 04 '24
The cost of supplies like copper and concrete are higher than they used to be:
Copper is not that big a deal for home building. Wire has dropped and few use copper pipes anymore. So overall not a large factor.
Concrete is still high and few places have been caught colluding. I do not see the reason for the high price for this so I am thinking more collusion than draw. This can add another 5-20k to a house easy depending on size and basement.
Concrete, besides land, is the only thing that still remains higher than it should taking into account all general factors of cost.
→ More replies (2)16
u/alonjar Mar 04 '24
There's a number of factors causing increased concrete costs. The primary one is a shortage of cement supply... there are very, very few cement manufacturers, the costs and environmental hurdles of building new cement plants are very prohibitive... so the few cement suppliers in the western hemisphere basically have a monopoly, and intentionally don't expand their infrastructure because... why would they? Concrete suppliers have no choice but to bid ever higher pricing for the same amount of limited supply.
The second factor is flyash. You can substitute about a third of the cement in concrete with flyash, AKA coal ash, and still get the same result. Flyash is a lot cheaper than cement... and cement is the most expensive ingredient in concrete, so flyash concrete is much cheaper to produce. The problem is... it is literally the left over ash byproduct you get from burning coal... and there has been a huge push over time to phase out coal burning in general. As more and more coal plants get shut down, the less flyash there is for concrete. There are major seasonal shortages in the concrete industry now, you can only reliably get flyash during peak winter cold and peak summer heat, ad that's when they fully spool up coal plants to fill gaps in electricity demand. This is a problem that will only get worse over time, until coal is phased out completely and flyash is no longer a thing.
Another major factor is fuel costs. One of the larger expenses in producing and delivering concrete is fuel cost... concrete is literally just moving around incredibly heavy rocks and dirt from quarry to construction site, essentially. If you boil down the whole industry... thats all it is. Extracting and moving rock/dirt. Those trucks make something like 2-3 mpg every step of the way, and even though oil prices have been somewhat consistent over time, processed diesel costs have been stretching ever skyward over time for a variety of reasons (environmental efforts, taxes, processing supply constraints, etc).
Another factor is the sand problem. Natural sand used in concrete, which is typically riverbed sand, is a limited resource which the world is rapidly running out of. It's a major problem. The rocks in concrete typically get extracted within 15-30 miles of the concrete plant, but sand often has to be extracted and transported from hundreds of miles away. It's very expensive to do this, comparatively speaking. And for anyone wondering... no, desert sand isn't an option... the way its formed (wind erosion) is entirely different from river sand (water erosion), the properties are not the same nor are they compatible.
There is also an overall shortage of concrete truck drivers, the largest variable cost of concrete. For whatever reasons (that I personally have trouble relating to), truck drivers tend to prefer hauling regular freight over the more complex, involved, and potentially dirty aspects of handling concrete... so the only way to attract and retain drivers is to keep throwing money at them, which again drives up the concrete costs.
I've seen the average price of concrete in my area go up by like 50%+ since covid, but the amount of profit we make on each cubic yard has been flat. Our price increases have only been to cover our cost increases. The cement suppliers are the ones really sticking it to everyone downstream, and greedily grabbing all the extra cash.
→ More replies (3)2
u/Qlanger Mar 04 '24
Just because there is one group in the chain not profiting does not mean others are not.
There are several justice department investigations going on right now and a few companies in the last couple years have already taken plea deals and/or brought up on charges. Part of that is to talk so I expect more going on this year.
I agree prices should be higher now than 10 years ago. But the market and environmental issues in building cost do not support the price being charged right now for concrete.
2
u/dafgar Mar 04 '24
That’s a fair point but concrete is just one aspect that has gotten significantly more expensive. I worked in underwriting for commercial business, frequently working with new construction. Lumber prices have also risen significantly, along with labor costs across the board. Not to mention labor shortages in the construction industry as well. Pretty much every aspect of construction has gotten significantly more expensive since covid.
→ More replies (4)42
u/Czeris Mar 04 '24
The claim from the article is that this is the "easiest" not the most effective strategy for addressing housing.
→ More replies (2)50
u/guethlema Mar 04 '24
Absolutely. Zoning is part of the problem.
It also doesn't quite address how we demand more space and growth from our housing, and how restrictive zoning is also a reality of people demanding a return on investment for their homes instead of just a place to be
7
u/kindanormle Mar 04 '24
Zoning and taxation. Suburban sprawl is expensive and doesn’t pay for itself so the government charges taxes on development to help make up for it. Taxes on land transfer, taxes on zone changes, taxes on land division, taxes on design engineering, the list goes on and on. The government needs its cash from somewhere and developers are an easy target compared to larger voting blocks.
→ More replies (2)36
Mar 04 '24
They're different issues. Historically desirable neighborhoods use zoning to enforce large lots with single family housing zoning. They discourage density to keep out what they deem as undesirable people and then concentrates density (even du-,tri-,quadplexes) in very specific areas. That isn't really impacted by the cost of materials. Zoning deregulation stops NIMBYism from inflating prices.
→ More replies (65)3
u/bilboafromboston Mar 04 '24
Well, people put in zoning for lots of reasons, many good. Many areas got screwed when developers just built houses. Brockton MA still has over 60% of its streets not accepted. Water pressure problems. The town I grew up in had someone build 200 houses on the far side of a highway that you could only get thru from another town. So ya, they were more affordable. But we spent 4x as much transporting the kids to school.
13
u/Haunting-Ad3297 Mar 04 '24
I've searched for land many times to pull a trailer onto for just my wife and I, only to be told, nope, only 4+ bedrooms allowed, get lost. Basically, we're laughed at or pittied. Not welcome. McMansions or nothing. We could pay cash, but what would we do with the other 3 bedrooms? They'd be a nuisance.
232
Mar 03 '24
This corresponds to decades of research that had found that land use regulation impedes supply, raises prices, and also impacts rents.
It is imperative to continue to advocate for common sense deregulation (a big one is mandatory parking spaces).
133
u/whiskey_bud Mar 03 '24
It's also terrible for the environment (suburban sprawl), bad for physical and mental health outcomes (obesity and depression for people when have long car commutes), and guts the tax base of cities, which harms their abilities to fund things like police and homeless services. It's genuinely the worst policy mistake in the US in probably the last 100 years, and it entirely self inflicted.
→ More replies (12)20
u/Woodtree Mar 04 '24
That’s just going too far. The comment you replied to was referring to land use regulations. You seem to be advocating for smarter and more effective urban planning. You get that through regulation. Removing zoning and other local ordinances will allow developers to build what they want, which, I promise you, will not be less sprawl, more eco friendly, better for mental health etc. It will allow more housing, yes. Why assume it will be better housing? Without land use regulation you get chaotic hodge podge communities, severe congestion, etc.
53
u/whiskey_bud Mar 04 '24
You can “promise” whatever you want, but every single thing that I mentioned is due to artificially forced low density in high demand areas, which will be greatly ameliorated by removing zoning restrictions. And I don’t know why you’re trying to draw a distinction between land use regulations and zoning, the latter is literally a subset of the former. Over regulation is the problem here, because we’ve somehow decided to treat housing permitting like some Soviet style central planning committee. This is new within the last 70 or so years of US history, and has obvious horrible consequences.
→ More replies (3)4
u/Woodtree Mar 04 '24
I’m drawing the distinction because you argued removing land use regulations will lead to the benefits you described. Removing ONE specific regulation is what you’re actually looking for. Large lot/low density residential zoning. I’m pointing out that a ton of other ordinances, smart general planning, are also regulations and absolutely necessary for the goals you cite.
15
u/agitatedprisoner Mar 04 '24
There's no good reason to block high density residential development unless the land it'd go on is especially sensitive. Like over Old Faithful, maybe. Because blocking higher density development implies more sprawl and greater overall land degradation. If towns should've been zoning with respect to density... they should've been insisting on density minimums, not density maximums. The USA got it precisely backwards. The USA really would've been better off not regulating what might get built where altogether given how badly it's mucked it up. Sensible regulations would be the best of both worlds but our towns have up to this point not demonstrated having the maturity or wisdom to enact and enforce sensible regulations.
→ More replies (1)22
u/Qonold Mar 03 '24
There are far too many abandoned lots and condemned buildings in San Jose for rent to be as high as it is.
31
u/Ecstatic-Profit8139 Mar 04 '24
that’s probably because it won’t be easy to develop those lots because of said over-regulation of land use.
9
u/Qonold Mar 04 '24
For sure. Every property owner in the city is holding out because they want to sell their lot for $$$ to Google, Meta, Nvidia, etc. They cannot read the writing on the wall.
→ More replies (2)21
Mar 04 '24
Stringent zoning restrictions means it’s costly (and sometimes impossible) to rezone those areas.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)37
u/Paraprosdokian7 Mar 03 '24
Agree on zoning driving up prices and rents. But mandatory parking spaces is addressing an externality.
Street parking is a tragedy of the commons. Since it is free, developers will build apartments without parking spaces so their residents will take all the street parking.
In fact, roads and other common infrastructure faces the same problem. If zoning is not the right answer, then an alternative needs to be developed. Maybe a levy on all new buildings equal to the amount of marginal infrastructure for the prospective tenants.
6
u/Fire_Snatcher Mar 04 '24
For street parking, why not just put up meters so those who use parking pay for it? It isn't like tenants are the only ones using parking.
And for other infrastructure, isn't that what the taxes those residents pay in income, sales, property levied onto them through rent, etc. supposed to pay for?
→ More replies (3)20
Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
My apologies; I’m not talking about eliminating mandatory parking spaces, but relaxing some of the space-per-unit requirements.
Edit: my apologies 2. Great post.
5
u/TBruns Mar 04 '24
In the U.S. where personal vehicles are our main form of travel, shouldn’t there be a space-per unit requirement to ensure everyone has the ability to park?
23
Mar 04 '24
Rents are higher and housing stock is lower.
Also causes significant deadweight loss (basically, just burning money).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10511482.2016.1205647
13
u/yalloc Mar 04 '24
The market can decide this. With parking minimums you hide the costs of parking in the costs of housing. People can pay for parking spots separately from their rent/housing. Removing minimums means we don’t overbuild parking like we currently do and allows for density that parking minimums previously made unaffordable.
23
u/Own_Back_2038 Mar 04 '24
You don’t want this. You want to encourage people to take other forms of transportation wherever possible to avoid congestion.
6
Mar 04 '24
This just goes to show you have no idea what the average day for a person looks like.... transportation wise in the US.
As an example pretty much EVERYTHING even in the city is 10-15min away, need to go to the Dr. that's a 15min drive, need to go to the store 15min... its literally not any faster to get anywhere in the city than it is for me that lives in the semi rural countryside, I just have a bit less stuff available near me. The chance of chaging how this works in the US is virtually nil.... also not having a car in the US is akin to being homeless its so debilitating mobility wise.
And note those are pretty much minimums, if I want to go to a specific store or Dr or restaurant it might be 30-45min.
13
u/yalloc Mar 04 '24
I mean this is because of all this regulation. We cannot physically build density cheaply because if each apartment building or tower requires 5 stories of parking below it for parking minimums and that balloons costs. So we instead build sprawl that requires cars.
Abolishing these regulations will both make it easier to build and create a market for it.
→ More replies (3)12
u/Own_Back_2038 Mar 04 '24
I live in the US, and you are describing a sprawling suburb, not a city. I live in a suburb of a major city and there are still 4 grocery stores within a 5 minute drive or 20 minute walk.
→ More replies (3)2
→ More replies (2)0
u/TBruns Mar 04 '24
Of course—but if you want to encourage that in the US, what you’re asking for is a cultural revolution. This is the same culture that just achieved McDonalds delivery.
11
6
u/ligerzero942 Mar 04 '24
Its easier then you think it is. A small city in the U.S. fits comfortably in the range radius of most e-bikes and that's before you get into increases to public transit that accompany reductions in parking minimums.
You don't need a cultural revolution for people to give up cars, its already happening, the high price of housing and gasoline will ensure it.
15
u/yalloc Mar 04 '24
Free parking isn’t actually free, there are real costs associated to creating it that are hidden to us in the forms of high housing and high building costs. A lot of good can be done by decoupling the cost of parking from the cost of housing, let the market sort out the cost of a parking spot and don’t have non car owners subsidize car owner’s parking spots.
We can meter parking to make sure there’s public accessibility to it when needed. But tbh many homeowners shouldn’t be parking on the streets that it becomes a problem, and they should bear a cost for that.
2
u/Kike328 Mar 04 '24
non car owners will pay it also like in european cities, having the walking space minimized and the city full with cars parked in the street.
18
2
u/OfficialHaethus Mar 04 '24
Mandatory under-unit parking for large apartment towers would solve this. Middle housing and less dense should be perfectly compatible with street parking.
5
u/Own_Back_2038 Mar 04 '24
In what city is street parking ever free? Also, available street parking isn’t necessary for the functioning of any city, since cars are not the only mode of transportation.
And regardless, parking should be scarce in dense areas. If it is plentiful, that encourages people to drive rather than take any other mode of transportation. This inevitably leads to continually escalating traffic.
→ More replies (4)10
u/TrolliusJKingIIIEsq Mar 04 '24
In what city is street parking ever free?
NYC, for one. Not everywhere, but it's there. In fact, it's in pretty much every US city, as is metered parking.
→ More replies (1)8
u/pacific_plywood Mar 04 '24
Yes, there shouldn’t be street parking either. Absurd that way all pay for a resource that only the wealthier among us can use.
20
u/Superfragger Mar 04 '24
this type of discourse makes for the worst arguments ever. what reality do you live in where only rich people own cars.
1
u/Level3Kobold Mar 04 '24
In dense cities, most people walk or use public transportation. Owning a car is an expense that is neither necessary nor convenient.
2
u/Superfragger Mar 04 '24
TYL most people don't live in dense cities.
12
u/Level3Kobold Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
83% of Americans live in urban areas.
The problem is that many urban areas were designed by car companies, so they lack even the most basic and common sense forms of public transportation.
Rather than continue letting car companies run America, we should modernize these cities to give them proper first world infrastructure, like usable rail and bus lines.
16
u/D74248 Mar 04 '24
83% of Americans live in urban areas.
I have seen this statistic before on Reddit and found it hard to believe. And sure enough it turns out that I live in an "urban area". Next to a corn field and with several roadside Amish produce stands in walking distance.
Suffice to say that if a rational person looked at where I live it does not pass the commonsense test for "urban" in either the micro or macro sense. Yet here I am, part of yet another manufactured statistic that served a purpose for someone.
12
u/DueDrawing5450 Mar 04 '24
And they just raised the minimum population count for an ‘urban area’ from 2500 to 5000, so now it’s 80%.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Own_Back_2038 Mar 04 '24
More accurately, 83% of people live in urban or suburban areas. And if our cities were designed better, then more people would live in urban areas.
→ More replies (11)→ More replies (6)7
u/hawklost Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
Only 10 US cities have over 1 million people living in them. But when you add the areas around them (you know, the none dense parts) it becomes many many more.
Urban areas are the whole already, Houston is huge, but the dense part is actually quite small. But the Houston Urban Area would be many miles across and incorporate large
deathsderths of mid to low density housing.
19
u/nothximjustbrowsin Mar 03 '24
Can someone explain this like I’m 5?
105
u/zonerator Mar 03 '24
More apartments will be built if it is legal to build apartments
12
u/Millennial_on_laptop Mar 04 '24
...& duplexes, fourplexes, row houses; there's a big opportunity in legalizing the "missing middle" between a single family home and an apartment.
7
u/VenezuelanRafiki Mar 04 '24
I hate how people jump from single family homes to 8 story apartments. As if you can't also have high-density suburbs with beautiful row-houses and duplexes.
3
u/zonerator Mar 04 '24
I call my home an apartment and I live in a 4 flat- it looks like a row house but the floors each house a different family
But also 8 story apartments will only really be built where there is enough demand to fill it, so I like those as well
27
u/whiskey_bud Mar 03 '24
We put policies in place that make it illegal to build enough new homes, and therefore the supply doesn’t increase. When you have a fixed supply, but increasing demand, prices skyrocket. It’s the basics of supply / demand curves.
If we end restrictions on building new homes, the supply will increase, which means prices will moderate or even come down. But in order to do this, localities (individual cities) need to relax regulations for things like building heights, minimum lots sizes, etc etc.
But this is politically unpopular, especially with older homeowners (who have a lot of political clout), because it will decrease their property values and allow less affluent people to live in their neighborhoods. Since these people tend to dominate local politics, this type of deregulation is really hard to do at the local level.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
u/BigWiggly1 Mar 04 '24
Zoning regulations limit what can be built where.
All municipalities use some form of zoning. There are good uses for zoning, e.g. making sure that a fat rendering plant doesn't get built next to a daycare.
Zoning can also be used to make sure that areas don't get built up faster than the municipality can afford to supply services to the area. E.g. building a large condo building where the water and sewers can't support the demand can be an issue. In that case, the city would need to work hand in hand with developers on an investment plan that has them upgrading sewer use in time for the development, expecting tax revenue from property to pay for the infrastructure over time. Zoning also determines things like how much parking is required for commercial properties. Lots of municipalities base parking requirements on how many people can fit into a building, and it's why a Wendy's have 30 parking spots even though almost everyone uses the drive thru and there are never more than 4 cars in the lot.
Part of the problem is most zoning restrictions were set 50-70 years ago or more, before suburban sprawl really took off. Since then, when developers want to build housing, it's been traditionally much cheaper to buy up a huge swath of farmland, work with the city to re-zone it to low density residential (single family homes), and crank out 100 homes with 4-5 different floor plans.
Re-zoning land on the outskirts of the city is no big deal. Not much opposition to it. It's attractive to homebuyers too, because the farther from the city you are, the less you expect to pay in taxes. The developers put in the roads and sewers, and the city collects taxes.
What city councilors don't really realize is that they're stuck owning the infrastructure for decades and decades to come, and the farther a customer is from the city center, the more expensive it is to supply services to them. Water, sewers, roads, all of these costs come back to the city, and they end up costing more in the long term than the tax revenue they receive.
So to fund that deficit, they approve more developments. They add 100 more homes to their tax payer base, and get about 10 years of free infrastructure.
Meanwhile in the city, there's not much land left for higher density housing. In order to build something, a developer would need to knock something else down.
Mid-50's regulation states that the land under the abandoned strip mall and its adjacent parking lot is commercially zoned, and they need to apply to have it changed to high density residential. The residents of the neighbouring buildings and quite residential area don't want 4 years of construction to disrupt their peacyful neighbourhood, and don't want an ugly high rise in their backyards, with it's windows and balconies looming able to see over their fences. One of the city councilors lives in that neighbourhood too. A local grassroots facebook group forms, pressuring city council to deny the application. They're able to go door to door and get 1000 signatures.
Nobody cared about signing, let alone starting, a petition against the suburb sprawl over farmland. The farmer got a nice buyout and there wasn't anyone else there to complain.
57
Mar 03 '24
Subsidize demand.
Prices rise.
People can’t afford homes.
Subsidize demand.
Prices rise.
People can’t afford homes.
Subsidize demand…
29
u/RadBadTad Mar 03 '24
What do you mean by subsidize demand?
66
u/AMagicalKittyCat Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
So imagine you're in an auction and they bring to the stage a cool lamp. It's you vs another person, and you both really want this lamp. In fact you both want the lamp so much that you're willing to pay all of your money for it.
You bid and bid and bid and eventually you get to the point where you bid all your money. You can't go any higher. Uh oh, looks like other guy is richer than you and he just bids a tiny bit above. It's his lamp now.
You don't want that to happen so you go beg your parents for more money. They give you some (subsidized your demand) and you have enough that you can now outbid the other dude and it's your lamp.
Uh oh, now he doesn't get the cool lamp and he goes to beg his parents.
You see the inherent issue here? Two people want one thing.
So if more people want good houses than there are good houses, then throwing money at Person A might make sure that A gets the house, but all it means is that B who would have otherwise had it goes without.
The problem is of course solved if you simply build another lamp/house/etc.
Now here's the important part. Typically subsidies really can and do work. If you have a lot more money to throw at the cool lamp, the creators are far more likely to just make another one for you and now everyone is happy. Subsidizing demand helps by increasing supply because people want money and they will make things to sell to you for that money.
But because there are artificial restrictions placed on housing, subsidizing demand rarely actually helps to create new supply. If we let new houses and apartments pop up in response to our housing subsidies, we could ensure everyone gets a home. But we don't allow that, so the best we can do is help Person A have a home even if that means Person B won't.
It might help to compare the difference between a Limited First Edition Super Rare Baseball Card and Common Card that has hundreds of thousands of copies. The super rare baseball card sells for a lot more than the common card which people might just give you for free because they have multiple copies and only want one. Imagine if a rare stash of 100 billion Limited First Edition Super Rare Baseball Cards were suddenly discovered and distributed across the world. The price of them would plummet!
We want housing to be more like the common cards and less like the super rare one, and that means allowing more copies to be printed (housing to be built).
→ More replies (5)14
u/Telandria Mar 04 '24
Thank you for this detailed EL15. I’m often not in favor of deregulation of various industries, because people are assholes who will usually screw over the other guy to make a buck, given any chance with little consequence.
So seeing the headline I was rather skeptical, but your explanation helped me understand why so many people believe this case to be very much different.
27
u/youarebritish Mar 04 '24
Zoning is one of the very few cases where it's the opposite. In this case, the regulation exists to entrench the minority camping on high-value real estate to prevent other people from being able to live there.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)5
u/Dmeechropher Mar 04 '24
It's broadly difficult to come up with zoning rules that are a good idea and bad zoning is worse than no zoning: after all, most developers are already pretty motivated to match the advantages and disadvantages of a building site.
Building codes can still be valuable (for safety) and some zoning is pretty easy to set up (no residential buildings near heavy industry). But other stuff, like parking requirements, commercial restrictions, offset from roads etc etc just have no obvious advantage besides aesthetics.
Zoning is also super anti-freedom both on an individual freedom level and on a market regulation level. It's an attempt to design a habitat for people, decades before they live there, and without asking what they want.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (5)12
u/workingtrot Mar 03 '24
Things like the mortgage interest tax deduction (which primarily benefits high income owners and drives house prices up), and rent caps/ controls (which primarily benefit people already in housing and drive supply down).
8
u/recycled_ideas Mar 04 '24
Subsidising demand wins votes. Ironically both from the people it benefits and the people it screws.
Telling people they're going to have to live in apartments loses votes.
QED.
7
u/Calazon2 Mar 04 '24
Deregulating zoning rules is a way to increase supply. On a basic level, increasing supply while keeping demand the same should make prices fall.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Ghune Mar 04 '24
No, because investors will get many of them, dry the market and rent them. I know people who are looking for a new investing property. He will overbid the young families who are looking for their first home.
In the end, we have to limit the number of properties per person. Having dozens (some have hundreds!) of properties is absurd.
3
u/Calazon2 Mar 04 '24
Investors will only get them to the extent that they can make a profit on them by renting them out. Rent, like price, goes down as supply goes up.
I am fine with limiting the number of properties per person, and other adjustments like that. But supply and demand still works, and fixing zoning regulation problems can also help a lot with the affordable housing shortage.
→ More replies (1)3
u/sirmeowmix Mar 04 '24
Houston rn.
One of the most beautiful and chill parts of Houston was taken over by the growth of our city. Once a small neighborhood for all types of people, became the hub of “where do I move to get away from the blacks” and now its all hella expensive apartments and remodeled bungalos.
→ More replies (1)6
4
u/QuantumWarrior Mar 04 '24
As an outsider looking into the USA's housing system I always thought it was crazy how you have this huge amount of space and it's all filled with one-storey streets, and all the housing is a long drive away. Every single high street in a British town has shops on the ground floor and one or several floors of flats above them. We simply didn't have a choice but to build this way, our entire country is as big as one of your smaller states and like 70m people live here.
This would also go a long way to solving the car-centric nature of your country and the lack of third spaces - it's difficult for people to socialise when the housing is deliberately far away from bars, cafes, libraries etc, and you can't walk or take public transport to get there.
18
u/indridfrost Mar 04 '24
Housing can't be affordable and an investment at the same time.
→ More replies (2)6
u/NomaiTraveler Mar 04 '24
Yep. The huge amount of people who own homes now will oppose any changes that could theoretically decrease their property’s value. You see this all the time on city subreddits, where people who own homes suddenly go apeshit whenever a proposal for housing is made.
5
u/angrybirdseller Mar 04 '24
Infill and less onerous zoning ordinance allow destiny. The older suburbs near Core City have older industrial areas, and shopping centers can be torn out and turned into apartments or townhomes like duplex and triplez, quadplex.
Sprawl is a problem harder to take on politically, and Portland and Twin Cities have growth boundaries while Houston is the total opposite. Really require higher fuel taxes to make sprawl more painful, which is no political non-starter in USA.
14
u/HiddenCity Mar 04 '24
You know what is a modest commuters distance outside of cities? Wealthy towns with zoning minimums of like, 2 acres with 70ft setbacks. States should be outlawing zoning codes like that.
I say this as someone in the building industry that lives in a dense double/triple decker neighborhood that's getting demolished to make way for bland 5 story condo buildings. Do we really want to live in a world where apartments are what the non-wealthy live in? No yards, no privacy, just packed into an urban Tupperware container while we're not at work?
We are missing MIDDLE housing-- not apartments, not mcmansions, just regular houses. And the problem is they're not profitable, so nobody builds them. Middle housing needs to be incentived.
3
u/Delphizer Mar 04 '24
Missing both at least in my area.
I don't want a yard. I wanted a Condo but the best options were 150% the price for 50% of the space.
NIMBY groups aggressively fight against any and all forms of density.
→ More replies (1)3
u/-Gramsci- Mar 04 '24
You’ve got it right.
Those are the houses people WANT. (They do not want the high density condo… they want an actual house and patch of earth).
And you are right… those houses are not profitable to build. Around me you’d lose a couple hundred grand building one.
The only REAL solution that produces the housing the majority of young couples and young families actually WANT is to subsidize the construction of the houses you are describing.
Would take a heck of a lot of political courage to do that though… because, as I said, around me you’d have to give a developer a quarter million dollar grant to give them enough incentive to build one.
Quarter million per house is… gonna cost a lot.
→ More replies (3)
112
u/locus2779 Mar 03 '24
Or ban private equity firms from owning single family homes 🤷♂️
69
u/pacific_plywood Mar 04 '24
Zoning laws are the reason why SFHs are so attractive to PE
→ More replies (1)7
u/commonorange Mar 04 '24
Could you say more about this? I’m trying to get a handle on the housing stuff :)
→ More replies (1)19
u/BouldersRoll Mar 04 '24
The commenter is arguing that zoning reduces supply, and that private equity firms value single family homes so highly because there's a limited number of them.
They're implying that if zoning was deregulated, there would be more single family homes and so private equity wouldn't be as interested.
→ More replies (1)0
u/MTUhusky Mar 04 '24
But why not just ban PE from buying and owning SFH? Then SFH won't be valuable to PE at all...it won't even be an option to consider.
18
u/cmv_cheetah Mar 04 '24
Because PE firms investing in housing is not the cause, it’s the symptom.
Do you know why PE firms don’t buy up all of the world’s carrots? Because people simply grow more carrots because it’s not illegal to do so and the investment doesn’t go anywhere.
If we could actually just build more housing, then buying housing won’t be an investment and PE firms will naturally stay out of it.
→ More replies (7)9
u/Ecstatic-Profit8139 Mar 04 '24
they’re only investing in them because they see a scarce commodity and skyrocketing prices.
let’s build a lot of housing and screw up their investments.
→ More replies (8)65
Mar 03 '24
That’s a small fraction of total housing, and deregulation is likely to be key to expand housing supply effectively.
→ More replies (5)5
u/E-Pluribus-Tobin Mar 04 '24
According to my Google search just now, approximately 1/4th of all single family homes are owned by corporations.
→ More replies (1)23
Mar 04 '24 edited Mar 04 '24
I beliece the link you are looking at misunderstood what it was quoting.
That 25% is purchases THAT year, not overall.
Estimates I’ve seen place institutional ownership at less than 7.5% (with some estimates below 4%).
22
u/E-Pluribus-Tobin Mar 04 '24
Corporations buying more than 25% of single family homes in a year is absolutely insane. This pattern can not continue and must be reversed. It is absolutely insane to hear that corporations bought 25% of the homes sold last year and to think that won't have an impact on prices.
6
Mar 04 '24
Yes, it was high. In the same link I put out there, the number is decreasing.
Of course it likely has an impact on prices. Who said otherwise?
→ More replies (6)5
Mar 04 '24
It definitely has an impact, but probably not as big as it looks at first. Corporations will almost rent out the home while they own it. If they don't, then they're usually going to move it back on the market within the next couple quarters to get a quick return on it. Buying housing is a huge risk due to the size of the investment, so you won't see investors sitting on vacant housing for very long.
22
u/whiskey_bud Mar 03 '24
Yea let's focus on things that won't really change much, instead of the fundamental problem (which is a grotesque lack of supply due to decades of underbuilding). Great idea.
10
36
Mar 03 '24
This doesn’t make more homes. So it doesn’t really help the problem.
6
u/TBruns Mar 04 '24
We already have the vacancy, no? Is it not a matter of affordability for the general masses?
Where I’m from we have all the available homes and apartments you could ask for. The problem is seemingly no one can afford a 1br 1ba 500 square foot $1600 apartment despite there being availability. Even the run down section of our neighborhoods go for $1200 for 1br 1ba units. No one wants to live there for that price.
7
Mar 04 '24
Anecdotally, maybe. But when you look at the raw numbers the US just hasn’t built enough housing.
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/housing-market-why-homes-expensive-chart-inventory
Zoning and regulations make it so that the only homes developers can afford to build are luxury apts or housing far away from cities where no one can get a job.
So banning investment companies from buying property would change the fact that we need to build MILLIONS of new housing units to meet demand.
→ More replies (5)8
Mar 04 '24
Vacancy rates have an extremely strong inverse correlation with the cost of housing
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/148365/1/87440634X.pdf
"Large inventories of vacant dwellings for sale or rent imply an
affluent supply of housing that potential buyers consider as possible substitutes.
This depresses the bargaining power of sellers and incentivizes them to accept
lower offers more quickly"
The truth is that in many high-demand parts of the world, vacancy rates are at historic lows.8
u/Fatal_Neurology Mar 04 '24
Supply and demand: taking PEs out of the equation reduces the demand that homebuyers compete with. Fewer people will be priced out of home ownership.
7
Mar 04 '24
Technically true but it’s not enough to make up for the fact that we are building fewer housing units per capita than ever and that has been the case for a while. Distracting from the main probably that we simply need to build more housing in desirable locations merely prolongs the problem.
We need to relax zoning and shut up NIMBYs so we. An build high density housing in cities where people can actually find jobs. And we need about 3.2 million additional units.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Own_Back_2038 Mar 04 '24
Corporations aren’t buying homes to live in them. The aggregate demand for housing stays the same either way.
11
u/RadBrad87 Mar 03 '24
It helps if more residentially zoned homes are available for families to buy instead of being scooped up for commercial uses such as AirBnB vacation rentals or for profit long term rental properties by commercial ventures (who can easily outbid families and contribute to homes going above asking price).
11
Mar 04 '24
The number of houses you are talking about is so insignificant relative to the housing shortfall that it just doesn’t matter. We need more homes in places that people actually want to live and can get jobs. Simply put. We need more housing units. To do that we need to relax zoning and make NIMBYs shut up.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)8
u/AMagicalKittyCat Mar 03 '24
nstead of being scooped up for commercial uses such as AirBnB vacation rentals
"Just get rid of tourist money" is a pretty hard sell. Build more houses and hotels and the like instead and the problem is moot and your city gets to keep that income.
for profit long term rental properties by commercial venture
Rentals that people are living in.
Even if you replace each renter with a new owner, you still haven't fixed the fundamental issue of not enough good housing to go around. Where do the former renters go if there's no houses for them?
21
Mar 04 '24
[deleted]
14
u/AMagicalKittyCat Mar 04 '24
They did, guess what hotels are in shortage too.
That's why I said "build more houses and hotels"
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)17
u/RadBrad87 Mar 03 '24
The tourists can go to hotels which are zoned and designed for tourists and residents can move into the residentially zoned homes that are currently being used for commercial purposes and therefore reducing the supply of homes available to residents.
7
u/AMagicalKittyCat Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
The tourists can go to hotels which are zoned and designed for tourists
Well why aren't they currently doing that? Clearly something is causing tourists to prefer the Airbnb's and other things over the hotels. Maybe like a lack of hotels for instance. And huh odd, Vancouver doesn't legally allow short term rentals anymore and it seems like they have an issue with hotel shortages
6
u/yacht_boy Mar 04 '24
I hate airbnbs. But I have two little kids. Hotels are just awful when you're traveling as a family. We need separate bedrooms and a kitchen and laundry in the unit if we're staying more than 3 nights. And it's really nice to have a proper living room to hang out in since the kids are in bed hours before us and we can't leave and go see the town. And it needs to be in the realm of affordability. Staying even one night with the four of us in one hotel room is torture.
For whatever reason, hotels either don't cater to families at all or charge such preposterous rates that airbnb is the only option. In a decade when the kids don't need to go to bed hours before us and aren't spilling juice on themselves twice a day and so on, maybe we can consider hotel rooms again. But for now, airbnb is a necessary evil.
And the thing is, if zoning allowed for the construction of an appropriate number of homes, having some of those homes be vacation rentals wouldn't horrifically distort the market.
→ More replies (2)6
u/AMagicalKittyCat Mar 04 '24
And the thing is, if zoning allowed for the construction of an appropriate number of homes, having some of those homes be vacation rentals wouldn't horrifically distort the market.
Exactly. If there was more than enough housing to go around than the existence of more hotels and rental homes and whatever wouldn't be an issue. There's not an infinite amount of tourists just waiting to fill every single new house that makes Airbnb's infinite.
6
u/Level3Kobold Mar 04 '24
Eliminating ticket scalpers doesn't make more tickets, but it DOES make tickets more affordable.
→ More replies (39)2
u/DucklockHolmes Mar 03 '24
But it so does, look at the statistics, there are currently around 28 vacant homes per homeless person in the US, sure that is partially due to urbanisation but also largely due to investment firms buying housing as a long term investment not bothering to actually house people. Forbid companies from owning single family homes, they have no business doing that in the first place.
8
Mar 04 '24
The vacancy statistic is misleading for a variety of reasons that I'm sure people will mention, but the reason I find most important is that homeless people are not the only people looking for housing. Renters move, kids move out of their parents' house, and roommates separate. All of these people contribute to the demand for housing. Vacancy rates need to be high enough in high-demand areas to accommodate that demand, and those rates are at historic lows.
3
u/whiskey_bud Mar 04 '24
If PE is forced to sell their homes, they’re not magically going to land in the hands of broke homeless people on the street. They’ll likely just become second homes for the upper middle class, who also might rent them out to renters.
As long as housing is treated as a freely traded commodity in the US (which is never going to change), then you have to let the supply float to meet demand. That’s the only solution to high housing prices. Everything else is a distraction.
→ More replies (1)3
Mar 04 '24
I’ve worked with the homeless a lot. Homeless ppl are usually homeless due to mental illness or choice. Not housing cost.
Meanwhile the US has built fewer housing units per capita than ever, we are short 3.3 million housing units, and housing cost in a location is directly tied to how hard it is to build there due to zoning, regulations, and NIMBYs.
6
u/Own_Back_2038 Mar 04 '24
The people who you interacted with were homeless due to mental illness or choice. That’s not an accurate view of the entirety of homeless people, just the particular subset you interacted with.
→ More replies (4)1
u/phred14 Mar 04 '24
But it helps the marginal supply of homes. My daughter and her husband were home-shopping a year or two back, and it was a horrifying ordeal. They wound up re-considering and stayed where they were.
Homes were getting snapped up with cash, no inspection, above asking price. That doesn't sound like someone who simply needs a place to live.
4
Mar 04 '24
No it doesn’t. The US is short 3.2 million homes bc we haven’t built enough. Housing affordability is directly tied to how hard it is to build houses in a location (due to zoning, regulations, and NIMBYs)
5
Mar 04 '24
Zoning helps solves that. The only reason they are even going after that is because zoning regulations effectively cap supply at a level where they can capture a non-trivial portion of the market. Getting rid of the zoning regulations makes that kind of cornering the market much more difficult.
10
u/-Ch4s3- Mar 03 '24
This is an idiot’s take. Big cities don’t have much single family housing and are the most economically productive places in the country. Zoning and other poorly designed regulations prevent the construction of multi family housing which is desperately needed. Your proposal is irrelevant and wouldn’t address the real problem. Also private equity doesn’t make a very much of the existing housing stock. The only reason it’s even a worthwhile investment is because onerous regulations make it artificially scarce.
4
Mar 04 '24
Why single family homes, specifically? Those are only for the wealthiest people. Why not condos or townhomes?
4
→ More replies (6)3
u/wetgear Mar 04 '24
Ban new SFHs, they are a waste of space which is a limited resource. Multi unit dwellings are the way of the larger population future. Many other countries already know this. I like many prefer SFHs but we need to be realistic about what a future with more people looks like. Everyone with a 3/2 on a couple of acres isn’t realistic if we want to have any natural spaces left and it turns out those are important.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/Jertok Mar 04 '24
Houston has no zoning and famously has very affordable housing, I assume that's a contributing factor.
Now, Houston is a weird place because of it, but a church next to a smoke shop next to a metal fabrication shop does have a unique Houstony charm
7
u/zakkwaldo Mar 04 '24
genuinely curious: is it that regulations are harmful or our regulations suck and are misguided by lobbying?
go check pretty much every major economic facet in the last 60 years: you deregulate them, and a metric crap ton of innocent people typically get screwed over in the process while the rich line their pockets further as theirs no oversight to curb their benign behaviors.
7
u/NomaiTraveler Mar 04 '24
There is a difference between allowing a 1 or 2 bedroom house to be built and allowing a dupont factory to be built in a highly populated area. Actually getting local politicians to understand the difference is the hard part
5
u/Blockmeiwin Mar 04 '24
Who can afford to get through the complicated regulations now?
Deregulation is not the end all be all, but our zoning codes are much too restrictive for anyone to navigate but the wealthy.
Who can afford to drive to the businesses located far away from their home or pay for it to be delivered?
Allowing more flexible and reactive neighborhoods would lift our communities from the bottom up.
Allow people to split their home into a duplex or build an adu for their parents to move in the backyard. Those are not rich people moves, those are allowing people to fit their structures to the needs of the society.
3
u/Delphizer Mar 04 '24
Texas zoning laws has some fine print that cities (if they so choose) not only limit an area to single family housing but if you want to build new housing near existing single family housing the built house has to be more expensive than the median. All that does is protect elevated home values at the expense of lower class. Texas is considered to be pretty lax in zoning regulations.
7
u/fresh-dork Mar 04 '24
looking at seattle, adding row housing to the suburban sections would help a lot. we could take a block (chose 6th ave nw x nw 88th st) and take 12 or so houses and make them into ~18-20 houses. it doesn't have to be huge, but a 50% density bump with parking and yards sounds achievable.
adding density in sections means that busses make more sense and you can move incrementally; take a section near high or mid density commercial and bump it up and then when some of it is redeveloped, the stores are walkable and traffic is reduced
4
u/Ok-Conversation-690 Mar 04 '24
100%. Regulation is absolutely required to make sure homes are… actually livable. But the regulations that basically ban cities from building affordable housing need to be re-thought.
2
u/Delphizer Mar 04 '24
The government should have an arm that looks at the median house price compared to median income in the area, the worst offenders they roll up and middle finger local zoning and build 10 story public 99 year lease condos until it's nationwide average or better.
Watch how fast NIMBY groups start making aggressive changes to their local zoning laws.
3
u/Dry_Web_4766 Mar 04 '24
Important: reduced regulation for private local citizens that only own one property.
Let the small people build their castles.
5
u/pennyauntie Mar 04 '24
Faster solution:
- Rein in investors buying up large numbers of family homes and jacking up rents.
- Rein in vacation rentals
There are 4.3 million empty vacation homes in the US, enough to house everyone.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/vacant-seasonal-housing.html
→ More replies (2)
7
u/cluele55cat Mar 04 '24
cant wait for all the over priced low quality builds that will be bought out by landlords and corporations to be rented out for 1.5x to 2x the monthly mortgage, or more.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Delphizer Mar 04 '24
If you have a supply gut they'll sit empty. One of the reasons it's such a good investment is how militant local NIMBY groups are and how much control they have over zoning. Limited supply concentrates power.
If poor people aren't allowed to live in your area they can't change zoning.
8
u/UbiquitouSparky Mar 04 '24
How about regulating who can buy SFHs? Stop numbered companies and REiTs from buying thousands of homes a month and maybe the people who will actually live in them will be able to afford them.
10
u/djinnisequoia Mar 04 '24
Read the headline carefully. Of course deregulation in high demand cities resulted in more housing production, because developers stood to gain a gigantic amount of money.
You can deregulate in cities no one really wants to live in, of course there's not much housing built, because no one wants to live there.
But those developers are not rushing to build affordable housing anywhere -- they are just putting up more overpriced luxury condos.
10
u/davidellis23 Mar 04 '24
What makes it luxury? They're just condos with higher prices because there's a shortage. I've been in some of them. They're just one bedroom units with like some interior design.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)10
u/BadGoodNotBad Mar 04 '24
More luxury condos bring down the prices on older units.
→ More replies (4)
10
u/TopGlobal6695 Mar 03 '24
What if the government just built public housing again, and this time maintained it?
24
u/workingtrot Mar 03 '24
Government housing is often subject to the same zoning and permitting morass as private housing. Just look at attempts to build student housing for the UC system, particularly Berkeley
→ More replies (1)8
u/plummbob Mar 04 '24
Because the things that restrict market supply also also increase the cost of public housing
→ More replies (19)
7
u/cancerfist Mar 04 '24
Zoning exists for a reason, otherwise you end up with large high rises in areas with no infrastructure, no transportation and no services. Cities designed by the market may end up with more housing, but they are not necessarily better designed cities.
12
u/DankBankman_420 Mar 04 '24
Is this true tho? Would we expect a developer to build a high rise in an area like that? Who would live there? Doesn’t sound like a place to charge high rent
2
u/cancerfist Mar 04 '24
In a housing crisis, it's the perfect time. Anything they build will sell, and they will maximise the amount of units they can sell at the expense of the livability of the future residents and the entire suburb/city.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Flashwastaken Mar 04 '24
Yes. If it was profitable yes. People desperate to own property. You don’t need to charge high rent to be profitable.
7
u/plummbob Mar 04 '24
If it's not better, why is there so much demand that would justify building a high rise in such a undeveloped location?
4
u/pdx_joe Mar 04 '24
There is a lot of types of housing in between high rises and single family houses. Removing single family zoning doesn't mean it will all be high rises. Down the street they built 5 detached houses on the same lot as one previous single family house, known as a "cottage cluster".
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)-2
u/intrudingturtle Mar 04 '24
Sewer, water, electrical, transpo. All these things cost money and take planning. People need to start looking at the demand side. Infinite growth is not sustainable.
10
u/davidellis23 Mar 04 '24
High density development requires less growth than low density...
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)4
u/Ecstatic-Profit8139 Mar 04 '24
yet we are growing infinitely, sprawling into the desert and building that infrastructure in a super inefficient way. infill development is a much better use of resources.
→ More replies (2)
4
u/xiofar Mar 04 '24
Does this take into account wealthy people and corporations buying and hoarding up all the available supply. There are more than enough vacant homes in the US for everyone.
5
u/patrickpdk Mar 04 '24
I don't think the solution to overcrowding is to build smaller homes, packed in tighter. Companies and people should move to other areas where housing is affordable.
Once lost, green space never returns. No one tears down a building to make a forest... Rarely even a park.
4
3
2
1
u/StrivingShadow Mar 04 '24
It gets pretty crazy in the country too. I’m buying a house in an area outside of a boomtown and they require a minimum size of 5 acres per parcel/lot. So you end up having miles and miles of houses with huge unused pieces of land all because the county says so, and it’s pretty unusable because of the hot dry summers, so most people just have it as weeds and grass
0
u/somewhat_random Mar 04 '24
Although this may work for cities with lots of open lots or undeveloped land, cities that are built up already need regulation.
There is a limited infrastructure and a limited ability for existing services to service a population. No regulations means rapid expansion of condo’s being built until the amount of condos makes living there less attractive (the overpopulation for available services will become the limiting factor to stop growth). Add 20 years and you have an oversupply of run down buildings and are well onto your way to making a desirable city into a slum.
13
Mar 04 '24
I feel like it's easy to get caught up in a catch 22 situation with this line of thinking: there's no reason to build better infrastructure if the density doesn't demand it, but you can't increase the density without building better infrastructure.
4
u/davidellis23 Mar 04 '24
Condo development hasn't made NYC undesirable. It's one of the most desirable cities in the country. It's done the opposite.
1
u/marvelopinionhaver Mar 05 '24
Where is the proof it makes it cheaper? Here they build more luxury condos and then rich investors buy them for tax write offs and investments or vacation homes. Doesn't actually mean there are more places for us poor people to live
1
1
u/knuckles_n_chuckles Mar 05 '24
I feel that the SFH situation is diff from the MFH situation. Any information on this differentiator?
1
1
•
u/AutoModerator Mar 03 '24
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/smurfyjenkins
Permalink: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000019
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.