One reason for California’s high housing costs might be Proposition 13. This law, passed by referendum in the 1970s, may discourage housing production in two significant ways.First, under Proposition 13, all housing- even vacant land- is taxed at its original purchase price rather than its … [Read more...]
New and Noteworthy: Randy Shaw’s Generation Priced Out
In Generation Priced Out, housing activist Randy Shaw writes a book about the rent crisis for non-experts. Shaw's point of view is that of a left-wing YIMBY: that is, he favors allowing lots of new market-rate housing, but also favors a variety of less market-oriented policies to prevent … [Read more...]
Two Cheers for PHIMBY
One alternative to market urbanism that has received a decent amount of press coverage is the PHIMBY (Public Housing In My Back Yard) movement. PHIMBYs (or at least the most extreme PHIMBYs) believe that market-rate housing fails to reduce housing costs and may even lead to gentrification and … [Read more...]
The land price argument and why it fails
One common argument against all forms of infill development runs something like this: "In dense, urban areas land prices are always high, so housing prices will never be affordable absent government subsidy or extremely low demand. Furthermore, laws that allow new housing will make land prices even … [Read more...]
Response to “Steelmanning the NIMBYs”
Scott Alexander, a West Coast blogger, has written a post that has received a lot of buzz, called "Steelmanning the NIMBYs"; apparently, "steelmanning" is the opposite of "straw manning"; that is, it involves making the best possible case for an argument you don't really support. There have been … [Read more...]
The Foreign Buyers Are Taking Over (Not!)
A headline in the Boston Globe screams: "Boston's new luxury towers appear to house few local residents." The headline is based on a report by the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, which claims that in twelve Boston condo buildings, "64 percent do not claim a residential exemption, a clear … [Read more...]
No, this study does NOT support refusal to build housing
A recent headline in the Forbes blog screams: "Additional Housing Won't Make City More Affordable, Says Fed Study." This blog post cites a Federal Reserve Study showing that adding 5 percent more housing in the most desirable urban neighborhoods would lower rents by only 0.5 percent.But if you … [Read more...]
Two cheers for subsidized housing
A pure libertarian might argue that in an ideal world, there'd be no need for government-subsidized housing for low- and moderate-income households. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in the world we actually live in, even people generally opposed to the welfare state should favor more such … [Read more...]