I recently ran across an interesting discussion on Twitter about housing costs. Someone praised Chicago's low housing costs, and someone else responded that because Chicago's most troubled neighborhoods are so unusually dangerous and disinvested (compared to the most troubled parts of a safer city … [Read more...]
Poor People Move Too
It is well known that rent control is not particularly effective in controlling rents; cities like New York and San Francisco have rent control and yet are quite expensive. Supporters of rent control, however, often argue that rent control is valuable for a different reason: it makes housing more … [Read more...]
traffic and development
One common NIMBY argument is that new development is bad because it brings traffic. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this is silly because it is a "beggar thy neighbor" argument: the traffic doesn't go away if you block the development, it just goes somewhere else. But my argument assumed that … [Read more...]
Is there really a building boom? Not as much as you might think
I've noticed numerous stories and tweets about a building boom: for example, a recent CNBC story asserts that the number of new apartments is "at a 50-year high." Various twitterati have used this claim to support their own points of view: some claim that rents are stabilizing because of this new … [Read more...]
Are Republicans or Democrats more pro-housing? Yes.
Some weeks ago, I was participating in a Zoom discussion on NIMBYism, and someone asked: are Republicans and conservatives more pro-housing than Democrats and liberals, or less so? After examining some poll data, I discovered that the answer depends on how the question is asked. A 2023 Yougov … [Read more...]
Why lawyer salaries matter
Today's Wall Street Journal includes a front-page article about sky-high lawyer incomes. The article points out that top lawyers can earn $15 million per year or more. Why is this relevant to urbanism or markets? Because one common argument against new condos (at least in NYC) is that they … [Read more...]
On coexistence
One common NIMBY* argument is that new housing (or the wrong kind of new housing) will "destroy the neighborhood." For example, one suburban town's politicians fought zoning reform in New York by claiming that allowing multifamily housing "is a direct assault on the suburbs." Indeed, many people … [Read more...]
Another of these studies that don’t mean what some people thinks it means
A group of researchers at the Urban Institute came out with a new study on zoning and housing affordability. At governing.com, a headline about the study screamed: "Zoning Changes Have Small Impact on Housing Supply." The Governing writer's spin was, of course, "there's no evidence it [upzoning] … [Read more...]
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