Michael Lewyn

Joined: May 21, 2025
Articles: 126

housing, NIMBYism, Places & Spaces, Uncategorized

The Truth About “Red Vienna”: Its a YIMBY Paradise!

One common leftist argument against new housing is the “Red Vienna” argument: the claim that housing can only be affordable in places where the government dominates the housing market. Supporters of this claim like to mention Vienna, where (according to progressive lore) Big Brother builds lots and lots of super-affordable public housing, while the Big Bad Market is not involved. But a recent article about Vienna states that “one-third of the 13,000 new apartments built in Vienna each year are funded by the government and commissioned by the housing associations.” This means that about 8700 apartments are built every year by the private sector. In a city with 1.8 million people, that’s a lot. By contrast, in Manhattan (which has a comparable population) about 3000 housing units were built between 2014 and 2017- far less than Vienna. Even in Houston (which has a slightly bigger population) only 14,653 housing units of all types, or about 3700 per year, were built between 2014 and 2017. In other words, even if not a single unit of public housing had not been built, Vienna would still have built more than twice as many units as high-growth Houston, and about ten times as many as Manhattan. Vienna’s affordability is thus an argument in favor of lots more housing, not an argument in favor of NIMBYism.

Michael Lewyn
June 29, 2019
1 Comment

Economics, Gentrification, housing

The Storper paper: not exactly a bombshell

Some commentators are slightly agog over an academic paper by Andres Rodrieguz-Pose and Michael Storper; Richard Florida writes that they shows that ” the effect of [housing] supply has been blown far out of proportion. ” Most of this paper isn’t really about the effect of housing supply on prices at all. Instead, the first 80 percent of the paper seems to argue that it makes no sense for low-skilled domestic workers to live in cities, because “Several decades ago mid-skilled work was clustered in big cities, while low-skilled work was most prevalent in the countryside. No longer; the mid-skilled jobs that remain are more likely to be found in rural areas than in urban ones.” (p. 20). The authors’ attack on upzoning is in the last few pages, and is based on broad, sweeping generalizations rather than actual data. First, they say that upzoning “would very likely involve replacing older and lower-quality housing stock in areas highly favoured by the market, effectively decreasing housing supply for lower income households in desirable areas.” (p. 30). They cite no source or data for this assertion- just pure conjecture. What’s wrong with their claim? First, such gentrification happens without upzoning; for example, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, gentrification occurred through renovation of existing structures, rather than new, taller buildings- and of course places where new construction is politically difficult (such as San Francisco and Manhattan) are notorious for gentrification. Second, it assumes that new housing inevitably replaces older housing, rather than, say, vacant lots- an obvious overgeneralization.. Second, they rely on the “but we’re already building new housing!” argument. They cite a paywalled newpaper article to support this statement: “rents are now declining for the highest earners while continuing to increase for the poorest in San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Pittsburgh, […]

Michael Lewyn
May 9, 2019

housing

High-Rises and Street Life

One common argument against tall buildings is that they reduce street life, because the most expensive high-rises have gyms and other amenities that cause people to stay inside the buildings rather than using the street. Because Manhattan has plenty of high-rises and plenty of street life, I have always thought this was a dumb argument. But until recently I’ve never thought of any way to prove or disprove the argument empirically- until now. It seems to me that if high-rises were bad for street life, places with expensive high-rises would have lower Walkscores than other neighborhoods; I reason that if high-rise residents stayed inside rather than going outside, they would be surrounded by fewer businesses than low-rise neighborhoods. So do high-rises generally have lower Walkscores? Not in dense areas; for example, 432 Park Avenue, one of Manhattan’s most expensive buildings, has a Walkscore of 98. Similarly, Boston’s Millenium Tower, a 60-story residential skyscraper, has a Walkscore of 96.

Michael Lewyn
April 17, 2019

Environment, parking, Places & Spaces, Policy, Transportation

A great new paper on how government fights walking

Many readers of this blog know that government subsidizes driving- not just through road spending, but also through land use regulations that make walking and transit use inconvenient and dangerous. Gregory Shill, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, has written an excellent new paper that goes even further. Of course, Shill discusses anti-pedestrian regulations such as density limits and minimum parking requirements. But he also discusses government practices that make automobile use far more dangerous and polluting than it has to be. For example, environmental regulations focus on tailpipe emissions, but ignore environmental harm caused by roadbuilding and the automobile manufacturing process. Vehicle safety regulations make cars safer, but American crashworthiness regulations do not consider the safety of pedestrians in automobile/pedestrian crashes. Speeding laws allow very high speeds and are rarely enforced. If you don’t want to read the 100-page article, a more detailed discussion is at Streetsblog.

Michael Lewyn
March 7, 2019

housing, NIMBYism, Uncategorized, World

Big Media Gets Big Buildings Wrong

While reading someone else’s work, I recently ran across an article by David Cay Johnston of the New York Times, claiming that overseas oligarchs turning apartments all over the world into unused “ghost apartments”. In this article, Johnston writes: “In Paris, for instance, one apartment in four sits empty most of the time.” This claim struck me as so astonishing that as to be implausible, for the simple reason that in other “global” cities vacancy rates are much lower. For example, in New York only 9 percent of housing units are vacant, and most of those units are currently for sale or rent.* Even this vacancy level should not be particularly astonishing, since cheaper American cities often have higher vacancy rates. For example, Houston has an 11 percent vacancy rate, and Atlanta has an 18 percent vacancy rate. After googling “one in four paris apartments vacant” I found an article claiming that 26 percent of apartments in four Paris arrondisements (neighborhoods) is vacant- a much narrower claim, comparable to an assertion that one in four midtown Manhattan apartments is vacant. One would think that a journalist as distinguished as Johnston would know the difference between “Paris” and “some parts of Paris.” A more recent article claims that only 7.5 percent of Paris apartments are vacant- a lower vacancy rate than that of New York. Moreover, we don’t know what the local media means by “vacant.” Does this category limited to apartments that are unused 365 days a year? What about units that are rented out now and then through Airbnb? Or units that are currently being advertised for rent or sale? I suspect that the true number of “ghost apartments” is far lower than 7.5 percent, since in London (another “global city”) less than 1 percent of housing units are […]

Michael Lewyn
February 28, 2019

housing, Uncategorized

New York State’s Property Tax Cap

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 current value. By artificially capping taxes on vacant land, this part of Proposition 13 ensures that a landowner does not suffer as much from keeping land vacant as it would under another tax system. Second, by reducing local property taxes, Proposition 13 forced municipalities to rely on other sources of revenue, such as sales taxes. Because retail shops bring in more sales tax revenue than residential uses, this law gave California towns an incentive to favor the former. * New York’s Gov. Cuomo has recently proposed a tax cut that buys popularity for state lawmakers on the backs of municipalities. In 2011, the state passed a law to limit local governments’ property tax increases to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. This cap was originally temporary, but Cuomo now proposes to make it permanent. A bill implementing Cuomo’s proposal was recently passed by the State Senate, but has yet to be voted on by the State Assembly. Historically, the cap has not included high-cost New York City, but that may change. If the cap does include New York City, will it have the same results as Proposition 13? Probably not, for two reasons. First, the tax cap, unlike Proposition 13, does not artificially favor property purchased long ago, and thus does not discourage people from selling their property. Second, New York State has to consent to sales tax increases, so municipalities don’t have as much of an incentive as their California counterparts to favor land uses that bring in lots […]

Michael Lewyn
January 31, 2019

Book Review, housing, NIMBYism, rent control

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 displacement of low-income renters (such as rent control, and more generally policies that make it difficult to evict tenants). What I liked most about this breezy, easy-to-read book is that it rebuts a wide variety of anti-housing arguments. For example, NIMBYs sometimes argue that new housing displaces affordable older housing. But Shaw shows that NIMBY homeowners oppose apartment buildings even when this is not the case; apartments built on parking lots and vacant lots are often controversial. For example, in Venice, California, NIMBYs opposed “building 136 supportive housing units for low-income people on an unsightly city-owned parking lot.” NIMBYs may argue that new housing will always be for the rich. But Shaw cites numerous examples of NIMBYs opposing public housing for the poor as well as market-rate housing for the middle and upper classes. NIMBYs also claim that they seek to protect their communities should be protected against skyscrapers or other unusually large buildings. But Shaw shows that NIMBYs have fought even the smallest apartment buildings. For example, in Berkeley, NIMBYs persuaded the city to reject a developer’s plan to add only three houses to a lot. On the other hand, market urbanists may disagree with Shaw’s advocacy of a wide variety of policies that he refers to as “tenant protections” such as rent control, inclusionary zoning, increased code enforcement, and generally making it difficult to evict tenants. All of these policies make it more difficult and/or expensive to be a landlord, thus creating costs that may either be passed on to tenants […]

Michael Lewyn
November 20, 2018

housing, Zoning

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 displacement. Their alternative is to build massive amounts of public housing. On the positive side, PHIMBYism, if implemented, would increase the housing supply and lower housing costs, especially for the poor who would be served by new public housing. And because there is certainly ample consumer demand for new housing, PHIMBYism would be more responsive to consumer preferences than the zoning status quo (which privileges the interests of owners of existing homes over those of renters and would-be future homeowners). But PHIMBYism is even more politically impossible than market urbanism. Market urbanists just want to eliminate zoning codes that prevent new housing from being built- a heavy lift in the political environment of recent decades. But PHIMBYs want to override the same zoning codes, AND find the land for new public housing (which often will require liberal use of eminent domain by local governments), AND find the taxpayer money to build that new public housing, AND find the taxpayer money to maintain that housing forever. And to make matters worse, the old leftist remedy of raising taxes on the rich might be inadequate to fund enough housing, because the same progressives who are willing to spend more money on housing also want to spend more public money on a wide variety of other priorities, thus making it difficult to find the money for housing.

Michael Lewyn
November 20, 2018

housing

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 higher, thus making housing more unaffordable.” This argument seems to be based on the assumption that land prices are essentially a fixed cost: that is to say, that they can only go up, never go down. In fact, land costs are extremely volatile. For example, a recent Philadelphia Inquirer story showed that in Philadelphia, land costs per square foot of vacant land fell by 46 percent over the last year. Why? A developer quoted in the story suggests that as supply has started to keep up with demand, rents have declined, causing land prices to decline. In other words, when supply increases, rents go down AND so do land prices.

Michael Lewyn
October 11, 2018

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