Michael Lewyn

Joined: May 21, 2025
Articles: 126

housing, NIMBYism

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 so many comments to this post that I don’t feel the need to respond to every point (and many of the points are very San Francisco-specific). But here are a few points, each of which begin with a quote from Alexander: “Even in the best case scenario, increased housing supply will just make apartments slightly more affordable.” But the post states that if housing supply increases by the admittedly ambitious 2.5 percent a year, the monthly rent for a one bedroom San Francisco apartment will go down from $3500 to $2100- a forty percent decrease. Moreover, in looking at the effects of new supply it isn’t enough to compare the benefits of reform to the status quo, because it is quite possible that if we continue “business as usual” policies rents will keep rising. So instead of comparing $2100 to the current rent, maybe we should compare it to whatever the rent will be if San Francisco continues along its current path (which I am guessing is more than $3500). “If your theory predicts that turning a city into Manhattan will make rents plummet, then consider that turning Manhattan into Manhattan made rents much worse, and so maybe your theory is wrong.” This is another version of the theory that density causes rent to rise. I have responded to that argument here. (Brief summary: Manhattan has gotten LESS dense over time, so if density was bad for rent, Manhattan should be a bargain now!) “And I have heard YIMBYs counter that if people don’t want […]

Michael Lewyn
October 7, 2018

housing

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 indication that the condo owners are not using their units as their primary residence.”* The report accordingly concludes that these buildings do not “address Boston’s acute affordable housing crisis.” This seems to be another version of the common “foreign buyers” argument: that new housing does not hold down rents, because it will all be bought up by rich foreigners who will let the units sit unoccupied forever. Although the report does not explicitly endorse restrictive zoning, it does urge the city to require new residential buildings to be carbon-neutral- a rule that might make residential construction more difficult. But this inference would be wrong. If you own a condominium, you have three choices: (1) to live in it; (2) to sit on it and lose money on your mortgage; or (3) to rent it out. Obviously, you make the most money through choice (3)- renting out the condo. So even a condo owner who does not choose option (1) has a strong incentive to adopt choice (3). Thus, it seems likely that at least some, if not all, of the condos will be rented out, thus increasing rather than decreasing regional housing supply, which in turn will have a positive effect on housing prices. *The residential exemption saves Boston homeowners up to $2500 per year on their tax bill. I would think that at least some owner-occupants are unaware of or forget to file for this exemption- but since I have no idea how common this is, I am reluctant […]

Michael Lewyn
September 14, 2018

housing, Urban[ism] Legends

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 the study more carefully, it doesn’t stand for what the headline says it stands for. First of all, it refers only to increasing housing supply in the most expensive neighborhoods. But housing markets are citywide- so of course if you increase housing supply in just one or two neighborhoods, you are not going to get significant rent reductions. If you raised housing supply by 5 percent everywhere, presumably you would get more than a 0.5 percent rent reduction. The study itself states: ” The papers that find large effects of regulation on house prices are not necessarily at odds with our findings in this paper, because regulations can have very large effects on the housing stock. For example, Jackson (2016) finds that an additional regulation reduces residential permits by 4 to 8 percent per year. Glaeser and Ward (2009) estimate even larger effects on supply. These effects on construction can accumulate into very large changes to the housing stock, especially when these regulations are in place for many years, as is often the case.” (p. 5) In other words, the study admits that supply-limiting regulations do affect housing costs: precisely the opposite of what a careless reader might think from reading the Forbes headline. Second of all, 5 percent is not exactly a huge increase. Even the author of the Forbes blog post concedes that more aggressive supply increases might lead to more aggressive rent reductions. Third, the study assumes a zero vacancy rate (p. 13) which seems to be an assumption that […]

Michael Lewyn
August 26, 2018

housing, Zoning

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 housing. This is so for several reasons. First, government raises the cost of housing through a wide variety of regulations- some justified (e.g. building codes necessary for safety), some not-so-justified (e.g. exclusionary zoning). These regulations, by raising the cost of housing, effectively take money from all households. And because these restrictions aren’t based on ability to pay, they are especially painful for low-income households. Public housing and similar programs, rather than being a subsidy to the undeserving poor, are merely compensation for this act of plunder. Second, even if the United States abolished zoning tomorrow, it might take decades for housing supply to increase enough to bring rents down. So in the interim, lower-income households would still be suffering from the effects of zoning, and would deserve compensation just as much as they do under the status quo. Third, even if the United States abolished zoning and similar restrictions tomorrow, public health and safety might support certain restrictions that nevertheless increase the cost of housing- for example, some basic safety protections in building codes. It seems to me that as a matter of justice, government should not be forcing people into homelessness, so government should subsidize housing in order to make up for the costs imposed by even the most legitimate regulations. Finally, even if there were no housing-related regulations at all, the cost of land would create a floor under housing costs, which means some people would be homeless without government support. So if homelessness creates harmful social externalities of any kind, […]

Michael Lewyn
August 22, 2018

Gentrification, housing

does gentrification cause eviction?

I found an interesting new website: EvictionLab. This website contains eviction data by city for a large number of American communities. One might think that gentrifying cities and/or high cost cities have more evictions. But interestingly, low-cost, poor cities tend to have more evictions. Nine of the ten cities with the highest eviction rates are in low-cost southern states; the tenth is Warren, Michigan. Even within states, low-cost cities tend to have higher eviction rates than more expensive, gentrifying cities. For example, Fresno has the highest eviction rate of any major city in California- 2.8 (that is, 2.8 evictions for every 100 renter households) while Los Angeles and San Francisco are below 0.5. Seattle has a lower eviction rate (0.3) than Washington’s smaller cities, Austin has a lower eviction rate than Dallas or Houston (0.98 percent as opposed to over 1.5 percent for Houston and Dallas). Miami’s 2.01 percent eviction rate, although high by national standards, is lower than that of other Florida cities such as Jacksonville (5.34) and Tampa (3). New Orleans (1.6) has a lower eviction rate than Baton Rouge and Shreveport (both of which clock in at over 4 percent). New York City is a partial exception- its 1.61 rate is higher than that of Syracuse and Yonkers; on the other hand no statistics are available for the state’s two biggest cheaper cities, Buffalo and Rochester. So what does it all mean? It seems clear that there is not a strong correlation between gentrification and eviction, or for that matter between higher-than-average housing costs and eviction. Beyond that, I’m not sure what conclusions to draw.

Michael Lewyn
June 27, 2018

housing, Uncategorized, Zoning

Morton’s Fork and land use issues

I recently discovered a new logical fallacy: the “Morton’s Fork” fallacy. This argument is one in which contradictory observations lead to the same conclusion. For example, if I argue that new housing near public transit is bad because it (1) spurs gentrification by bringing rich people into the neighborhood and (2) increases crime by bringing poor people into the neighborhood, I am engaging in this fallacy. Similarly, I have heard arguments that new housing is bad because it (1) brings down property values and (2) increases property values. In such situations, it is sometimes possible that one of the two claims could be true, but it is unlikely that both claims could be true.

Michael Lewyn
June 25, 2018

parking, Transportation

The “Old People Need Cars” Argument- Myth or Fact?

The needs of the aged are often a political football in disputes over transportation policy. On the one hand, defenders of low-cost parking and other car-oriented policies argue that older people all need cars because they can’t be bothered to walk. On the other hand, smart growth types argue that we will all be too old to drive someday, so we need to end the reign of car dependency. One way of examining the issue is to find out whether seniors in fact drive more than everyone else. Happily, the 2016 American Community Survey comes to our rescue here. In Manhattan where I live, there are just over 129,000 senior-headed households with no car, and just over 36,000 with a vehicle available. So contrary to car-lobby conventional wisdom, only about 22 percent of senior-headed households have a car. How does that compare with other age groups? On the one hand, only about 25,000 out of 200,000, or 12 percent, of millennial-headed households (that is, households headed by someone under 35) have a vehicle. But among Manhattan households headed by persons between 35 and 64, about 28 percent (just over 109,000 out of just over 386,000) have a vehicle- more than senior-headed households, to my surprise. So I rate the “Old People Need Cars” claim as Mostly False: most seniors here in Manhattan don’t have cars, even though they are more likely to own cars than millenials. On the other hand, the latter fact suggests that seniors are rarely physically incapable of using cars.

Michael Lewyn
May 23, 2018

housing

Loving the Stranger- Not!

The Bible says again and again and again to “love the stranger”. Although this phrase has been interpreted in a variety of different ways, one highly plausible interpretation of this maxim is that we should be at least somewhat hospitable to newcomers and temporary sojourners in our midst. But American land use and transportation regulations seem to be motivated by hostility to “strangers” (or, as they are more perjoratively termed, “transients”). For example, the most privileged uses in zoning are the most permanent: single-family houses and businesses tend to be the least controversial land uses, while the most transient-oriented land uses tend to be the most controversial. Owners of single-family houses try to zone out apartments because renters are “transient”, and homeowners and renters in turn may ally try to zone out hotels and other forms of short-term rental because the users of these services are even more ‘transient” than renters. Street design often seems hostile to transients as well; a visitor to a city is least likely to be disoriented in a place where one can guess a place’s location based on an address. For example, if you are going to 1125 M Street, SW, in Washington, DC you know that your destination is near the corner of 11th and M Streets. Other gridded areas are a little less legible, but even so you can somewhat guess where you are going if you know a street name or two. By contrast, newer suburbs often tend to be much less legible to visitors: for example, in suburban Atlanta, there is no street grid and the proliferation of cul-de-sacs makes navigation confusing for visitors.

Michael Lewyn
May 11, 2018

housing, Policy

The Attack on Airbnb

New York politicians’ attacks on Airbnb are now getting national press; they argue that because Airbnb units could be used for long-term rentals, Airbnb reduces the housing supply and thus raises rents. But just as a matter of principle, this claim leads to absurd results. The logic underlying the claim is: a housing unit that is used for short-term rentals such as Airbnb could be easily used for long-term rentals. Thus, Airbnb reduces the long-term housing supply. But this argument proves too much. If you own a house, your house could also be used for long-term rentals. If you have a spare room, you could rent out that spare room. And even if you rent out every room in the house, your house sits on land that could be used for a much larger number of rental units. Since there are far more single-family houses than there are Airbnb units, bulldozing every house in the city would increase housing supply to a much greater extent than would outlawing Airbnb. Does this mean the city should bulldoze your house to build more rental housing?