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Michael Lewyn

Michael Lewyn

  • Joined: May 21, 2025
  • Articles: 126

What About Vancouver?

Market urbanists such as myself tend to believe that if a place suffers from absurdly high housing prices, there is probably not enough new housing being built to accommodate rising demand. A recent paper argues that inadequate supply is not a significant part of the problem in high-cost Vancouver, primarily because the number of housing units has kept up with the number of people (p. 11)   It seems to me, however, that this theory overlooks people priced out of Vancouver, thus understating demand. To put the matter in hypothetical form: suppose that in 1991, Nimbytown had 20,000 people and 10,000 housing units.  In 2011, Nimbytown had 30,000 people and 15,000 housing units; however, 30,000 more people are priced out of Nimbytown.    Obviously, it would be silly to say that housing is keeping up with demand. Vancouver is, to be fair, adding housing supply- but at about the same pace it did 20 years ago.  From 1991-95, Metro Vancouver added about 18,000 housing starts per year, ranging from just over 14,000 in 1991 to just over 21,000 in 1993.    Housing starts then nosedived, not reaching the 20,000 level until 2007.  Between 2007 and 2011, the region averaged about 16,000 housing starts per year, slightly fewer than in the 1990s. In a region with a stagnant population, this would be a strong performance.  But from 1991 to 2011, the number of Vancouver households grew by over 40 percent, from just over 600,000 to almost 900,000.  So should a region with 900,000 households have the same number of housing starts as one with 600,000?  I don’t think so. The paper blames Chinese investors for Vancouver’s high housing prices- and logically, any increase in demand should, other things being equal, increase housing costs.  But the author of the paper has written elsewhere: […]

what about singles?

Both smart growth supporters and sprawl apologists focus on the needs of families with children: sprawl defenders argue that only suburbia can accommodate the desires of parents, while some smart growth types argue that cities should require lots of two- and three-bedroom units downtown because families need a lot of space. But a current exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington suggests that this focus is a bit misguided.  The exhibit points out that nearly 30 percent of U.S. households are singles living alone.  Judging from all the planning-media blather about families, one might think that the housing market is focused on their needs, and that 30 percent or even more of the housing stock consisted of single-sized units. But the exhibit points out that in fact, less than 1 percent of housing units are studios, and about 12 percent are one-bedrooms.  So family-oriented units are in fact overrepresented in the housing stock. Larger units may  not dominate downtown, but they start to dominate pretty close to downtown.  For example, when I looked at zillow.com I discovered that downtown Pittsburgh is dominated by one-bedroom units, but in zip code 15203 just south of downtown, 3/4 of housing units available for rent or sale have two or more bedrooms, including 80 out of 115 rental apartment listings.    In zip code 15202 just northeast of downtown, 34 of 60 rental apartment listings, and 71 percent of all rental listings have two or more bedrooms. Of course, Pittsburgh is a pretty family-oriented city.  But even in Washington’s 20036 zip code (a wealthy downtown neighborhood) 1/3 of all listings are for two or more bedrooms.  And if you go just two subway stops north to Cleveland Park (zip code 20008) 108 out of 174 listings have two or more bedrooms. What about […]

new report on SROs

Once upon a time, New York City’s poor single people were usually not homeless because they lived in little apartments with shared bathrooms and kitchens.  These units are called “single room occupancy” (SRO) units in plannerese. (When I was young, people used less flattering terms such as “fleabag” and “flophouse” to describe the nastier SRO buildings). What happened?  Why are so many people sleeping on the streets of Midtown?  A recent paper by NYU’s Furman Center partially answers the question, by discussing the obstacles to SRO construction.  For decades, New York’s housing law has made SROs almost impossible to build, in a variety of ways:  By flatly outlawing SROs, unless they are built with government or nonprofit involvement Through anti-density regulations that limit the number of dwelling units in a building; Minimum parking requirements (though these are an issue primarily in the outer boroughs). The paper recommends allowing market-rate SROs, limited density deregulation, counting SRO units as affordable housing for purposes of the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, exempting SROs from minimum parking requirements, and government subsidies for SROs.  

The absence of gentrification causes displacement

Some progressives believe that gentrification causes displacement of poor people, that new market-rate housing causes such gentrification, and thus that new housing must be kept out of low-income neighborhoods. The first of these claims is based on the assumption that absent gentrification, low-income neighborhoods would be stable places.   But this is not the case.  Often, a city’s poorest neighborhoods are those losing population most rapidly. In St. Louis, for example, the city’s low-income, crime-ridden northside wards are rapidly losing people: the city’s 3rd Ward lost 28 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010 alone, and other northside neighborhoods also lost over 10 (and in a few cases, over 20) percent of their population in the 2000s.   The city’s racially integrated, somewhat poor Near South Side also lost over 10 percent of its population in the 2000s.   By contrast, the city’s gentrifying downtown and midtown actually gained population, while the white working/middle class Far South Side were somewhere in between. Similarly, in Atlanta, the affluent northside and racially integrated downtown and midtown gained population in the 2000s, while much of the city’s all-black south side and far northwest side are losing population.  These declining neighborhoods tend to be poor: for example, zip code 30315 (Lakewood Heights on the southside) has a 38 percent poverty rate and lost 16 percent of its population in the 2000s.   Zip code 30314 (Vine City and other northwest neighborhoods) has a poverty rate of 34 percent, and lost about 18 percent of its population. And in Chicago, the toughest neighborhoods also export people. The city’s downtown gained over 40,000 people since 2010, while the city’s traditionally impoverished Far South Side lost nearly 50,000.  In fact, nearly every major part of the city outside the Far South Side either gained population or lost no more than […]

Mini review: Suburb, by Royce Hanson

Suburb: Planning Politics and the Public Interest is a scholarly book about planning politics in Montgomery County, a (mostly) affluent suburb of Washington, D.C.  The book contains chapters on redevelopment of inner ring, transit-friendly areas such as Friendship Heights and Silver Spring, but also discusses outer suburbs and the county’s agricultural areas. From my perspective, the most interesting section of the book was the chapter on Friendship Heights and Bethesda, two inner-ring areas near subway stops.  When landowners proposed to redevelop these areas, the planning staff actually downzoned them (p. 56)- and NIMBYs fought the planning board, arguing that even more downzoning was necessary to prevent unwelcome development. These downzoning decisions were based on the staff’s “transportation capacity analysis”- the idea that an area’s roads can only support X feet of additional development.  For example, Hanson writes that Friendship Heights “could support only 1.6 million square feet of additional development.” (p. 62).   Similarly, he writes that Bethesda’s “roads and transit could handle only 12 million square feet of new development at an acceptable level of service.” (p. 75) Thus, planning staff artificially limited development based on “level of service “(LOS) .  “Level of service” is a concept used to grade automobile traffic; where traffic is free-flowing the LOS is A.  But the idea that development is inappropriate in low-LOS places seems a bit inconsistent with my experience. Bethesda and Friendship Heights zip codes have about 5000-10,000 people per square mile; many places with far more density seem to function adequately.   For example, Kew Gardens Hills in central Queens has 27,000 people per square mile, relies on bus service, and yet seems to be a moderately popular area. Moreover, the use of LOS to cap density has a variety of other negative effects.  First, places with free-flowing traffic tend to be dangerous for […]

Mini review: Vanishing New York, by Jeremiah Moss

I recently read a highly publicized pro-NIMBY book, Vanishing New York.   The author, who goes by the pen name “Jeremiah Moss” tells a simple story: throughout New York, gentrification and chain stores are on the march, making the city rich and boring.  The story has an element of truth: obviously, there are some places that have gentrified, and there are some places (mostly notably Times Square) that have lots and lots of banks and chain stores. But on balance, the book’s relationship with factual reality is a bit uneven.  Much of the book complains about the evils of gentrification. But in fact, even in Manhattan the poverty rate is 17.9 percent, about three times that of most New York suburbs. Moss also claims that the city is getting whiter, but even Manhattan is 40 percent black and Hispanic, and New York City as a whole is 54 percent black and Hispanic. By contrast, in 1980 the city was only 45 percent black/Hispanic, and in 1940 it was over 90 percent white. Moss seems to think that the city is being taken over by chain stores. The last time I walked through the East Village (one of the neighborhoods he writes about) I found about one or two such stores per block, or about 5 or 10 percent of all storefronts.  My guess is that Moss thinks about chain stores the way many racists think about racial minorities: because they assume one is too many, 5 percent seems to them like a takeover. Moss is all for immigration from foreign nations, but constantly complains about newcomers, especially parents; he uses the word “stroller” like anti-Semites use the term “international bankers”- as a code-word for a dreaded enemy.  He has a problem with college students too (complaining about “NYU’s presence… [having] spread […]

High Rents: Are Construction Costs the Culprit?

(cross-posted from planetizen.com) I have argued numerous times on Planetizen that increased housing supply would reduce rents. I recently read one counterargument that I had not fully addressed before: the claim that no amount of new housing will ever bring down urban rents because housing in high-cost, high-wage cities is expensive to build.* This argument rests on two assumptions: (1) that construction costs are the primary reason some cities are more expensive than others, and (2) if new housing is expensive, the median citywide rent will be equally expensive. I find neither assumption to be persuasive. Admittedly, expensive cities do tend to have higher construction costs than more affordable costs—but this gap is far more modest than the gap in housing costs between high-cost and low-cost cities. For example, a study by the design firm EVStudio showed that the construction costs for a small apartment building in New York City were only about 30 percent higher than the costs of a similar building in Kansas City ($232 per square feet in New York, $181 in Kansas City). But rents in New York are far more than 30 percent higher; I pay about $5 per square foot for my Manhattan apartment, but paid just over $1 per square foot for a roughly comparable apartment in Kansas City (i.e., a doorman building in a fashionable intown neighborhood). Similarly, the Lincoln Institute’s land price database reveals that regional differences in construction costs lag behind differences in land costs: for example, construction costs in San Francisco are only about 60 percent higher than construction costs in Kansas City, but the median San Francisco-area house costs seven times as much due to differences in land costs. Thus, construction costs are not the main reason some cities are more expensive than others.** Moreover, the suggestion that high construction costs for new buildings mean high […]

Does Density Raise Housing Prices?

My last post, on urban geographic constraints and housing prices, led to an interesting discussion thread.  The most common counter argument was that because dense cities are usually more expensive, density must cause high cost.  But if this was true, cities would become cheaper as they became less dense. Most American urbanized areas have become less dense, not more, over time due to suburban sprawl.  Even where city populations have grown, much of that growth has been in areas that where undeveloped a century ago.  Thus, the developed part of even growing cities were, I suspect, more dense in 1917 than than they are today: for example, Manhattan’s population peaked at 2.3 million in 1910, about 40 percent more than its current population.   So rents should have come down.  Did they? Apparently not.  The Census date has statewide data showing that rents rose pretty much everywhere in real terms over the late 20th century.  In the District of Columbia, real rents increased from $346 to $612 in real dollars between 1950 and 1990, even as the city was losing population and the region was de-densifying.  If Washington is typical, it appears that lower density and higher rent went hand-in-hand.

Urban[ism] Legend: The “Geographically Constrained Cities” Fantasy

geographic constraints

One common argument against building new urban housing is that cities are geographically constrained by their natural and political boundaries, and thus can never build enough housing to bring prices down.  This claim rests on a variety of false assumptions. The first false assumption is that the amount of land in a city limits the amount of housing in that city.  If you assume that every bit of residential land must be occupied by single-family houses on 1/5 of an acre on land, I suppose this assumption makes sense.  But in reality, you can always put more people on a block of land.  Where today you have big houses, tomorrow you could have small houses.  Where today you have small houses, tomorrow you could have small apartment buildings.  Where today you have small apartment buildings, tomorrow you could have large apartment buildings.  Even in midtown Manhattan, where I live, there are lots to two-to-four story buildings that could be knocked down and replaced with larger buildings.     If Manhattan had the density of Mongkok (a popular Hong Kong neighborhood with 340,000 people per square mile), it could accommodate almost 7 million people- about 80 percent of the city of New York’s population.*  And if Manhattan had enough housing to accommodate Mongkok-type densities, a whole lot of housing units (either outer borough units or older Manhattan units) would become vacant, causing rents to plunge. The second assumption is that a city’s built-up core is its entire housing market.  But this is wrong, because Manhattan landlords compete not just with each other, but with landlords in the outer boroughs and the suburbs.  So if enough housing units were, for example, built in New Jersey, demand for housing in Manhattan would eventually decrease.   *A common counteragument is that demolishing and rebuilding housing […]

old posts

Before there was a Market Urbanism blog, I posted short thoughts on the Congress for New Urbanism group blog.  I am in the process of recovering as many of the posts as possible through the Internet Archive (archive.org).  My 2015 posts are here.  I hope to gradually recover the earlier posts as well.

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