In a recent blog post, Julia Galef has generated a fairly comprehensive list of pro-housing arguments and counterarguments to those arguments. She gives the most detailed consideration to the "infinite demand" argument- in her words, “So even if SF adds a lot of additional housing, prices will … [Read more...]
More on “Empty Houses”
I recently saw a Facebook post asserting that San Francisco has 30,000 vacant units, so therefore no market-rate housing should be built. So I looked up Census data on these allegedly empty units. It is true, according to the Census Factfinder website, that there are 30,000 or so unoccupied … [Read more...]
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” should be required reading for YIMBYs and urbanists of any ideological stripe. Rothstein argues that housing segregation in the US has been the intentional outcome of policy decisions made at every … [Read more...]
People Over Process: Why Democracy Doesn’t Justify Exclusion
Some people accept the idea that restrictive land use policy is just as bad as all the research suggests, but persist in supporting the status quo. They argue that if a community chooses to regulate its built environment, that choice should be respected as having moral weight because it’s the … [Read more...]
Is Inclusionary Zoning Legal?
Market Urbanism may soon have a hearing in the Supreme Court. Two of my colleagues at the Mercatus Center, Sandy Ikeda, half a dozen other professors, and I argue that the Court should take up the case 616 Croft Ave., LLC, v. City of West Hollywood. The case is an opportunity for the Court … [Read more...]
Empty Houses, part 2
The most interesting comment to my last post focused on one narrow issue: to what extent are vacant housing units second homes (and thus presumably less likely to be rented out) as opposed to units for rent/sale or held for other unknown reasons? Why does this matter? Because one might argue … [Read more...]
The “Empty House” Theory
One common argument against new urban housing runs as follows: "If we build new housing, it will all be bought up by rich investors who will sit on it. So new supply doesn't restrain housing costs." This argument (at least as I have phrased it) strikes me as absurd. Here's why: for the argument … [Read more...]
YIMBYism: Its Not Just For Conservatives
Last week, I posted about an attack on YIMBYs (activists who favor less zoning and more housing) that used the term "alt-right"; the authors of that blog post recently doubled down with a slightly more moderate op-ed that still tarred YIMBYs as "aligned with conservative right-wing … [Read more...]
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