Category housing

Book Review, housing, Zoning

Review: Homelessness is a Housing Problem

In Homelessness is a Housing Problem, Prof. Gregg Colburn and data scientist Clayton Page Aldern seek to answer the question: why is homelessness much more common in some cities than in others? They find that only two factors are significant: 1) overall rents and 2) rental vacancy rates. Where housing is scarce and rents are high, lots of people are homeless. Where rents are lower, fewer people are homeless, even in very poor places. (In fact, high city incomes correlate positively with homelessness, because more and better jobs lead to higher demand for housing). By contrast, many other factors that one might think are related to homelessness in fact are not correlated on a citywide basis. For example, since homeless people are generally poor, one might think that places with high poverty rates or high unemployment rates have lots of homelessness. The authors show that this is not the case. Where most people are poor, there is less demand for housing, which translates into lower rents and less homelessness. One might also think that places with warm weather have lots of homelessness, because homeless people might be attracted to them. But high-rent cold cities like Boston have above-average levels of homelessness, while cheaper warm-weather cities like Orlando and Charlotte do not. However, homeless people are more likely to have temporary shelter in cold cities than in expensive warm-weather cities like San Diego- either because city governments are less motivated to build homeless shelters when no one is at risk of freezing to death, or because the homeless themselves are less eager to use shelters. I suspect that if the authors focused only on highly visible unsheltered homelessness, they might have found a stronger correlation with weather). It might be argued that shelters themselves (or other social services) attract the destitute. […]

Michael Lewyn
April 19, 2022

housing, sprawl, Uncategorized

Reasons to be a Census skeptic

Over the past week, the press was chock full of 2020-style headlines like “Census Bureau Confirms Pandemic Exodus from SF.” That’s because according to the Census Bureau, virtually every urban county in the U.S. (even urban counties in growing metros like Dallas and Atlanta) lost population between July 2020 and July 2021. But is the hype justified? I suspect not, for a variety of reasons. First of all, Census Department estimates have, in recent years, tended to underestimate urban populations, at least in some cities. For example, in 2019 the Census estimated Manhattan’s population as 1.628 million, while the actual count of 2020 showed 1.694 million residents- an underestimation of over 65,000 people. The Census estimated Brooklyn’s population at 2.559 million, but the actual count showed 2.736 million- an underestimate of over 150,000. (On the other hand, the 2020 population count was actually a bit lower than the 2019 estimates for Washington and San Francisco). Second, even the 2020 Census probably undercounted cities more than it undercounted suburbs. How do we know this? Because according to the Census Bureau itself, it undercounted Blacks by 3 percent and Hispanics by 5 percent, while slightly overcounting whites. These groups tend to be more urban than suburban (at least compared to whites) – so if the Census undercounted these groups, it probably undercounted urban population generally. Third, the timing of the Census Bureau’s estimates does not quite make sense to me. By July 2021, rents had already began to rise in Manhattan; the low rents of February and March were already disappearing. This suggests that by July, population (and thus demand) was increasing. Fourth, even if the Census Bureau’s population estimates were valid for the summer of 2021, they certainly aren’t valid any more. How do we know? It seems pretty obvious that […]

Michael Lewyn
March 28, 2022

housing, privatization

Do HOAs justify zoning?

At a recent webinar, Prof. Christopher Serkin of Vanderbilt Law School made an interesting argument. He pointed out that a) Sun Belt cities tend to have less restrictive zoning than northern cities; b) Sun Belt cities also have more homeowners’ associations (HOAs) with restrictive rules; and therefore (c) perhaps zoning reform will fail because homeowners will react to restrictive zoning by creating more HOAs, which will limit density and housing supply just as much as zoning. It seems to me that this argument has some weak links. The most obvious is that it is not clear that the correlation he points out really exists. Admittedly, northern and midwestern states have fewer HOAs than the rest of the nation. In the Northeast, only 29 percent of new homes are part of HOAs, as opposed to 47 percent in the Midwest, and 2/3 in the South. But not all southern and western states are the same- and if we go state-by-state, the correlation between HOAs and strict zoning starts to disappear. In particular, California metros are notorious for strict land use regulation and high housing costs. But 64.9% of California homeowners belong to an HOA, well above the national average. In fact, only three states (Vermont, DC and Florida) have higher HOA participation rates than California. On the other hand, Texas metros tend to be less restrictive, but only 1/3 of Texas homeowners belong to a HOA. Similarly, only 15 percent of Tenneseee homeowners belong to an HOA. So its not quite clear that metros with lower housing costs and/or less zoning have higher HOA participation rates. ( On the other hand, this data would be more useful if we were able to a) distinguish between new subdivisions and the rest of the housing market, b) distinguish between HOA participation rates for […]

Michael Lewyn
March 20, 2022

housing, NIMBYism, Uncategorized, Urban[ism] Legends

Where investors invest

One argument I have run across recently is that the high cost of housing is caused by mysterious corporate investors are buying up real estate and forcing up the cost. The stupidest version of this argument is that investors are hoarding all the real estate. Why is it stupid? Because corporations like to make money, and a corporation that doesn’t sell or rent out real estate is making no money from it. A more sensible version of the argument is that the existence of investors adds demand for housing, and thus that their presence thus increases housing costs.* But even if this true, are these investors really a significant factor in the housing market? In today’s Washington Post, an article supplies data for 40 metro areas. If investors are really the problem, one might think that the most expensive metros have the highest investor share. But this is simply not the case. In San Francisco, only 6 percent of for-sale houses are being purchased by investors (about the same as the 2015 share). In metro New York and Los Angeles, that share is around 10-11 percent. The most investor-heavy markets are in growing, medium-cost Sun Belt markets like Atlanta (25 percent), Charlotte (25 percent), Jacksonville (22 percent) and Phoenix (21 percent). And within those markets, investors are not buying in the most expensive areas. In Atlanta, the highest investor shares are in the lower-income Southside, and low and moderate-income southern and western suburbs. In Jacksonville, the mostly lower-income Northside and the working-class Westside have higher investor shares than the more middle-class Southside. This pattern seems to hold in less investor-heavy metros as well: even though some affluent Manhattan zip codes have high investor shares, most of the high-investor zip codes are in East Harlem, the South Bronx, and other poor […]

Michael Lewyn
February 16, 2022

housing, NIMBYism

More information about NYC “Billionaire’s Row”

A recent Youtube video on New York City’s “Billionares’ Row” (a smattering of very expensive buildings at the northern edge of midtown Manhattan) has received over six million views. Much of the video is rather propagandistic: it uses perjorative terms like “loopholes” to describe how the supertalls on Billionaires’ Row complied with zoning codes. The video relied heavily on sources such as socialist Sam Stein (who generally opposes market-rate housing). Having said that, this video does contain some interesting information. In particular, the video points out that to the extent that the condos in these buildings are vacant, it isn’t necessarily because the owners are treating them as wealth storage units. Instead, the video claims that 44 percent of the units haven’t even been sold yet: the owners of the building are waiting for prices to rise a bit more before finding a buyer. However, this data may be far less scandalous than it seems at first glance. Some of the buildings with the fewest sales are rather new. For example, 179-unit 217 West 57th Street has had only 47 sales (and only six rentals) listed on Streeteasy.com- but that may have something to do with the fact that it did not open until 2020. Similarly, 111 West 57th, also built in 2020, has had only 19 sales and one rental listed on Streeteasy. (I wonder, however, if there are sales or rentals not listed on Streeteasy). By contrast, 157 West 57th Street, built in 2013, has had 213 sales- more than twice the number of units in the building; thus, the average unit in 157 has been not only sold but resold. What about the units that are owned by owners? Here we are still short of information. The video says that in the “Billionaires’ Row” zip code (10019, […]

Michael Lewyn
January 6, 2022

Economics, housing, NIMBYism, Policy, Zoning

Financialization and housing costs

One common explanation for high rents is something called “financialization.” Literally, this term of course makes no sense: any form of investment, good or bad, involves finances. But I think that the most common non-incoherent use of the term is something like this: rich people and corporations have decided that real estate is a good investment, and are buying it, thus driving up demand and making it more costly. But if this is true, to blame financialization for high rents and sale prices is to confuse cause and effect. If real estate prices weren’t going up, it wouldn’t make sense to buy buildings as investment. Thus, high housing costs cause financialization, not vice versa. In fact, if government did not restrict housing supply through zoning, financialization would be a force for good. Why? Because instead of buying existing buildings, people with money might be more willing to build new buildings for people to live in- which in turn might hold housing costs down. PS I am running for Borough President of Manhattan, and am gradually creating a Youtube page that addresses anti-housing arguments in more detail.

Michael Lewyn
August 21, 2021

housing, NIMBYism

contradictory anti-housing arguments

Over the years, I’ve heard a wide variety of arguments against new housing. One of them is the “mysterious foreign investor” argument. According to this theory, new urban housing will all be bought up by billionaire foreign investors, who will purchase the property and never rent it out, thus preventing the new housing from increasing supply. (I have rebutted the argument here).* A variation of the argument is that because some high-end housing is vacant, supply is therefore adequate to meet demand. (I have addressed this idea here). Another argument is that housing markets are segmented: that if you increase the supply at the top of the market, it will not help anyone who is not already at the top of the market. It seems to me that these arguments contradict each other: the first argument is based on the idea that high-end housing does affect the market as a whole (or would if rich people stopped using apartments as second homes); the second is based on the idea that high-end housing doesn’t affect the rest of the market at all. *In addition, I have recently published a much longer article in the New Mexico Law Review, discussing the pros and cons of high-end condos.

Michael Lewyn
July 2, 2021

housing, Zoning

Local iniquity

There was an interesting article in the New York Times magazine this week on the rise of extended stay hotels, which specialize in renting to a group within the working poor- people who have the cash for weekly rent, but cannot easily rent traditional apartments due to their poor credit ratings. This seems like a public necessity – but even here the long arm of big government seeks to smash affordability. The article notes that Columbus, Ohio “passed an ordinance that subjects them to many of the same regulations as apartments” because “The hotels had an unfair competitive advantage.” In other words, the city is basically rewarding landlords for turning out bad-credit tenants, and punishing the hotels who seek to house them.

Michael Lewyn
May 21, 2021

Book Review, history, housing

Book Review: The Housing Bias

The best book on zoning and NIMBYism you’ve never read might well be The Housing Bias by Paul Boudreaux. The author is a law professor, but you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s a journalist. His writing is engaging – and occasionally funny – and he does what is unthinkable for many scholars: drives to various places to interview people who are engaged in the (legal) drama of what we now call “the housing crisis.” Boudreaux had the misfortune of being ahead of his time. The housing market was so soft in 2011 that his book landed with nary a sound. A quick web search turned up no book reviews besides the publisher’s blurbs. The book (and you’ll be forgiven if you stop reading right here) will set you back. That’s unfortunate. Just a few years later, the book would have connected with passions shared by the rapidly growing YIMBY movement and a publisher would have marketed it to the masses. Boudreaux’s thesis is that “the laws that govern our use of land are biased in favor of one specific group of Americans—affluent, home-owning families—who least need the government’s help.” He keeps his ideological cards close to the vest. But that’s the point: one need not lean left or right to want to stop using the power of the state to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. The first chapter is the most important, because it lays out the foundation for all that local governments do, good and bad, in land use: the police power. He’s writing from Manassas, Virginia, where “restaurants with Aztec pyramids on them” telegraph the large Hispanic immigrant community. A vocal minority opposed this local immigration, and pressured local governments to stop it. Of course, the city doesn’t issue passports, but the police power allows local […]