I have long been shocked that the City isn't a major landlord.
The projects should be slowly torn down, and replaced with solid, well engineered, middle class housing, and then the former inhabitants of the projects should be mixed in with affordable house, so the poor are not being warehouses in unfit housing.
It would seem an obvious first step is that before building new homes for new people, we should be building new homes for the people that are already there.
My brief encountering-YIMBY-culture story: A few years ago I went to a happy hour organized by a YIMBY group in my neighborhood in Austin. I'm totally on board with the need for more development in our neighborhood, and often frustrated by the anti-development ethos of our official neighbors association. BUT after that one happy hour I swore off that crew forever. Generally pleasant people, but they were total ideologues when it came to development. At the time the city was engaged in a battle over whether or not to sell a public golf course to developers for housing. I'm not even a golfer, and it wasn't in our neighborhood, but it seemed apparent to me that a public golf course is a public good that, at a minimum, shouldn't be turned over to developers without a lot of thought. The response i got from the YIMBY crew was totally dismissive. They couldn't even seem to grasp my point. There were a few other things like this. I really am pretty hardcore pro-development, but as with all politics, you can't be dumb about how you go about advocating for big changes to housing infrastructure in people's neighborhoods. It's really personal for people.
It's hard enough to develop new market rate housing in New York, but trying to fix social housing and subsidized housing at the same time just seems unrealistic. Maybe YIMBYs are just being pragmatic.
Explain to me why length of stay in an apartment or house grants you legal rights to it as if you were the owner? You get all of the upside and none of the downside, like having to pay to replace the water heater, roof, stairs, maintain the yard, shovel snow, etc. It's quasi-ownership rights without the owner getting the benefit of the takings clause. Tenants = sainted martyrs and landlords = evil parasites. Is this the best you have to offer, really?
I'd love to hear from people who've been landlords and can you tell about awful tenants, including Section 8 tenants. There's never a fulsome, thoughtful discussion about this. I remember having a discussion with a man on the bus who was Brooklyn born and raised for generations (not yuppie, SJW Brooklyn, but working class Brooklyn and worked in the construction industry) and he told me he had inherited a building and would accept Section 8 tenants because he wanted to give people a chance. He was rewarded with tenants using Section 8 against him (I forget the terminology but I think tenants would cook up frivolous complaints that triggered audits by the housing authority). The process was the punishment and it meant that he couldn't collect the rents to pay the bills (I assume they were in an escrow account but I'm not sure). He vowed he would let the building be empty before allowing Section 8 tenants again.
Tenants quasi-ownership rights to apartments leads to an inefficient use of apartments as people in oversized units continue to stay there while larger families are stuck in smaller apartments.
the sarcastic way i like to put it is "they should demand that their landlord evict them, so they can convert the building into a rent-controlled SRO with many times more units"
Is there any area of policy or activism that does not have a very online branch that acts just this way, though? It is easiest to opine at a high level of abstraction, without putting in time to get familiar with the particular or with what's been said before on the topic, and our open information environment means that anyone can do so in a fraction of a second. I agree with the ethic you're trying to encourage, and think it generalizes to just about any area of activism. That said, I think that engaged activists (as opposed to social media opiners) also need to grow up in the sense of accepting that message discipline is impossible in a large, populous, literate country where more people who "message" are going to be doing so half-assed at best than after doing the work to understand or to align with people who do.
I'm new to this intellectual argument, so pardon any ignorance.
Here's the question: Is the issue of foreign-owned real estate being talked about at all? In the current market, with the dollar strong and things uncertain, even more international elites will seek to park their wealth in the U.S., thereby driving up housing costs everywhere.
Is there anyone considering how to apply Denmark-like housing rules to the U.S.? (Denmark highly limits foreign ownership of residential real estate). Or attempting to make the real estate professionals abide by the Patriot anti-money laundering provisions from which they were exempt?
I'm holding on as a renter in Washington Heights (NYC) in a building that went condo and the apts have been bought by shady foreigners sight unseen. Renters are being shoved out and the new foreign, faceless owners have jacked up the rent to nose-bleed levels (or even worse, they sit empty, as safe-deposit boxes). I am one of the last Latinas left in the building. It's truly horrible. There are many suffering families.
Anyone who thinks that simply "building more" is the answer does not live here in the real world with me. There is basically unlimited international money waiting to buy real estate in America. As we build or convert more, more foreign dirty money, and local hedge-fund ("dirty" from a moral perspective) money, buys up more and more residential units...and, prices real people out.
Unless you deal with excess capital at the top of the food-chain, you will never ameliorate the housing crunch.
I'm all onboard with the need to do politics, but it's pretty clear to me that the politics are a second-order concern, and may be on the way to becoming a third. America has a housing shortage, which is making rents higher and taking purchase prices outside of the reach of many. The only people who win in that environment are those wealthy enough to pay cash or institutional investors who can raise lots of money. The only way out of this is too build more housing. Short of that, we're not even rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; we're arguing over the seating plan and the deck slowly fills with water.
Maybe there's an acdelerationist case for not doing the obvious thing we need to do. But I'm highly skeptical that this is all going to lead to pitchforks and revolution and the social housing utopia. More likely, things are just going to get worse and worse, with the greatest pain being felt by those who have the least. Critiquing YIMBY culture doesn't change any of this. So, we should just make our decisions on how to proceed and be prepared to live with the consequences.
Very good take on YIMBYism - it is good but has the problems you describe.
“Yes, we must increase supply, and over a long enough period and in general, more building will slow rental increases.”
Over the top YIMBYs ignore the point above and the long term nature of the challenge. This is a common disease - translating philosophy/talking points/big picture into reality.
What does anyone’s race have to do with anything? I’m sure you’re not channeling the New York Times with the “world ends poor and minorities hardest hit” bilge. So what is it?
Once again I can only speak for the west coast housing situation, not New York. And I wish you would consider that not everyone does live in New York. I assure you that YIMBYism is extremely strong in the midsized white-dominated cities and towns of California and the single moms on Facebook desperately looking for a rented room they can share with their 5 year old, or the students that are living out of their cars, just need somewhere to live. And the people most against building apartments for them are white homeowners whose million dollar plus home values have tripled in the past decade. There are way more people and than there were 30 years ago and not way more houses. It really is just arithmetic and I don’t see any other real solution, short or long term to house people for whom houses don’t exist. I’m not trying to be sneering, I am not trying to ignore other demographics in the anti gentrification debate, I am saying that the white homeowners are genuinely the dominant force in anti development where I live, and their line is “not everyone can afford to live here, too bad so sad, but the important thing is that this town stay the way it was when I bought my house in 1982 forever unchanged.”
I have long been shocked that the City isn't a major landlord.
The projects should be slowly torn down, and replaced with solid, well engineered, middle class housing, and then the former inhabitants of the projects should be mixed in with affordable house, so the poor are not being warehouses in unfit housing.
It would seem an obvious first step is that before building new homes for new people, we should be building new homes for the people that are already there.
My brief encountering-YIMBY-culture story: A few years ago I went to a happy hour organized by a YIMBY group in my neighborhood in Austin. I'm totally on board with the need for more development in our neighborhood, and often frustrated by the anti-development ethos of our official neighbors association. BUT after that one happy hour I swore off that crew forever. Generally pleasant people, but they were total ideologues when it came to development. At the time the city was engaged in a battle over whether or not to sell a public golf course to developers for housing. I'm not even a golfer, and it wasn't in our neighborhood, but it seemed apparent to me that a public golf course is a public good that, at a minimum, shouldn't be turned over to developers without a lot of thought. The response i got from the YIMBY crew was totally dismissive. They couldn't even seem to grasp my point. There were a few other things like this. I really am pretty hardcore pro-development, but as with all politics, you can't be dumb about how you go about advocating for big changes to housing infrastructure in people's neighborhoods. It's really personal for people.
It's hard enough to develop new market rate housing in New York, but trying to fix social housing and subsidized housing at the same time just seems unrealistic. Maybe YIMBYs are just being pragmatic.
Explain to me why length of stay in an apartment or house grants you legal rights to it as if you were the owner? You get all of the upside and none of the downside, like having to pay to replace the water heater, roof, stairs, maintain the yard, shovel snow, etc. It's quasi-ownership rights without the owner getting the benefit of the takings clause. Tenants = sainted martyrs and landlords = evil parasites. Is this the best you have to offer, really?
I'd love to hear from people who've been landlords and can you tell about awful tenants, including Section 8 tenants. There's never a fulsome, thoughtful discussion about this. I remember having a discussion with a man on the bus who was Brooklyn born and raised for generations (not yuppie, SJW Brooklyn, but working class Brooklyn and worked in the construction industry) and he told me he had inherited a building and would accept Section 8 tenants because he wanted to give people a chance. He was rewarded with tenants using Section 8 against him (I forget the terminology but I think tenants would cook up frivolous complaints that triggered audits by the housing authority). The process was the punishment and it meant that he couldn't collect the rents to pay the bills (I assume they were in an escrow account but I'm not sure). He vowed he would let the building be empty before allowing Section 8 tenants again.
Tenants quasi-ownership rights to apartments leads to an inefficient use of apartments as people in oversized units continue to stay there while larger families are stuck in smaller apartments.
Well said Freddie. Your forays here and in education are indispensable and why I support you.
the sarcastic way i like to put it is "they should demand that their landlord evict them, so they can convert the building into a rent-controlled SRO with many times more units"
Is there any area of policy or activism that does not have a very online branch that acts just this way, though? It is easiest to opine at a high level of abstraction, without putting in time to get familiar with the particular or with what's been said before on the topic, and our open information environment means that anyone can do so in a fraction of a second. I agree with the ethic you're trying to encourage, and think it generalizes to just about any area of activism. That said, I think that engaged activists (as opposed to social media opiners) also need to grow up in the sense of accepting that message discipline is impossible in a large, populous, literate country where more people who "message" are going to be doing so half-assed at best than after doing the work to understand or to align with people who do.
I'm new to this intellectual argument, so pardon any ignorance.
Here's the question: Is the issue of foreign-owned real estate being talked about at all? In the current market, with the dollar strong and things uncertain, even more international elites will seek to park their wealth in the U.S., thereby driving up housing costs everywhere.
Is there anyone considering how to apply Denmark-like housing rules to the U.S.? (Denmark highly limits foreign ownership of residential real estate). Or attempting to make the real estate professionals abide by the Patriot anti-money laundering provisions from which they were exempt?
I'm holding on as a renter in Washington Heights (NYC) in a building that went condo and the apts have been bought by shady foreigners sight unseen. Renters are being shoved out and the new foreign, faceless owners have jacked up the rent to nose-bleed levels (or even worse, they sit empty, as safe-deposit boxes). I am one of the last Latinas left in the building. It's truly horrible. There are many suffering families.
Anyone who thinks that simply "building more" is the answer does not live here in the real world with me. There is basically unlimited international money waiting to buy real estate in America. As we build or convert more, more foreign dirty money, and local hedge-fund ("dirty" from a moral perspective) money, buys up more and more residential units...and, prices real people out.
Unless you deal with excess capital at the top of the food-chain, you will never ameliorate the housing crunch.
I'm all onboard with the need to do politics, but it's pretty clear to me that the politics are a second-order concern, and may be on the way to becoming a third. America has a housing shortage, which is making rents higher and taking purchase prices outside of the reach of many. The only people who win in that environment are those wealthy enough to pay cash or institutional investors who can raise lots of money. The only way out of this is too build more housing. Short of that, we're not even rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; we're arguing over the seating plan and the deck slowly fills with water.
Maybe there's an acdelerationist case for not doing the obvious thing we need to do. But I'm highly skeptical that this is all going to lead to pitchforks and revolution and the social housing utopia. More likely, things are just going to get worse and worse, with the greatest pain being felt by those who have the least. Critiquing YIMBY culture doesn't change any of this. So, we should just make our decisions on how to proceed and be prepared to live with the consequences.
Very good take on YIMBYism - it is good but has the problems you describe.
“Yes, we must increase supply, and over a long enough period and in general, more building will slow rental increases.”
Over the top YIMBYs ignore the point above and the long term nature of the challenge. This is a common disease - translating philosophy/talking points/big picture into reality.
What does anyone’s race have to do with anything? I’m sure you’re not channeling the New York Times with the “world ends poor and minorities hardest hit” bilge. So what is it?
Once again I can only speak for the west coast housing situation, not New York. And I wish you would consider that not everyone does live in New York. I assure you that YIMBYism is extremely strong in the midsized white-dominated cities and towns of California and the single moms on Facebook desperately looking for a rented room they can share with their 5 year old, or the students that are living out of their cars, just need somewhere to live. And the people most against building apartments for them are white homeowners whose million dollar plus home values have tripled in the past decade. There are way more people and than there were 30 years ago and not way more houses. It really is just arithmetic and I don’t see any other real solution, short or long term to house people for whom houses don’t exist. I’m not trying to be sneering, I am not trying to ignore other demographics in the anti gentrification debate, I am saying that the white homeowners are genuinely the dominant force in anti development where I live, and their line is “not everyone can afford to live here, too bad so sad, but the important thing is that this town stay the way it was when I bought my house in 1982 forever unchanged.”
How many of America's housing problems could be solved by a handful of aspirational rom-coms set in Ohio?