The Best Plan for Housing Is to Plan Less - NYT
I've had this excellent NYT opinion piece queued up to share for a while, because it essentially argues for adopting the Houston approach to housing regulation for the whole country: The Best Plan for Housing Is to Plan Less (no paywall gift link). In fact, Houston shows up quite favorably in a lot of their excellent graphs. Below I share the opening, an AI summary of the main points, and the excellent conclusion that this deserves to be a bipartisan issue (bold highlights mine).
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"I would be the first to argue that if an economist claims to know of a cure-all policy — a reliable way to relieve a long list of social ills in one fell swoop — common sense tells you to stop listening.
So it is awkward for me to declare that I know of something close to a panacea policy: one big reform that would raise living standards, reduce wealth inequality, increase productivity, raise social mobility, help struggling men without college degrees, clean the planet and raise birth rates. It’s a sweeping reform that Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives could all proudly support.
The panacea policy I have in mind is housing deregulation. Research confirms that there are large benefits in saying yes to tall buildings, yes to multifamily structures, yes to dense single-family development and yes to speedy permitting. The growing YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement already has high-profile wins in Minnesota, Oregon, California and beyond, but even YIMBY devotees rarely appreciate the scope of the merits of loosening rules on housing.
- The economic argument for housing deregulation rests on basic supply and demand principles: allowing more construction leads to lower prices. This is evident in historical data, showing that housing prices were relatively stable before stricter regulations in the 1970s, while rising significantly afterwards.
- Housing deregulation would directly improve the standard of living by significantly lowering housing costs, which currently represent a significant portion of the average American's budget.
- The distributional effects of deregulation would be impactful in reducing wealth inequality, as rising home values have been a key driver of the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.
- Deregulation would enhance social mobility by removing barriers to moving to higher-wage areas. Current strict regulations often make the cost of living in such regions outweigh any potential wage gains, discouraging relocation for many.
- Deregulation would create numerous job opportunities in the construction sector, a large and well-paying industry, particularly benefiting men without college degrees, who have faced challenges in the job market.
- Environmental protection is a common rationale for restricting construction, but deregulation can actually lead to more sustainable practices by encouraging denser housing in urban areas, resulting in lower carbon emissions.
- While concerns exist about homeowner resistance, the bigger obstacle to deregulation is public misunderstanding of basic economic principles, with many believing that increased housing supply will not lead to lower prices.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have embraced housing deregulation yet. YIMBY activists lean left, but they are only one voice in the progressive coalition. Republican states usually have less housing regulation, but more from tradition than from principle. Yet, given housing deregulation’s many demonstrated benefits, this policy agenda deserves bipartisan support. Democrats should cheer the effects on equality, social mobility and the environment. Republicans should be delighted to see free markets spreading broad prosperity, creating new working-class opportunities and fostering family formation. In a rational world, the panacea policy of housing deregulation would be a done deal. Hopefully whoever wins the next election will agree."
Labels: affordability, density, development, economic strategy, governance, home affordability, land-use regulation, opportunity urbanism, perspectives, politics, YIMBY
Mayor Whitmire's HPD opportunity, Chicago's debt warning for Houston, Strong Towns takedown, 15-min city economics don't work, and more
Backlog of smaller items this week:
"The economics of the 15-minute city don’t really work...
What hasn’t been said is that the economics of 15-minute city planning go against foundational principles of how urban markets function....
Employment markets are even less localized. The very raison d’etre of cities is as a vehicle for labor pooling and sharing — this cannot happen effectively at the neighborhood scale. Setting up an expectation where people live within 15 minutes of their place of work will at best result in bad matches between workers and jobs, and at worst no matches."
- Bill King: Over 90% Of U.S. Population Growth Last Year Occurred Outside Of Largest Cities
- Arpit Gupta's "Contra Strong Towns" critique focuses on challenging the Strong Towns movement's assertion that suburban growth operates as a "Ponzi scheme." Gupta argues that the evidence does not support the claim that suburban development is inherently financially unsustainable. He emphasizes the need for rigorous accounting and empirical data to substantiate such arguments, which he finds lacking in Strong Towns' narrative. Hat tip to Zoabe.
- Antiplanner: "But today’s density policies depress fertility rates and the anti-immigration movement make it more difficult to compensate for those policies. Fortunately, some are getting the message that “maybe we should rethink” YIMBYism."
- Twitter: "There's a growing consensus on YIMBY Twitter that we need to build a lot of new high density housing in the biggest cities. Maybe we should rethink that idea." Or go with the Houston free-market model: allow lots of high-density housing in the core for those that want it (typically non-families) as well as plenty of low-density suburban housing for those that prefer that (typically families). Best of both worlds.
Labels: crime reduction, economic strategy, growth, market urbanism, pensions, public debt, public safety, sprawl, YIMBY
The epic failure of METRO's Uptown BRT, housing costs vs fertility, YIMBY righteousness, and Honolulu rail-fail
A few short smaller items this week:
"Tinkering around with local fiscal incentives, forging alliances with regional business elites, and helping some property-rich homeowners get richer won’t usher in an egalitarian new millennium of integrated neighborhoods from coast to coast, but it will help YIMBYs build a more persuasive case that housing growth is in the enlightened self-interest of suburbanites who might otherwise be concerned about rising tax burdens and sinking home values. That’s not a bad start."
- Bill King: Ridership For The Uptown BRT Is 5% Of What Metro Projected. What an epic failure by METRO, even taking into account the pandemic. Yet they're just going to pretend it didn't happen and plow ahead with the $1.5B Universities BRT line reducing Richmond to one lane each direction?!? 😠
- A massive rail-fail in Honolulu: white elephant $5 billion light rail line opens with ridership at TWO percent of capacity! Why does government keep wasting mountains of money on these projects?!
Labels: fertility, home affordability, Metro, rail, transit, transportation plan, YIMBY
