this is completely anecdotal, but there's a pretty cool trend i notice where urban places with reasonable renter economies tend to fall into one of three categories
1) "b- to c-tier" cities that build build build build build (austin, slc, phoenix)
2) de-industrialized cities that already have the housing stock (chicago, baltimore, detroit, pittsburgh, philly, worcester)
3) struggling smallish towns and cities that leaned into building better downtowns (there's a billion of em)
The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises. Having watched the WA state legislature go through several years of attempts to fix housing by throwing random policy ideas into the void, I'm not convinced any of it matters nearly as much as a) more money in the state housing trust to help people with down payments and b) a robust economy so more people have more money that they can apply toward housing.
So, sure, yes, by all means do things like pass residential-in-repurposed commercial changes, ADUs, greater density in transit-oriented neighborhoods - do all the things. But, getting more people able to move to parts of the state (in my case, Yakima, the Tri-Cities, Spokane, etc) where there are houses just sitting around relative to King / Pierce / Snohomish... that's just as viable a solution and solves a whole bunch of other water / energy / land use / political / social type problems.
>The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises
Over three quarters of all residential land in Seattle is zoned single family and the population density of the city is less than a third that of NYC. The geography is not the hard constraint in this city.
Subsidizing down payments doesn't do anything to improve housing availability or affordability in the long run. It just artificially inflates real estate values and acts as a wealth transfer from taxpayers to property owners.
You offer cities with aggressive anti-development regulations, like max height restrictions, and then suggest things would be the same if they instead had endless high-rises?
Sounds like you've found an infinite-value hack: let developers build infinite housing yet prices stay the same.
How many of those "random policy ideas into the void" were to lift regulations to allow people to build housing? Which sounds a hell of a lot simpler than figuring out how to make everyone wealthier without proportional increases in market prices.
i'm realizing i don't have a great knowledge base on like,, exactly how many people live in a suburb but would rather live in a city and vice versa. anything you can point me towards? you can make sure the whole state has access to the basic living amenities required to, say, do remote work effectively, but my gut tells me that a significant number of people are drawn to urban areas for the types of amenities only possible with higher population density
that's really dope, but i'm not sure if it'll work out the same way nowadays. i think we're in a weird stage where momentum REALLY matters in a way that it didn't 10 years ago or 5 years down the line (probably)
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this is a very cute anecdote, thank you. my parents have three dogs, so i've had similar thoughts. i believe they're just truly used to the dead space in a day. it makes sense once i think about it, but it feels so far away
1) "b- to c-tier" cities that build build build build build (austin, slc, phoenix)
2) de-industrialized cities that already have the housing stock (chicago, baltimore, detroit, pittsburgh, philly, worcester)
3) struggling smallish towns and cities that leaned into building better downtowns (there's a billion of em)
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