> Part of the problem with the first item you mentioned is that developers don’t really want to build cheap housing (I guess this is an assumption, but it makes sense financially.)
This is like saying that Toyota would rather sell Lexuses than Camrys.
Yes, it's true, but they sell Camrys anyway. Why? Because the market for luxury is only so big. They can make more money total addressing other parts of the market.
So why doesn't this apply to housing? Land + zoning. Imagine if Toyota was only allowed to produce 10,000 cars a year. What kind of models would they choose to make?
Can only speak for my city (Seattle), but no one’s building Camrys and building is constant. It’s not because any zoning prevents building affordable units. It’s because there’s limited land to develop at all and demand for property of any kind is extraordinarily high. All of the development in residential neighborhoods is already zoned for everything that could accommodate 4-10 times as many tenants. But they’re building luxury units anyway.
Doesn’t surprise me but this zoning explanation ain’t it.
50% of the developable land in Seattle is designated for single-family homes, and not one single inhabitable SFH in Seattle city limits is what anyone would call "affordable". The fact that it's illegal to replace those SFHs with duplexes, quadplexes, or midrises is a primary driver of housing unaffordability.
Seattle's population growth has outpaced its housing growth for multiple decades. There's a huge amount of "catching up" to do, and SFH zoning is blocking that from happening.
Once enough there's enough housing to hold all the rich people that want to live here, of which there are many, you will see some downmarket construction happening. But we're a long way away from that.
They’re replacing SFHs with multiplexes all over the city all the time. Instead of assigning A/B/C units or fractions they just split the numbers already designated for the lot.
Zoning for MFHs won’t change that. It’ll maybe bring more skepticism to luxury developments. But people buying million dollar units with no lot will know they’re buying the same thing.
And mixed use luxury apartments are the only development otherwise. No one is building anything more affordable in zoning more favorable for it. At best this is trickle down economics where everyone who needs somewhere affordable to live might be able to get scraps at the most dangerous furthest flung place in Lake City.
So if this is a "problem" for government to fix via either Zoning being abused or the free-market being naughty, then why doesn't the government just create very specific and targeted "high-density, high-rise, cheap-price" zone that can only be built with the right and necessary units?
Dude have you been to lake city? The only area that’s dangerous is where there city built one street up with all projects. It’s significant safer than Ballard university district and and capital hill
> As of 2019, there were 367,806 housing units in Seattle, representing a 19 percent increase since 2010 (according to Washington State Office of Financial Management). The growth in the number of housing units in Seattle from 2010 to 2019 surpassed the 14 percent growth seen between 2000 and 2010. However, even with the rapid increase this decade, expansion of our housing stock has not kept up with Seattle's population growth of 22 percent between 2010 and 2019.
And here's Seattle's land zoning ("Land Use" tab on the same website):
> Can only speak for my city (Seattle), but no one’s building Camrys and building is constant
I'm in the Seattle metro. Building higher density housing is still illegal in most of the city, because attitudes there are still fundamentally NIMBY, even if it's not as bad as SF.
The city has generally upzoned little slices at a time around 'urban villages', and while that's certainly better than nothing, it's a lot less effective than largest scale upzones, and streamlining building processes.
This is a poor analogy. People rely on cars way differently then they rely on housing. If the only car you could buy was a Lexus, you might stretch you budged, take out a big loan and buy one, or you might simply not buy a car, get a bicycle instead, take the train, a cab, or pay a coworker to carpool.
Housing doesn’t give you this option. If you don’t want to be homeless you may be able to rent, but that is pretty expensive too.
It seems to me like your list has analogs in housing without squinting too hard: spend more of your budget on housing, get a mortgage (big loan and buy one), get a smaller place (bicycle), rent a place (train), or move in with roommates (carpool).
So many landlords have taken old homes and converted them into single apartments, raising the cost without creating any value. I would say destroying something of intangible value as well. That trend has definitely driven the cost of housing up.
Because selling a Camry doesn't reduce the selling price of Lexuses built in proximity to it by more, in aggregate, than the profit from the Camry. Which is why developer-founded and controlled HOAs have much more restrictive rules than public zoning rules.
One theory, and this may just apply to my location, starter homes supply is being eaten up by firms who are going to turn around and rent it out. So they are essentially grab what little supply there is of new construction starter homes, then turning around and renting them out for quiet a bit of a sum that still prices quiet people out of them unless they are fine eating shit.
We don't seem to have an issue with Hertz coming in and scoping up all the camrys.
There are plenty of yuppies to buy up any fancy new houses in town, though. So no cheap houses are built inside the cities proper.
In the US, there's always more land - it's just further away! The cheap "Camry" houses still get built, but never as infill. It just gets pushed further and further out to the exurbs.
Unless you take money (or cheap debt) out of the hands of the yuppies, nothing changes here.
This is like saying that Toyota would rather sell Lexuses than Camrys.
Yes, it's true, but they sell Camrys anyway. Why? Because the market for luxury is only so big. They can make more money total addressing other parts of the market.
So why doesn't this apply to housing? Land + zoning. Imagine if Toyota was only allowed to produce 10,000 cars a year. What kind of models would they choose to make?