Want to live in San Francisco? No problem, that’ll be $3,000 (a month)--but only if you act fast.In the last two years, the the cost of housing in San Francisco has increased 47% and shows no signs of stopping. Longtime residents find themselves priced out of town, the most vulnerable of whom … [Read more...]
The Renewed Debate on Inclusionary Zoning
Stephen Smith and I co-wrote this post. In case you haven't been following Stephen elsewhere, he's also been writing at The Atlantic Cities and Bloomberg View. This year, some of the first apartments and condos subject to inclusionary zoning laws in DC are hitting the market, stoking … [Read more...]
Selling the Rights to Greater Density
At Next American City, Mark Bergen has an interesting long-form piece on municipal infrastructure financing. He argues that the property owners who benefit from public policies, such as infrastructure investment, should be required to fund these policies. He suggests infrastructure improvements … [Read more...]
Market urbanism vs. market suburbanism smackdown at Cato: “The Death and Life of Affordable Housing”
The debate you've been waiting for! Randal O'Toole, Matt Yglesias, Ryan Avent, and Adam Gordon participated yesterday in a discussion at the Cato Institute moderated by Diana Lind from Next American City/Forefront. (How had this never happened before??)Randal O'Toole did not disappoint, arriving … [Read more...]
Affordable Housing vs. Density: The Unintended Consequences of Zoning Bonuses
California Assembly Bill 710 was introduced to earlier this year to tackle the problem of municipalities requiring onerous amounts of parking for new development, widely recognized as one of the main impediments to transit-oriented development and infill growth. The bill would have capped city and … [Read more...]
Affordable housing for the rich and the failure of zoning bonuses
In the past I have not been kind to affordable housing programs. I have a lot of deeper problems with them that I'll get to in a minute, but I think the extraordinarily high upper income limits on some of the projects are indicative of the broader problem of the essentially arbitrary and random … [Read more...]
When “affordable housing” is just a random middle class housing subsidy
Affordable housing and inclusionary zoning are complicated subjects and it's hard to sum up all my thoughts and objections to the schemes in one post, so I'm going to take the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach. Today's installment: income eligibility levels.Now, the stated intent of affordable … [Read more...]
A question for the blogosphere: How much affordable housing is enough?
Reading about a new ultra-luxury Far West Side rental project going up where over 40% of the apartments are going to have controlled rents ("affordable housing"), I'd like to pose a question to supporters of affordable housing mandates in the planning blogosphere (which includes pretty much the … [Read more...]