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Originally Posted by TakeFive
I also have a high regard for 'those that came before' and process... While it generally favors those WITH money it can at times also mitigate the will of the irrational masses and the Uber-Rich.
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The fun thing about the
"we're the middle class masses who came before, fighting to save our homes against greedy developers" narrative is that it's literally the existing homeowners being greedy and getting rich. Nothing is better for home values than a housing shortage. It's horrifically hypocritical.
The
entire point of multifamily housing is that it allows the middle class to get together and out-bid the rich for use of valuable land that only the rich could otherwise afford. Like,
literally that's the point of it. NIMBYism makes that impossible, makes the existing landowner rich, and conveniently blames the developer.
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I don't have a strong opinion either way on what happened but I do respect the process.
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Of course people should have the ability to speak up. But that doesn't mean we have to give deference to immediate neighbors, whose greedy equity self-interests are at odds with the self-interests of the community at large. We do that as a choice. And because we do that as a choice, it's important to understand the history of
why. We didn't always give NIMBYs so much weight. But then the mid 20th Century hit, and two big things changed:
1. The master-planned mistakes of Urban Renewal and inner city highways being imposed on communities resulted in a massive pendulum swing to the other direction, where governments established rules giving deference to hyper local concerns over regional concerns. We urbanists rightly idolize Jane Jacobs for her urban design wisdom, but she's also an idol for modern NIMBYism. (Fastforward to 2018 and the affordability disaster that's been, and you clearly see the pendulum beginning to swing the other direction.)
2. Segregation was ruled illegal, so people segregated using other means. Instead of making it illegal for different people to live nearby, the middle class whites moved out to new neighborhoods and established rules making it hard to change those neighborhoods, and especially hard to densify them with multifamily housing. Yes, I am saying a big part of our NIMBY-deference is a direct result of racial segregation, even if we don't exactly mean it that way today.
So yeah, of course, say what you will about the first amendment. Obviously I think people should have a right to show up and petition government for whatever they want. But don't blindly respect the process just because freedom of speech and evil developers. Know what you're getting into.
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For one thing there's no shortage of construction
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This is objectively wrong. There may be a lot of construction, but there is still more demand, which means there is still a shortage.
It's like the difference between "dense" and "crowded." People use them interchangeably but really they're different. "Dense" just means a lot of people in a given area. "Crowded" means specifically
too many people for the area to support. You can increase density virtually without limit and still not have crowding, if you also increase infrastructure and other things enough to accommodate the density comfortably. And you can have very sparsely-populated places that are nonetheless crowded, if they lack the infrastructure to handle the sparse numbers of people they do get. This is why a low-density suburb can feel crowded with too much traffic congestion, while a dense walkable neighborhood can feel very humane.
We have a lot of construction but still a massive shortage.
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The urbanization and densification of Denver may be a wonderful thing but it's the antithesis of affordability.
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This is not inherent to urbanization or densification. It is a specific result of the specific set of rules we have in place. It's easy to urbanize and densify affordably. We simply choose not to because we choose instead to prioritize NIMBYism, and make it illegal to build enough housing to satisfy the demand. Because of our process.
Urban housing was cheap before World War 2 (yes, relatively to incomes at the time), when our cities were generally denser than they are now. It only really became expensive after we adopted suburban-style zoning ordinances circa the 1960s, and a few decades ran their course to result in the scarcity we have now.
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The problem is that developers build for the more upscale resident and 'scarce' land (at least compared to sprawl) has skyrocketed in cost
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Developers only build for the upscale resident BECAUSE developable land is scarce. By making most of the city off-limits to development, we create a situation where there are not enough parcels to build enough housing for everyone who wants it. So instead, only the top of the market gets built. Because of course you build for the highest bidder.
That doesn't mean it's technically impossible to build for lower bidders. It's not. But we've outlawed it through NIMBY zoning.
The point about how housing gets less expensive over time is true (it's called "filtering"), but it's only true if there's enough housing overall. If there's only enough housing for the high bidders, even including the older housing, then only the high bidders can afford housing.
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It isn't just about density. Density by itself is simplistic and won't solve affordability.
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This is true. But it's all tied together. For example Wash Park is expensive because a lot of people see having a single family house that's in a walkable neighborhood as the best of both worlds. Understandably. But making density scarce
also makes those best-of-both-worlds neighborhoods scarce, because with so few truly walkable neighborhoods we by-default also have very few best-of-both-worlds neighborhoods. If we expanded density, we'd also expand the number of places people could get both.
And then there are things like accessory dwelling units: apartments above garages and little miniature houses in the back yard. Those things contribute tremendously to affordability, without really affecting the look or feel of neighborhoods at all (they do technically increase the density, which is of course the point). But we've outlawed them.
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Actually I like that.
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