Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeFive
This sounds like one of those "free speech" confusions. Ofc, he's entitled to say whatever he wants just as I'm entitled to suggest how pointless his points are.
When you bring up 'boomers' for example you're talking about Single Family Home ownership and presumably in specific areas...
Anyway you have your view on affordability which is different from mine. I don't automatically think of singe family home ownership, let alone in high valued neighborhoods. I think more to basic housing affordability. Btw, nobody has posted about new affordable projects like I have. But it's not generally a sexy development example.
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Yes everyone gets their free speech and I hope they do say whatever they want but please be honest. You're talking to someone who plats a decent amount of land, rezones a decent amount of land, builds a decent amount of housing (not single family), and also develops some commercial property. My experience, which is that of doing high level macro housing economics as well as the above mentioned items is what I rely on.
I define housing affordability based on % of income used for housing and I could care less if it's single family home, condominium, apartment, townhome, duplex, triplex, co-op, student housing, whatever. If housing costs more than 30%, it is unaffordable and households start to sacrifice things like healthy food (first), healthcare (second), school (third) - that's not a good thing. The cost of for sale single family housing (the traditional american metric) as a % of household income used to be a 2.5x 50 years ago. In Denver and the greater metro area, it's now generally above a 7x. In coastal cities, it gets 'progressively' worse (see what I did there?).
You can argue all you want that there is affordable housing because you're right, there is and it does exist, but most cities and even now many leisure areas are experiencing drastic housing shortages and related affordability issues. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.
We can disagree as to the causes of why housing is no longer affordable, but you cannot come on here an truthfully assert that housing in Denver is generally affordable because it's not.
As to the causes, there is no one - it's a combination of decades of many things going wrong. The gallagher amendment incentivizing local governments to avoid residential zoning, tabor which has led to local government "fee creep", construction materials volatility, a pandemic, generational labor shortage, lack of wage growth, inadequate zoning leading to land scarcity (not just for housing), the list goes on.
As someone who does this every single day, my strong opinion is that a lack of adequate and appropriate zoning for a spectrum of housing options has led to land scarcity which has driven up land prices. This zoning conundrum has been created by and through drastically increased regulation, the gallagher influence, and by the nimby movement. Second up is the construction labor issue, which I don't see any fix to unless we stop telling every child they should go to college. The third issue, which I see as more transitory is the materials market volatility though that should stabilize and self-correct.
The last is politics. Some years back I proposed a mixed income, mixed housing project in a mountain community - several hundred units, both for rent and for sale , market rate and affordable, along with a significant creative component. It was rejected because the scale was "too large" even though nothing was above three stories and there was ample and abundant open space. Instead, the municipality tried to screw around with a couple dozen for sale units themselves with disastrous results and within 12 months, approved a massive high rise resort development that will offer second or third homes to wealthy folk (which is totally ok too).
My point is this, local politicians thought they knew the market better than someone willing to put it all on the line and this happens time and time again where the people in charge think they know better than the people who actually take the risk to make it happen - and it is a huge risk every time. This particular community now suffers from an acute housing shortage for people who actually live and work in their community and their business base is struggling as a result while their community becomes less vibrant because 75% of their housing is vacation homes which are dark 1/3 of the time.
Anyone can preach to me about housing affordability - I'm one of the lucky ones it doesn't remotely affect, but it breaks my heart what has transpired with regard to housing and how many damn people it negatively affects who deserve better. In this country, we used to think we could do better and now we're just ok with the status quo. We can solve housing, we just don't have the damn leadership to make it happen. End rant and editorial.
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