Break Up the Liberal City (Commentary)

[Qubert]

I realize this runs against the current zeitgeist, but not everyplace needs to be "accessible" to everyone. If Manhattan or SF become islands of wealth then tax their apartments to build more affordable housing in Newark, NJ and Oakland. People talk about elitism but then act like certain areas are below them. It's one thing to provide housing as a part of social welfare, but another to demand that luxury areas/cities be accommodating to people who can't afford them. Not even the most left-wing countries in Europe go this route.

Like food, I might have a right to basic rations, but not to a 20oz porterhouse from Peter Lugers. Likewise, even if we agree to housing being a part of the social compact, I don't have a "right" to live at 5th and 73rd.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Qubert

If Manhattan or SF become islands of wealth then tax their apartments to build more affordable housing in Newark, NJ and Oakland. People talk about elitism but then act like certain areas are below them. It's one thing to provide housing as a part of social welfare, but another to demand that luxury areas/cities be accommodating to people who can't afford them. Not even the most left-wing countries in Europe go this route.

Like food, I might have a right to basic rations, but not to a 20oz porterhouse from Peter Lugers. Likewise, even if we agree to housing being a part of the social compact, I don't have a "right" to live at 5th and 73rd.

Can't speak for Manhattan but San Francisco requires up to 33% of units in new market rate buildings to be "affordable" (aka "below market rate") for which people over a wide range of incomes up to 150% of city median can be eligible (it varies for different units).



Developers have the option of putting these units in their market rate buildings or building separate buildings for the "affordable" units off-site. The off-site option leads, of course, to a disagreement about where: Should these buildings all be in lower cost areas effectively turning them into ghettos of lower income people and services for such people or should they be distributed around the city in spite of the fact that land costs more in better areas meaning you get less housing for your buck? As things are, the housing is pretty widely distributed but not yet in the most expensive areas (Pacific Heights, Marina, Noe Valley, upper slopes of Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill etc).

And this is not low quality housing. This is an "affordable" building built to satisfy the requirement for a 40-story market rate tower across town:


http://1400missionsf.com

I'd live there (if I could qualify). Note that the taller tower down the block seen in the rendering is new market rate housing targeted at techies working at Twitter and similar nearby companies.

According to this site, there are 358 developments (the Mayor's office says above over 3000 units) of "affordable" housing in San Francisco, some rental and some for purchase: https://data.sfgov.org/Housing-and-B...Requ/i9x4-xhtt

Again, this is not "public" housing. By national standards, these units are not inexpensive. They are just inexpensive by SF (and Manhattan) standards. Nearly everybody in them is working and making a solid (even upper) 5 figure salary.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Qubert

I realize this runs against the current zeitgeist, but not everyplace needs to be "accessible" to everyone. If Manhattan or SF become islands of wealth then tax their apartments to build more affordable housing in Newark, NJ and Oakland.

I would guess most expensive locales have done this for decades. In NYC, market-rate housing has been subsidizing non-market housing for some time.

Often, it's cheaper for the poor/working class to live in expensive cities than affordable cities, because in the expensive cities there's tons of non-market housing and in affordable cities there isn't. NYC renters pay a lower proportion of income to rent than Detroit renters.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Qubert

I realize this runs against the current zeitgeist, but not everyplace needs to be "accessible" to everyone. If Manhattan or SF become islands of wealth then tax their apartments to build more affordable housing in Newark, NJ and Oakland. People talk about elitism but then act like certain areas are below them. It's one thing to provide housing as a part of social welfare, but another to demand that luxury areas/cities be accommodating to people who can't afford them. Not even the most left-wing countries in Europe go this route.

Like food, I might have a right to basic rations, but not to a 20oz porterhouse from Peter Lugers. Likewise, even if we agree to housing being a part of the social compact, I don't have a "right" to live at 5th and 73rd.

I don't think this is the right way to frame it. Nobody is upset that poor people can't afford luxury high rises. They're upset that entire cities, and even regions, have become unaffordable due to restrictions on the growth of market rate housing. They're upset that even shitty, roach infested apartments rent for a premium.

Imagine if a group of wheat farmers was to successfully lobby the government to put a very low cap on the number of tonnage allowed to be grown and sold every year. The results would be disastrous - skyrocketing prices for staple foods, starvation, etc

This is basically the way we approach housing in much of the US.

[ChargerCarl]

I agree with you about certain neighborhoods though. Even in a perfectly competitive housing market with no inefficiencies some neighborhoods would still definitely be out of reach because costs rise linearly with density. I agree that we should accept that.

Inclusionary zoning and other social welfare schemes will never work.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Imagine if a group of wheat farmers was to successfully lobby the government to put a very low cap on the number of tonnage allowed to be grown and sold every year. The results would be disastrous - skyrocketing prices for staple foods, starvation, etc

This is basically the way we approach housing in much of the US.

Why imagine it? We've done it for many crops (except since nobody can predict the actual crop yield in any given year, what is restricted is acreage devoted to the crop, not the tons of production):

Agricultural Quantity Restrictions
To keep high price supports from leading to large stockpiles, the U.S. government paid farmers not to produce as well as for their actual production. Further, quotas were used to limit acreage (Johnson 1973, and Economic Report of the President 1987, Ch. 5). In other words, to offset problems from the first type of regulation—the expense and the embarrassment from storing enormous quantities of unused food—additional regulations were added . . .

https://wps.aw.com/aw_carltonper_mod...ent/index.html

. . . under New Deal farm policy the Federal government would support the prices of commodities through nonrecourse loans but farmers generally had to comply with acreage allotments to get the loan. Marketing quotas were initially an additional component of supply control policy that were at the discretion of the Secretary and the farmer via referendum. Marketing quotas essentially set limits on the quantity of a commodity that could be sold. They were often used in the event that the acreage allotments (or specific diversion or reduction requirements) failed to reduce supplies sufficiently to balance against demand. Under the typical marketing quota provision, the Secretary of Agriculture would have to declare a marketing quota when supplies were estimated to be excessive and then all farmers that would be subject to the quota could vote in a referendum held by USDA; if more than one-third of the farmers voting opposed the quota they would not go into effect . . . .

http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/201...am-choice.html

[Qubert]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

I agree with you about certain neighborhoods though. Even in a perfectly competitive housing market with no inefficiencies some neighborhoods would still definitely be out of reach because costs rise linearly with density. I agree that we should accept that.

Inclusionary zoning and other social welfare schemes will never work.

This is what I am saying. This article and the entire anti-gentrification movement that has formed in some cities is based on this idea that every neighborhood/city has a responsibility to be "affordable". I do believe that on a broader scale, yes, social housing needs to be built, but if you get more units out of allowing more market rate housing in Manhattan which then leads to more tax money building working class housing in the Bronx then frankly wouldn't that be the greater social good?

[Qubert]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I would guess most expensive locales have done this for decades. In NYC, market-rate housing has been subsidizing non-market housing for some time.

Often, it's cheaper for the poor/working class to live in expensive cities than affordable cities, because in the expensive cities there's tons of non-market housing and in affordable cities there isn't. NYC renters pay a lower proportion of income to rent than Detroit renters.

The current city administration has mostly been focusing on the very poor, of which NY already does an admirable job of accommodating. The working class to middle class are being pushed out as much as ever.

[RCDC]

So Baltimore voted down an inclusionary housing update last September. Currently, it's easy to get a waiver simply because the city doesn't have the money. Developers are building market rate housing like crazy.

A lot of the comments seem to be portraying cities (the expensive ones anyway) as having urban prairie. Quite the opposite. And no you can't just come in and bulldoze blocks, it's not going to happen (again).

Odd that the article describes cities "as trusts that concentrate wealth and power and conspire against the public good." but completely ignores big banks and wall street.

[llamaorama]

There are government institutions all around the middle part of the US. Albuquerque and Huntsville are classic examples of cities that gain from this.

It's the private sector that's more concentrated than ever. The trend is to cut funding from research and colleges leaving only elite bubbles.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by 599GTO

I'd rather die than live in red America.

Disgusting people.

With that attitude, I don't think you'd be too much a prize to blue America either.

[chrisvfr800i]

Originally Posted by 599GTO

I'd rather die than live in red America.

Disgusting people.

Why are so many of you people such hateful shrews? Not everybody wants to live like you.

[Leo the Dog]

Originally Posted by JManc

With that attitude, I don't think you'd be too much a prize to blue America either.

JManc, you took the bait!

Anyways, nobody agrees with his/hers opinion, no matter what income bracket you, me and everybody else fall into and no matter what race/ethnic classification we self identify with.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Leo the Dog

JManc, you took the bait!

Anyways, nobody agrees with his/hers opinion, no matter what income bracket you, me and everybody else fall into and no matter what race/ethnic classification we self identify with.

Yeah. I know. I just had to pile on him/her/it along with everyone else on here.

[CherryCreek]

I love Douthat's sometimes conservatism: Free markets!! Blah blah blah. Individual rights!! Blah blah blah. Government = BAD!!!! Blah blah blah.

But when free markets and individual rights and choices lead to talented and creative people choosing to concentrate themselves in certain urban areas that have lifestyles, politics, and preferences that Douthat doesn't like, suddenly the infamous "unseen hand" has no value and it's now government that should sort things out by "pushing" people to make choices he thinks are more preferable.

He might as well advocate for a law declaring that Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi shall have just as many millionaires and Nobel Prize winners per capita as California, Massachusetts and Connecticut. My sense is that the focusing of American talent and creativity into a relatively handful of thriving cities and regions isn't an "effect" of America's leadership in innovation and creativity, it's a "cause" of it.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by CherryCreek

I love Douthat's sometimes conservatism: Free markets!! Blah blah blah. Individual rights!! Blah blah blah. Government = BAD!!!! Blah blah blah.

But when free markets and individual rights and choices lead to talented and creative people choosing to concentrate themselves in certain urban areas that have lifestyles, politics, and preferences that Douthat doesn't like, suddenly the infamous "unseen hand" has no value and it's now government that should sort things out by "pushing" people to make choices he thinks are more preferable.

He might as well advocate for a law declaring that Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi shall have just as many millionaires and Nobel Prize winners per capita as California, Massachusetts and Connecticut. My sense is that the focusing of American talent and creativity into a relatively handful of thriving cities and regions isn't an "effect" of America's leadership in innovation and creativity, it's a "cause" of it.

Douthat is a conservative communitarian, not a libertarian.

Even then its mostly a tongue in cheek proposal. It's mostly about highlighting the degree to which coastal liberal cities have excluded themselves from the rest of the country by denying access to newcomers (via government interference in the market, mind you).