val7101 wrote:

Hmmm because all of those other things are easier to produce?

ActionDan wrote:
Quote:

Yvonne wrote:
When I was a kid in school, I had to study the 1960 census, the population then was 179 million. Being 335 or 330 million means there is more competition for housing. That is 156 or 160 million more people in my lifetime. In the 1970s, approximately 20% of Jersey City housing stock was vacant, nothing but empty buildings and empty land. More people means there is more competition for housing. Rents were extremely cheap, around $150 a month.

OK so why is there a housing shortage and not a food shortage or an automobile shortage or clothing shortage?

Yvonne wrote:
When I was a kid in school, I had to study the 1960 census, the population then was 179 million. Being 335 or 330 million means there is more competition for housing. That is 156 or 160 million more people in my lifetime. In the 1970s, approximately 20% of Jersey City housing stock was vacant, nothing but empty buildings and empty land. More people means there is more competition for housing. Rents were extremely cheap, around $150 a month.

HCResident wrote:
Quote:

Yvonne wrote:
When I was a kid in school, I had to study the 1960 census, the population then was 179 million. Being 335 or 330 million means there is more competition for housing. That is 156 or 160 million more people in my lifetime. In the 1970s, approximately 20% of Jersey City housing stock was vacant, nothing but empty buildings and empty land. More people means there is more competition for housing. Rents were extremely cheap, around $150 a month.

Just to be clear, due to inflation, $150 in 1960 is equal to $1,257.78 in today?s dollars.

Yvonne wrote:
When I was a kid in school, I had to study the 1960 census, the population then was 179 million. Being 335 or 330 million means there is more competition for housing. That is 156 or 160 million more people in my lifetime. In the 1970s, approximately 20% of Jersey City housing stock was vacant, nothing but empty buildings and empty land. More people means there is more competition for housing. Rents were extremely cheap, around $150 a month.

Yvonne wrote:
The shortage of housing has more to do with population and immigration than anything else. I clicked on a youtube speech of Ronald Reagan where he spoke before a crowd in Portugal in 1985. This speech was not covered in the news since it had to do with religion (Fatima.) Reagan said, "I represent the 229 million people of the United States..." I was shocked. 32 years later, it is 329 million. The US is not having babies, the reason for the Social Security increases but there are more legal and illegal people here. That is the reason for the shortage of houses.

JCGuys wrote:
Good article.

Jersey will never be tax fair.

Tax abated properties also add more revenue to the city in the form of pilot payments. It's the county and school board that get shafted by the under assessment of land and by abatements.

The goal, Wiener says, isn't Hong Kong?style high-rises. It's what housing advocates call the ?missing middle,? things like side-by-side duplexes, eight-unit apartment buildings, six-story buildings?a building form even San Francisco built plenty of in the early 20th century. Typically these are wood-frame construction, cheaper to build than luxury steel-and-glass high-rises.

When home buyers are paying for dirt, someone is being excluded, and the solution is to densify

High home value to replacement cost ratios are a good indication that the housing supply is restricted, meaning that people who are willing and able to pay enough to support new housing construction are being excluded by limits on density.

Both expensive coastal metros and affordable expansive ones would benefit from the relaxation of restrictions on housing density, but for slightly different reasons. Whereas the former need greater housing density to combat a full-blown housing affordability crisis, the latter need it in order wean off sprawl without creating an affordability crisis of their own.

Doesn?t upzoning just raise the value of land?

A common objection to increasing a lot?s permitted housing density or ? loosely speaking ? upzoning it, is that it simply raises the value of the land in reaction to the increase in density rather than resulting in cheaper homes. Although there is truth to the observation, it is a poor argument against raising density. When upzoning raises land values it indicates that the scarce factor drawing a premium is not land per se, but the units zoned upon it. It is mistaken to think that upzoning will reduce the land value component of homes simply by dividing a fixed land value over a greater number of units. The value of land depends on its characteristics, one of which is the number of units it is zoned for ? i.e. the number of households allowed to call it home ? and changing that number affects the land?s value. But upzoning also increases the number of zoned units in the housing market as a whole, and in so doing will contribute to easing their scarcity.

For upzoning to meaningfully suppress housing prices, it must be applied en masse. Upzoning a limited number of lots ? where ?limited? means small compared to the relevant housing market ? will raise the value of the upzoned land without measurably influencing home values. To suppress housing prices, upzoning must substantially ease the scarcity of zoned units and, for this to happen, upzoning must be applied at sufficient scale vis-a-vis the relevant housing market.