In San Francisco, some residents are embracing a heterodox housing researcher who is making the case that building more housing won’t lower prices
Want to solve California’s affordability crisis? The popular answer these days is to allow developers to build more homes. Supporters say it’s an intuitive solution that follows the basic logic of supply and demand laid out in economics 101.
Upzoning inflates land values by inviting speculative investment, he says. Real-estate investors pass on those increased land costs by jacking up rents and home prices, effectively undermining any affordability gains that might be gotten by increasing the number of available homes.
His message has also found a receptive ear in Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who has made opposition to the upzoning plan a key theme of his mayoral campaign. Peskin attended Condon’s recent talk and participated in the question-and-answer session that followed. At one point, the supervisor decried “upzoning for upzoning’s sake.”
Condon’s work, they say, bolsters their case that demand for new housing — either from new residents or from real estate speculators — will always outmatch supply. “Developers and their allies at City Hall are asking voters to believe that building tens of thousands of units of luxury housing will make housing more affordable,” Jaye said. “People like Condon are looking at that and challenging the economics of that assertion.”
According to his figures, Vancouver has tripled its housing stock over the past 60 years. It upzoned neighborhoods, making way for a proliferation of duplexes and high-rise towers. All told, the city has had perhaps the fastest rate of housing growth over that period of any major city in the U.S. or Canada.
SFMTA approves new RV parking restrictions Parking-enforcement officials will be able to tow oversized vehicles without a warrant if their occupants refuse offers of shelter, housing and services The owners of the rezoned land frequently sell it before any redevelopment takes place, pocketing the increased value. The developers who eventually do build homes pass along the inflated cost they paid through higher prices to renters or home buyers.
“Part of the issue is that observers in many cities see prices rising despite new construction,” a team of New York University professors said in a recent literature review of housing research compiled in response to common forms of housing “supply skepticism.” But what about Vancouver? Why has the affordability crisis seemingly only gotten worse in the wake of all that construction?
So according to Davidoff, it’s not upzoning and clearing the way for new housing that has led to higher prices. Instead, it’s the rising prices in these globalized, highly in-demand cities that have spurred new construction. Meanwhile, San Francisco offers a good illustration of what happens when cities restrict housing development, he said. Rent and housing prices in The City have outpaced other cities — even other global boom towns — because it failed for years to substantially increase supply.
Nimby Affordable Housing Patrick Condon Housing Element
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