[Tiktaalik]

> bringing too many people into the country via immigration

The housing situation has clearly severely declined post pandemic at the same time that immigration was restarted and increased, but I gotta point out that Vancouver has had a severe homeless crisis my entire life, long, long before this recent government changed immigration rates or even came to power.

As far back as 2007 I was reading articles about how Vancouver was net losing the sort of affordable housing that those most at risk of homelessness depended on. Unsurprisingly the amount of homeless in Vancouver has continued to increase.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2007/07/10/SRO-Losses/print.html

But you're absolutely correct that the core of this problem is a severe lack of building. Both a lack of construction of market product and below market publicly owned housing. Building more homes is the solution to get our way out of this crisis and end homelessness.

If there is any real villain here to blame IMO it is Jean Chretien, who with the severe austerity budget of 1993 completely got the Federal government out of all social housing development and building of housing plunged to near nil for decades.

The chart from this article is remarkable. https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/04/22/Why-Cant-We-Build-Lik...

[brailsafe]

True, on all points, but it wasn't just him, it's been a decades long process of multiple parts of the economy failing imo. One does wonder though how things would be if we simply cancelled zoning and other needlessly bureaucratic development restrictions in the 80s, and enabled automatically correcting policy that was outside the hands of both property owners and politicians. Every time I see an anti tower sign in east van it makes me want to throw a rock through that person's window, and the fact this tension exists on a local level is ridiculous.

[cyberax]

We have a natural experiment: Minneapolis vs. Madison.

Minneapolis abolished the single-family zoning and parking requirements in 2018. And it worked, developers swarmed the city like vultures attracted to carrion.

Madison did no such nonsense.

Can you guess the impact of these policies on housing costs?

The house price growth in Minneapolis _accelerated_, just like in the nearby Madison. Here are the price growth charts: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1COwL

[germinalphrase]

FWIW: as a Minneapolis resident, my experience is that there is active hostility and grassroots rejection of adding dense housing in neighborhoods that are traditionally single family homes. I would be curious to see how much dense housing has actually been built post-2018 relative to the historical norm, as the small number of apartment buildings I've seen go up along light rail and buss corridors have fought tooth and nail against certain demographics in the neighborhoods.

[cyberax]

It'll get worse: https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/08/31/ending-minimum-park...

The usual misery pushers are already celebrating the win.

[brailsafe]

So... you want all new buildings to have parking minimums? First of all, pass, but secondly what about that article justifies your cynicism, and lastly what exactly is the root of your anger? Do you just love being isolated to the point that you think everyone else hates or should hate living somewhere where they don't need a car?

I'd be pretty annoyed about only being able to own something that had to have a dedicated parking space. What a waste.

[tacitusarc]

I defy the data [1].

There is too much complexity in that single example and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently for it to not make sense that increasing demand to meet supply would reduce cost.

1. For clarity, this phrasing is from here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrHRcEDMjZcx5Yfru/i-defy-the...

[cyberax]

> I defy the data.

Sorry. The reality doesn't care about your defiance.

Upzoning does not lead to lower housing prices. Even the most extreme urbanists admit that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might...

> and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently

Ah, here it is. Have you considered that there, you know, might be "too much complexity" for "Economy 101" to fully explain the situation?

The _only_ way to decrease the housing prices is to BUILD MORE SUBURBS. Or even new cities entirely.

You don't have any other options. Sorry again.

Well, maybe one more: the Detroit route. Reduce the city population and the prices will go down.

[tacitusarc]

Firstly, your link is focused on zoning changes, specifically how they are insufficient to prompt addition supply to be built.

From your linked blog post:

> Freemark finds extremely mixed and uncertain evidence for the effects of upzoning, and one of several reasons he identifies is that the link between upzoning and actual housing production is tenuous. In other words, “Are they allowed to build it?” is a different question from, “Are they building it?”

Secondly, building more suburbs and more cities increases the supply… which indicates agreement that the price problem is one of insufficient supply.

EDIT: To be perfectly clear, the data I disagree with is that increasing supply in Minneapolis failed to impact price. This is the contention of the comment I responded to, and it is fundamentally different from the claim that zoning changes fail to increase supply.

[cyberax]

> Firstly, your link is focused on zoning changes, specifically how they are insufficient to prompt addition supply to be built.

Yeah. The misery pushers (urbanists) can't admit outright that their ideology is leading to disaster, can they? So they now need not only zoning restrictions lifted, but the state must also build housing and give it out to "deserving" people for cheap.

> Secondly, building more suburbs and more cities increases the supply… which indicates agreement that the price problem is one of insufficient supply.

I'm not arguing against supply-and-demand in general (I'm not a communist idiot). I'm arguing against the _density_ increases.

> EDIT: To be perfectly clear, the data I disagree with is that increasing supply in Minneapolis failed to impact price.

But it did. The real estate transaction index clearly shows that there were no positive effects from the new construction.

Moreover, I analyzed all the real estate sales in the US, Canada, and parts of Europe since 1995. I have not found a single example of a large (>100k population) city that decreased the housing sale prices by increasing density.

Even during the crash of 2007, the dense housing crashed less than comparative nearby sparse housing.

The scholarly literature is also unambiguous. The best effects of density increases are either mild (transient effects on rent), or indirect (migration chains).

[verall]

What about Austin, where they have aggressively upzoned and built, and now housing prices are down?

[cyberax]

Austin is an interesting case. It tripped me up a bit when I saw it.

But it turned out that my prediction was correct because the Austin population went _down_ during the pandemic.

Population:

2019 - 978,763

2022 - 975,418

2023 - 979,882

The overall Travis County population went up a bit. And the prices, in the places other than Austin, are also up.

I can also give a prediction, if Austin population growth recovers (not a given), the price growth rate will quickly outpace the surrounding Travis County.

[tiahura]

The _only_ way to decrease the housing prices is to BUILD MORE SUBURBS. Or even new cities entirely.

Preach brother. Might I also add the possibility of encouraging migration from Metropolises to regional 100k - 200kish cities?

[cyberax]

Yup. It's pretty much the only way to fix the housing crisis.

I think that 300k is the threshold for a good city size.

[tacitusarc]

*increasing supply to meet demand

[waveBidder]

Those abolishments are way less intense than you're thinking. There's still a ton of restrictions that make building even the triplexes that they technically legalized actually get built. Things like floor/area ratios and setbacks, which make building dwellings that people want difficult.

https://streets.mn/2023/10/24/mapping-minneapolis-duplexes-a...

[cyberax]

The abolishments actually fundamentally changed Minneapolis: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...

Most of the new units are in massive multi-apartment buildings. And these buildings have a huge disproportionate impact on the quality of life.

It's now going to be sliding into shittier and shittier conditions. More crime, more congestion, higher housing prices.

[germinalphrase]

You live near one of these developments? Your reaction may be correct, but my experience has been that the density has brought amenities. A brewery, a cafe, and a good restaurant moved into vacant/underutilized spaces. My street hasn’t been had issues with long-term parkers. Crime’s no issue. IDK. My experience doesn’t align with your certainty.

[cyberax]

I actually do live in a neighborhood affected by densification, although not in Minneapolis. The "amenities" got worse, a couple of local small stores were demolished and replaced with apartment buildings. A couple of these apartment buildings are "low barrier housing", meaning that they are given to junkies. So the property crime in the area skyrocketed (not helped by newly opened transit), and we don't have a single 24-hour pharmacy in the area anymore.

The street parking is now oversubscribed, so my friends often have to circle around the area for quite a while to find a spot when they visit me.

These changes actually made me look into the question of density. Before that first-hand experience, I used to be a pro-urbanist victim of propaganda. And yes, I lived in Europe and I got my driving license when I was about 30.

[waveBidder]

I don't think you read and understood the article you just linked. That is talking about a very broad set of reforms, not the single family home zoning abolishment.

> higher housing prices

Have you ever heard of a market?