[tptacek]

This analysis, for whatever it's worth, is wrestling with a straw man. Klein and Thompson never claim that permitting reform is the only lever available. The housing strategy Abundance documents is that of the YIMBY movement, and YIMBYs are all-of-the-above advocates. If you can get subsidized housing built, you get it built. Meanwhile, you fix exclusionary zoning and clear a path for the market (which produced virtually all the homes we live in) to function as well.

[theluketaylor]

I'm hugely in favour of adding non-market housing anywhere it can be added, but the author declaring it a different fix to the housing crisis from zoning is naive at best. Non-market housing is subject to the exact same complex local regulations as market housing, plus all the complexity of government projects, a patchwork of subsidies, grants, and loans to get funding, and even more intense public scrutiny. Trying to get social housing done is playing an exceptionally hard game on nightmare mode.

The single lever he points out is itself a ton of local, regional, and federal regulations and laws that all need modernizing or abolishing, which is far from a simple, single lever at all.

[tptacek]

Worth mentioning here that appeals to social housing have over the last 20 years been absolutely classic NIMBY arguments. People raise it because they know significant amounts of social housing won't get built, but if you fix the gating factors for the market, it will.

But this is also a factional concern; for reasons I don't understand, the Democratic left polarized hard against "abundance" (and thus YIMBYism). So these kinds of arguments now code as "centrist".

Nathan J. Robinson actually said the quiet part out loud a couple years ago, when he wrote in Current Affairs (a relatively high-profile American leftist periodical) a long defense of suburban NIMBYism.

[nozzlegear]

> But this is also a factional concern; for reasons I don't understand, the Democratic left polarized hard against "abundance" (and thus YIMBYism). So these kinds of arguments now code as "centrist".

To be slightly glib: the left has no greater enemy than someone who agrees with them 95% of the time.

[msteffen]

> But this is also a factional concern; for reasons I don't understand, the Democratic left polarized hard against "abundance" (and thus YIMBYism). So these kinds of arguments now code as "centrist".

I think a lot of these activists were originally fighting gentrification. Then, over time, the gentrifiers won anyway, and now most housing in hcol areas is occupied by wealthy professionals. But the activists never updated their politics (people have a hard time admitting—or, sometimes, realizing—that they lost), and now they advocate policies that shut out the people they originally set out to protect.

[CalRobert]

The old school granola hippie left (anti nuclear types who love coal and gas) seem to think that “making things people want and selling them for money” is fine until it’s homes, when it suddenly becomes evil.

There’s also a failure to see second or third order effects. Yes, up zoning means that new homes will be expensive at first, but over time prices fall as demand and supply reach equilibrium. Similarly rent control is a feel good policy to screw the young and newcomers in favour of incumbent renters.

[Avshalom]

Of course one of the reasons social housing won't get built is the faircloth limit from 20 years ago.

[tptacek]

That's like 4-5 principal components back from the first principal component, which is that the places that need housing market vitality the most could not reasonably afford to acquire the housing to support it. The best school systems in Chicagoland are in the inner-ring suburbs, locked up for SFZ residents. Even if their municipal governments wanted to go all-out to fix that, they couldn't conceivably acquire the land and arrange the development.

Worth adding that "public housing" isn't the only or even the most common form of subsidized housing. There's no Faircloth limit at all to public-private subsidized housing with AMI-calibrated eligibility and rent, and that's a much more common form of subsidized housing than a "housing project". But it can't get built in meaningful numbers either, because it's simply too expensive.

[JuniperMesos]

> The best school systems in Chicagoland are in the inner-ring suburbs, locked up for SFZ residents. Even if their municipal governments wanted to go all-out to fix that, they couldn't conceivably acquire the land and arrange the development.

Also, if municipal governments "fixed that" by making it possible for more housing to be built and more people to move into neighborhoods served by those currently-good school districts, the odds are good that the influx of new students would make the school district worse. And the people currently living in single-family zoned residences know this - one motivation for NIMBYism is that it helps maintain the high quality of the local school district where your kids currently attend school.

I'm personally in favor of abolishing public school districts, precisely so that the location of a house is no longer a major deciding factor in where any children in that household attend school. This reduces the incentive for people who live in a house in a good public school district to resist building any more houses in that school district, lest the inhabitants of that house make the school district less good.

[TimorousBestie]

> I'm personally in favor of abolishing public school districts, precisely so that the location of a house is no longer a major deciding factor in where any children in that household attend school.

Setting aside the inevitable transportation issues this is an excellent policy that I would love to see implemented, but I think too many suburbs built their identity around “having the (property tax base necessary to create the) good school district.”

[lazyasciiart]

School districts per se isn’t the problem so long as you have enrolment catchments. Australia doesn’t have school districts for their public schools but there are definitely more and less attractive state schools and people definitely pay more to live in the catchment zones of good schools. https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/12bgjnt/victoria... https://web.archive.org/web/20260202110638/https://www.theag...

[ButlerianJihad]

For centuries, Roman Catholics belonged to territorial parishes. That is, wherever they lived determined which parish they attended, and they also had obligations to support the material needs of this home parish, and their home pastor had a significant influence on whether these folks could marry or pursue a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. Of course, any family with children would send them to the parochial school where they belonged (there were often regulations that prevented the kids from going anywhere else.)

However, the popularity of cars, highways, and general mobility all over the place, has caused many bishops, particularly in the United States, to sort of supersede these territorial rules. Now in my diocese, a Catholic can go attend any parish they want to, and register in that parish, and for all legal purposes they are an official member of that parish, as if they lived within the territory. There have always been parishes like this, called "personal parishes" but they were often defined by certain ethnolinguistic qualities, like everyone from Poland, or Vietnam or something.

So now this leads to some crazy situations. For example, my friend was received into the Church from Lutheranism, and when this happened, he lived in a particular place. But he's moved away--far, far away--twice, and yet he still "commutes" to that parish where he became attached and still loves, and still has commitments and responsibilities there, which he upholds.

There are also people who, for liturgical or doctrinal reasons, will drive for hours on Sundays just to reach a church that agrees with their personal beliefs and preferences.

I am not sure this is sustainable or realistic. If eventually you have Catholics driving all over creation, literally, to get to their preferred parish, then some parishes are going to languish, if they cannot attract or retain people who are willing to volunteer there, support their material needs, and send their kids to the parochial school. That means schools are going to close. There are also independent schools popping up, that are not parochial, but approved, and Catholics send their kids there. Failing that, they get homeschooled.

I think this extreme mobility thing is absurd. I can't keep up, obviously, having no vehicle. It was actually easier for me to commute to a parish I didn't "territorially" belong to because of the way public transit works, but eventually I decided to stop commuting, and be honest, and live up to responsibilities of the parish where I belong, territorially, even if that is now a de jure thing of the past.

[specialist]

> the Democratic left polarized hard against

As I understand stuff, "abundance" is perceived as a threat to, a means to neuter, YIMBY urbanism advocacy (a la , Strong Towns, Sightline, War on Cars, etc).

Criticisms I've read are:

1) guilt by association

2) exasperation with neoliberal faith in markets, to the exclusion of other strategies

3) punching left, while ignoring the perfidy and obstructionism of the right, as though only "the left" has agency

4) being anti-democratic, by ignoring (or underplaying) the necessity of rebuilding state administrative capacity

Wanting a lot more housing, I'm pro "abundance" by default.

Even so, I've been hurt before. So I try to remain cognizant of "the left's" criticisms. Being confused by the food fight over abundance, I'd describe "the left" as being wary.

[tptacek]

No, Abundance is the semi-official home of YIMBYism in the Democratic party. The opposition to it from the left is uniformly anti-YIMBY.

(Strong Towns and YIMBYism aren't totally aligned.)

[TimorousBestie]

> Nathan J. Robinson actually said the quiet part out loud a couple years ago, when he wrote in Current Affairs (a relatively high-profile American leftist periodical) a long defense of suburban NIMBYism.

If we’re thinking about the same essay it’s a criticism of capitalist YIMBYs who are only interested in building McMansions and the like. It is both anti-NIMBY and anti-some-YIMBYs, which seems reasonable to me.

EDIT: Historically, some YIMBYs have not opposed—I guess we’ll call it instead—unaffordable housing. So-called “capitalist” or “libertarian” YIMBYs in particular. Robinson’s article describes this. Leftists are skeptical of “all housing construction makes housing more affordable” arguments, and there’s evidence presented in the article to that effect.

[tptacek]

Capitalist YIMBYs oppose McMansions. They're like the central thing we oppose. The whole point of the movement is replacing large-lot-coverage single-family-homes with multifamily. The whole point of YIMBYism is multifamily housing.

Understand: there isn't regulation against large single family homes. You can build a McMansion anywhere you want already. Your analysis makes no sense: nobody needs to organize anything to allow McMansions; they're the regulatory default. But suburban progressives genuinely believe stuff like this! It's a real problem.

[Animats]

> This analysis, for whatever it's worth, is wrestling with a straw man.

More like a straw army.

Austin is surrounded by empty flat land. San Francisco is surrounded by water and was built out many decades ago.

London suffers from being the main city in Britain. The UK is overcentralized. Most of the money and power are in London. Some countries are centralized like that, with all the good stuff around the national capital. France, Japan, and Russia are; the US, Canada, and China are not. (China, maybe; too much is near Beijing, but there are lots of other big cities.)

[vannevar]

>Austin is surrounded by empty flat land. San Francisco is surrounded by water and was built out many decades ago.

This^^^. The idea that housing starts are solely (or even substantially) impacted by regulation is a case of control bias, attributing disproportionate influence to minor factors we can control (like regulation) over major factors we cannot (land, labor and material costs).

[tptacek]

I've read this like 5 times and I still can't make sense of it. Is this a variant of the "5-bedroom houses in Cairo Illinois only cost $40,000, there is no housing shortage" argument?

[vannevar]

No---did you read the original article? The comment and the parent will make more sense. Basically the article compares Austin and San Fransisco and attributes the difference in building rates entirely to disparities in regulation. Which is obviously not an accurate framing, for the reasons mentioned in our respective comments.

Your comment is more addressed at affordability, which is largely a function of wealth disparity: as the wealthy get richer with respect to the lower percentiles, they absorb an increasing share of the home market and drive prices up.

[tptacek]

I did; the top comment on this thread is my response to the article. I don't think you fully get the argument: San Francisco needs to upzone and do large amounts of infill development. Most of the most important areas of economic opportunity in this country are landlocked; San Francisco's challenge isn't unique.

[vannevar]

I think you're making the same mistake the article did, focusing on the regulatory environment. My argument is that the zoning and other regulation is not the main reason Austin has more housing starts than San Francisco. The main reason is that land, labor, and materials are cheaper there. SF can upzone and infill to it's heart's content, it won't make land, labor and materials cheaper than Austin.

[CalRobert]

SF still has lots of low density that could be demolished in favour of higher density housing though.

[pj_mukh]

Yes, plus, all these meta-studies always seemed to ignore the reasons for the demand shock.

"It's not the permits, it's the demand shock" (the last image in the blog post). The "demand shock", was the economy growing...quickly. And that statement is left hanging in the air like we're supposed to do something about it.

The economic growth is a good thing, we should have a housing system that reacts to it like surge pricing but instead we get a lot of hand-wringing then rezoning 5-10 years too late, so instead of temporary surge pricing, we get permanent ultra-heavy-high-surge pricing.