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I wrote about affordable housing for my master's thesis, especially in regards to my homestate and the regulations they have to force towns to build affordable housing, happy to see this thread/contribute if people have questions.
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Sep 9, 2018 14:22
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Cicero posted:Demand for luxury studios isn't infinite, this is another example of yeah, the market will take the lowest-hanging, most profitable fruit first. Too true for the 2nd point in this sense, smaller suburbs could build apartment style housing and help alleviate some of these problems.
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Sep 15, 2018 21:10
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Square footage restrictions also keep costs down and I am starting to see towns in Massachusetts talk about square footage restrictions for SFHs, I am imagining the same might need to be done for apartments too.
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Sep 18, 2018 04:12
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there wolf posted:I'd be interested if your home state anything other than California or Oregon. I wrote about Massachusetts it's 40B housing law. Ostensibly the law states that every municipality should have 10 percent of housing deemed affordable (up to 80 percent AMI) and that if you are below that rate developers can bypass local zoning restrictions if the town is willing to play ball. Naturally, cities have a lot of housing and smaller and wealthier communities tend to have less housing. There were a few takeaways from my project but I think the biggest was town managers or town planners ostensibly admitting that without the law the housing won't be built in their communities.
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Oct 14, 2018 03:12
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hailthefish posted:
On the other hand, small towns of 1,000 to 10,000 people living on 1 acre McMansions isn't a great way to bring affordable housing to people either. Talking strawmen to strawmen.
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Oct 14, 2018 23:57
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More highways don't alleviate traffic very long as people adapt to the new roads and encourage more cars. BUILD A RELIABLE COMMUTER RAIL SYSTEM.
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Nov 11, 2018 08:27
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Ardennes posted:The issue is simply public transit is about 30-40 years delayed from where it should be, although there is some progress. Obviously everyone knows about the Red Cars scandal at this point. This maybe a New England solution but I think the towns should start working together more to expand their regional transit options. That would require, however, towns to actually care about long term transit. Somebody fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 03:41
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This is a good article if you can find it for free.
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Jan 9, 2019 01:13
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Insanite posted:
That article carried a good chunk of my thesis.
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Jan 9, 2019 04:27
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Insanite posted:FWIW, Boston is just about as dense as Stockholm. We don't have a lot of empty space around us, but what's occupied isn't particularly dense, either. It's funny you mention Boston as Tokyo a few posts up because there is a similar population problem going on right now in New England. Greater Boston is the only part of New England that is growing. Maine, NH, Vermont, RI, Connecticut, and anything west(ish) of Worcester is essentially aging out. In theory, the 40B law is bypassing SOME of the restrictive zoning policies created by the Boston suburbs but so much more needs to be done. Also, I thought Somerville was one of the densest places in the United States? Anyways, part of what we are seeing here is a combo of ending White Flight, rural death, and no housing policy coming to ahead and creating these housing issues. Density and square footage restrictions are going to have to be used soon and advocated for if we want to start making a dent in the housing market. Another interesting quirk in Massachusetts, is a place like Cape Cod could use a program where older folks move into condos and free up some more SFH. they are living 1500 to 2000 sqft homes that they can really no longer take care of and can literally be hazardous to them. One study said that up to 7500 homes could be on the market if they could get people to downsize.
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Jan 11, 2019 05:17
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KingFisher posted:I agree we should bulldoze every single family home and build judge dredd style brutalist megablocks. I see you are a Boston architect from the 70s.
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Jan 12, 2019 14:21
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Insanite posted:
You just have to show people why these type of projects are important and why the neighborhood should have it. Arguing that workers need places to live and that there is a need can be effective as well. By the by, is you city/area super white? Say more than 90 percent?
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Jan 23, 2019 02:14
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Thanatosian posted:Brutalist megablocks >>>>>> lawns On the other hand, the area around City Hall in Boston is the worst looking place in Boston.
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Jan 27, 2019 21:23
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Insanite posted:It's often said that the Ghostbusters were the most effective tenant's rights advocates of their time. Well unless you are living impaired.
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Feb 1, 2019 03:49
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Badger of Basra posted:https://twitter.com/JSadikKhan/status/1106678391007264768 Our lack of city planning post World War II is galling to say the least. Paving over tracks in the 60s to 80s was even worse.
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Mar 17, 2019 17:33
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Cicero posted:I don't really see what "commodity" housing has to do with being terrible at urbanism. Also ownership opportunities in cities right now essentially is buying condos and renting them out at a ludicrous price to make a profit on them. And to launder money.
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Mar 17, 2019 21:55
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Insanite posted:Say I’m in a neighborhood of two- and three- story multifamily homes in a streetcar suburb. I’ve lived here for a decade or two, I have kids in the school system, and I love the feel and routine of where I live. That you can build dense buildings that don't compromise the feel of the neighborhood. Why not build a 20 unit apartment building that is three stories? This will bring business to your area and keep your taxes lower as the property that just was built will add to property tax levies. And, most importantly, without housing homeless situations get worse.
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Mar 18, 2019 14:12
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Badger of Basra posted:Can’t build in poor neighborhoods because it causes gentrification here is the tough thing around building affordable housing, from the things I have read. Laws that create physical affordable housing (so say requiring to build X amount of units in a Y project) have to be super careful to NOT destroy the ACTUAL affordable housing that exists. Developers will just rebuild the units and not add more, so no net gain in affordable units. The 40B law in Massachusetts works outside of urban centers because it essentially forces small to medium sized towns to build apartment complexes that they would otherwise not build. It hasn't been enough to stave off the current crisis but I do find utility in that. But I agree, one of the solutions just needs to provide more rental supply where it is needed and try to bring down demand as much as possible. Mixed income is a good idea but you have to really find a good combo of adding units and telling the developers they need to take a slightly smaller cut. That being said, I think suburban towns really need to put moratoriums on SFH that is larger than 2000 square feet or at least charging a bigger tax at a certain point. The home I see coming up around me are not intended for middle class families but its the only type of housing I ever see being built.
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Apr 6, 2019 17:48
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Badger of Basra posted:I think that's why the new SB50 focuses more on rich areas - there's way less existing affordable housing to demolish (or just very little housing in the first place) When I did my thesis on affordable housing I saw that a community in the San Franisco Bay Area had 3 acre zoning and my mind was blown. That is TOXIC. This is one of the articles I used to really help me understand why it is legal in the United States.
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Apr 6, 2019 17:58
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FISHMANPET posted:
That's not exactly true. At least where I live you have to go to the planning board and say what you are building in why and the planning board has to approve it. So if you buy 20 acres of land and put like 1 house on it the planning board can come in and say something.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:37
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Thanatosian posted:Replacing golf courses with medium-density subsidized housing is the way to go, IMO. Get those property values for the neighboring SFHs down. Du, Tri, Quadplexes and then turn leftover land into conservation land would be my ideal. Get the housing, do some environmental restoration.
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Apr 10, 2019 01:55
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Pembroke Fuse posted:Donteat01 has an excellent two-part episode on public housing in the US and Europe, and why it fundamentally failed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqJbE1bvdgo I haven't watch the Youtube but my guess is that the US used it to only house low-income residents, which became a poverty concentrator which led to its own problems. While Europe did mixed density AND mixed income? FYI if you want the ur-case of Super Gentrification, Look to Barnsby, England.
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Apr 14, 2019 20:15
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Pembroke Fuse posted:I wonder if there's any value in the government once again becoming a non-profit lender for housing (i.e. what Savings and Loans used to be). Say, ten families take out a group mortgage from the government, build a mid-rise and collectively own it (can't sell an apartment for 5-10 years, to prevent flipping). The cost of direct non-profit construction is far less than just purchasing from a developer. Combined with zoning for such products, you end up with a motivation to build that would offset any rent-control capital flight issues and give tenants a significant level of co-operative control over their properties. In a way they already are with the low-income tax credit though. Check out the Preservation of Affordable Housing they do this work a lot. Again, the issue we face in America right now is that wealthy and affluent communities will not build and cities are going through a boom period and cannot create enough housing. Rural communities are not desirable right now, so there is a weird crunch. Vancouver I guess has seem some results from their vacancy tax, which is an interesting proposition in certain United States cities.
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Apr 18, 2019 02:22
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StabbinHobo posted:what exactly is one bulldozing on a golf course? the trees? the little flags? Some watering systems too. Again, if it were me, convert some of it into conservation space while creating mixed use housing.
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Jun 7, 2019 22:00
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pointsofdata posted:I looked this up, construction costs in expensive markets are $3000 - $4000 psm, so the construction costs are a sizable chunk of apartment costs but not the majority. In Boston (and certain communities in the outer ring) buying an empty lot can run you $750,000 for a quarter acre of land. However, to me that makes me even a bigger proponent of density. More units, more dedicated units to be affordable please. I usually roll my eyes at the developers who decry the fact they need to turn a profit. Make a profit on 30, use another 20 for affordable and low-income please.
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Jul 6, 2019 19:34
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El Mero Mero posted:I wonder what the ven diagram of nimby and demographics looks like. Gentrifying black people out from their existing neighborhoods while simultaneously blocking new (probably not white millennials) seems like a no-brainer and I don't understand why this isn't more of the discussion. I pulled out one of my master's papers on gentrification and this article may be helpful for you. In either case my partner on this paper saw four key parts of gentrification: 1. Disinvestment in low-income, particularly black and latinx areas. 2. Captial reinvestment (both big and "sweat" equity investment) 3. High income residents start to move into the area (a good indicator is that more college degrees popped up in the community) 4. Rents go up, displacing the old residents and the demographics become whiter. At least as defined in the US and places like South Africa.
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Jul 19, 2019 03:11
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Canuck-Errant posted:It's easier to develop in poor communities because what are the poor people going to do, take time off work to petition? Rich people on the other hand have money and time, which makes it more difficult to upzone Your ROI is also higher in a low-income area. Mooseontheloose fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jul 19, 2019 |
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Jul 19, 2019 04:01
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Cicero posted:gently caress "selective zoning reform", America's zoning is monstrously broken and needs a complete overhaul. The mandatory SFH zoning that dominates the country is classist as all hell, and you can't support it and be a progressive. It shouldn't exist, anywhere. Wrath v. Seldin a case decided in 1975 basically said zoning is perfectly fine because income is not a protected class. That article is a proread to understand how we use our zoning to lock out the suburbs from the "wrong" people.
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Jul 20, 2019 00:39
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Bubbacub posted:Elderly homeowners in my area are throwing a shitfit over an upzoning proposal. Affordable developers are allowed to build an extra floor, and up to 3 extra floors near a transit hub. I've been following this drama on facebook and its basically affordable housing is GREAT! In Area IV, or East Cambridge, or better yet Boston, keep it over there. TOTALLY not against affordable housing though. And the they can't articulate why it's bad for the area other than developer give away. Cape Cod is even worse.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:32
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luxury handset posted:they look very much like old (relatively, for america) purpose built apartment buildings, probably 6 or 12 units in the foreground and less so in the structures behind the new blue structure For the Greater Boston area, they were built post 1900 and up until World War 2 to allow for immigrant families to have housing, their purpose was to bring affordability and were the symbol of affordability for a long time in the area. But as time passed and Boston's real estate market got super hot, they have been passed down from Grandma/pa to the next family member who would be stupid to sell it off because...$$$$$. Something like the most triple deckers per square mile was in Somerville at some point.
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Aug 15, 2019 01:00
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Badger of Basra posted:There would be 10 million amendments writing zoning restrictions for specific lots into the constitution I mean, the Supreme Court already legalized zoning restrictions.
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Aug 17, 2019 01:21
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extremely online posted:One of the sticking points (and something that's frustratingly ignored by most leftist urban policy advocates) is that people poor enough to be eligible for public housing usually don't have the time or mental energy to take on additional administrative tasks like this. It's impossible for people who've always lived a safe middle-class life to understand how relentlessly draining extreme poverty is. Co-op run housing is great in theory, but anyone who's ever lived in one (or worked in a co-op store) knows that the people who run the show are the ones willing and able to spend a lot of time on it. This reason you talk about is why Section 8 is under a voucher program, which when used is extremely successful but is also super underfunded. Letting people choose where they live is much better then poverty concentration which is what happend in the 60s and 70s with housing. This is to say, the goal was laudable: give people housing but they put the public housing in low-income areas and concentrating that much poverty causes issues. As much as you can, free movement is good because people will move towards economic opportunity or better school systems if they are informed of their choices. That being said, we need more funding in public housing because we need more public housing to be built and integrated into high income and suburban areas.
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Oct 4, 2019 21:24
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Quorum posted:In the US in particular this is highly bound up with the historical exclusion of black people from homeownership and wealth building. It's all too easy, particularly if you have little hope of getting a mortgage and none of inheriting property, to get stuck in a cycle of perpetual renting. And should you end up with a mark on your record from a run in with the courts or falling behind on rent, background checks run by landlords in higher end markets will reject you, trapping you in the low end of the rental market. Those landlords have realized the high margins you can extract from their often minimally maintained properties, the rents for which really are not much less than comparable median-rent properties. In many localities they're enabled by local and state laws to extract further profits through filing frequent, cheap foreclosures and rapidly cycling through tenants. Don't forget there are states that allow you to gather first, lasts, and a security deposit basically forcing people come up with a mortgage payment for even modest housing.
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Dec 8, 2019 20:08
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Badger of Basra posted:A state rep in VA has introduced a bill to legalize ADUs statewide and people aren’t taking it well: Then don't build one? What a loving weirdo.
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Dec 28, 2019 06:56
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Cicero posted:
I wouldn't go this far given how rural some places are in the United States but if you are "close" to a city you should absolutely be obligated to build more dense housing. Density can bring its own problems, what you want is a different stocks of housing.
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Dec 29, 2019 15:30
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By the way the Boston City Council passed a transfter tax on properties over $1 million dollars to generate revenue for affordable housing. Also hopefully it slows down the ridiculous speculation in this city.
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Dec 30, 2019 15:13
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Solaris 2.0 posted:
Redlining started probably a decade before world war 2. Literally, derived from New Deal policies that marked communities not worth investing in as red. Mostly because there was a black person or peoples living there. And then the banks got a hold of the maps and it all went to poo poo. Post World War 2 there was a whole mix of issues started with the Interstate Highway System which opened up suburbs that had been hard to access before plus the new deal investment added with white flight.
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Feb 1, 2020 15:38
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luxury handset posted:the problem with parking minimums, aside from the fact that they are completely made up (http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/Trouble.pdf) is that they perpetuate sprawl. hard to find street parking in dense areas isn't really linked with parking minimums, that's just a different headache of not enough space in extant urban morphology for cars. you can sneak parking garages into buildings and underground and stuff, and of course the relative modal share of cars is lessened in dense areas anyway as you say That's a good read. I lived in a suburban apartment complex for a bit before I bought a house and they had spaces underground and we just parked outside cause we didn't want to pay the extra cash but the point stands, they add cars when they shouldn't and add cost.
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Feb 1, 2020 18:02
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Killmaster posted:I think the idea is the govt (probably federal due to the scale of spending required) directly building housing (jobs for contractors/construction workers), then selling it to the ‘free market’ once the policy goal of lowering prices is achieved. Eminent domain with compensation could get around local zoning laws. Again, I would look to the Massachusetts 40B law on ways to get around zoning restrictions.
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Feb 27, 2020 03:04
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V. Illych L. posted:gentrification is not a moral choice people make, nobody (or well, hardly anybody at least) is thinking to themselves 'hohoho i am going to price working-class people out of this neighborhood and start agitating for opening a starbucks instead of the local butcher'. they're just moving where their money's good enough and bringing their preferences with them. dirt-poor students are often the first wave and they don't do much other than just be single, young people without much connection to the community Yah gentrification is more of a phenomenon than a choice for renters. But the cycle of gentrification is brown/black community land is made cheaper by society, white developer comes in and says I can make good money by rehabbing this building, neighborhood is perceived to be "good" because it becomes whiter and more educate, rents go up, gentrification. When I was doing my masters, I did a whole thing on gentrification and while it was easy to see where people moved, it was harder to see where they moved to, so we didn't see which neighborhoods were absorbing people who were forced out of their community.
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Mar 13, 2020 14:03
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