The wrong approach to affordability

A Chicago Alderman just demonstrated why trying to solve affordability at a local level works poorly at best. Alderman Maldonado down zoned a collection of properties to "combat gentrification". On it's own, that would be the worst solution as it's decreasing available housing, which will only push up the prices of the remaining housing. There's a small silver lining in that he claimed this was a negotiating tactic to push more affordable housing into development plans.

The problem here is, that while affordable housing is a great goal, this is a poor way of getting it. It's not necessary to negotiate for it if you act in a comprehensive way, because you can simply legislate the requirements. Legislating creates a predictable and equal environment for development. Negotiating creates friction, uncertainty and is at risk of being arbitrary. The developers who succeed in such an environment are often going to be that are best at bending the politicians in their favor, both in legal and sometimes illegal ways.

Mayor Lightfoot has the right response here. Spot zoning and using Aldermanic privilege as a negotiating tool are poor substitutes for a comprehensive plan that builds new housing, especially affordable housing.

Comments

How to create a resilient Oil & Gas industry

Use Less As part of the current crisis, oil usage is down, and storage around the world is filling up, to the point that oil has traded at negative prices. As a reaction, many Republican lawmakers want to bailout the oil industry, by providing free access to storage or no-collateral loans. While it would make sense to ensure oil doesn't get dumped in the ocean, the right way to do that is by producing less oil. These proposals from the Republicans undermine the motivation for the industry to do so. Workers are important, but they have the same access to unemployment as the other 25 million Americans who are out of work. What this crisis should illustrate is something that has been illustrated many times before, the oil industry is a fragile thing. In the past this fragility has been demonstrated by massive spikes in prices and fears of shortage, in this case it's the inverse. Why the fragility? The simplest explanation is, we use too much. In a world where oi

Commit to Long Term Testing

Expanding testing is very important now. It's also clearly an area we were unprepared. We should commit to having testing capacity long term, to both provide more certainty to anyone expanding testing capacity today, and to be prepared in the future. I had some thoughts about how this testing would be best structured. It's not possible to test for an contagious disease you're not aware of, but much of the infrastructure for doing so can already be in place, ready to be adapted. That infrastructure would roughly boil down to a) sample collection b) sample handling c) sample preparation d) sample analysis e) materials: reagents, etc. Scaling these up from scratch is quite a bit more work than adapting to a new contagion. A commitment to having that infrastructure would have helped a lot with the current crisis. Right now, the focus is rightfully on health care workers, suspected cases and essential workers. In terms of preparation though, in the early stages

Who are the rentiers?

American cities need more housing. That is obvious to the YIMBY movement. I've heard some attempts to contest that statement, but in the overall range of discourse, it's rare for those who defend opposing viewpoints to respond to that statement directly. Instead, those discussions experience a topic change, either focusing on personal experiences, homeowner "rights", or an attack on landlords. Part of the reason for that topic change is that contending that there is enough housing in cities has to confront the supply and demand topic, and if you're not going to provide more supply, you have to change demand. That line then leads to somewhat hollow arguments about how people don't "belong" in cities and should be elsewhere. It's hard to make that argument without being oblivious to the individuals who are currently making that choice to live in a city despite the very high housing costs, or who would prefer to if they hadn't been forced out by

Search This Blog