This has been something I have struggled to grapple with as someone who spends a lot of time in far left spaces as well as urban planning spaces. Hopefully you guys can correct me if I'm being a lib or even worse, a neolib.
On one hand one I love cities and one of the things I love is how dynamic they are. Each building and street tells a story about the city and the people that live there and how they have changed over time. I don't think we can stop that process from happening and since I believe cities to be our best chance to fight climate change they must change. We need more housing, more transit, and we need to invest in our cities to make them better places to live for everyone. I believe that means making it easier to build more housing. You might even call me a YIMBY. That means there is probably going to be a lot more a lot more 5 story buildings with a coffee shops on the first floor, bike lanes, and inevitably breweries, but what is the alternative? If we don't build those yuppie apartments then yuppies will just move into existing apartments which will accelerate displacement. If we don't invest in the most disinvested parts of the city we will just recreate places like the south side of Chicago or Detroit that essentially had no investment in generations and creates extreme segregation. That's not good for anyone.
Of course if I were dictator for a day I would just make all housing public but since I can't do that I think we have no option but to embrace the YIMBY strategy while simultaneously fighting for realistic housing reforms to protect current residents, like rent control, with the long term goal of decommodifing housing. I live in Minneapolis and I'm involved in a few Socialist/Left orgs and I can't believe there are people that were against the plan to get rid of single family zoning in Minneapolis because it was supposedly a handout to developers. Single family zoning is one of the most reactionary policies in America that entrenches a white petite bourgeoisie, and socialists are opposing eliminating it? People just seem to hate developers more than solving actual complex problems.
The real problem isn't gentrification, but capitalism. As long as housing and land, the things we all require to live, are commodities cities with opportunities will always be expensive because demand to be there will always outpace supply of land and housing. I just feel like so much of the gentrification discussion on the left is purely reactionary and doesn't have any actual solutions that could actually help people in our lifetime.
Am I just a lib?
Don't have my links on me as it stands, but:
We need more housing,
Is a common neoliberal talking point. In most major urban areas there's 3-5x the vacant homes per homeless person and I think it's like 13x nationwide in the US. (Can't speak for outside the US that's outside what I know with housing). So we have more than enough hosing for all, and more development won't change that.
I agree with you on single family zoning practices, though. However, I agree because sprawl that it creates places a strain or transportation.
In the end, gentrififaction is a product of capitalism, but it doesn't only occur in hypercapitalist spaces, either. I think there's an importance to protecting unique architecture and the unique feel of neighborhoods which only occurs by keeping people in their homes.
So we have more than enough hosing for all, and more development won’t change that.
It's not just about having more houses than homeless people. A lot of people want to move to cities. It's a trend all over the world.
Is a common neoliberal talking point. In most major urban areas there’s 3-5x the vacant homes per homeless person and I think it’s like 13x nationwide in the US. (Can’t speak for outside the US that’s outside what I know with housing).
I have read similar things before but that is more of a problem with our total lack of investment in public housing and not much to do with the general anti development streak on the left.
It's actually 31x
And then I'm not sure what point you are trying to make? Do you believe that a development-led solution will decrease housing prices?
But it doesn't work. There's scholarly research showing supply side policies don't decrease rental or housing prices on a local, state, or national level.
Even if I wanted to level with you and say, "sure supply side eventually will work," At what point would we see that return? Because we're at 31x homeless to vacant homes. Do we need to be at 310x? Imagine have 310x the amount of housing that you need that just ends up empty. That's a massive waste of resources both in construction and maintenance.
The homeless aren't the only ones we have to worry about. What about those who are rent burdened?
Also, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/05/rents-are-falling-due-to-covid-heres-how-to-negotiate-a-lower-rate.html
Their rent prices should be dropping due to vacant units, shouldn't they?
If housing followed the laws of supply and demand we wouldn't be seeing what we currently are.
Housing supply has consistently outpaced demand by (don't quote me) 20-30% every decade since the 50s. However, housing and rental increases have outpaced inflation over that time. If building more actually led to a solution then prices should remain stagnant or decrease, but that's not what we are seeing.
If housing followed the laws of supply and demand we wouldn’t be seeing what we currently are.
That's exactly what we are seeing. I can't speak for San Francisco but in Minneapolis like 75% of the land area is single family homes that are over 50 years old. Supply has not kept up with demand.
Also to be clear I am not saying all our issues are a supply and demand issue.
Also what about this? https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/23/21035307/san-francisco-population-2018-2019-housing-gains-california-department-finance
That article only dates back to "the 2010s". I can't speak about SF during a massive silicon valley boom, but for the US on the whole production has outpaced population growth since the 1950s as have most major metro area. As well, SF still has 5 vacant units per person. So again, these units did not need to be built as the housing supply already existed.
The article is also slightly disingenuous as California (and most measures of housing) use metro areas to break down housing froth instead of just cities.
SF has added vastly more jobs than housing, something north of 6x. Each one of those jobs represents someone who would want to live in or near the city. The construction in the city has not kept pace with this.
Instead, the construction is pushed further and further out, destroying more and more of the beautiful California countryside, and requiring their residents to drive. All the while over 2/3rds of the city is comprised of single family homes that legally cannot even be developed by their owners into multi-family housing.
I can get it for you on my computer in the morning. I don't have it bookmarked on my phone.
So I read over our conversation again and I think we were just talking past each other or I was just arguing like an idiot so I want to try to express myself a little better.
Lets take your original point of 3x-5x vacant homes to homeless in San Fransisco.
According to Google there are 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco which means which means 40,000 vacant housing units in the best case scenario and I will be even more generous and assume every vacant home was immediately livable. If we homed every homeless person we would have 32,000 vacant homes. San Francisco gained about 8,500 residents per year since 2010 according to Wikipedia numbers which means if we are assuming average US household size we would literally be full in a little over 9 years. This is assuming all 40,000 vacant homes are in livable condition which I bet is an extremely generous. What about people who want to move within the city? Comparing homeless numbers to vacant homes numbers only makes sense if people never move into a city or never move within a city. You need a certain number of vacant homes.
He mentioned that housing supply typically outpaces demand. So all the vacant houses wouldn't fill up in 9 years, because although 32k might fill up you'll have another 40k houses built in that time (assuming their stat is accurate).
So if you've got 5x more vacant houses than people in need of housing, and the rate of houses being built is higher than the rate of population increase, then theres no apparent reason why we need to increase housing development.
If at this rate of housing development, the problem of high rents still persists, then it implies that it's not just a problem of supply and demand. Rents won't necessarily decrease if we increase the supply of houses.
Sorry if you felt like I was talking past you. That was not my intention at all. I think @boboblaw largely covered what I would respond to this question, but I feel like it might be helpful to try and summarize my main points as it relates to this discussion as well as try and explain myself better.
I'm not saying we never need to build another housing unit in the United States ever again. I agree with the larger original point you are making, however, I just believe that you are slightly off on the aspect of housing following typical supply/demand methods. It is an incredibly common misconception as the ideology (:zizek:) is incredibly pervasive across both mainstream media and the public policy sphere. Most of my academic work for a degree I have was on housing policy in the United States and it hasn't been until probably the last 5-10 years that there has been anything actually testing that notion that the solution is just to build more.
As noted with the vacant units across the country (especially as housing units are gobbled up by larger companies who can write off certain lost expenses) there are more than enough units for each person. However, keeping some vacant until a higher price is met can be more profitable for companies to do than just selling/renting at the first available offer. This artificial scarcity coupled with the necessity of having a house to live enables ownership prices and rental prices (at least until COVID) increase continually.
It is reasonable to think that more development will just continue to create more vacant units. It doesn't seem like a problem we can build ourselves out of, BUT I do agree with you that single-family-zoning (and exclusionary zoning in general) should be done away with. In my opinion, though, the priority should be getting people into homes, stabilizing affordability of the units for everyone, and then development of density in urban areas. Not that they can't happen concurrently, just development shouldn't lead the solution.
In my opinion, though, the priority should be getting people into homes, stabilizing affordability of the units for everyone, and then development of density in urban areas. Not that they can’t happen concurrently, just development shouldn’t lead the solution.
I think we are talking past each other because I think we might actually agree with each other except maybe a few minor points. I'm still a little skeptical of the vacant home thing as a viable strategy but I think we agree that this is a complicated issue that requires multiple fronts.
We do mostly agree I have been trying to get that across somewhat. I just strongly disagree on development as a solution.
I think something like a vacancy taxes would be incredibly effective, because it creates a negative externality for companies which hold onto vacant units in hopes of higher rents. Creates ones for developers and holding companies for asking too high a price on housing they sell. Also, for people who own multiple homes it becomes more expensive.
It’s actually 31x
CLAIM: There are 13 vacant homes for every homeless person, in the US.
RATING: False.
One of the funniest "fact-checker" articles I've ever seen. But the info in it is fine.
You are not just a lib. There is a great deal more housing that needs to be built in American cities. Single family zoning is racist and terrible for the environment and should be abolished entirely. I feel like a good policy to rally around would be abolishing single-family zoning pared with rent control. Upzoning alone won't fix the problem, and just rent control won't fix it either.
I think socialists don’t account for assimilation when it comes to gentrification. My dad’s neighborhood was Swedish 100 years ago, became Polish in the 40s, in the 60s - 70s it was Puerto Rican, Polish, and Black. The first 80 years, the neighborhood had strong immigrant poor/working class roots.
80s and 90s broke artsy hipsters came in and started the process of changing the neighborhood to what it is now, basically a wealthy yuppy/hipster neighborhood. While the last 10-15 years are definitely the result of Capitalism concentrating wealth in inner cities I think the first 80 years was just the demographics changing as different people migrated into and out of the city.
It has always been a trend of a generation or two, but capitalism has shifted it to be FAST. Gentrification has turned from a 10 year process into a 2-3 year one. A lot is also cities in the US have at least 80 years of being considered inferior to the suburbs for raising families, ownership and AMERICAN DREAM.
City living became considered much cooler as the ability to have a family seemed harder and harder.
There are so many things that need fixing.
I think a good pair of steps under our current model would be a form of rent control and altering taxes to be less punishing on renters as so many people buy homes “as you’re throwing your money away renting.” We need to make home ownership not a far superior option to long term renting.
I have no idea how to actually fix it.
But I do see that when new development hits an area, existing rents go up.
We can start by building trains and public transportation. Dense housing is usually built along public transpo routes and US cities are all in desperate need of more transpo that isn't another damn freeway.
Gentrification as it exists in the US is specific - it's the displacement of impoverished people from properties that become more and more desirable as the surrounding areas also increase in value. If you're just investing in these impoverished areas, with the intent that those impoverished would enjoy the fruits of that labor, how is that gentrification? I don't understand this post.
Gentrification in a place like Chicago simply displaces poor people from areas yuppies desire to areas that are already broke down bad. The last Cabrini tower fell 10 years ago to this date. Most of the residents got scattered to the wind into the south and west sides of the city. Since the 70s, the residents of Cabrini could smell gentrification coming from a mile off, and they fought hard for decades to stop that happening, but the city didn't give two fucks and didn't do any real upkeep on the buildings for a good few decades.
I don't know what org you're in over there in Minny, but you need to start checking them. That sounds like some chauvinistic bullshit in regards to their refusal of better zoning policies.
I agree with you and housing policy is probably the main reason I haven't joined any of the Bay Area DSA chapters (the other reasons are drama).
I think I've been able to mostly find common ground with other socialists when I propose upzoning with significant protections for existing tenants and multi-family housing. Where I have trouble with them is getting them to ever say that there are enough of those things to allow private construction.
Exurbs are a symptom of a lack of density and they're killing the planet. If someone's solution to the housing crisis is "the revolution", I don't think they're being helpful. In my opinion, we might as well let the capitalists build us the dense urban form we'd want to realize under socialism anyway.
I think red star chapter has similar viewpoints, at least the people I know in it
Yeah pretty much all Bay Area leftist orgs are proponents of "but first the revolution" housing policy.
I don't blame them for taking the black pill when a sizeable portion of exected municipal governments are literally landlords and real estate developers (a majority in many cities). There is absolutely no way you are going to get any kind of meaningful housing reform out of that sort of government. If the stars align and you get just one Trot on the city council like Kshama Sawant in Seattle, the bourgeoisie from all over the country will collaborate to stamp them out.
It's stupid to shrug and say "well, I guess there's nothing we can do until the rev happens," but we will have very limited means to do anything as long as housing is a commoditized, financialized asset and our political system is just a rubber stamp for capital. I think you're right though. It is not enough to point out the problem. We need to present an alternative. Like a housing equivalent of Medicare for All - but with some actual concrete steps that can be taken, as opposed to a nebulous slogan. Then research can be done, we can find out empirically who will benefits (the majority), who will lose (a few kulaks), draw battle lines, and start mobilizing people.
I guess I just get frustrated when I see them defend bills that would eliminate single family zoning.
There's no world in which exclusive single-family zoning needs to exist.
I am generally in favour of building more and denser housing. However I think housing policy should shift from privately owned speculative housing to community-owned public housing, the funding of which should be improved in order to make decent homes affordable.
However I also think that there is a limit to how dense you can build a city. Skyscrapers are horrible, wasteful and creates unpleasant neighborhoods. If more people wants to live in the city we can't just move them all into existing cities. Instead of constructing new suburbs we should construct new urban centres complete with the amenities you would expect an urban core to have. Don't just build housing and commercial spaces, build schools, museums, parks and a nice central plaza as well.
My idea of an ideal new city would be a mix of the Soviet planning idea of building self-contained neighborhoods with every facility citizens needs and the New Urbanist movement's (classist as it might be) idea of letting new construction be inspired by the old city cores people really love, with crooked streets, varied architectural styles and a human scale of buildings.
In all honesty I like skyscrapers but they can be pretty wasteful. Not everywhere needs skyscrapers, but I think it's fine for cities to have a few.
If a building requires use of the elevator multiple times a day for all its occupants, it's not a sustainable model.
5 or 6 stories is plenty. Berlin and Vienna and various other cities exemplify this.
I like how there are dozens of buildings that will just collapse without power because people though tuned mass dampers were a real solution instead of just a bandaid.
no skyscrapers are neat everywhere should look like lower manhattan
Note: "The census’ annual American Communities Survey defines a home as vacant if there is either no occupant or a temporary occupant—temporary meaning “people who will be there for two months or less.” so I'm not sure if there really are this many vacant homes.
What does that even mean? Even if we seized every empty home nobody can afford rent. Maybe San Franciscans will rise up an form kill all their landlords and live in a communist utopia but doesn't seem likely. Didn't work out great for Paris anyway.
Even if we seized every empty home nobody can afford rent
???
If you have to pay rent the same as now, then what exactly did you seize?
For SF, that vacancy rate is only 10% of the city's housing stock (for SJ it's only 4.2%), for perspective. You do need some vacancies so people can move (from elsewhere or into the city). I think that imagining you'll solve the housing crisis using already built housing is fiddling on the margins rather than the untold multitudes of homes that could be built in the place of owner-occupied single family homes in the city limits.
Why are people talking about some different phenomenon and calling it gentrification lol
Of course if I were dictator for a day I would just make all housing public but since I can’t do that I think we have no option but to embrace the YIMBY strategy while simultaneously fighting for realistic housing reforms to protect current residents, like rent control, with the long term goal of decommodifing housing
Ok, well embracing YIMBYism guarantees that none of the latter part will ever come true, displacement is inherent to the profit-led model of housing development, and WHO exactly is gonna INVEST, you keep repeating that word over and over again like it means something free of context, WHO are you talking about? The State? Developers? Landlords? Worker councils who've seized the means of production?
Because aside from the last one the rest don't give a shit about what "story" a street or house tells, they'll tear it down and replace it with hostile architecture, expensive condos/studios and expanded roadways, breweries and coffee-shops that hire a dozen people each and sell over-priced beverages, no trains, no public transit, no social housing, you say the problem is capitalism, but you completely buy into the capitalist model of housing development
The future is intensified rent seeking and Contemporary architecture........and apparently yuppies who'll twist into pretzels to explain how this is actually "GOod"
WHO exactly is gonna INVEST, you keep repeating that word over and over again like it means something free of context, WHO are you talking about? The State? Developers? Landlords?
All the above?
