Does Density Solve Affordability? Explaining New York and San Francisco

[@elizabethdavis1696]

Some of those “illegal buildings” are prettier than the newer buildings

[@jetfan925]

Facts

[@jimbo1637]

People tend to be more willing to tolerate larger buildings when they think the buildings look nice. If done correctly, I think aesthetic zoning could actually bring costs down by making it possible to build larger buildings.

[@metavercenary]

Victorians are some of the most beautiful buildings in the world. I’ve lived in S.F. for over a decade and it’s my forever home

[@doughayden]

Thanks to very restrive bylaws that have zero relevance to safety.

[@elizabethdavis1696]

@@jimbo1637 I like that “aesthetic zoning”

[@seriousbees]

Living in Boston I hear the "they just build luxury condos" argument a lot. I think those people buy into the construction = high rent correlation. More people need to understand this

[@colinneagle4495]

Yes! I watched a different urbanist KZbin video recently that pointed out that luxury condos aren't expensive because they have marble countertops, but instead because ANYTHING brand new is going to be more expensive by virtue of being new, just like any new car or new iPhone would be more expensive that used cars and used cell phones. Jane Jacobs even pointed this out in her book, writing about how new buildings house the rich people while older buildings stay affordable, meaning a mix of old and new buildings help a neighborhood stay economically diverse and vibrant. So yes, that shiny condo tower is for rich people, but if it didn't get built those rich people would just buy up whatever affordable housing already exists, ensuring the very same gentrification people are afraid the new towers will bring.

[@CannedFishFiles]

In NYC, all the buildings I have ever lived in were luxury buildings... in 1960.

[@szurketaltos2693]

Those people don't understand that if there is a market for "luxury" housing, the price/rent increase is much higher than the cost of "luxury" finishes. For builders to build "standard" housing of their own volition, it needs to be profitable; when land and red tape expenses are high, luxury housing is the only profitable housing.

[@wakaflocka37]

Luxury condos are great. Means I don't have to bid against luxury condo owners for average condos

[@colinneagle4495]

@@CannedFishFiles LOL! Linoleum and shag carpeting were once considered trendy and state of the art after all

[@jakehood7463]

"My rent went up because there are too many units to choose from" is a thing that you will literally never, ever hear.

[@AMPProf]

hmmm Challenge Expectedwait wtf?

[@MrBirdnose]

Where I live "there are a bunch of units but they're all AirBnBs" is a more common problem.

[@bramvanduijn8086]

Except for in monopoly situations, obviously. When there is a monopoly or some other form of market-wide coordination by the sellers on prices then prices will go up no matter what.

[@j.s.7335]

Well said.

[@yuriydee]

People here in NYC say that and blame all the "luxury" apartments. Technically if you live near them, rent could go up. But as a whole the city always benefits from more housing.

[@LucasDimoveo]

I’m from NYC and currently live in downtown SF. Manhattan is dense. Queens and Staten Island is not. Parts of SF are dense, but the majority of the greater Bay Area are single family homes. For f*cks sake we just need to build

[@ABCantonese]

Asians be looking at the pictures shown as high density and just laughing. NYC and SF are both land constricted.

[@rishabhanand4973]

The main issue is those people who live in single family homes treat their home as an investment vehicle and they protest and file lawsuits against efforts to build denser housing.

[@EM-od6yr]

@@rishabhanand4973 We had a Republican win an East Bronx city council election last year because she opposed a rezoning measure that would have brought affordable housing to the neighborhood. It's crazy how many people want to keep their neighborhood suburban while living in the biggest city in the country.

[@ecurewitz]

NIMBYs won’t allow building

[@paxundpeace9970]

Or they sit on a million dollar home and either complain about luxury condos that cost half that much or rentals that drag the area down. You can't make it right for them. ​@@rishabhanand4973

[@neelsg]

This is like asking "if hospitals heal people, why are there more sick people in places with more hospitals?". It is reverse causality

[@searchingfortruth619]

There's a clip out there of a woman calling in to a radio show, and she's very upset that the deer crossing was placed by a highway 😂😂😂

[@josepheridu3322]

If the hospital cannot handle that many sick people, and it does not change or adapt to it, and people don't have any other option...then yes, it is reasonable to criticize the management and infrastructure of the hospital.

[@neelsg]

@@josepheridu3322 what are you even talking about? I think you completely misunderstood the point I was trying to make

[@franwex]

I actually don’t understand what you’re saying here.

[@neelsg]

@@franwex Let me explain. You would expect if there are a lot of sick people in an area, there would be more hospitals in that area in response. To then go and say "look there are more hospitals in this area and also more sick people, therefore the hospitals cause sick people" is obviously backwards. The same goes with housing cost and density. If the housing in an area is more expensive, you would expect developers to build higher density units in response, so to say these areas have higher density and are also less affordable is backwards. The density does not cause the higher prices... the higher prices cause the density

[@uhohhotdog]

If demand is greater than supply it doesn’t matter how dense it already is, it needs to be denser.

[@aminsennour5571]

And at a certain point needs good transportation links to allow people living further away to get there, as is realistically the case for SF & NYC where even if every block was a 40+ story skyscraper would still have demand greater than supply.

[@jimbo1637]

@@aminsennour5571 The issue is that there's no undeveloped land in Manhattan, and just the cost of buying/ demolishing an existing building is often so expensive that affordable housing isn't possible. The reality is there's no way to have 1.6 million people living on a 23 square mile island and not have high housing costs.

[@cmmartti]

​@@jimbo1637Lower Manhattan, maybe. But mid and upper Manhattan has plenty of old low-rise and even single family homes that can be upgraded with denser housing. Yes, demolition is expensive, but that's not what is holding back redevelopment.

[@MbisonBalrog]

And be denser but still more expensive. No one build more supply unless demand is there already.

[@Zraknul]

​@@jimbo1637 There's lots of underdeveloped land. Literally a block or two from Central Park you can find single story buildings.

[@oufukubinta]

In Sydney Australia we have thousands of tiny cottages built 100+ years ago which are considered heritage and can't be demolished even though they're in terrible condition with leaky roofs and asbestos (and look ugly from the outside), and those are among the most expensive places to live because of the location being close to the CBD

[@barryrobbins7694]

James-Hardie, the gift that keeps on giving.

[@HweolRidda]

In Toronto the trend has been to tear down two small houses and put up a huge single family luxury house. Net loss of one house.

[@Secretlyanothername]

It's even worse than that. You can have a weed-filled vacant lot across the road from these, but you're not allowed to build on it above two stories because it would "disturb the character" of the houses. It's a religious or spiritual practice now

[@ivani3237]

WW2 in Europe helped a lot with cleaning cities from 100+ years old buildings

[@mickanvonfootscraymarket5520]

Saying that density solves housing issues, like saying more gyms will solve obesity.

[@Richard24Blair]

Major US cities having "extremely low" rental vacancy rates of 3%-4%, meanwhile your average Canadian city hasn't seen vacancies that *high* in a decade+.

[@smareng]

Unchecked immigration will do that,

[@paxundpeace9970]

Except for Montreal and Quebec to some degree but vancancy is super low.

[@AMPProf]

Canada crazy cold some days eh

[@Secretlyanothername]

Cries in 0.3%-2% Australian

[@mariusvanc]

Vancouver: 1% vacancy = practically a generational high

[@bos2pdx2yvr]

As someone who lives in Vancouver, I would looooove to see a similar video done for Canadian cities!

[@smareng]

Same

[@paulmcewen7384]

This is a funny one in Canada, people make the density argument about Vancouver all the time but you need to take exactly one flight that loops over the city before landing at YVR to see what the situation is.

[@mariusvanc]

@@paulmcewen7384 90%+ of Vancouver is houses.

[@buckodonnghaile4309]

Canada sold Hongcouver a few decades ago.

[@jasonriddell]

@@paulmcewen7384 no need to fly ride sky train to ANY station get off and walk AWAY from the traffic often ONE block does it I cant think of a single NON downtown station that has density more then a BLOCK in every direction

[@nathang4682]

"What makes housing affordable isn't density per se but rather abundance." Reading "Order Without Design" by Alain Bertaud, the case he would make is that land prices are highest on a square foot basis in urban centers, so the market should be allowed to respond with high densities so that people can get something small that's affordable. Problem is that zoning has heavily distorted the market, which is not always a bad thing necessarily, the market needs to be "put in its place" in some scenarios, but clearly thing are far from where the should be.

[@Secretlyanothername]

Zoning has strayed far from its original purpose - let's not build houses next to a chemical factory. Same with preservation, which is no longer about saving historically unique things and instead is about making it illegal to modify or demolish anything built before 1970

[@thibaultlibat368]

The level of economic literacy of this channel is refreshing. Keep it up!

[@yotoronto12]

Ive also been fascinated by the Singaporean model of housing where virtually most people live in public housing but such that maintains high quality and Singapore still outranks nearly all cities in the US and Canada in terms of social and economic development.

[@watch1981]

@@yotoronto12 SG public housing is for purchase only, totally different. SG also has well behaved citizens and strict laws against criminality, while the US clearly does not

[@red2theelectricboogaloo961]

@@watch1981 well, that's the problem. singapore might do a lot of things right, but understanding the context that they do these things is key. it's basically a one-party state. so, maybe that's not what we want. there are different approaches, which are out there, and which have yet to be found, that will bring similar results without having to essentially have the PAP regime all over again.

[@krillin876]

The people living in our public housing projects in New York City wouldn't last one day in Singapore in fact they probably wouldn't be able to make it out of the airport without being arrested

[@shauncameron8390]

@@krillin876 LOL. True.

[@watch1981]

@@red2theelectricboogaloo961Singapore was basically the 1 time that a benevolent dictator actually worked out. Uncle Lee knew how to deploy the carrot and stick😂

[@mariusfacktor3597]

This is exactly the video I needed. Not because I needed to be convinced that legalizing low-cost housing will increase the amount of available low-cost housing (duh) but because I needed a good way to respond to people who point at NYC and SF and ask why those places aren't affordable.

[@JordanPeace]

This is easily one of the best analyses of housing affordability issues in these two cities that I’ve ever seen, great work!

[@vmoses1979]

But it doesn't answer the question posed. Increased density does not lead to affordability if you build in a city with house prices 10 times median income. Developers will only build if they can maintain that ratio. To me - this clip was just a bunch of hemming and hawing without much meat. I am in favour of increased density but it will not improve affordability.

[@ratracerescuepodcast]

That was exceptional reporting. Thank you. I live in Portland and see the exact issues crop up here as well.

[@southend26]

Good points. However, density alone still has major effects on affordability because the infrastructure costs per home/business are much lower, transit is more viable (which is MUCH cheaper than car-dependency), and the revenue to support maintenance and services in a dense environment is higher long term because there are more tax payers per block/acre and the businesses are more lucrative and stable.

[@Jacksparrow4986]

I wanted to make the same point: Yes, affordability of housing is improved by building up or out. However, the costs are not the same. Suburban municapilities are struggling to keep their roads and basic services maintained, cities are generally speaking doing fine to excellent. And for the individual it's similar: Suburban requires a car and lots of time to drive, Urbanites can live carlight or -free, save big on money (and time, if desired/possible). And from a global scale, building up is much more ecological, as it's less space and co2 intensive.

[@badart3204]

@@Jacksparrow4986only issue is that it kills birth rates. The only form of housing that has a replacement rate is the single family home.

[@Jacksparrow4986]

@@badart3204 I don't get what you're saying. Yes, single family homes in the USA need to be replaced much quicker than those old buildings, because they break down much faster? I live in a ~125 year old multistory house and guess it will stand for another 125 years.

[@jasonriddell]

@@badart3204 not true BUT the "missing middle" offers both "family sizes" AND density and suburban homes are also a MAJOR expense both to finances and TIME making child raising harder OR impossible

[@TheSpecialJ11]

And then the landlords benefit. Unfortunately, the issue is structural. Civilization grows more efficient? Landlords grow wealthier.

[@raken0230]

Am I the only one who laughed at the “They can start by not doing that” at 8:39 😭😭😭

[@AMPProf]

MAYBE.. But I get the joke.. Oh wait Thats the counsel of Political politicians

[@AMPProf]

awwww snap son

[@jaydenthegreat6469]

I chuckled at that to 😂

[@mariusfacktor3597]

Making old buildings "illegal" really fascinates me. Culver City is a crazy example. There is one hotel downtown built in like 1920 that is 6 stories tall, and it's the tallest building in downtown but it's illegal to build today. What are we, a city of NIMBYs from the 1910s? It's absurd.

[@eazydee5757]

Personally, I believe that land value taxes, combined with laws allowing for dense zoning to be built, are very much beneficial for preventing sprawl and promoting proper density and affordability for all. For example, the state of California since the mid-20th century has gone all out on sprawl, especially in SF and LA, to the point that the cities were all built out and there’s no space left to build more sprawl. The housing supply couldn’t keep up with demand, leading to the affordability crisis we see today in the state. Land value taxes combined with wise zoning laws would incentivize developers to use and utilize land wisely and properly, benefitting all who use, live, and sustain themselves on it.

[@AwesomeHairo]

Agreed.

[@mindstalk]

Land value tax has its use, but it wouldn't "incentivize" wise use at all if zoning laws forbid developers from enacting those uses. Zoning is the primary issue, LVT secondary.

[@Basta11]

@@eazydee5757 yes. But it’s not the limiting factor. The limit factor is large lot single use zoning, parking requirements, set backs, height restrictions, costly and uncertain permitting process, lawsuits.

[@joeyo4134]

lol MORE TAXES says California. What a clown show.

[@jasonriddell]

@@Basta11 delays and MORE delays all while interest payments are due I personally believe in a APPROVED by default VS denied by default approach with CLEAR and SIMPLE zoning like "housing" is an area primarly for housing and daily NEEDS of those living in said housing - a single family detached YUP - tower block - YUP 5 over 1 with retail spaces YUP live over shop ETC

[@scpatl4now]

Atlanta has several high rise residential buildings that will be coming online in the next couple of years downtown and in midtown. Some are student housing, and all have some percentage of affordable housing. There is even more being proposed since it's more viable right now than new high rise commercial.

[@andre-cmyk]

i was exploring atl on google maps recently and the amount of density coming up really shocked me! its way better than LA

[@paxundpeace9970]

Many cities are getting hugr amounts of housing getting build like in Austin Nashville Dallas Houston .

[@josephinepura525]

They should build more of those housing units around MARTA stations. Atlanta needs more areas like Buckhead tbh

[@Eepy-Rose]

I hope Atlanta can build enough housing and expand the amount of the city where it's viable to live without a car. I currently wouldn't want to move to Atlanta because of Georgia's Republican politics but it feels like one of the more promising US cities to me.

[@ab8817]

Yet the infrastructure is not keeping up. The electric grid is completely overworked. All these new apartments are full of car owners, sometimes owning multiple. Rent is staying high. Density does not create affordability. You are believing developer propaganda. Growth is fine, be smart about it.

[@westonsmith3190]

I think this video is mostly accurate, but as someone who is doing policy research on affordable housing in Ontario I think I there are a couple of nuances worth pointing out. 1) In certain markets, speculation can have an outsized impact on housing prices, to the point where it becomes a bigger factor than supply. A good example is the current Toronto studio condo market, which has seen a sudden decrease and lack of buyers even as other types of housing continue to sell. Because condos (especially those with smaller units) were treated as an investment class for so long, it warped the price of that housing type and is only now somewhat correcting, while housing types like detached houses retain their value. I'm not as familiar with the markets in SF or other US cities, but my understanding is that the NYC housing market (especially in Manhattan) is incredibly financialized on a global scale, and that this can cause investors colluding and/or creating a bubble where they are incentivized to keep rents high. How much of a factor this is can vary by city and even by neighbourhood, but it's an important thing to discuss when talking about housing prices. 2) Somewhat related to the first point, a significant amount of non-market housing is essential to ensure that prices don't jump too high. In cities like Vienna with extremely high amounts of non-market housing, rents stay low because landlords can't charge more than the government is charging people to live in public housing. When you have enough public housing that people can get into a unit in a matter of months instead of years, landlords can't gauge people just because they feel like it. That said, many of the barriers to the construction of market housing that you mentioned in the video also apply to non-market housing. Having lots of legislation around what is able to get built means it is more expensive to build housing, period. For non-profits and similar housing organizations, that means they need an absurd amount of funding just to get approvals, much less build the building. I understand that for the purposes of KZbin these things can't always make it into the video, but since this topic is the center of my life right now I couldn't help myself but jump in, if you'll forgive me! Keep up the great work :)

[@OhTheUrbanity]

1. This is possible but it would presumably be more applicable to housing prices, while I looked at rents in this video. Also, it's not an either/or thing with speculation versus supply. Being scarce is what makes something attractive as a speculative asset. 2. I agree on the usefulness of non-market housing, especially in times of high interest rates when private homebuilding tends to decline.

[@jgrahamx]

THANK YOU! So many of these pro-YIMBY arguments are predicated on the simplistic (and frankly outdated) Economics 101 concept that it's merely about supply and demand. In a financialized economy, developers aren't actually interested in increasing the supply of housing, they're only interested in creating speculative investment vehicles that will earn them the most profits. They don't care if nobody actually lives in what they've built (and they certainly don't care about the neighborhoods in which they build or how their buildings might affect the existing community). To them, a luxury condo is no different than any other Wall Street investment: buy/build as cheaply as possible and then sell at the highest price. Helping the cities in question or providing housing for anybody at all - much less the working-class poor, struggling middle-class teachers, etc. - is absolutely none of their concern. Second, the market is full of distortions intentionally created by the same developers/realtors/landlords that deeply naive YIMBYs believe will fix the situation if we simply give developers free rein to build whatever they want, wherever they want. There is no "law" of supply and demand; if there were, San Francisco business and residential rents would've plummeted after the pandemic as Silicon Valley techies - whose own overpaid presence is a huge market distortion in and of itself! - left the city en masse. The truth is that the same people YIMBYs want to empower via deregulation have long been in collusion to keep rents high. They don't "compete in the free market" at all, as price fixing schemes à la RealPage make clear. Therefore there's no incentive for them to EVER lower prices if they're not explicitly forced to do so. Finally, the problem can't be easily solved simply by building MORE so-called "housing" - it needs to be the RIGHT KIND of housing, i.e., "missing middle" housing and/or permanently affordable/rent-controlled housing. Luxury condos WILL NOT DO. People need to get over this ridiculous myth that there are multi-millionaires being forced to hunker down in tawdry studio apartments because there aren't enough penthouses for them to buy. In fact, MORE market-rate condo developments only distort the market even further towards UN-affordability as land values increase following the insertion of these upmarket developments into previously downmarket neighborhoods. Let's put it as simply as possible: THE "FREE MARKET" WILL NOT FIX THE HOUSING PROBLEM BECAUSE THE "FREE MARKET" IS WHAT CAUSED THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE - so everybody please stop bending over backwards to rationalize why we should let profit-first/profit-only developers run riot in our cities! Today's luxury tower developers are the descendents of the same people who terraformed North America with six-lane highways and suburban sprawl and strip malls and stroads. IMHO no self-proclaimed urbanist should ever support a developer-first agenda. It's misguided madness that we'll all come to regret in the future.

[@OhTheUrbanity]

​@@jgrahamx Are you suggesting that restricting the supply of housing does not harm housing affordability or accessibility? I don't know how that can be the case.

[@MakeMeThinkAgain]

Related to your 1st point, (I covered this in my comment) owners of hundreds or thousands of rental units in SF would rather leave units vacant than reduce rents -- this is why the vacancy rate is surprisingly high. The city is trying to address this with a rental vacancy tax, but if your business loans only pencil out at a certain rent level, you can't afford lower rents and may be willing to pay the taxes instead.

[@MofoMan2000]

I live in the Denver area, and I moved into my current apartment in 2020. Since then, two more large apartment complexes have been built nearby, and a third is currently under construction. Housing is being built like crazy out here.

[@gooffgoff89]

I have fallen in love with your videos! I came across them while seeking videos on New Urbanism and I cannot STOP viewing them, assessing them and thinking about the messages that I’m gathering from them. I would that I could find more videos of such regarding cities in my home country:USA. There’s a wealth of knowledge that we in America could learn from these videos. I’ve visited Canada several times and viewing it from your lens has truly expanded my sphere of understanding. Having lived in both cities and suburbs, I find the videos you present resonates with my lived experiences. Thank you for what you present us with. I’ve a degree in Public Administration and Public Policy with a strong interest in urbanism and city development: your videos are teachable tools!

[@dianethulin1700]

I live in San Francisco and work in Mission Bay. Dogpatch is unrecognizable from 20 years ago with all of the new apartment buildings have been built. Lots of building going on here. I looked at apartments yesterday with my son. Rents have dropped from five years ago when I moved

[@alejandroviasus668]

I wrote a paper this year for my senior thesis talking about this EXACT topic. I collected data on density, rent cost, vacancies, multifamily home abundance, multimodal transit use, ect… for 344 US cities. The correlation I found after running some regression models were that cities with high rent costs also house the MOST people per unit, cities as well with higher rents have a higher supply of multifamily homes. At its current state, density characteristics of cities here are also the costliest, but this video (and myself) came to the conclusion that those metrics ALONE can’t provide evidence for whether “density” alleviates or impacts cost. I agree with you here in that regulations and housing construction play the biggest factor in determining their costs. (Philadelphia, one of the densest cities in the US, is at nearly the dead middle in rent cost). Fantastic video and one I want to dedicate most of my professional research on this topic and improving my thesis further

[@_human_1946]

> Some people from these cities will defend their record by saying they're built up and hemmed in by water and/or mountains Meanwhile China's Mountain City (Chongqing) is known for density, rapid urban expansion, and affordable housing

[@Demopans5990]

With NYC and SF, they're hemmed in by NIMBYs

[@andre-cmyk]

thinking of maybe doing some analysis of this sort for brazil to understand rent prices here

[@OhTheUrbanity]

Sounds interesting! Do it.

[@lucagattoni-celli1377]

This is such an accessible explanation, I hope it changes some minds.

[@simon7762]

Actually kind of weird not having Mrs. "Oh the urbanity" narrating every second segment

[@weirdfish1216]

We need the densest housing that makes sense around Golden Gate Park in SF and all throughout the Richmond and Sunset. The fact that like 2/3rds of SF is single family homes is preposterous

[@TohaBgood2]

Ummm… love the energy but let’s not state outright wrong data. Only 30% of SF is single family homes right now. 2/3s of SF *was* zoned for single family homes up until about five years ago when SF got rid of single family zoning entirely. And the state of California made single family zoning illegal a few years later.

[@weirdfish1216]

@@TohaBgood2 Yes it’s not zoned for single family homes anymore but that doesn’t mean those 30% of existing single family homes magically turned into apartments. Also I’m pretty sure the state law you’re referencing just allows ADUs on all lots. That’s bad, but also not enough.

[@jtontheheights]

@@TohaBgood2 Just because they changed the zoning laws doesn't mean a significant portion of the city isn't single family homes.

[@watch1981]

SF needs to allow and convert downtown into housing as well

[@daffodil9075]

The Richmond district in San Francisco was zoned for single family homes, but for many years, additional apartments added within the existing building envelope abound. New construction typically runs anywhere from two units to about thirty units or more.

[@michaelwiebe8273]

In sum: supply is high, but still low relative to demand. (And the effect of increasing supply is to reduce prices.)

[@stealth_chain]

it seems a bit odd to say "supply is high, but still relatively low to demand" what even is a high supply value, if not an arbitrary number? it's only ever "high" or "low" when against a demand value

[@LeetHaxington]

Wow people sure do like these walkable cities with plenty of housing things to walk to no need for a car in public transport wow! We should build more of that by building these massive endless suburb shit holes that require a car in 12 lane shit hole highways.

[@TheScourge007]

Good video though I would add one point of nuance on density that is worth remembering (though it doesn't change the assessment of the wildly overpriced cities like NYC and SF). As a CityNerd video detailed, transportation is typically the 2nd biggest expense in a household's budget, and in dense, walkable, bikeable, transit accessible areas, transportation can be a LOT cheaper. Not having to own a car saves money, and that money can be used to bid up housing prices. Which can lead to a mirage of affordability for some non-walkable areas that is really a budget shift from housing to transport. For some folks they might prefer that which is fine as long as you're aware of the trade off and negative externalities are not too socially costly for that choice (which generally isn't a problem for areas with congestion tolls and decent fuel efficiency standards). Also a side note, I know that there was no way you could give justice to the complex housing markets of every city mentioned, but Atlanta has shifted a LOT towards building multi-family especially in the Atlanta city limits. The Atlanta regional commission produced a report last year on 2022 housing permits by county and with the City of Atlanta and City of Atlanta had more housing permits than the next 3 counties combined (despite only having 1/3rd of those counties combined population) that was about 90% multi-family permits. I also happen to live in a large tower here built within the past 2 years. Atlanta has traditionally been an outwardly expanding metro area with SFHs and some of that is still true, but a shift is happening here increasingly towards multi-family density.

[@mikeydude750]

The problem with this is that not owning a car means you are effectively enslaved to your neighborhood. You cannot go anywhere outside the transit network. I could take Caltrain to my company quite easily. But I would not be giving up my car to do so because I still would like the option to just go somewhere off the timetable without having to get an expensive rideshare.

[@matthewshultz8762]

@@mikeydude750 That's only a downside if you live somewhere without places to visit. You can get pretty damn far with a bicycle or motorcycle both of which are still the 'personal transportation' that you're alluding to. Cars definitely make sense in a lot of the US, it's really hard for every household to justify going 100% car-free, but car-lite is still an option, i.e. 1 car per household instead of 1 per resident. I'm like 90% car-lite in day-to-day life but still need to car to do certain things just based on where I live and the total lack of public transport options.

[@TheScourge007]

@@mikeydude750 That's not really true. First, biking let's me go quite a ways away from where I live and combining it with transit gives a HUGE area I can easily reach even in transit-poor Atlanta. And for cases where I can't easily get there with transit and a bike, that's rare enough that a ride-share is worth it. If I needed a ride share more than about once a month I'd consider a car sharing service like Zip Car. It's not really as hard as many Americans think once you have a good sense of all your options.

[@coolsteven2]

​@@mikeydude750 "Enslaved" is quite a hyperbole, don't you think? I regularly go to other neighborhoods and cities around the Bay and NorCal without owning a car...

[@BradizbakeD]

​@@mikeydude750 I haven't owned a car for the 14 years I've lived here in San Diego, and I've had zero issues going anywhere in the Metropolitan region using just public transit and/or walking, so I'm FAR from being "enslaved to my neighborhood". 😂

[@riverbankfrank4896]

Excellent analysis. Although I am thirsty for more discussion surrounding the financialization of the housing market in the sphere of planning discourse.

[@KOSMOinfinite]

SF has the same land area as Paris. SF can hold ~2 M people and not have to build any skyscrapers. There is room for growth, just not the political will to make it happen. SF has decided to be a museum city and forever stunt its growth, and thus, will always be expensive.

[@mindstalk]

Not to mention the rest of the Bay Area, most of which could literally triple in population and still not be as dense as SF.

[@mikeydude750]

the city doesn't want growth, because growth killed it. the tech sector destroyed SF's culture by turning it into a homogeneous "startup hub"

[@eugenetswong]

Thank you! I love your use of graphs.

[@barryrobbins7694]

In a city like San Francisco, more available housing would definitely help lower housing costs. If left up to market forces would it be affordable to the average person?

[@metavercenary]

Asking the real question, here. They’re the architects of this housing shortage, not the solution.

[@EmperorMars]

Removing red tape from housing construction in the Bay Area would certainly reduce the cost of housing to a certain point, but all markets reach an equilibrium, and I don't think most experts would ever claim that even a totally unregulated housing market would be able to affordably house everybody who wants to live in the Bay Area, since it is simply so desirable. That's why most YIMBYs also believe that social housing and supply subsidization is a key component of addressing housing shortages in cities like SF and NYC.

[@x--.]

Yes. The answer is certainly yes.

[@barryrobbins7694]

@@EmperorMars Yes, there a lot of people that want to live in the Bay Area, but don’t because they can’t afford it. There are also a lot of people that have really long commutes from the Central Valley to work in the Bay Area. The disparity of incomes creates the situation as much as any physical housing shortage. It has to feel demeaning for someone working full time to still need a housing subsidy. There are major defects in the economic system. Workers working full time, doing work that needs to be done, shouldn’t need a subsidy. Otherwise it is really a subsidy to the employer.

[@bobbycrosby9765]

@@barryrobbins7694 this problem exists in LA too. I have cousins who work in San Fernando Valley but live in Bakersfield. If High Speed Rail ever gets built it might help them out a bit. Or not, I don't really know.

[@OctopolisGaming]

The main issue, for me, is housing and real estate in general turning into commodities or, even worse, speculative assets. At this point, the demand for housing, particularly in cities like NY or SF, is not based on people's need for a place to live, but on the need for safe investments for investors from around the world. In that context, the demand is for profits on top of profits. The supply of housing is then carefully controlled to sustain high profit margins, and legislation becomes a tool for that.

[@jerrytwolanes4659]

Love the work you continue to do! You both are amazing!

[@jameshansenbc]

This is a great presentation! Every elected official, particularly at the municipal level, should watch this.

[@j.s.7335]

I'm from Austin, and all that permitting worked! Finally, after over a decade, my rent hasn't increased this year!

[@alkjhsdfg]

Love this channel. Thanks for all the great work!

[@definitelynotacrab7651]

We need more building and especially more non-profit/below market rate buildings

[@erictaylor3897]

San Francisco has way too many single family homes. Certain areas should be re-zoned, especially around Balboa Park Station. Golden Gate Park should be lined with mid-rise and high rise apartments. It doesn't have to look like Central Park but a smaller version would be nice, instead of the low rise buildings there now. City council isn't truly interested in fixing the housing problem.

[@MrBirdnose]

San Francisco has a desirable climate and easy access to jobs. You could build it up like Manhattan and still not meet demand.

[@Shamrockshake007]

This is tough issue bc one of the charms of SF are the smaller older buildings and row houses (single family homes) that create the unique character. On the other hand if every generation is priced out of the City is it still SF?

[@atm1947]

@@Shamrockshake007it isn’t SF anymore to most people. San Francisco was the frontier of gentrification, and the ongoing process of gentrification that’s affecting most American cities has already finished in SF. It slit the throat of San Francisco’s working class community, and then dined on its proverbial corpse by skyrocketing the price of most of those Victorian homes formerly owned by SF’s poor. The obsession with preserving SF’s “charm” and “uniqueness” is quite literally what has killed much of its charm and uniqueness. Cities are like humanity, they are not stagnant. They are meant to evolve and change and grow. Refusing to do so is why SF’s working class has all moved to Antioch, Martinez, Vallejo, or even out of state.

[@isaacliu896]

there will be substantial turnover in the board of supervisors this year. aaron peskin is term limited (and will probably lose mayor), dean preston and connie chan might lose as well. some of the sunset and richmond supervisors are yimby (to a paris-level). london breed or daniel lurie as mayor will probably be yimby. and hey maybe it doesn't even matter because the state will intervene and force SF to build

[@MakeMeThinkAgain]

Under current rules you couldn't build anything on the south side of Lincoln (GG Park) that would result in shadows hitting the park. As much as I would like to see taller construction along transit lines, our best option may be just letting people build a story or two taller all over town.

[@chrisaugustin9181]

i think a big reason for affordability not being fixed is because dense cities are an American anomaly, so as soon as prices go down, people move in

[@theurbanspokesman]

OMG What a great find! Thanks for this video!

[@dekox]

As a European, it's quite maddening to see 7:25 as what's considered high density in America. San Francisco is not high density!

[@bobbycrosby9765]

That's not the high density part of San Francisco. By land area, the majority of San Francisco is actually suburbs that look like that. But it's not where you live if you want to live in a "city" - you can't really walk anywhere.

[@realtissaye]

same here in Canada 🙃

[@daffodil9075]

San Francisco is the densest large city in in the United States outside of New York City. However, the density decreases as you travel further from the urban core.

[@brandontaraku6081]

A big problem with how people talk about cities is that they view a single city as a monolith when that is almost never the case. SF like many cities, has denser neighborhoods and less dense neighborhoods. The one at 7:25 is a less dense more suburban neighborhood of SF, but I should add that for suburban standards in the US, that is a very dense SFH neighborhood. I would also add that I’ve seen plenty of neighborhoods like this in Europe so I’m not sure what the fuss is about. I was just in Amsterdam recently and found that so much of Amsterdam is built at a similar scale to SF.

[@brandontaraku6081]

@@bobbycrosby9765Exactly. I would even add that this area is an example of a very walkable suburban SFH neighborhood, and probably one of the best SFH neighborhoods in the US, given that most suburban neighborhoods in the US are so isolated from other areas. These suburban neighborhoods in western SF are still fairly walkable and are in close proximity to some commercial main streets in the area.

[@wellivea1]

Density means nothing if you are unwilling to add further density later when there is demand. Some of these cities may be rather dense (although SF clearly is severely underdeveloped), but have not added more density (vertical density) hardly at all in the last several decades at least. The housing supply in these areas is fixed and the existing density is attractive enough for demand to be much larger than supply. It's that simple, it doesn't need to be more complicated than that. Every other reason for housing affordability issues are either brought up as a poison pill for adding housing ("evil developers", historic preservation, etc), or are totally non-workable like rent controls, investment bans, etc.

[@takatamiyagawa5688]

So it's like adding another lane to a busy road. Eventually, demand is going to catch up with increased capacity or supply, and you'll eventually need another lane, or train, or another block of houses, or apartment building, unless it turns into a city that no-one wants to move to, like pittsburg or detroit.

[@coolsteven2]

Wanted to note that SF is planning to upzone huge swaths of the Western side and along major transit cooridors but it's taking a minute to get to final approval. The exciting thing is that yimby endorsed candidates have been winning local seats!

[@thomasgrabkowski8283]

Well thing is, most San Francisco residents these days don’t own homes, so NIMBYs, by making housing unaffordable and pricing most residents out of home ownership has backfired on them

[@ashishpatel350]

Problem is too many rental units and not enough units being sold to people living in them.

[@joyg2526]

Implementing strategies to decommodify residential properties and create publicly funded housing will effectively tackle housing affordability issues.

[@16randomcharacters]

What we could do in NYC is discourage RTO pushes by employers to empty out the office buildings and convert them to apartments.

[@mikeydude750]

Yes. Instead of giving employers tax credits to fill seats in their downtowns, we should give them tax penalties for forcing RTO.

[@jevinliu4658]

@@mikeydude750 I mean, part of the problem is that office buildings generate tax revenue for the city, and so less office buildings means less tax revenue. So cities have incentives to force RTO just to keep themselves above water

[@mikeydude750]

@@jevinliu4658 Sounds like the cities planned poorly and need to actually adjust to a new reality rather than forcing companies to shove people back into offices for work that could easily be done remote.

[@rainemccandless8160]

I am a nyc college student and am currently studying in southern Japan for one year. Its really amazing just how poorly in NYC, even though its as populated and busy as Tokyo, is less consistently dense as smaller Japanese metros like Fukuoka or Kitakyushu. NYC may be known for its massive office high rises that dominate midtown Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City, in most of the city we barely build more than 2/3 stories in most neighborhoods like Astoria, Jamaica, or central Harlem. Its amazing how many empty lots or abandoned building I see in NYC, knowing each lot could be home to dozen of new residents hoping to start a life in NYC or a lifeline to someone teetering on the brink of homelessness due to insane rents. In Japan, all cities are built with density, as outside of Kanto and Kansai (the Tokyo and Osaka-Kyoto-Nara metros), there are no large flat plains to build on. Even large metros like Fukuoka are constrained by high mountains and their seashore. Despite this physical challenge, rents are actually very affordable and the housing is far nicer, large, and more convenient than any of my NYC housing. Japan builds dense. And not even massive 30+ story towers, but often less than 8 floors for most apartment buildings. Plenty of sunlight, ample space for wind, and smoothly integrated neighborhoods. And with the much less strict rules on housing and business, there are endless amount of tiny shops that service their local community on the ground floors and alleyways here. hair salons, small tiny ramenya, computer repair workshops, massage parlors, tiny clothing stores, anything you'd need. There is still reasonable regulations on where industry can be for health and safety. But in this looser system of zoning regulation, I never seen or heard of a dangerous business like an e-bike repair shop in a residential neighborhood, as they have a reputation for starting major building fires in NYC. This densification and freedom for business gives japanese metros like Fukuoka a really strong local economy, as the public transit here well surpasses NYC, which is considered the best in North America because well, it exists for one ^^'. The dense urban neighborhoods here give enough activity to support this amazing transit, and the dense neighborhood's foot traffic is enough to sustain all of these super tiny business that give the neighborhood character.

[@mikeydude750]

Different culture, different society.

[@mindstalk]

@@mikeydude750 Different choices, different outcomes. Japan chose housing. US chose homelessness.

[@rainemccandless8160]

@@mikeydude750 Not sure what you mean by this. Japanese people aren't aliens that live on a different planet. They're just human beings like you or me that made different choices on how to live in their environment, and we can learn a lot from them. The biggest cultural differences is that people try to refrain from making loud noise at night and women covering up as much of their skin as possible during the summer to try to meet East Asia's fair skin beauty standard. Nothing all that drastic.

[@mikeydude750]

@@rainemccandless8160 Asian cultures are more collectivist than Americans prefer. That's fine for them and it clearly works very well. But for Americans? Absolutely not.

[@rainemccandless8160]

@@mindstalk exactly. In North American, its primarily that we stopped building housing on a large scale after 2008, and are only now after 15 years are we building again despite our population growing by about 15-20 million due to immigration. And as a secondary factor, we treat housing as commodities to be bought and sold, investments that should accure in value. In Japan, they are constantly, constantly building more housing to keep costs stable, as Japan continues to urbanize and building codes are constantly improving to better withstand some of the strongest typhoons, earthquakes, and flooding on this planet. With a secondary factor of Japan historically always rebuilt housing every 25 years, as japan is very, very, very humid, and wooden houses rot much faster than in other regions. This, along with building codes constantly changing, means housing decrease in value as they get older, as they are seen by many Japanese as temporary objects that are rebuilt as needed.

[@WestTown97]

based on zumper data, the median monthly studio cost is $3,650 in NYC & $2,150 in SF. based on government data, the median monthly pay for a single person is $9,058 in nyc & $8,742 in SF. therefore, the median single person can afford living by themself in SF with 25% of their pretax income, but someone in NYC would need to dump 40%. NOTE: i’m talking about cities not metro areas if you wanna look at metro areas, a young person could split a 2-bedroom in oakland on a luxury high rise for $3,200 a month. starting pay for a bus driver in SF is $64,480. you could have a nice commute via BART to work and only have to forfeit 30% of your income each month to have your own bedroom in a luxury apartment in a walkable/bikeable neighborhood with good transit

[@christopherneil8265]

No, what fixes it is housing decommodification.

[@wzeng02]

Excellent video addressing the core issue of high housing prices in nyc and SF. The city NIMBY needs to let developers built more housing.

[@JesusChrist-qs8sx]

Re: St. Louis (and other cities, I'm sure, but I live in STL) This supply/demand thing does apply here too - the city (and metro) overall has lower rents, but zoom in on some municipalities and neighborhoods in St. Louis City (the prewar urban area) and you'll see the same trend. The Central West End, for example, is one of the densest parts of the region. It's also one of the most expensive. But a huge part of the problem is that a ton of the land is exclusively single family homes (mansions) while an even larger portion of the land (right by transit too) is parking owned by the hospital complex in the neighborhood. So while it's super dense, it's also pretty much out of room to easily grow and so ends up having a huge supply/demand imbalance. Laclede, one of the streets that runs along Forest Park in the CWE and other really expensive neighborhoods, for example is lined with mansions. All of which have both zoning protections and historical protections.

[@Ben-jq5oo]

I love density so long as all your neighbours abide by the strata rules (no dumping old furniture outside the bin store when you move out for example; keeping music to a “reasonable” level, not having musical instruments..also not leaving fire doors propped open etc etc etc). I have lived in density and experienced all of the above. Who else here has done also? The channel definitely needs to address these issues more robustly. Personally I love to hear a neighbour practice on the piano or sax, but not the drums. How do we address these issues..? And yes, density is very expensive as are strata (management) fees, in Australia 🇦🇺🏳️‍🌈

[@ujai5271]

I just yesterday thought "we know induced demand is a thing for traffic, but wouldn't the same thing be true for housing, ie 'more housing would increase demand for housing, eventually leading to higher prices?'". This video doesn't cover my thought exactly, but it did help me understand a few correlations I had not considered

[@jmlinden7]

It depends on land prices, but generally speaking 5-over-1's give you the most amount of housing per dollar. The biggest problem is that too much of SF and NYC are not zoned for 5-over-1's even though their transit networks could in theory handle the extra density.

[@AbsolutePixelMaster]

I'm glad to see videos going into detail on this... whenever someone makes that argument, that the densest cities are the most expensive and therefore density causes prices to go up... I'm always speechless. Like, do they not understand basic economic concepts of supply and demand? Like what do they think is causing the price to go up in such a scenario? I'm genuinely curious... Do they think housing just magically get's more expensive because it is built closer together? What would cause that? Less building materials would be needed... So it isn't a material cost thing... There really is only one conclusion you can draw, more people want (or need) to live there. What the heck'in else would it be? Anyway, using the word "abundance" was brilliant. Hopefully it clears things up a little. I'm going to start using it myself. Density is just a more practical way to provide abundance, and abundance is just relative to how many people need housing in an area.

[@user-yi7zj3lv5t]

Density can. We just have too many zoning codes and it locks it in corporate development and ownership. Along with over commodification.

[@SwiftySanders]

The most expensive cities also have the highest paying salaries and have public transportation and have more areas that are walkable.

[@shauncameron8390]

New York = the US and world's #1 financial center. San Francisco = prominent banking sector and close proximity to Big Tech.

[@angelal8829]

I’m a lifelong Austinite that just moved to New York City and it is (sadly) cheaper for me to live here! Some of that is better pay (I’m a teacher) but as constantly as Austin has been building (which I’m very proud of) we still can’t keep up with our insane growth or the intense property taxes that come from the state’s abysmal education funding policies. There’s also greater flexibility in terms of housing options here in New York and MUCH better transportation options which mean I spend less day to day than I did in Austin. As lots of places get more expensive, the expensive metro areas are honestly relatively affordable. I told my brother who’s still in Austin what I pay for rent here and he was shocked.

[@jfmezei]

On San Francisco: there is value in wanting to preserve the look/feel of a city whose tourism depends on that look/feel. They will keep that legacy tall building, but want to make sure it remains unique by preventing similar height buildings to fill the city especially as modern construction refuses to honour style of the neighbourhood and just build vanilla style-less buildings.

[@patrickfreeman9460]

San Francisco is an outlier in the vacancy graph on account of the "tech curse." Analogous to the way resource-rich countries can preserve their economic stability without otherwise developing their economies, the federal regulatory environment surrounding venture capital makes the SF Bay Area geographically sticky for the tech industry, despite otherwise being inhospitable. If Silicon Valley were teleported somewhere else, SF's statistics would much more closely resemble Detroit's.

[@Jakob_DK]

So if you remove a global industrial power house making fortunes - there would be less demand? I agree:-)

[@patrickfreeman9460]

@@Jakob_DK No, I mean if you remove the regulatory restrictions on venture capital, those companies would be more likely to relocate.

[@jez5855]

I live in Calgary Canada. Our city council recently passed a rezoning law that allow builders to build multi unit apartments in certain areas where only single homes was allowed before. Weeks later, a few hundred residents file a lawsuit against the city. They cite various reasons from increased traffic to possible issues with water pipes not being able to support these new apartments in their local area. Mostly silly reasons if you ask me. But it starts to make sense once you realize that all these residents live in very well off communities in the city. In reality, they opose such changes because they dont want affordable homes in their area because they dont wanna attract lower income families that could in theory, potentially cause an uptick in crime .

[@peabody1976]

There is a fifth element (!) that you touched on at the end, but didn't list as a contributing factor: the type of renter/homebuyer and income level. In both SF and NYC, you have varied income levels because job types are varied, but it's the average salary in both places that also plays a factor. NYC is the US financial and business centre and has a higher-than-average salary rate in addition to the other four factors you listed; SF is a tech centre with higher-than-average salary rates. That type of rate means that the limited stock that is there -- as you say explicitly -- can be bought or rented by people with the means and those without the means have to live either 1) farther out, irrespective access to transport, or 2) pay more (regardless of space) but have a much more tenuous existence. And despite the demand that exists, and the developers that want to build, the regulations you cite both make building new project more expensive to developers and make those that do get built easier to "overcharge" (since developers try to recoup their costs via rents/mortgages). It is part of the cycle that Seattle, Minneapolis, and other places are finally trying to solve (this despite Seattle also being a giant tech/service industry hub).

[@loljakkon]

the answer is pretty simple actually landlords, and housing being treated as a commodity that needs to infinitely increase in value

[@loljakkon]

however zoning laws definitely are an issue as well, making it easier for landlords to charge more than they should be

[@MrRicklynch57]

There is much more that goes into San Francisco. Developers will only build luxury apartments and condos therefore the rent will still be $3,000 and the 1BR condo will still be $1M with a $1K HOA. Rents and HOA in California are expensive due to high insurance due to earthquakes and wildfires. The reason that apartments can’t be built the way they were in 1926 is because in 1989 several apartments that size were knocked down and caught fire during the earthquake. San Francisco has several building codes due to natural disasters. You can’t just remove them and when an earthquake happens and kills thousands of people say, “at least we lowered rent”.

[@dressmaking]

Earthquakes and fire are the reason why Tokyo doesn't have dense housing /s BFFR, San Francisco (and California) could solve this problem if we didn't make homeowner greed our guiding principle.

[@MrRicklynch57]

@@dressmaking Japan has the opposite problem. Tokyo is overcrowded and a place where common people can live in a box. Why not build a skyscraper in Yamate? Everything there is quite spacious and the people there are quite wealthy. 200 square feet is the size of a bathroom not a living quarters.

[@dressmaking]

@@MrRicklynch57 FYI "/s" indicates sarcasm and "BFFR" stands for "be f*****g for real". Cost of living in Tokyo is much much lower than that of San Francisco so clearly they are doing something right.

[@user-tz5uq2bt1s]

I'm practically allergic to the heat of the south. Gotta stay north.

[@operavin]

Someone else said it here, but when you make a house your retirement investment, it’s no longer housing. So many people I know bought around 1970 for around 3x their annual income, and sold their homes for 20x their current income (buy for $50k, sold for $2M).

[@bopete3204]

Excellent video as always. The notion that density itself rather than overall supply across an entire housing market leads to lower rents is quite widespread and it needs to be corrected. I'm convinced that Condon became a nut because he though density itself leading to affordability was the orthodox view.

[@ericmaynard493]

If the most dense city in America also has the most unmet demand, does that imply that cities naturally grow unbounded? I can appreciate the opinion of not wanting your city to turn into a megalopolis like NYC. Esp with America's bad land use and public transit policies. I imagine that many New Yorkers like myself only live here because of jobs. And megalopolises attract employers. But my employer would still exist if the city was half the size. I'm not sure how you can prevent a city from turning into a megalopolis like NYC without hurting housing affordability, but I think that is a topic worth discussing.

[@ericmaynard493]

To clarify, limiting a metro area's housing supply would be devastating to housing affordability. I think the discussion topic I'm getting at is: how do you allow a metropolitan area to grow unbounded while still being very livable and not feeling like a megalopolis. Exploring the metro areas of Shanghai and Beijing recently, it seems like the answer is a robust metro system in combination with limiting low-rise and mid rise development. Many spread-out clusters of towers surrounded by open space but closely connected by efficient metro is the utopia. Coming back down to earth, idk what the vision in America would look like given the state of our existing metro areas.

[@ericmaynard493]

I think we need to acknowledge that Yimbyism probably implies unbounded growth. I was hoping that would be discussed in this video when I saw the title.

[@Basta11]

@@ericmaynard493 Cities grow when they are successful. Jobs is one of them. Jobs attract people. People have needs, Businesses pop up to try to fill those needs. They offer jobs. There is a positive feedback loop. San Fransisco should be more like NYC if it weren’t for the people who use government policies to prevent this. LA use to be more like NYC. Watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit. San Diego should be denser than it is if it weren’t so restrictive. The irony is that if we simply allow cities to be denser, building up, that actually prevents even more sprawl, leaving more lands to be more rural or suburban.

[@Basta11]

@@ericmaynard493 Some amount of growth is inevitable. NIMBY policies cause growth to sprawl horizontally rather than vertically. They also cause a lot of unnecessary growth. Things that would exist less in a denser place. Cars become central to getting around when things are more spread out. This requires a whole ecosystem of infrastructure. So many jobs exists just to feed the beast - gas stations, mechanics, car washes, shops for auto parts, dealerships, parking garages, junk yards, accident injury lawyers. There are miles of more roads, pipes, sewers, drainage, electrical wires, more fiber cables. Plenty of jobs to construct, replace, and maintain all that. There is also need for more police cars, more fire trucks, ambulances, more school buses, garbage trucks, delivery. A lot of activity is just to maintain the sprawl lifestyle that would be unnecessary in more traditional development.

[@ericmaynard493]

@@Basta11 yeah I def agree. Dense development in combination with less car prioritization is needed to prevent sprawl. That being said, idk if most people want to be surrounded on all sides by miles of dense development. Speaking to your point about the job market growing because it supports the needs of residents of a city, that makes sense but I think most of the white collar jobs that compose a city's downtown business district aren't domestic services, but rather provide services for the global economy. (Bring wealth into the city's economy). Those jobs want to be in cities with the most desirable labor market. So yeah it's def a positive feedback loop, but I think those jobs still exist regardless of whether the city does.

[@Scott.Jones608]

There's also the national housing supply to consider. There is so little quality urbanism in the US & Canada that the few places which do have it are overwhelmed with demand.

[@flashsentry1791]

The problem with dense living is that alot of cities in the usa dont have good public transit. So people still need cars. But the buildings dont provide enough parking vs meny people can live there. So now every side street is cramped with street parking.

[@PlaylistWatching1234]

One of your best videos

[@TomTheGas]

Something you completely ignored and is one of my biggest issues with "yimbys" is the reason supply is kept so low in places like NYC and SF is because of the landlord lobby. They play a huge role in these exorbitant rents and to ignore that fact is irresponsible.

[@x--.]

And why do they have outside power, is it because there's a shortage?

[@jackh3242]

So build more and tax empty units

[@ecurewitz]

Greed is the root of the problem

[@teuast]

I feel like most "yimbys" are pretty open to the idea that landlords have too much power. I would consider myself both a YIMBY and a landlord abolitionist, personally. Certainly if somebody thinks we can fix housing supply without reducing how much deference we give to landlords, that's a problem, but I would be surprised if that's a position many people have.

[@josephinepura525]

Hence why I think it's time for the government to step in and replicate what Singapore and Japan are doing - build and operate public housing for the middle class.

[@Legonatic]

Lived in Boston for 5 years and have lived in NYC for 2. It sucks that housing is so expensive here and the demand is so high that finding a new place is hard. It feels like there is also a vested interest in keeping building permitting low and difficult so as to inflate prices. Both cities (and their metro areas) could be doing a lot more to increase building supply.

[@SwiftySanders]

Something to note… is that in NYC rental vacancy rates don’t tell the full picture. There are many empty apartments and other commercial real estate that aren’t being listed which means they are unlikely to be counted as part of the rental vacancy rate. Many businesses delist empty apartments until they are sure they can get the highest price for it using software like Realpage.

[@FullLengthInterstates]

~10 story mid rise buildings (think eastern europe) are traditionally considered the optimal density for cost per sf in terms of construction/ energy/ maintenance, so every small town with low demand could still improve the cost of ownership if more residents shared walls in a few apartment buildings rather than living in their own detached homes. In areas with low land value, high insurance costs are an increasing problem. If a roof exclusively shelters 1 family, then that family is responsible for the cost of the entire roof when a storm destroys it. Consider the increasing danger from extreme climate in terms of wind/ temperatures, and the subsequent need for more HVAC/insulation, wind and impact resistance, as well as flood mitigation. All would be cheaper per unit with bigger buildings, so the true optimal density of the current century would be in far bigger buildings than the optimal density of the past century.

[@shanekeenaNYC]

That's where building technology needs to be seriously updated and it starts with the biggest projects and works it's way to smaller projects as the existing tech becomes more easily scaled off the back of the new technology. From Kone Elevator Systems; The Secret is in the Rope Traveling a kilometer is no huge feat - unless you want to make the journey upwards in a single elevator ride. The secret of smooth and uninterrupted vertical elevator travel in the world’s increasingly tall skyscrapers lies in the ropes. Published 29-01-2024 At first glance it doesn’t look like much, a flat piece of black licorice, perhaps. But the superlight KONE UltraRope® is a completely new take on elevator hoisting. Made of a carbon fiber core surrounded by a unique high-friction coating, it weighs only about a fifth of a similar conventional steel rope. You might not think about it, but the weight of an elevator’s ropes impacts everything. The lighter the rope, the smaller and lighter the elevator counterweight and sling. So, a lighter rope reduces the overall moving mass and energy consumption significantly. This matters, especially as buildings are getting taller. The top ten tallest in the world each already reach heights of more than 500 meters, or roughly 100 floors per building. In structures this tall, using conventional elevator hoisting technology means moving masses weighing around 27,000 kilograms. This is like fitting ten off-road vehicles inside the shaft and moving them up and down alongside the elevator! At around this point the ropes become so heavy that additional ropes are needed just to hoist the weight of the ropes themselves. This is one reason most very tall buildings feature sky lobbies reachable from ground floor by one set of elevators, with another set of elevators taking people onwards to higher levels. Enter KONE UltraRope. It cuts the weight of moving masses inside the shaft for a 500-meter-tall building to roughly 13,000 kilograms, or the equivalent of 4 off-road vehicles. This reduction is so significant that it enables travel from ground floor to penthouse in one continuous elevator journey - even in a building that rises to a height of one kilometer! "With a hoisting rope that is 80% lighter than conventional steel rope, we achieve a 15% reduction in energy consumption for our high-rise elevators. This not only translates to enhanced operational efficiency, but also leads to 11% decrease in the overall lifecycle carbon footprint,” says Timo Vlasov, head of MP offering at KONE.

[@FullLengthInterstates]

@@shanekeenaNYC elevator capacity is also a huge issue. traditional elevators have too low throughput for the volume they occupy, its like trying to run an entire city's rapid transit system using only disconnected single tracks. You end up with a building that is 50% shaft. If we want to take advantage of scale we have to figure out modern paternosters

[@davidroldan6007]

More people need to understand the supply and demand dynamics of real estate.

[@kylebeckham3825]

California passed legislation allowing for much higher density around transit. This is already taking place, though slowly, in new developments in the Mission, Excelsior, and (slowest of all) the Outer Sunset. Building costs are high and the financial picture for builders is not great, though hopefully the recent rate reductions unstall some projects. Projects are getting approved at much faster rates than in the last 20 years, but not necessarily being built because of larger market conditions.

[@noseboop4354]

Even though it's legal, Nimbys can still oppose the construction of denser buildings and cause serious delays and cost overruns, which discourage most developpers from taking on such projects. You need to have some pre-approved designs that cannot be opposed by local residents.

[@kylebeckham3825]

@@noseboop4354 This is increasingly difficult to do because of state legislation. SF has come near to being sanctioned by the state for not moving fast enough in realizing its housing element. NIMBYs are very much on the defensive in SF. Even if there were pre-approved designs the market conditions are not favorable to construction at the level and rate that is currently needed.

[@mikeydude750]

@@noseboop4354 Pre-approved designs would ruin the character of neighborhoods they are put into. Local residents are rightfully opposed to this external intrusion at the behest of real estate developers. The externalities pushed onto them are increased congestion from more residents driving or taking transit (crowded trains/buses), less privacy as more people are out and about. The influx of new residents also means less of a community, and can increase crime.

[@anonymoose3423]

The lack of land argument is bullshit. Build up then. If Japan sitting at about 1/30 of the US and Canada's size, 120+ million people, and 80% of its area being uninhabitable mountain, can still build enough places for its population to live in, then anyone making an argument about North America and its supposed lack of land and overpopulation should take a hard look at whether they're just making excuses for a problem that shouldn't even have existed in the first place.

[@metavercenary]

San Francisco is imposing a vacancy tax this year, called the Empty Homes Tax. It will apply downward pressure to rents without building more.

[@daffodil9075]

Never mind the fact that Governor Newsome radically revised the zoning laws in California, expediting the process and emphasizing new buildings on corners in selected traffic corridors.

[@eu9910]

lol that’s not going to happen. It’s just going to cause rents to go up. The owners of those buildings will just pass on the cost of that tax to their other tenants.

[@Parkeralto]

Rent control was imposed in SF in 1972 and since then there have been countless new laws and regulations imposed on property owners, the vacancy tax being just the latest in the name of lowering the cost of renting; just have to ask: How is that working out for you?

[@kraigfarrar3141]

As a former vacancy tax fan, this is not correct. Vacancy taxes have essentially no mechanism to improve rents. They at most might encourage landlords to expedite remodeling work to avoid taxes. This is not a significant contributor to increasing housing supply though. There just isn't much truly vacant housing other than those that are being remodeled or are in the process of seeking new tenants.

[@kraigfarrar3141]

​@@eu9910while the first commenter is incorrect, your assertion that the tax is passed on is also probably incorrect. The market rate for a rental does not increase just because there is a tax placed on it and it's likely that the land owner will end up eating this tax in the very few cases that it applies. The problem with the vacancy tax is more than it doesnt really have a mechanism to affect the market since people generally don't leave units unrented if they can fill them.

[@katyoutnabout5943]

this was really neat! i wish it included stats for canadian cities too, just for comparison’s sake

[@AMPProf]

Idk bout that eh might be little bit there on the ehhh side

[@SincerelyFromStephen]

Pittsburgh also has an unreasonably restrictive zoning code. Multiple projects that have been favored by a majority of the local communities keep getting shut down by a few NIMBYs and the zoning commission because they refuse to grant variances

[@PiotrPavel]

Yes before watching. 1) But done right. Cheap apartments with varies type. Small apartments/big/one level/multi level. 2) avability. If Demand is Higth you need to buuild a lot so if many people wants to live in big cities that demand drive proces up.

[@Wooster77]

Having better, smarter, less corrupt city officials would probably solve most of these problems

[@jordankelly4684]

Most city officials aren't corrupt, they're just too dumb to know that most of their policies are harming their constituents.

[@shauncameron8390]

Not really as the people who elected them are every as dumb corrupt.

[@mintberrycrunch1752]

The construction industry is booming here in Minneapolis. Not insane stuff like Austin but we have quite a few new highrise apartment buildings under construction and many more non high rises as well

[@pineapplesareyummy6352]

I have come to realise that housing affordability is a POLITICAL decision. Compare two similar cities: Singapore and Hong Kong (where I'm originally from). Hong Kong is the most unaffordable housing market in the world. Meanwhile, Singapore is about as dense. But it doesn't have a housing crisis because its government (contrary to popular perception that Singapore is a hyper-capitalist city) is actually very socialist when it comes to housing. They built public housing and restricts that stock only to Singaporean citizens. This excludes the international elite with greater purchasing power than locals from driving up prices to unaffordable levels for ordinary people, thus avoiding social conflict. Meanwhile, cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Toronto, Vancouver have unaffordable housing markets (not as extreme as Hong Kong) despite being from countries with very low population per sq km. It is all political, and has to do with planning, zoning, and whether politicians are multiple homeowners with vested interests in keeping property prices high.

[@MassiveChetBakerFan]

The New York metro area is surprisingly low-rise as you head away from Manhattan. If the free market were allowed to operate, there would be a lot more high-rise apartments to the east and west of the island. A few pedestrian and cycle bridges linked to Manhattan would be very useful too.

[@BS-vx8dg]

Nicely balanced video.

[@wrvpgod2155]

I am in New York right now. And I won the housing lottery twice. (They were in the Bronx, not near my job) New Yorkers see apartment buildings being built all the time. Most of them are luxury, but a percentage of the units are rent controlled. I guess what you guys are saying is that even with so many units being built, there is still a lot of demand, but it doesn’t make sense to act like there aren’t, a lot of units being built. And then there’s also a lot of existing units that aren’t even on the market. I think that codes could be relaxed so that more things can be built without variances, but I also feel like people should be able to have a say in what kind of development happens inside of their neighborhood, especially as so many New Yorkers are being displaced in areas that are being gentrified. There needs to be more protections for residents as new development happens.

[@isaacliu896]

San Francisco is responding! We will fix it! It is time for NYC to start moving too!

[@OhTheUrbanity]

I very much hope SF is able to turn things around! It's an awesome city, I want it to be affordable and accessible.

[@isaacliu896]

@@OhTheUrbanity super optimistic, we are hopefully about to see major turnover in city council (board of supervisors) and even that fails, california state government and scott weiner will intervene

[@JoyClinton-i8g]

P.S. You need to review the PRESENT zoning in New York versus what is built. A lot of existing buildings, especially in Manhattan, would be illegal to build today. The "density" is locked in, and is a historical anomaly.

[@cartermoberg3092]

Detroit is interesting, in the desirable neighborhoods rent is actually quite high expensive for the region. But again there are still other places in the city where you can purchase a home for 5-10k. It’d be interesting to see where greater downtown Detroit would sit on some of those charts.

[@vincentmeylan3859]

ground should be a common good and not to be able to be purchased by people. Also the state needs to regulate this market more.

[@AMPProf]

nawwwwww

[@MakeMeThinkAgain]

5:29 makes a very important point. A large number of SF rental units are owned by large companies that would rather leave the units empty than reduce rents. Both SF and NYC are also very expensive places to build, In SF you have to build with earthquakes in mind and much of the city is either on sand dunes, swamps, or fill. Also, while SF may be denser than the average US city, the entire west side and the SE section are essentially suburban -- mostly townhouses. Political decisions were made back in the 1970s to preserve the city essentially as it was at the time. This was fine while the population was still reduced following the migration to Bay Area suburbs after the war, but it stopped being fine in the 1990s. Unfortunately, no one wants to admit that they may have been wrong in the past. I would love to see what would happen if they just bumped up the height limits everywhere by 20 feet.

[@shauncameron8390]

In some cases it's cheaper to do that than rent to a bad tenant that cannot be legally evicted in a timely manner resulting in high maintenance/repair and legal costs.

[@indigobunting5041]

A few years ago a new apartment complex was built on my street. The original design was for 3 story townhouses. Those in my neighborhood who responded back to the design didn't like how tall and how many townhouses were planned. In the end, they were only two stories and not as many were built. They look much better than the vacant lot, but do not solve the affordable housing problem here. The rents are 3 times the cost of my mortgage. Definitely not affordable housing.