The US doesn't have enough homes. This line shows how many months it would take for the current supply of housing to run out. It's a measure of housing supply and it's
been dropping for a decade. And this line shows how housing prices
have changed. They've skyrocketed in the past year. For rental units, the percentage of empty
buildings is the lowest it's been in 3 decades while rent prices keep going up. But here’s the thing. Often, when new buildings go up in these places people hate them. "It's hard to describe... but... you know it when you see it." "Gentrification building." Most often, they’re talking about
new buildings like this: boxy, modern, multi-family homes. I saw one one day that sort of hit me. And it was a TikTok that was showing this
building in Camden, New Jersey. That’s Jerusalem Demsas, a Vox policy reporter. You know, the comments range from a bunch
of different things. It was people kind of deriding
the building itself saying that it was causing displacement saying, get ready for a Starbucks
to come and pop up. Comments like this are a common narrative. To many, these buildings don’t just look
bland and artificial. They signal raised rents, displacement, and the complete transformation of a neighborhood to a place that’s richer and whiter. But in this case, what happened next
might surprise you. So I started like, kind of like, going around trying to find the specific location,
walking around Google Maps. And eventually, I find it. And I find the building, I look at the address. I look into property records to figure out
what this building was. And not only is it new housing, it's actually
new affordable housing. Turns out, there’s a lot we get wrong about how we see new construction in the US. Whether it’s DC, Oakland, or Austin newer apartment buildings in the US
have a distinct look one that sticks out against older architecture. But these buildings don’t look like historic homes
for a reason. This building is actually one of
the cheapest ways to build an apartment building right now. The design is strategic. According to reporting from Curbed this kind of architecture is built to fit
within restraints like cost, height limits, and safety requirements. It’s why many of these structures are what’s
known as “5-over-1” or “1-plus-5”. That means there’s several levels of
wood-framed construction which usually contain apartments and is known
as Type 5 in building code. That’s over one level with a concrete base which usually contains commercial space or
parking, known as Type 1. The light-frame wood construction, flat windows,
and paneling around the building are all ways to build as affordably as possible. And that means you're able to build
more affordable housing. I think a lot of the time people
don't understand that in order to get affordable housing, the actual
components of the building have to be cheap to develop and to construct. The results can be bland and look artificial but that authenticity problem is an old one. In this book, "The Invention of
Brownstone Brooklyn" Suleiman Osman writes about
the iconic brownstones of Brooklyn a design that today, is widely considered
to be deeply authentic to New York. But in the 19th century, compared to the mostly
wooden homes which predated them critics actually dismissed brownstones as
"modern and artificial”. They called them out as “products
of the mechanical age” ”poorly built and subject to decay”
with a “dehumanizing monotony”. Sound familiar? Comments in a lot of those Tik Tok videos,
they say things like, "Oh, it looks mass-produced. They look phony." I mean, that's literally the exact same language
that was being used in the 1900s to talk about the brownstones. That building we mentioned earlier
in Camden, New Jersey was built using low-income housing tax credits. It has 245 units, geared towards seniors and families making less than 60 percent of
the area’s median income. It’s easy to see why the construction of
affordable housing like this is a good thing but what about the new, market rate buildings
that service middle and higher-income people? They’ve come to symbolize displacement. Or the idea that existing residents could
be forced, involuntarily, to move out. Often for reasons like rent increases or eviction. Since developers like to build in places where
prices are already rising new buildings tend to correlate with those
increased rents and displacement. But a growing number of researchers have tried
to find out whether these new buildings are the cause of displacement. They were testing “the demand effect” or the idea that the new buildings increase
demand for the neighborhood which in turn causes rent hikes
that force people to leave. But the research suggests the opposite. An overwhelming “supply effect”. Where increasing the supply of new buildings even if they are market rate made housing less scarce and decreased rents
and risks of displacement especially in the areas closest
to the new buildings. New housing freed up space within a neighborhood for new residents to move in without
taking up existing homes. And it also meant when they moved
from theirpast homes they freed up housing units
in those neighborhoods as well. But here’s the thing: less displacement was happening
near new construction but it didn’t necessarily mean
less gentrification was happening. Because gentrification and displacement
aren’t the same thing. While displacement happens to people,
gentrification happens to a place. When an area experiences demographic change typically going from lower income tenants
to higher income ones shown here in the darker green. Over time, demographic shifts in the neighborhood
could still occur not because existing residents were displaced but for other reasons: maybe people decided
to move to more desirable neighborhoods or some passed away. And the research suggests when that happened residents were more likely to be replaced
by richer people. Meaning gentrification was happening,
but without forced displacement. So, to reduce both displacement and gentrification you need more market rate and affordable housing like that building in New Jersey. Affordable housing, along with policies
like rental assistance preserve income diversity, making sure those
with lower incomes can always live in a particular neighborhood. If there is a scarcity of a product,
we know this in every market: when there is not enough of something, the
only people who get anything are rich people. And so you have to make sure that there's
enough for everyone at every level. But there’s one very big obstacle to building
housing for everyone, everywhere. Wealthy neighborhoods across the US are really
good at blocking new housing developments. Take a look at this map of New Haven, Connecticut compared to the nearby, wealthier town of
Woodbridge, Connecticut. When we take a look at local zoning laws and
where multi-family developments are allowed in these areas. There’s virtually no land in Woodbridge
zoned for them. Single-family zoning laws block
the vast majority of apartments or affordable housing in this area. When you have political power concentrated
in the hands of very few wealthy homeowners and they say, "We're not going to allow
housing here." Of course, there's going to be
an unequal distribution of housing. In 2020, after a 4-unit multi-family building
was proposed in Woodbridge a group of residents even created these flyers
saying “Do we want this next door?” Pitting single-family homes against multi-family
buildings. And this kind of conflict happens everywhere from Woodbridge, to Soho, to San Francisco. In some places, activists have found a way
to use the language of gentrification against changing zoning laws. For example, in response to a
proposed California bill pushing for more housing near areas with transit including a specific percentage
of affordable housing a group called Livable California said building more housing would add
“jet fuel to a gentrification crisis.” They see the power of this rhetoric and they are using it as a tool to muddle
the debate to make it seem like building new housing is actually going to
create displacement when we know what creates displacement is not building new housing. That's what's so kind of dangerous
about this entire debate. We have gotten to a place where
the actual policy solution is seen as part of the problem.
Labeling an affordable development "gentrification" based on aesthetics seems very on-brand for Tik Tok level of analysis. And makes very worried that people are getting their policy analysis via Tik Tok.
Honestly I know people despise looking at them in my area but honestly I don’t see another way to save Seattle as it currently stands.
Home prices have basically doubled in the last 6 years and although we’ve got an expanding light rail system most of the stops end at fucking malls or parking lots. Each station should be surrounded by these style of buildings where people can live, eat, and play without needing to drive or walk 2 miles in the rain.
Even our existing density isn’t really conducive to life. Unless you live the in the absolute core of most of neighborhoods (which are already prohibitively expensive) you are still walking at least 20 minutes to fresh produce. Now have fun carrying them back!
A lot of people's reactions are "we don't need this free-for-all, we need [some other plan where we build exactly the best type of housing that IMO would be most useful right now]."
Arguing about specifics aside, my reaction is, I'll believe it when I see it.
The anti-zoning approach is actually paying dividends, with easing zoning laws leading to more housing being built and lowered rent (or at least rising less quickly). I am not aware of any alternative approach to affordable housing actually producing results any time recently. Until I do, I think this is making the perfect the enemy of the good, not allowing the easiest approach in the hopes of completely overhauling the entire housing market in a way that doesn't have any political will behind it, and leading to 10 years from now being in the exact same position.
To me it's like someone saying we should oppose universal health insurance because that will help drug companies and what we really need to do is overthrow capitalism.
It seems pretty obvious that if you don't build new buildings then as demand increases the prices in the area will go up and people will get forced out. Rents will go up, property taxes will go up and people will decide to sell their now small but very expensive house for a larger house of the same value somewhere else.
You have to choose one or the other: Do you want the buildings to stay the same? Or do you want the people to stay the same? You can't have both.
Personally, I think changing the buildings in an area but keeping the residents keeps the character of the area far more than keeping the buildings and having everyone forced out.
edit: Also to be clear the real issue is that the only reason these markets start skyrocketing in demand in the first place is generally due to strict zoning laws that keep nearby urban areas from building new homes so there is kind of a spillover effect. You can see this pretty clearly somewhere like San Francisco where basically everything is single-family zoned and prices are just outrageous.
I don't even think they look that bad. I'd much rather live in one of them than the boring brick apartment block built in the 60s I live in now.
If the issue is that they build expensive housing instead of affordable housing then yeah, that's not great. But just from an aesthetic standpoint I think they're kind of neat.
There's a youtube channel called City Beautiful that summarizes something missing in the US, which is Middle-density housing. Everything's either single-family or dense apartments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdresao83bE
It's almost as if uninformed, knee-jerk social media reactions are a bad thing and shouldn't be taken seriously.
i actually think those buildings look nice
people talk like gentrification is a bad thing......
it's pretty fucking great.