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.
@@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
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.
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
Yes! I watched a different urbanist UA-cam 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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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
@@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.
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
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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”.
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
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?
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
@@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...
@@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". 😂
The main takeaway I got from this video was that if you want to massively reduce rent prices you need to massively reduce regulation in the housing market.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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 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.
@@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.
@@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.
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
Not sure if highest, but Toronto is extremely high. Of the $1,000,000 sale price of an average new home, about $300,000 is because of 'welcome' taxes and building permits.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
@@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.
Dense walkable cities being expensive shows they are on demand and that there's too few of them. Part of the reason they can be expensive is because of gentrification. Watch Jedu on New York being gentrified. Watch videos on protests in overtourism. It's because of gentrification pricing locals out. Because rich people hoarded homes and buildings to cater to millions of tourists. Such as in the form of Airbnb or tourist traps. Also, many of those top tourist destinations are dense, walkable, beautiful cities. It shows they are on demand. Watch More Perfect Union on private equity hoarding homes and buildings and leaving them empty. But some good news, I think DW Planet A has a video on people turning office buildings into apartments.
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.
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 🇦🇺🏳️🌈
Is this analysis using entire SF Bay Area including suburbs - east bay, peninsula and San Jose? But this is comparing against New York City - 5 boroughs only? That's not a proper comparison.
You would need to demolish existing housing to build denser in New York City or San Francisco, making it very expensive and less economical. Every new building in most neighborhoods is built on top of a parking or vacant lot, which is becoming scarce. Also, if you create a graph of median income vs rents you might see a correlation. There is no affordable mega-city, maybe the closest is Japan, where zoning is very lax, apartments are small, and they demolish buildings around 30 years old. I agree with all the reforms, but I see no city where incomes are high and rents are low.
A lot of SFH around here in SF are falling apart and might not even up to code. I don't think trying to maintain them is going to be that much cheaper than a demo.
@@coolsteven2 Same here for NYCHA, i think increasing demolitions is a key to affordability as you can easily add density. This is really hard in historic cities with good architecture like SF and NYC.
The whole reason we have zoning restrictions is because a bunch of elitist central planners thought they knew better than the people how to build homes and businesses. All they've accomplished is to consolidate the developers into a few powerful politically connected entities and drive up costs of real estate.
Manhattan is such a unique case that it shouldn't be used a point of comparison most of the time. There's a certain upper limit to populated density where demand for housing inevitably overwhelms supply regardless of urban form, and Manhattan is well past that point.
@@MrBirdnose Sort of. The difference is that housing more people is an independently good thing even if prices remain high, whereas accommodating more vehicles on the road is only beneficial if traffic actually decreases.
@@jimbo1637 In Manhattan it seems like new construction gets used as an investment instead of as housing. Look at some of the new pencil towers, which aren't really designed to be occupied on a permanent basis.
@@MrBirdnose The 6 towers on billionaires row are massive outliers, but there's still some benefit in having them since they soak up demand from investors, thereby reducing the amount of competition they pose to locals.
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).
Interesting video, thank you! "Housing elasticity" makes me wonder about the reverse, what happens when cities/towns shrink. Most places with a declining population turn into sad ghost towns, the only strategy against that seems to be to get more people to move back there. But failing that, I wonder if there's other ways to stabilise a place's economy/vibe with a smaller population than before? (unrelated to the video, I'm aware. Just a brain fart)
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
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.
There is also the question of taxation. Dense parts of a city are taxed very high and generate large profits which pay for the undertaxed majority of a city which is single family dwellings, making SFDs underpriced and dense living over priced. There’s an organism in the US which helps cities with financial problems see the their taxation issues via graphs. This is what every graph they have produced shows. Unfortunately, I forget their name.
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.
I remember someone claiming San Francisco is so expensive because its surrounded by water on 3 sides and then asking "don't they have dikes?" granted my ancestors came (in part) from the Low Countries so I was thinking more of the engineering method that gave the Netherlands 2 new provinces.
@@MrBirdnose That is understandable, after all there is a point where ecological damage might be incurred. Hopefully there might be a way to square the circle.
I have no idea if this is the case or not but couldn't it also end up being a situation where more houses just means more people? It's like improving road congestion. You add more lanes and more people drive.
My 42 unit 6 floor apt building in San Francisco is over 40% vacant and the landlord has refused to budge on rents since 2021. Units that were not rented at 3400/month have sat vacant for over a year, and the asking rent increased to 4100/month. It defies logic.
Detroit is a very special case. Look for "Demographic history of Detroit" in that wikipedia thing. Population peaked in 1950 at 1,849,568 and has declined since t now be (2020) at 639,111 The glut of housing was such that Detroit made it possible for neighbours to buy unoccupied house adjacent to theirs, tear it down to make for larger garden, and that was to maintain decent housing prices to protect existing homeowners investments. Automation and loss of jobs in automotive industry has lead to this decline, as well as exodus to nearby towns/suburbs.
In san Francisco rent will never be low, unless coty lower property tax. A$1.3m house @1.178% is $1276 month plus house insurance $4000year /12 mon is $333 mon. This $1600 a month just on that.
More housing won't solve price fixing, landlord greed, or landlords letting apartments stay vacant instead of allowing them to be rent controlled. There's already enough housing, that's not why rents are so high
Nice video. I think the issue goes beyond supply-demand though, and comes down to the type of new, dense housing stock being developed-of which, much of it is luxury and high-amenity. For instance, the average SF rent ($3000/mo) is over 50% the average income (~$68K)-which is absurd. If I was a betting person, I’d bet these new units sit higher vacancy than older, “more affordable” units. Ultimately, density should accompany affordable housing incentives as well as commercial/industrial development that tempers real estate speculation.
Glad I'm not the only one to think this. My city has the units, but there's usually never any vacancies for the affordable housing, even the slums that come from motel conversions. Now if you're willing to pay $1,500 or more, vacancies will gradually increase. Density is great and definetly need where I live, but that alone won't address the issue of affordability as developers, banks, and investment groups want a relatively decent RoI with each build.
> much of it is luxury No, much of it is "luxury", an empty marketing term. The new housing is expensive because _all_ housing in the region is expensive, even old homes with lots of problems. New construction is not raising prices; expensive new construction is _reflecting_ the market rates.
Didn't the cities of Los Angeles and Calgary both bring in new blanket zoning laws that allow for much higher density without having to go through all the red tape and roadblocks to building higher density housing?
A lot of california zoning reform is basically meaningless at the scale of housing construction that is needed to address the supply gap. LA has pushed for ADUs as a solution, and the LA region is now permitting almost 7000 ADUs a year! But sadly, with an estimated supply gap of over 400,000 units, it's a drop in the bucket, and LA and other cities in the region are doing much less to actually reduce non-zoning code related roadblocks to development, like permitting timelines and developer fees.
1 million dollars for that very simple small house is insane. That should be a starter home for a family in the lower end of income, not a home for a millionaire.
You left out the effect of rent control, highly restrictive in both SF and NYC which has a demonstrated long term negative effect on availability and affordability. It is like a game of musical chairs where those who get a place to sit never get up to allow someone else a place. In SF a tenant who moves into a unit essentially has a life estate in that unit, (and sometimes to their offspring) with free legal aid and a huge bureaucracy to enforce their rights. All the numerous costs and responsibilities falling on the owner. Is it any wonder that an estimated 100k rental units are being held off the market in SF primarily by long term owners with paid off mortgages who can make the calculation that a tenant actually lowers the value of their property investment and can afford to keep it empty for their family members or TIC conversion.
This isn't exactly true - new buildings aren't subject to rent control in SF. I don't know if its a moving date but when I lived there anything built after the '70s wasn't under rent control.
Higher density means that more businesses -- more kinds of businesses and more businesses of each kind -- can have enough potential customers nearby for the business to be viable. More kinds of businesses means that people can get goods and services more precisely to their liking. More businesses of each kind means more competition, which means better prices. That means more people will want to live there, which in turn means higher rents and condo prices. With NIMBYism, we can stop this cycle, and get the higher rents and condo prices directly, avoiding unnecessary improvements to other people's quality of life.
so what about Detroit? We have a declining population for decades. But we still have a problem with affordability of Housing compared to to means of the inhabitants.
The problem is transportation funding. Florida has higher population than New York State. Amtrak is going to spend $16 billion for a new tunnel from New Jersey to New York City (Gateway Project), so Amtrak should spend an equal amount in Florida. Half of Gateway is paid for by federal taxpayers. SF and NYC are desirable places to live because locals get outsized benefits paid for by the rest of the country. If NYC and SF had to pay for the MTA, PATH, BART, MUNI that they use, they might be interested controlling the costs in those systems, instead of planning on subsidies for everyone involved. The estimate to extend Caltrain 2.2 miles from 4th and King to the already built Salesforce Tower (all of this is inside SF) is $6.8 billion ($3 billion per mile, a world record, when it gets done). Note that there is no/zero/nada/zip Amtrak service in the Florida panhandle. To take a train from New Orleans to Jacksonville, you go through Washington DC (not kidding).
Those older buildings are beautiful. I lot of fear of new housing comes from the fact that new housing = ugly housing. If we were still building things that looked like that building from 1926, I have a feeling people wouldn't mind as much.
Sadly, artisans like stonemasons, bricklayers, and woodcarvers are in massively short supply, ever since Wall Street screwed the housing and construction sectors in 2008. Most have either moved abroad, shifted careers, or stopped working altogether.
There are actually newspaper articles from a hundred years ago complaining that Victorian houses are tacky and gaudy. Focusing so much on aesthetics is a losing battle because it's all subjective. I actually have liked a lot of the more contemporary new buildings.
@@coolsteven2 I prefer more ornate aesthetics myself, but see no way to democratically mandate it in a way that couldn't be hijacked by NIMBYs. I am friendly to mandating stuff like external shade elements and balconies, which would at least break up the "flat panel" effect of modern construction while also providing functionality.
3:14 And is anyone surprised why rents in Austin have been going down??? Also, not surprised to see Charlotte in second place there. Have traveled there occasionally in the past few years, so much construction going on!
Have rents in Austin been going down? I have friends in Austin who are still seeing rent increases. Just because you can hypothetically get cheaper rents by moving elsewhere does not mean "rents are going down". There is a significant cost in moving apartments. I just moved apartments two months ago because my previous landlord wanted another 10% rent increase on top of the 10% increase I got the year before. It cost me about $2500 to move everything.
@@MbisonBalrog Austin filled up with people from Silicon Valley, as did Portland, Seattle, etc. Basically demand to live in SF is so high that the spillover has filled up three other cities. I'm not sure there's enough density possible to fix that.
1:47 this unit makes me so sad particularly because it's beautiful and fits in seamlessly with the landscape, defeating the entire 'neighborhood character' nonsense; and yet, it's literally illegal to build the same exact unit today. it makes no sense
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.
Dense areas are expensive, because no developer will build density in an area that does not have the demand/prices to support it. A tower costs more to build per square foot than a bungalow, so towers will only be built in areas where the underlying land value is high enough to justify it.
That's true about towers, but you can also get fairly decent density -- more than San Francisco -- with low-cost, low-rise housing. Allowing small lot sizes, high lot coverage, 4 or even 3 story buildings everywhere, and *not having parking mandates*, can get you great results.
Yinzer here, and I think these stats are missing something important about Pittsburgh. There's a big lack of affordable housing here, and a growing over abundance of 1,500-2500 one bedroom units. Which makes sense given what's down the busway from a lot of this empty housing stock in the east end: a ton of students who for whatever reason don't or can't live on campus. Who housing is built for, when it's built, is an important part of why Pittsburgh is the way it is.
Can we just get this video in the hands of every politician in America today. Chinas has a spare capacity of a billion extra units, meanwhile we cannot provide any sort of affordable housing due to politics
It's not complicated. The densest cities in the USA (and also in Canada) are the most livable and the most desirable, therefore people want to live there, therefore rent is more expensive. Increasing density makes places even more desirable (more stuff to do, more walkability, etc.). Having high rent is a sign of a city being a very livable place. That said, high-rent cities need to have cheaper options for lower income residents. There is no market-based solution for this: socialized housing is the only option.
same thing here in the nordics, everyone lives in one of the larger cities because that's where *things* are, outside of those cities you have some electronics stores and that's about it.
But there clearly is a market based solution to reducing housing costs--increasing supply, the entire thesis of this video? There are highly desirable and growing cities that are able to maintain relative housing affordability compared to NYC and SF--cities like Tokyo and Osaka, Helsinki, etc., all without relying on social housing. I said in another comment that social housing is a fantastic solution, but at the scale needed in cities like SF and NYC it is simply unworkable to expect the government to be able to build and maintain hundreds of thousands of units in the timelines we're operating under.
@@EmperorMars The market won't increase supply (enough) on its own, as evidenced by the fact that we have market-based housing in North America and not enough supply. Your counterexamples are just false. Helsinki absolutely does have social housing, and housing in Japan is largely planned by the national government.
@@joeturner9692 "we have market-based housing in North America" This claim is just false. Did you even watch the video? We have zoning laws that ban most forms of housing and regulations (like parking mandates) that drive up its cost. "housing in Japan is largely planned by the national government." Housing (and other land use) in Japan is far closer to a free market than US housing is. The zoning is more flexible and permissive. National government defines the allowable zoning types, which prevents cities from blocking too much. Most of the housing is still private construction.
I mean it sucks. As a New York resident and architect, I love the beautiful historic buildings that can’t be built today. There’s a lot of architecturally beautiful buildings of mid density that make the city an amazing place to live. What sucks is what replaces these buildings are typically inferior architecturally and I think that’s a big problem in the construction industry that most new housing construction is quite developer centric and usually visually unappealing. I am a transit and density advocate but I don’t think that high density apartments necessarily lead to better quality neighborhoods with the current building standards we have. Beautiful missing middle housing is the way forward to me. New York and SF are my favorite US cities unfortunately so my life is gonna be expensive lol😂😭
This is like asking "if hospitals heal people, why are there more sick people in places with more hospitals?". It is reverse causality
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 😂😂😂
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.
@@josepheridu3322 what are you even talking about? I think you completely misunderstood the point I was trying to make
I actually don’t understand what you’re saying here.
@@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
Some of those “illegal buildings” are prettier than the newer buildings
Facts
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.
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
Thanks to very restrive bylaws that have zero relevance to safety.
@@jimbo1637 I like that “aesthetic zoning”
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
Yes! I watched a different urbanist UA-cam 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.
In NYC, all the buildings I have ever lived in were luxury buildings... in 1960.
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.
Luxury condos are great. Means I don't have to bid against luxury condo owners for average condos
@@CannedFishFiles LOL! Linoleum and shag carpeting were once considered trendy and state of the art after all
If demand is greater than supply it doesn’t matter how dense it already is, it needs to be denser.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
And be denser but still more expensive. No one build more supply unless demand is there already.
@@jimbo1637 There's lots of underdeveloped land. Literally a block or two from Central Park you can find single story buildings.
As someone who lives in Vancouver, I would looooove to see a similar video done for Canadian cities!
Same
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.
@@paulmcewen7384 90%+ of Vancouver is houses.
Canada sold Hongcouver a few decades ago.
"My rent went up because there are too many units to choose from" is a thing that you will literally never, ever hear.
hmmm Challenge Expectedwait wtf?
Where I live "there are a bunch of units but they're all AirBnBs" is a more common problem.
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.
Well said.
Am I the only one who laughed at the “They can start by not doing that” at 8:39 😭😭😭
MAYBE.. But I get the joke.. Oh wait Thats the counsel of Political politicians
awwww snap son
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.
@@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
They also kill you if you're caught with a joint. Singapore is a shithole country.
@@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.
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
@@krillin876
LOL. True.
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.
That was exceptional reporting. Thank you. I live in Portland and see the exact issues crop up here as well.
> 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
With NYC and SF, they're hemmed in by NIMBYs
This is easily one of the best analyses of housing affordability issues in these two cities that I’ve ever seen, great work!
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.
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.
i was exploring atl on google maps recently and the amount of density coming up really shocked me! its way better than LA
Many cities are getting hugr amounts of housing getting build like in Austin Nashville Dallas Houston .
They should build more of those housing units around MARTA stations. Atlanta needs more areas like Buckhead tbh
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.
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
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.
@@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.
@@TohaBgood2 Just because they changed the zoning laws doesn't mean a significant portion of the city isn't single family homes.
SF needs to allow and convert downtown into housing as well
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.
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.
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”.
In sum: supply is high, but still low relative to demand.
(And the effect of increasing supply is to reduce prices.)
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
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?
Asking the real question, here. They’re the architects of this housing shortage, not the solution.
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.
Yes. The answer is certainly yes.
@@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.
@@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.
Implementing strategies to decommodify residential properties and create publicly funded housing will effectively tackle housing affordability issues.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
@@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...
@@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". 😂
The main takeaway I got from this video was that if you want to massively reduce rent prices you need to massively reduce regulation in the housing market.
Thank you! I love your use of graphs.
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.
So if you remove a global industrial power house making fortunes - there would be less demand?
I agree:-)
@@Jakob_DK No, I mean if you remove the regulatory restrictions on venture capital, those companies would be more likely to relocate.
San Francisco is imposing a vacancy tax this year, called the Empty Homes Tax. It will apply downward pressure to rents without building more.
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.
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.
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?
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.
@@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.
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.
Love this channel. Thanks for all the great work!
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!
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.
same here in Canada 🙃
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.
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.
@@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.
This is a great presentation! Every elected official, particularly at the municipal level, should watch this.
What we could do in NYC is discourage RTO pushes by employers to empty out the office buildings and convert them to apartments.
Yes. Instead of giving employers tax credits to fill seats in their downtowns, we should give them tax penalties for forcing RTO.
@@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
@@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.
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.
This is such an accessible explanation, I hope it changes some minds.
I'm practically allergic to the heat of the south. Gotta stay north.
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.
And why do they have outside power, is it because there's a shortage?
So build more and tax empty units
Greed is the root of the problem
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
Different culture, different society.
@@mikeydude750 Different choices, different outcomes. Japan chose housing. US chose homelessness.
@@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.
@@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.
@@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.
Density can. We just have too many zoning codes and it locks it in corporate development and ownership. Along with over commodification.
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
Some of those charts went by fast, I'd like to hear more about dense, yimby cities that do have decent rents
I'm really curious what city has the highest fees or taxes to build new homes and what percentage of a homes cost that is?
Not sure if highest, but Toronto is extremely high. Of the $1,000,000 sale price of an average new home, about $300,000 is because of 'welcome' taxes and building permits.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
@@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.
Dense walkable cities being expensive shows they are on demand and that there's too few of them.
Part of the reason they can be expensive is because of gentrification.
Watch Jedu on New York being gentrified.
Watch videos on protests in overtourism. It's because of gentrification pricing locals out. Because rich people hoarded homes and buildings to cater to millions of tourists. Such as in the form of Airbnb or tourist traps.
Also, many of those top tourist destinations are dense, walkable, beautiful cities.
It shows they are on demand.
Watch More Perfect Union on private equity hoarding homes and buildings and leaving them empty.
But some good news, I think DW Planet A has a video on people turning office buildings into apartments.
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.
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.
nawwwwww
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 🇦🇺🏳️🌈
Is this analysis using entire SF Bay Area including suburbs - east bay, peninsula and San Jose? But this is comparing against New York City - 5 boroughs only? That's not a proper comparison.
Great point
Nicely balanced video.
You would need to demolish existing housing to build denser in New York City or San Francisco, making it very expensive and less economical. Every new building in most neighborhoods is built on top of a parking or vacant lot, which is becoming scarce. Also, if you create a graph of median income vs rents you might see a correlation. There is no affordable mega-city, maybe the closest is Japan, where zoning is very lax, apartments are small, and they demolish buildings around 30 years old. I agree with all the reforms, but I see no city where incomes are high and rents are low.
A lot of SFH around here in SF are falling apart and might not even up to code. I don't think trying to maintain them is going to be that much cheaper than a demo.
@@coolsteven2 Same here for NYCHA, i think increasing demolitions is a key to affordability as you can easily add density. This is really hard in historic cities with good architecture like SF and NYC.
More people need to understand the supply and demand dynamics of real estate.
The whole reason we have zoning restrictions is because a bunch of elitist central planners thought they knew better than the people how to build homes and businesses. All they've accomplished is to consolidate the developers into a few powerful politically connected entities and drive up costs of real estate.
Manhattan is such a unique case that it shouldn't be used a point of comparison most of the time. There's a certain upper limit to populated density where demand for housing inevitably overwhelms supply regardless of urban form, and Manhattan is well past that point.
Yes, but the point applies very strongly for Queens and Staten Island
Induced demand, like adding freeway lanes.
@@MrBirdnose Sort of. The difference is that housing more people is an independently good thing even if prices remain high, whereas accommodating more vehicles on the road is only beneficial if traffic actually decreases.
@@jimbo1637 In Manhattan it seems like new construction gets used as an investment instead of as housing. Look at some of the new pencil towers, which aren't really designed to be occupied on a permanent basis.
@@MrBirdnose The 6 towers on billionaires row are massive outliers, but there's still some benefit in having them since they soak up demand from investors, thereby reducing the amount of competition they pose to locals.
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).
The most expensive cities also have the highest paying salaries and have public transportation and have more areas that are walkable.
Interesting video, thank you!
"Housing elasticity" makes me wonder about the reverse, what happens when cities/towns shrink. Most places with a declining population turn into sad ghost towns, the only strategy against that seems to be to get more people to move back there. But failing that, I wonder if there's other ways to stabilise a place's economy/vibe with a smaller population than before? (unrelated to the video, I'm aware. Just a brain fart)
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
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.
There is also the question of taxation. Dense parts of a city are taxed very high and generate large profits which pay for the undertaxed majority of a city which is single family dwellings, making SFDs underpriced and dense living over priced.
There’s an organism in the US which helps cities with financial problems see the their taxation issues via graphs. This is what every graph they have produced shows. Unfortunately, I forget their name.
this was really neat! i wish it included stats for canadian cities too, just for comparison’s sake
Idk bout that eh might be little bit there on the ehhh side
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.
I remember someone claiming San Francisco is so expensive because its surrounded by water on 3 sides and then asking "don't they have dikes?" granted my ancestors came (in part) from the Low Countries so I was thinking more of the engineering method that gave the Netherlands 2 new provinces.
Filling in wetlands is frowned upon in the US now.
@@MrBirdnose That is understandable, after all there is a point where ecological damage might be incurred. Hopefully there might be a way to square the circle.
Actually kind of weird not having Mrs. "Oh the urbanity" narrating every second segment
I have no idea if this is the case or not but couldn't it also end up being a situation where more houses just means more people? It's like improving road congestion. You add more lanes and more people drive.
My 42 unit 6 floor apt building in San Francisco is over 40% vacant and the landlord has refused to budge on rents since 2021. Units that were not rented at 3400/month have sat vacant for over a year, and the asking rent increased to 4100/month. It defies logic.
It is a shame that this video needs to be made. When will people accept that supply/demand is the only real issue?
But almost all of San Francisco's housing comes from after 1905.
Too soon?
Yep Real estate on SHAky Foundation
Detroit is a very special case. Look for "Demographic history of Detroit" in that wikipedia thing. Population peaked in 1950 at 1,849,568 and has declined since t now be (2020) at 639,111
The glut of housing was such that Detroit made it possible for neighbours to buy unoccupied house adjacent to theirs, tear it down to make for larger garden, and that was to maintain decent housing prices to protect existing homeowners investments.
Automation and loss of jobs in automotive industry has lead to this decline, as well as exodus to nearby towns/suburbs.
In san Francisco rent will never be low, unless coty lower property tax. A$1.3m house @1.178% is $1276 month plus house insurance $4000year /12 mon is $333 mon. This $1600 a month just on that.
More housing won't solve price fixing, landlord greed, or landlords letting apartments stay vacant instead of allowing them to be rent controlled. There's already enough housing, that's not why rents are so high
City officials should take a lesson on supply and demand
Nice video. I think the issue goes beyond supply-demand though, and comes down to the type of new, dense housing stock being developed-of which, much of it is luxury and high-amenity. For instance, the average SF rent ($3000/mo) is over 50% the average income (~$68K)-which is absurd. If I was a betting person, I’d bet these new units sit higher vacancy than older, “more affordable” units. Ultimately, density should accompany affordable housing incentives as well as commercial/industrial development that tempers real estate speculation.
Glad I'm not the only one to think this. My city has the units, but there's usually never any vacancies for the affordable housing, even the slums that come from motel conversions. Now if you're willing to pay $1,500 or more, vacancies will gradually increase. Density is great and definetly need where I live, but that alone won't address the issue of affordability as developers, banks, and investment groups want a relatively decent RoI with each build.
Absolutely. Totally agree.
> much of it is luxury
No, much of it is "luxury", an empty marketing term. The new housing is expensive because _all_ housing in the region is expensive, even old homes with lots of problems.
New construction is not raising prices; expensive new construction is _reflecting_ the market rates.
Housing: a problem ignored for over half a century.
They have high demand for the core areas.
Overregulation.
So much for the heritage argument in those cities. Heritage is illegal.
Didn't the cities of Los Angeles and Calgary both bring in new blanket zoning laws that allow for much higher density without having to go through all the red tape and roadblocks to building higher density housing?
A lot of california zoning reform is basically meaningless at the scale of housing construction that is needed to address the supply gap. LA has pushed for ADUs as a solution, and the LA region is now permitting almost 7000 ADUs a year! But sadly, with an estimated supply gap of over 400,000 units, it's a drop in the bucket, and LA and other cities in the region are doing much less to actually reduce non-zoning code related roadblocks to development, like permitting timelines and developer fees.
1 million dollars for that very simple small house is insane.
That should be a starter home for a family in the lower end of income, not a home for a millionaire.
You left out the effect of rent control, highly restrictive in both SF and NYC which has a demonstrated long term negative effect on availability and affordability. It is like a game of musical chairs where those who get a place to sit never get up to allow someone else a place. In SF a tenant who moves into a unit essentially has a life estate in that unit, (and sometimes to their offspring) with free legal aid and a huge bureaucracy to enforce their rights. All the numerous costs and responsibilities falling on the owner. Is it any wonder that an estimated 100k rental units are being held off the market in SF primarily by long term owners with paid off mortgages who can make the calculation that a tenant actually lowers the value of their property investment and can afford to keep it empty for their family members or TIC conversion.
This isn't exactly true - new buildings aren't subject to rent control in SF. I don't know if its a moving date but when I lived there anything built after the '70s wasn't under rent control.
😂
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
Higher density means that more businesses -- more kinds of businesses and more businesses of each kind -- can have enough potential customers nearby for the business to be viable. More kinds of businesses means that people can get goods and services more precisely to their liking. More businesses of each kind means more competition, which means better prices. That means more people will want to live there, which in turn means higher rents and condo prices. With NIMBYism, we can stop this cycle, and get the higher rents and condo prices directly, avoiding unnecessary improvements to other people's quality of life.
so what about Detroit? We have a declining population for decades. But we still have a problem with affordability of Housing compared to to means of the inhabitants.
The problem is transportation funding. Florida has higher population than New York State. Amtrak is going to spend $16 billion for a new tunnel from New Jersey to New York City (Gateway Project), so Amtrak should spend an equal amount in Florida.
Half of Gateway is paid for by federal taxpayers. SF and NYC are desirable places to live because locals get outsized benefits paid for by the rest of the country. If NYC and SF had to pay for the MTA, PATH, BART, MUNI that they use, they might be interested controlling the costs in those systems, instead of planning on subsidies for everyone involved. The estimate to extend Caltrain 2.2 miles from 4th and King to the already built Salesforce Tower (all of this is inside SF) is $6.8 billion ($3 billion per mile, a world record, when it gets done). Note that there is no/zero/nada/zip Amtrak service in the Florida panhandle. To take a train from New Orleans to Jacksonville, you go through Washington DC (not kidding).
Last time I in Austin looked like all SFHs.
Those older buildings are beautiful. I lot of fear of new housing comes from the fact that new housing = ugly housing.
If we were still building things that looked like that building from 1926, I have a feeling people wouldn't mind as much.
Sadly, artisans like stonemasons, bricklayers, and woodcarvers are in massively short supply, ever since Wall Street screwed the housing and construction sectors in 2008. Most have either moved abroad, shifted careers, or stopped working altogether.
" I have a feeling people wouldn't mind as much."
There's no evidence of this being true. Aesthetics are just an excuse NIMBYs use.
There are actually newspaper articles from a hundred years ago complaining that Victorian houses are tacky and gaudy. Focusing so much on aesthetics is a losing battle because it's all subjective. I actually have liked a lot of the more contemporary new buildings.
@@coolsteven2 I prefer more ornate aesthetics myself, but see no way to democratically mandate it in a way that couldn't be hijacked by NIMBYs.
I am friendly to mandating stuff like external shade elements and balconies, which would at least break up the "flat panel" effect of modern construction while also providing functionality.
3:14 And is anyone surprised why rents in Austin have been going down???
Also, not surprised to see Charlotte in second place there. Have traveled there occasionally in the past few years, so much construction going on!
Austin is also compelled to do so, especially since a lot of housing units will be demolished due to TxDOT being dumb in widening I-35 yet again
Have rents in Austin been going down? I have friends in Austin who are still seeing rent increases.
Just because you can hypothetically get cheaper rents by moving elsewhere does not mean "rents are going down". There is a significant cost in moving apartments. I just moved apartments two months ago because my previous landlord wanted another 10% rent increase on top of the 10% increase I got the year before. It cost me about $2500 to move everything.
How is Tokyo doing with density yet remaining affordable? (no, it's not population shrink)
High vacancy is caused by low demand not high supply.
Fast-growing cities in Texas (i.e., plenty of demand to live there) have high vacancy.
@@OhTheUrbanity then prices too high and lots of homeless. Did not solve affordability
@@MbisonBalrog austin would be worse if they were building fewer housing than they are.
@@Ryan-093 is already bad from what I hear
@@MbisonBalrog Austin filled up with people from Silicon Valley, as did Portland, Seattle, etc. Basically demand to live in SF is so high that the spillover has filled up three other cities. I'm not sure there's enough density possible to fix that.
1:47 this unit makes me so sad particularly because it's beautiful and fits in seamlessly with the landscape, defeating the entire 'neighborhood character' nonsense; and yet, it's literally illegal to build the same exact unit today. it makes no sense
What if all the rich people bought homes then sold the homes at a loss?
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.
Dense areas are expensive, because no developer will build density in an area that does not have the demand/prices to support it.
A tower costs more to build per square foot than a bungalow, so towers will only be built in areas where the underlying land value is high enough to justify it.
That's true about towers, but you can also get fairly decent density -- more than San Francisco -- with low-cost, low-rise housing. Allowing small lot sizes, high lot coverage, 4 or even 3 story buildings everywhere, and *not having parking mandates*, can get you great results.
Yinzer here, and I think these stats are missing something important about Pittsburgh. There's a big lack of affordable housing here, and a growing over abundance of 1,500-2500 one bedroom units. Which makes sense given what's down the busway from a lot of this empty housing stock in the east end: a ton of students who for whatever reason don't or can't live on campus. Who housing is built for, when it's built, is an important part of why Pittsburgh is the way it is.
These figures were for across the metro area. It's definitely possible for particular areas to have housing shortages or a lack of options.
Can we just get this video in the hands of every politician in America today. Chinas has a spare capacity of a billion extra units, meanwhile we cannot provide any sort of affordable housing due to politics
“The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.”
- Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?”
It's not complicated. The densest cities in the USA (and also in Canada) are the most livable and the most desirable, therefore people want to live there, therefore rent is more expensive. Increasing density makes places even more desirable (more stuff to do, more walkability, etc.). Having high rent is a sign of a city being a very livable place. That said, high-rent cities need to have cheaper options for lower income residents. There is no market-based solution for this: socialized housing is the only option.
same thing here in the nordics, everyone lives in one of the larger cities because that's where *things* are, outside of those cities you have some electronics stores and that's about it.
@@swedneck Small towns in North America don't even have that.
But there clearly is a market based solution to reducing housing costs--increasing supply, the entire thesis of this video? There are highly desirable and growing cities that are able to maintain relative housing affordability compared to NYC and SF--cities like Tokyo and Osaka, Helsinki, etc., all without relying on social housing.
I said in another comment that social housing is a fantastic solution, but at the scale needed in cities like SF and NYC it is simply unworkable to expect the government to be able to build and maintain hundreds of thousands of units in the timelines we're operating under.
@@EmperorMars The market won't increase supply (enough) on its own, as evidenced by the fact that we have market-based housing in North America and not enough supply. Your counterexamples are just false. Helsinki absolutely does have social housing, and housing in Japan is largely planned by the national government.
@@joeturner9692 "we have market-based housing in North America"
This claim is just false. Did you even watch the video? We have zoning laws that ban most forms of housing and regulations (like parking mandates) that drive up its cost.
"housing in Japan is largely planned by the national government."
Housing (and other land use) in Japan is far closer to a free market than US housing is. The zoning is more flexible and permissive. National government defines the allowable zoning types, which prevents cities from blocking too much. Most of the housing is still private construction.
Idk but i feel like the people who decide on more housing might not want more housing...
Denver mentioned x3c
I mean it sucks. As a New York resident and architect, I love the beautiful historic buildings that can’t be built today. There’s a lot of architecturally beautiful buildings of mid density that make the city an amazing place to live. What sucks is what replaces these buildings are typically inferior architecturally and I think that’s a big problem in the construction industry that most new housing construction is quite developer centric and usually visually unappealing.
I am a transit and density advocate but I don’t think that high density apartments necessarily lead to better quality neighborhoods with the current building standards we have. Beautiful missing middle housing is the way forward to me.
New York and SF are my favorite US cities unfortunately so my life is gonna be expensive lol😂😭
Where’s the female voice?
I love the tandem paragraphs
As long as humanity is allowed to swell by a couple billion more there is no way there will ever be affordible housing.
Housing as an investment vehicle for the masses is.a terrible policy.
Nyc has over 50% rentals with rent subsidies, i.e. affordable housing programs. Another issue, when does higher density make a city unlivable?