More Housing for Better Public Transit: A Grand Bargain for New York City

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/more-housing-better-public-transit-11134.html

by ayanai • 8 years ago

37 15 8 years ago

jseliger• 8 years ago

For a little more context, about 40% of the buildings in Manhattan couldn't be built under today's zoning laws: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

In other words, the very thing that people move to NYC for can no longer be built in much of NYC. Pretty perverse.

In the 1950s, nice apartments in Greenwich Village or the UES might be $800 – $1,500, adjusted for inflation: https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/what-a-wes... .

What changed between then and now? Zoning: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-...

huebnerob• 8 years ago

I'm not saying the current state of zoning is correct or even sane, but I think you also need to consider how that density accumulates over time. If you duplicated every high density building in Manhattan tomorrow, there would be problems, because the older buildings are naturally still there and in use.

bobthepanda• 8 years ago

Manhattan's population is way lower than it was at its peak. You could add another 300,000 residents to Manhattan and it would have only reached the 1950 peak of 1.9M, let alone the 1920s peak of 2.3M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Manhattan

A pertinent quote from an article about zoning in Politico, hardly an outpost of libertarian free-market thinking: https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/201...

Rezonings push and prod what planners call the “building envelope,” an invisible outline that hovers over the built city and limits what developers can create. The legacy 1961 zoning created an invisible city with a loose shape, like a dress bought a few sizes too big, that the physical city had plenty of room to grow into. The Bloomberg administration has left behind a building envelope that’s more like a corset, pulled tight to the city’s body, cinching around places that were already small and boosting its curves. The Bloomberg administration’s 120 rezonings did as much to change the city’s shape in places where it limited growth as where it let developers build tall, and, as the city expands, those limits could become a problem.

No one is calling for the immediate doubling of housing stock today. But the notion that we should restrict development in specific areas is ludicrous. Often the places that have development restrictions are wealthy and politically connected; Williamsburg gentrified because the East Village gentrifiers slammed the doors, then Bushwick gentrified because the Williamsburg gentrifiers slammed the doors, and so on and so forth. Development restrictions hurt poor people more by forcing gentrification into other neighborhoods.

hapless4• 8 years ago

The main thing that changed was an explosion of cheap money to borrow, and high construction costs to pay with it.

ALL real estate, everywhere in America, including places that are in no way bound by land, has exploded in cost against inflation.

In no state nor Puerto Rico will the minimum wage pay for an apartment.

closeparen2• 8 years ago

As I understand it, nterest rates determine purchase prices in a way that’s mostly irrelevant to you unless you’re a cash buyer. Lower housing prices combined with proportionally higher interest rates will not make housing more affordable. You’ll just pay more interest and less principal.

You don’t borrow to pay rent. Low interest rates and high asset prices could increase the rate of condo conversion, diminishing the supply of rental housing, but doesn’t in general explain exploding rents.

hapless4• 8 years ago

The grand bargain is impossible, not due to NIMBYs and zoning conflict but rather because more funding for the MTA won't help a damn thing.

The MTA has repeatedly been caught lying to the public about their finances, hiring ghost employees, etc etc. They have the highest capital costs in the world, full stop -- it would cost them a billion dollars to erect a mailbox.

The MTA's annual _capital_ expenditures budget is already larger than any transit system in America. Their operating budgets are among the healthiest in the world, due to very high farebox recovery ratios on the buses and subways, but the fares go up without bound and there is somehow never enough money to get existing service back to 2010 levels, to say nothing of modernization or expansion.

There's no money for new transit in New York City because no one in City Hall _or_ Albany is damn fool enough to believe that tossing additional billions into that bottomless pit will yield meaningful results.

Lastly, property taxes are pretty low in NYC. Property tax is less than 30% of total City revenues. Massively expanding property tax bases in localized areas will not move the needle on the city's budget.

ardit33• 8 years ago

"...estimate that a grand bargain would allow the building of roughly 411,000 new private housing units over 10 years, as well as generate some $54 billion in extra revenue for the MTA during the same period."

Thats a lot of money for the MTA.... it ends being about 12-15k per apt, which is chump change for NYC standards.

Too bad the MTA is a semi-corrupt organization, that can't build efficiently enough.

hapless4• 8 years ago

The MTA is already budgeted for 32 billion in new capital acquisitions across the next five years.

City revenues are 93 billion annually. The City government could easily fund the extra 5bn/year out of the general fund without any hinky schemes. It chooses not to because the MTA wastes substantially all of its capital spending -- adding City money to the bonfire won't be rewarded by voters.

Given the MTA's track record, an extra $5 billion a year would buy us what, _one_ extra subway station, ten years from now?

DrScump• 8 years ago

  it ends being about 12-15k per apt

How much MTA revenue is made from each apartment today? I seriously doubt that it's over $100/month average per apartment.

tropdrop• 8 years ago

California is currently attempting to pass a bill doing almost exactly this - SB 827: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/03/03/sb-827/

A lot of people are up in arms because if you include Muni bus/rail as "transit hubs," supposedly 96% of San Francisco is vulnerable to significant and sudden height increases (from 4 to 8 stories).

That would, indeed, be a pretty drastic change to the landscape, but more housing is desperately needed, so it seems the pros (better for climate, better for lower income residents, etc.) outweigh the aesthetic cons here.

Tempest1981• 8 years ago

Even pro-growth Mountain View doesn't like Wiener's SB 827 because it cripples their power to negotiate with developers -- to get money for transit, schools, parks, utility upgrades, etc.

https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/03/25/housing-bill-draws-...

jphelan2• 8 years ago

The whole point is that city councils today have complete discretion over the allocation of building permits. Of course city councils won't like a rule that limits their power.

Software developers are rarely happy when security people make it harder to ssh into prod machines, but sometimes it's better for some powers to be restricted and more carefully applied.

Also I'm just curious, how many of the mtv city council are renters and how many are home owners?

Edit: typo

closeparen2• 8 years ago

God forbid we fund services out of general property taxes rather than specifically taxing new buildings.

jphelan2• 8 years ago

IMHO the aesthetic cons will seem petty when you're waiting an hour for an ambulance because the EMTs are late to work because of their four hour commute.

We have no housing oversite on these councils and even in Sunnyvale where we're talking about voluntarily adding 7k housing units on El Camino, the council's primary concern is the impact on home owners' views. I sat in the council planning meeting and it was all about how to make the buildings tolerable to the council - who are home owners. To my knowledge I was the only renter there. They want to add 400 units along a mostly empty 1 mile stretch (mostly car dealerships), to keep the appearance minimal. But, that means that mile can't support walkable restaurants and those 400 people will be getting in their car on crowded El Camino to do anything.

If they would just build dense enough to support walkability and to have enough riders for transit efficiency to improve! Their compromises pick the worst of both worlds.

And then in Cupertino, the mayor points at Palo Alto and says "why should we build if they aren't?" Darcy Paul literally said this to me at a vallco meeting.

From what I see, I think the city councils say one thing about sb 827 but really they'd love to have the responsibility be taken out of their hands. They just aren't capable of solving their prisoners dilemma.

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More Housing for Better Public Transit: A Grand Bargain for New York City

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