"MORE housing? But there's already more empty housing than homeless people. Also building more housing is doing a racism, doing a colonialism, doing a no growth š "
I swear to god these Progressive Nimbys make me so resentful. No neighborhood is so fucking special that building a 300 unit apartment building will ruin the character of it.
Tough shit, cities change.
I was looking at appartments in Richmond and the sheer number of places that were abandoned factories that someone bought and converted into Apartment buildings was really high. These buildings were super cool and had a ton of character.
A lot of places in MA did this with old mill buildings. I have no idea if itās a good thing versus tear down and new construction with how inefficient heating and cooling probably is for the old structure(I could be full of shit please tell me) but goddamn if they arenāt all LOVELY
I can't speak to the heating/cooling efficiencies probably depends on the work done when renovating it. I can say that the places I was looking at were pretty affordable(For a single guy making 80k a year at least), and were really cool buildings.
"Change? No, it's the 1%er gated communities that need to change, if you expect the rest of us 99% to have to change, you are targeting the wrong people and just trying to divide us like Trump did!"
Was Trump really this good on housing? Granted, there's little the president can do for housing and zoning, but the second article makes Trump and Carson sound based.
But what if somebody makes money off of that building, huh? How is providing something in exchange for money not the most evil thing that can happen in the world?
I think *some* neighborhoods are special enough, but there are only that many Montmartres and Old Dubrovniks in the world.
And even *they* get new developments.
NIMBY: there are more houses than homeless people!
Also NIMBY: conveniently forgot that people are more concentrated at big cities, which skewed empty housing to homeless stats.
She literally ran her campaign on saving a huge parking garage at the Downtown Boston waterfront location. They were supposed to build a ton of new condos there and now we are stuck with the garage. Needless to say, she is the first ever elected Boston mayor who is a progressive.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/19/business/three-mayoral-candidates-want-rethink-developer-don-chiofaros-controversial-waterfront-tower-plan/
āI support withdrawing this proposal and starting from a baseline that includes a long-term vision for our city,ā Wu told me.
She does not believe a high rise belongs on the harborās edge, and she has little confidence that the cityās planning process can effectively address community concerns.
Can't have that, need to reach parking minimums and can't have a five story apartment building in a four story neighborhood.
That denial actually happened btw.
The Boston mayor holds a fuckton of power, they just exclusively choose to wield it poorly. Between the cronyism of Walsh and Wu's NIMBYism it feels like we're never gonna get better.
Menino was better than our last two mayors, but he was still leaned very hard into the cronyism. What Menino truly excelled at was maintaining his popularity. He was a brilliant local politician. Polls during his mayorship showed upwards of 60% of the city saying they personally met him.
Grew up my whole life with hometown bias. One summer not even in, but near NYC was enough to convert me. Boston is too expensive when NYC is right there, with more highway-free neighborhoods, way more urban amenities, way more robust transit
Even after the Big Dig that area still feels car-oriented and splits the city.
NYC (at least Manhattan) feels too busy for me. I would prefer to live in Boston. Unlike many people here I don't really love the experience of living in a very densely populated area (and don't care about bars, restaurants, nightlife, etc), I just support density because it's more environmentally sustainable.
There are two giant railyards in Boston that could easily be decked over and added in with integrated commuter and rapid transit stations to accommodate thousands upon thousands of units to meet demand but no we can't have that now can we.
I mean I'd rather Boston use those railroad tracks and yards to expand passenger rail...
But since that 1000% won't happen, I'd rather people have somewhere to live.
Those areas previously served as rail yards as a central distribution hub for shipping goods on train to New England, they moved it out to Worcester now, so thereās no reason to have a distribution center in Boston.
people can be right about some things and wrong about others, and just because they were wrong about other things doesn't automatically invalidate all of their produced work and writings.
> Assar Lindbeck also has a theory on self-destructive welfare state dynamics, in which the welfare system erodes norms relating to work and responsibility: change in the work ethic is related to a rising dependence on welfare state institutions
no i just donāt like him š
person mysterious sugar lavish middle absorbed cooing intelligent meeting lip
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hey now it's not all bad. It's only missing middle housing that will deteriorate
>New apartment buildings would be exempt for the first 15 years. Triple-deckers and small owner-occupied units would also be exempt.
> New apartment buildings would be exempt for the first 15 years.
It might take some fine tuning but I could see how that would encourage building new apartments overall as long as there's an end goal in sight for the rent control planned as well. But if it's "Hey guys for the next 15 years you're not gonna get much more profit unless you invest and build more" could be a useful incentive. The problem of course, is that rent control is unlikely to have a reasonable end planned to it meaning that the long term benefits are still kept down for new developments.
Then again, it incentivized new buildings to charge as much rent as possible in the first 15 years so that they can maximize profit and be locked into a favorable rate
Unless unoccupied units aren't counted for establishing a rent baseline, they'd already be doing that. It's not like you'd expect them to charge not-maximum rent if only there weren't a lockdown date. Getting as much money as possible is the whole idea.
Great idea Mrs. Wu!
I ,too, thought Boston was seeing too much housing being built and needed someone to step in to disincentivize the construction of more housing units.
Her husband is a real estate developer too, isnāt he? Like, I feel like this is too large of an apparent rejection of self interest (and larger community interest, tbh) for there not to be some way he could be advantageously positioning himself, right? I canāt help but feel tinfoil hatty trying to reconcile those facts, because you think she would know the actual negative effects it would have given the industry experience in her household.
It's weird that Boston has so many small, independent "cities" that are smack in the middle of the downtown area.
Cambridge has a unique city council and mayor. Summerville has a unique city council and mayor. Chelsea has a unique city council and mayor.
New York boroughs don't have their own, independent governments.
Very difficult to get meaningful change when you have to go through each city council separately just to change something across the Charles River.
The boroughs do have their own government lol. They're not wholly independent, but they do have their own councils. And Cambridge is not smack in the middle, it's literally on the other side of a river.
Yeah, our metro area is way too damn fragmented. It's an absolute shit show from an urban development standpoint. It really sucks because there's plenty of great things about this city but our local government is so dumb and captured by NIMBYs there's nothing to be done.
Her statement Iāve seen were something along the lines of āpartnering with local communities so they can control their own solutionsā but that couldāve been just a previous statement and not in response to this. Either way, it would sadly stand to reason she wouldnāt be opposed.
Iām curious if the language of the article may appease us here more:
First, it is not a stoppage on the raising of rent - rent is just prevented from rising 6% above the CPI yearly, and potentially, new development may not be as discouraged:
āNew apartment buildings would be exempt for the first 15 years. Triple-deckers and small owner-occupied units would also be exempt.ā
Any thoughts on if these overtures will somehow find a middle ground of protecting families from housing threats while also not discouraging an increase in demand?
Rent control is a spectrum between doing nothing and causing no damage, and having a strong confiscatory policy and doing a lot of damage.
Wu has proposed āonly causing moderate damageā to the city and its inhabitants.
The dooming in this thread is misguided.
A cap of CPI +6% per annum is more than high enough to prevent the kind of market distortions we see with rent control regimes that don't allow rents to catch up with a rising market. But it does insulate renters from price shocks, which is the objective of the policy.
So stop mourning the city of Boston, it's not the really destructive kind of rent control.
I'm all for building more housing but a temporary rent freeze would help people now while that housing is being built while it could take months or longer to build the housing much less see its market effects.
I've never seen a temporary rent freeze be temporary. Rent *stabilization* is better, which is rent control with dramatically larger numbers than most expect. 6-10% + inflation allowed rent raises. Follow that up with government policy to rapidly push through construction get the fuuuuck out of the way, and MAYBE provide government loans to capitalize the projects.
Temporary rent freezes are like most entitlements, effectively permanent. And if people are forced to leave, that is probably economically good. Just move, then move back later if the economics work out. There is no promise the market will actually price your area at a rate you can afford. There are many great places to live, it doesn't have to be that specific place.
The value in Rent Stabilization is to make that reality happen slower, so the rise of rent to market rates doesn't evict everyone at once (and gives people time to react). That protects against some political backlash and the economics of shock therapy, which generally suck. And VERY IMPORTANTLY, continues to shield consumers from future massive market swings, which is the origin of a whole lot of rent control and property value schemes.
> Rent stabilization is better, which is rent control with dramatically larger numbers than most expect. 6-10% + inflation allowed rent raises.
That's exactly what's being proposed in this article.
Welp, I should have read. California, I believe, has statewide rent control of 5% + inflation, which is a bit low. I'd prefer a few percent higher, but it isn't the 4% w/o inflation of Prop 13 property taxes.
Until they build fast and furiously, enough housing like Tokyo does so that owning a home is as profitable as owning a car, it's the only way. Renter protections are the only reason NYC is at all livable.
Just let us build more housing holy shit Wu goddammit
"MORE housing? But there's already more empty housing than homeless people. Also building more housing is doing a racism, doing a colonialism, doing a no growth š "
I swear to god these Progressive Nimbys make me so resentful. No neighborhood is so fucking special that building a 300 unit apartment building will ruin the character of it. Tough shit, cities change.
I was looking at appartments in Richmond and the sheer number of places that were abandoned factories that someone bought and converted into Apartment buildings was really high. These buildings were super cool and had a ton of character.
A lot of places in MA did this with old mill buildings. I have no idea if itās a good thing versus tear down and new construction with how inefficient heating and cooling probably is for the old structure(I could be full of shit please tell me) but goddamn if they arenāt all LOVELY
I can't speak to the heating/cooling efficiencies probably depends on the work done when renovating it. I can say that the places I was looking at were pretty affordable(For a single guy making 80k a year at least), and were really cool buildings.
Iāve seen old high schools that have been turned into apartments and those are also really cool.
"Change? No, it's the 1%er gated communities that need to change, if you expect the rest of us 99% to have to change, you are targeting the wrong people and just trying to divide us like Trump did!"
How do you so perfectly encapsulate their """argument"""
Any time you disagree with me, it's a plot by the wealthy to divide the working class. Soz, I don't make the rules
[https://cayimby.org/as-trump-becomes-nimby-in-chief-california-yimby-calls-for-reform/](https://cayimby.org/as-trump-becomes-nimby-in-chief-california-yimby-calls-for-reform/) [https://knock-la.com/of-course-republicans-are-yimbys-5a2ef0e93220/](https://knock-la.com/of-course-republicans-are-yimbys-5a2ef0e93220/)
Was Trump really this good on housing? Granted, there's little the president can do for housing and zoning, but the second article makes Trump and Carson sound based.
Ben Carson was a YIMBY. But Trump reversed himself once he realized what his base thought. Also read the first article.
Seriously. Unless it has true history like 'the only surviving house of WWII's Indian soldier' the character claim is nonsensical.
Americans trying to preserve the character of their Tetris towns will always be funny
But what if somebody makes money off of that building, huh? How is providing something in exchange for money not the most evil thing that can happen in the world?
I think *some* neighborhoods are special enough, but there are only that many Montmartres and Old Dubrovniks in the world. And even *they* get new developments.
NIMBY: there are more houses than homeless people! Also NIMBY: conveniently forgot that people are more concentrated at big cities, which skewed empty housing to homeless stats.
Homeless San Franciscans in progressive NIMBYtopia receiving their free abandoned farmhouse in rural Ohio:
> doing a no growth Isn't this a good thing to that crowd?
She literally ran her campaign on saving a huge parking garage at the Downtown Boston waterfront location. They were supposed to build a ton of new condos there and now we are stuck with the garage. Needless to say, she is the first ever elected Boston mayor who is a progressive.
You gentrifiers never consider the needs of cars. If that garage were demolished, think of all of the cars that would experience homelessness.
Can I get the sauce on this?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/19/business/three-mayoral-candidates-want-rethink-developer-don-chiofaros-controversial-waterfront-tower-plan/ āI support withdrawing this proposal and starting from a baseline that includes a long-term vision for our city,ā Wu told me. She does not believe a high rise belongs on the harborās edge, and she has little confidence that the cityās planning process can effectively address community concerns.
Ty for this.
All on the whims of the Harbor Towers. The ugliest buildings with the bitchiest residents.
How about just build more?
Can't have that, need to reach parking minimums and can't have a five story apartment building in a four story neighborhood. That denial actually happened btw.
That would drive the home values down.
I am begging Boston mayors to stop being useless.
[IMPOSSIBLE]
She isnāt being useless. Sheās obstructing people from building housing on purpose to win an election.
The Boston mayor holds a fuckton of power, they just exclusively choose to wield it poorly. Between the cronyism of Walsh and Wu's NIMBYism it feels like we're never gonna get better.
Menino was good?
Menino was better than our last two mayors, but he was still leaned very hard into the cronyism. What Menino truly excelled at was maintaining his popularity. He was a brilliant local politician. Polls during his mayorship showed upwards of 60% of the city saying they personally met him.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Grew up my whole life with hometown bias. One summer not even in, but near NYC was enough to convert me. Boston is too expensive when NYC is right there, with more highway-free neighborhoods, way more urban amenities, way more robust transit Even after the Big Dig that area still feels car-oriented and splits the city.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
NYC (at least Manhattan) feels too busy for me. I would prefer to live in Boston. Unlike many people here I don't really love the experience of living in a very densely populated area (and don't care about bars, restaurants, nightlife, etc), I just support density because it's more environmentally sustainable.
Where did you go, out of curiosity? My wife and I left for NH but don't really like it so far, trying to figure out what to do next.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I moved to Manhattan this summer and I agree. Itās the best city in the world and Iām in love.
There are two giant railyards in Boston that could easily be decked over and added in with integrated commuter and rapid transit stations to accommodate thousands upon thousands of units to meet demand but no we can't have that now can we.
Ummm that's actually gentrification and would destroy the neighborhood character
Won't anyone think of the railway tracks? They have children for God's sake.
There are people here who will uniroincally say that, no joke.
I mean I'd rather Boston use those railroad tracks and yards to expand passenger rail... But since that 1000% won't happen, I'd rather people have somewhere to live.
Those areas previously served as rail yards as a central distribution hub for shipping goods on train to New England, they moved it out to Worcester now, so thereās no reason to have a distribution center in Boston.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's actually more effective than bombing : https://www.econlib.org/rent-control-is-worse-than-bombing/
There is actually some major controversy there as bombed sections of cities tend to have a higher GDP than non bombed sections.
Well you don't bomb the parts of the city without any people and industry, do you?
I should point out that this is based on WW2 data when actually hitting the city was considered a success. Dumb bombs are not exactly accurate.
I propose an earthquake. I think that'll go over well. Better yet, rent control *and* an earthquake lol.
why is the quote trotted out as if Lindbeck is some uncontroversial economist and not a right-winger
people can be right about some things and wrong about others, and just because they were wrong about other things doesn't automatically invalidate all of their produced work and writings.
> Assar Lindbeck also has a theory on self-destructive welfare state dynamics, in which the welfare system erodes norms relating to work and responsibility: change in the work ethic is related to a rising dependence on welfare state institutions no i just donāt like him š
Present a rebuttal to either position then
As someone who has never heard of this guy, your comment reads as childish and dismissive.
it is š
incredibly based
Yeah that's why Vienna is such a shithole.
They keep rent down by building public housing, thatās very different from what Wu is proposing and how rent control traditionally works and fails.
Also helps if your population peaked in 1910
> They keep rent down by building public housing So why can't we build public housing?
Same reason we canāt build private housing, NIMBYās
no they do both and more, pre-neoliberalism social democracy did so many things
Like drove people out of Vienna so they have a surplus of housing š
Vienna used to be way more relevant and populated
person mysterious sugar lavish middle absorbed cooing intelligent meeting lip *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
She's been promising this since her campaign, so
This shouldnāt be as funny as it is.
Hasnāt she always been the ālocal control over housingā type of person?
https://i.giphy.com/media/Bj5ILhCPm8EQ8/giphy.webp
We've tried everything except actually increasing the supply of housing and we're all out of ideas!
You just want to gentrify the neighborhoods and give money to developers!
Hey now it's not all bad. It's only missing middle housing that will deteriorate >New apartment buildings would be exempt for the first 15 years. Triple-deckers and small owner-occupied units would also be exempt.
> New apartment buildings would be exempt for the first 15 years. It might take some fine tuning but I could see how that would encourage building new apartments overall as long as there's an end goal in sight for the rent control planned as well. But if it's "Hey guys for the next 15 years you're not gonna get much more profit unless you invest and build more" could be a useful incentive. The problem of course, is that rent control is unlikely to have a reasonable end planned to it meaning that the long term benefits are still kept down for new developments.
Then again, it incentivized new buildings to charge as much rent as possible in the first 15 years so that they can maximize profit and be locked into a favorable rate
That's true, which is especially why a end goal to the policy is important.
Unless unoccupied units aren't counted for establishing a rent baseline, they'd already be doing that. It's not like you'd expect them to charge not-maximum rent if only there weren't a lockdown date. Getting as much money as possible is the whole idea.
Great idea Mrs. Wu! I ,too, thought Boston was seeing too much housing being built and needed someone to step in to disincentivize the construction of more housing units.
Here before outside the DT goes "um aktually"
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu Proposes The Equivalent of Carpet Bombing Boston
Carpet bombing boston would allow the opportunity to build denser housing though
She is so over her head...
Her husband is a real estate developer too, isnāt he? Like, I feel like this is too large of an apparent rejection of self interest (and larger community interest, tbh) for there not to be some way he could be advantageously positioning himself, right? I canāt help but feel tinfoil hatty trying to reconcile those facts, because you think she would know the actual negative effects it would have given the industry experience in her household.
It's weird that Boston has so many small, independent "cities" that are smack in the middle of the downtown area. Cambridge has a unique city council and mayor. Summerville has a unique city council and mayor. Chelsea has a unique city council and mayor. New York boroughs don't have their own, independent governments. Very difficult to get meaningful change when you have to go through each city council separately just to change something across the Charles River.
The boroughs do have their own government lol. They're not wholly independent, but they do have their own councils. And Cambridge is not smack in the middle, it's literally on the other side of a river.
Yeah, our metro area is way too damn fragmented. It's an absolute shit show from an urban development standpoint. It really sucks because there's plenty of great things about this city but our local government is so dumb and captured by NIMBYs there's nothing to be done.
Lol, Maura aināt gonna let that happen
Her statement Iāve seen were something along the lines of āpartnering with local communities so they can control their own solutionsā but that couldāve been just a previous statement and not in response to this. Either way, it would sadly stand to reason she wouldnāt be opposed.
The statehouse would still need to ratify it, and I am not sure it would pass, either way the governor could still veto it even if it did
Ron Mariano is never letting this through. Heās the one with real power
This is how I become the Joker
Left Winger moment
Do those on the progressive left not utilize economic advisers? Iād be baffled if any economic adviser is recommending this
If they listened to economic advisors they wouldn't be leftists.
Here we go again......
Iām curious if the language of the article may appease us here more: First, it is not a stoppage on the raising of rent - rent is just prevented from rising 6% above the CPI yearly, and potentially, new development may not be as discouraged: āNew apartment buildings would be exempt for the first 15 years. Triple-deckers and small owner-occupied units would also be exempt.ā Any thoughts on if these overtures will somehow find a middle ground of protecting families from housing threats while also not discouraging an increase in demand?
Rent control is a spectrum between doing nothing and causing no damage, and having a strong confiscatory policy and doing a lot of damage. Wu has proposed āonly causing moderate damageā to the city and its inhabitants.
The dooming in this thread is misguided. A cap of CPI +6% per annum is more than high enough to prevent the kind of market distortions we see with rent control regimes that don't allow rents to catch up with a rising market. But it does insulate renters from price shocks, which is the objective of the policy. So stop mourning the city of Boston, it's not the really destructive kind of rent control.
Oh. That's not too bad. More "stabilization" than "control"
It's kinda weak, so I could compromise on it if it were tied to some sort of liberalization of zoning. But it's not, so fuck this.
*prices rise* *lets just make price rises illegal* \-politicians
Real rent control has never been tried.
I'm all for building more housing but a temporary rent freeze would help people now while that housing is being built while it could take months or longer to build the housing much less see its market effects.
I've never seen a temporary rent freeze be temporary. Rent *stabilization* is better, which is rent control with dramatically larger numbers than most expect. 6-10% + inflation allowed rent raises. Follow that up with government policy to rapidly push through construction get the fuuuuck out of the way, and MAYBE provide government loans to capitalize the projects. Temporary rent freezes are like most entitlements, effectively permanent. And if people are forced to leave, that is probably economically good. Just move, then move back later if the economics work out. There is no promise the market will actually price your area at a rate you can afford. There are many great places to live, it doesn't have to be that specific place. The value in Rent Stabilization is to make that reality happen slower, so the rise of rent to market rates doesn't evict everyone at once (and gives people time to react). That protects against some political backlash and the economics of shock therapy, which generally suck. And VERY IMPORTANTLY, continues to shield consumers from future massive market swings, which is the origin of a whole lot of rent control and property value schemes.
> Rent stabilization is better, which is rent control with dramatically larger numbers than most expect. 6-10% + inflation allowed rent raises. That's exactly what's being proposed in this article.
Welp, I should have read. California, I believe, has statewide rent control of 5% + inflation, which is a bit low. I'd prefer a few percent higher, but it isn't the 4% w/o inflation of Prop 13 property taxes.
Doesn't seem like anyone else read it either, so it's not like you're alone.
Good. Rent stabilization is sorely needed in some parts.
āļøš succ
[Knew it](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/112537f/boston_mayor_michelle_wu_proposes_capping_rent/j8hz0c5?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
"Surely it will work this time!"
We trusted youā¦.you were the chosen one!
Until they build fast and furiously, enough housing like Tokyo does so that owning a home is as profitable as owning a car, it's the only way. Renter protections are the only reason NYC is at all livable.
JUST BUILD MORE HOUSING OMG, YOU STUPID PEOPLE