The objection I'm most interested in right now is the one about induced demand (that's not the right term but let's roll with it). Like, let's say we build many cheap apartments in Manhattan. Then the first bidders for them will be rich people - from all over the world! - who would love to get a Manhattan apartment for a bargain price. The priced-out locals will stay just as priced out, shuffled to the back of the line, because there's quite many rich people in the world who are willing to outbid them. Maybe if we build very many apartments, and not just in Manhattan but everywhere, the effect will eventually run out; but it'll take very many indeed.
The obvious fix is to put a thumb on the scale somehow, for example sell these cheap apartments only as primary residences. But then we lose the theoretical beauty of "just build more", and we really should figure out what mix of "just build more" and "put a thumb on the scale" is the most cost-efficient for achieving what we want. Maybe some thumb on the scale will even give us what we want without building more, since there's a lot of empty housing and non-primary housing.
"I'm tired of this simplified idea that building more buildings here will solve the affordable housing problem"
I am tired of this simplified idea that giving people more food will solve the hunger problem. (Insert sophisticated arguments about how supermarkets throw away lots of perfectly okay food, etc.) Therefore, making more food should remain banned.
Food gets used up quickly, but it takes a long while to use up housing, so banning new housing really isn't comparable to banning making food.
Yes, if you have 500 000 people in town, you need to produce food for 500 000 people all the time. While if you have 500 000 people in town, you only need to build houses for 500 000 once.
But the logic of "there is a shortage of X, therefore the proper solution is to ban the production of X and hope that the problem will magically go away" is insane either way.
Yes, if you have 500 000 people in town, you need to produce food for 500 000 people all the time. While if you have 500 000 people in town, you only need to build houses for 500 000 once.
Unless, of course, some people who already have a house or people who do not even live in your town can buy houses in your town in order to use them as investment and/or to rent them to people living in your town. Thankfully, this is a completely ridiculous counterfactual and noone ever does that...
But the logic of "there is a shortage of X, therefore the proper solution is to ban the production of X and hope that the problem will magically go away" is insane either way.
For some things this logic is valid. See induced demand and attempts to solve traffic jams by building even larger roads. Now housing isn't exactly like that, but neither its like food. This kind of appeals to simplified heuristics and resulting referent class tennis is non-productive.
The people outside the town who buy houses here either expect to rent them expensively, or to use them as an investment because they expect the costs of housing to grow. (Or a combination of both.)
Refusing to build more houses means doing exactly the thing they want -- it keeps the rents high, and it keeps the costs growing.
If you have 500 000 people in the town, and 100 000 houses are owned by people outside the town, you should build more houses until there are 600 000 of them (i.e. not only 500 000). Then the people outside the town will find it difficult to rent their houses expensively, and may start worrying that the costs will not grow sufficiently to justify their investments.
Thankfully rising land prices due to agglomeration effect is not a thing and the number of people in town is constant...
Don't get me wrong, building more housing is good, actually. But it's going to be only marginal improvement, without addressing the systemic issues with land capturing a huge share of economic gains, renting economy and real-estate speculators. These issues are not solvable without a substantial Land Value Tax.
Over the past six months there's been a huge amount of discussion in the Davis Square Facebook group about a proposal to build a 25-story building in Davis Square: retail on the ground floor, 500 units of housing above, 100 of the units affordable. I wrote about this a few weeks ago, weighing the housing benefits against the impact to current businesses (while the Burren, Dragon Pizza, etc have invitations to return at their current rent, this would still be super disruptive to them if they even did return).
The impact to local businesses is not the only issue people raise, however, and I wanted to get a better overall understanding of how people view it. I went over the thousands of comments on the posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) over the last six months, and categorized the objections I saw. Overall I found comments by 90 different people opposed to the proposal, and ignoring super short ones ("Stupid idea", "Oh no") I put them in 11 different categories. I counted some comments towards multiple categories: the goal was to understand how many people hold each objection. Here are the objections, sorted by the number of unique people raising each, and with some representative quotes:
23/90 people:it won't bring down the cost of housing:
"I'm tired of this simplified idea that building more buildings here will solve the affordable housing problem"
"It isn't going to lower prices like people think. It is going to drive prices up because the new construction will be of the unaffordable type."
"Somerville can't build its way out of a housing crisis."
21/90 people:it's just too tall:
"We don't want a high rise building"
"These ugly, tall buildings are destroying the city."
"They are better off just making a 3-4 story building"
20/90 people: I don't want these businesses displaced:
"When it takes out 3 local businesses two of which are institutions it's not just nimby"
"Many long time tenants won't return after being forcibly closed for the renovation"
"Losing any local independent businesses in Davis Square will have irreparable harm to what we all love about Davis or any locale that's unique."
16/90 people: this should be built somewhere else:
"What I don't really understand is, why *this* particular spot"
"How about they go build it in the middle of West Medford square and you can go live there"
"Density is good but not here."
15/90 people: The roads / sewer / other infrastructure is not up to it:
"Nice. Where are all the delivery vehicles going to park? Figure 50 meal deliveries, 10 UPS, USPS, Fedex, couple of ambulance calls EVERY DAY."
"I'm worried about our aging sewer system and the impact of 500+ flushing toilets!"
"let's see what happens if you turn the Boston area into New York level density without New York level public transit"
11/90 people: This kind of building is aesthetically unacceptable:
"It damages our home city visually by rising like a giant pr*ck over a small town. Aesthetics matter."
"This place is an eye sore and monstrosity"
"A large, impersonal, brick and mortal prison, with few local independent shops and stores; few parking spaces; high consumer prices; and no character."
11/90 people: Units won't actually be affordable, or there should be a higher fraction of affordable ones:
"The developer has no intention of making any of it 'affordable' housing"
"I would accept 8 stories if the building was 100% affordable"
"the affordable housing part is all smoke and mirrors, it will still be very expensive."
4/90 people: Mostly new construction just sits empty:
"The problem is that builders keep building 'luxury condominiums' which they then can't rent and so take a tax deduction"
"Where's your evidence that all of the market rate units are leased up?"
"Just because you build it doesn't mean people will actually live there. More and more apartments are being purchased as investments by people who are not at all invested in living in the community."
3/90 people: Density makes us worse off:
"We don't need to live on top of each other. This city is already too crowded."
"You want this place to become Hong Kong and Kowloon"
"Keep jamming people in small areas. Fcking ridiculous. More people more problems."
3/90 people: This will damage our culture, beyond just losing the businesses:
"Nothing is sacred anymore. Without a solid base, life comes tumbling down. Take care of what there is instead of creating future problems. The small town feeling is being lost"
""when you start putting high rise building in a smalllll neighborhood, you lose the sense of community. It just naturally dies because you cram a bunch of people in a big building and everyone stops seeing one another"
"Multigenerational families who haven't been displaced physically are culturally and socially displaced"
2/90 people: Tall buildings make solar panels produce less:
"Those in the immediate area who put solar panels on their homes will see the damage."
"Project supporters care about climate change but you're S.O.L. if you got solar panels...which *check notes* helps fight climate change."
There are solid responses to all of these, and I saw lots of great ones in reviewing the comments. I'm not getting into rebuttals here, just get a sense of what the objections are and how common each is.
(An hour ago someone started yet another thread in the group, which already has sixteen comments. I'm not looking at it here, though, because this post is done. Serves me right for mostly drafting last night but not finishing it until this afternoon.)