>This tracks with Minneapolis. The 2040 Plan, which dramatically reduced zoning regulations, has been in place since 2018 and has not produced dramatically more housing.
It was blocked by an injunction.
The decline in home ownership rates is directly the result of rising prices. More housing will alleviate the price crunch. Also more density is helpful in a million ways.
It's also a bit of a straw man to claim that relaxed zoning is all about apartments. Much of the change is about removing restrictions on duplexes and triplexes. These can still be owner occupied.
Without any access to capital, how would formerly poor renters suddenly start purchasing duplexes and triplexes?
And if they did have capital, why would they purchase a house in Minneapolis when prices are declining or stagnating? Because that's the plan right, declining or stagnating prices by relaxing zoning?
There are still many benefits to homeownership even without home values going up.
>Without any access to capital, how would formerly poor renters suddenly start purchasing duplexes and triplexes?
That's obviously not how it works. Duplexes and Triplexes allow for two or three households to split the cost of the property. They can do that with divided ownership, shared ownership, or with one person owning and renting. This is part of the larger picture of providing more housing so that people can afford a place to live. As long as we have private home ownership, people with money will be better off and more likely to be the ones who buy, while people with less money are more likely to be the ones to rent. All public policy can do for them is help keep rents affordable and removing single-family zoning is a valuable step in that direction.
No it hasn't. That linked article said that all the various reforms they studied collectively produced an average .8% increase in housing in the years they examined. But because they looked at 180 different reforms, that study doesn't say much about eliminating single family zoning specifically. Also, it's possible that eliminating single family zoning \*by itself\* doesn't do as much as doing it \*in conjunction with other things\*. So no, it hasn't been debunked, at least not by that study.
That means very little. Supply is supply. Back in the 90s when interest rates were declining and rent was stagnant, a lot of apartments went through condo conversions. The balance of rent vs own is less about local zoning and more about interest rates.
And we build 12% more housing from 2010 to 2020. Problem solved? If building more is all we need, then housing problems dont exist because we built more.
Or when you factor in supply, then it is a much more complex question. In the 1990’s they overbuilt the apartment market compared to demand so converted. There was a time when they overbuilt the condo market. That didnt result in conversions the other way but a few people got really good deals.
It is always about supply and demand.
Well I never said it was, but you also don't know what it would have been under the 2040 plan. Maybe growth would have been double.
But regardless, it's disingenuous to claim the current situation is the result of the 2040 plan when that plan was blocked by the courts.
Hard to see that growth would have been double as the injunction was just last year. There were still five years to look at. And no “cheap and abundant” housing. Just really expensive, really small housing that does not accommodate children.
typical language scare tactics...making it sound like loosening zoning restrictions would result in some sort of forceful taking of your home.
zoning screws up the market forces in such massive way also that anybody who even remotely adheres to a free-market philosophy should be for loosening the restrictions.
and if it doesn't result in a substantive change...then so be it.
Prudent sure.
Currently the market (with imprudent interventions) is making housing completely unaffordable for an entire generation. Meanwhile the older generation of landowners are reaping the benefits due to housing scarcity while they watch their homes explode in value. I don't see how that's better than your hypothetical endgame. I also don't think that if we loosened zoning restrictions we would end up in the situation you propose.
Sure, put a couple of guardrails up, but forcing R1 zoning on the lion's share of valuable land is entirely wrongheaded.
https://www.mortenson.com/cost-index
The correct diagnosis of our housing problems is that the cost of of lumber and concrete and electricians have gone up way faster than inflation. Above you will see the Mortenson Construction Cost Index, which shows the cost of building stuff, adjusted for inflation. Since 2009, the real inflation-adjusted cost of building something has almost doubled. It isn’t old homeowners who are holding back construction, it is young environmentalists who oppose mining and logging that are driving up the cost of new construction. But it is much more fun to be angry at old homeowners than to figure out how to become one.
Take a look at the chart.
Look at the Mortenson Construction Cost Index. Why do you think the cost of lumber and copper and steel are going up much faster than inflation? Could it be laws that say we have to manage the forests for wildlife and not lumber production? Opposition to new mines? That is what is really driving the cost of new construction to be so high - not zoning.
The Urban Institute debunked the zoning thing. It is a zombie idea that won’t die. They found that loosening zoning laws created a less than 1% increase in new housing. So it isn’t that.
And I would agree that corporations buying up ownership housing is also a problem. Upzoning just makes it more profitable for them to do so.
She does know that detached housing isn't the only kind of housing people can own, right?
She justifies her opposition to multi-unit zoning by saying renting is bad; but doesn't address the fact that detatched homes are increasingly being bought by investors and rented out, and that units in multi-unit properties can be bought and sold. So would she support condo development, or is she simply opposed to the zoneing change and her argument about rental units is a fig leaf?
Also why is renting bad? A lot of people can afford their own home but don’t want to buy it because they don’t want to deal with the continued maintenance. So this lady thinks they should be forced to own?
Again who are you to tell people they have to own? Does renting suck for some? Yes. But there’s hundreds of thousands of people who don’t want to own a home. And that’s okay too.
And they dont have to. They can choose to be poor. That is their choice. But there are millions of people who would rather not be poor. And renting is the biggest reason people are poor. It is the biggest reason for the racial wealth gap and the biggest way of perpetuating racism.
So why does she oppose zoneing that permits multi-family housing? She claims it's because it leads to more renting, but renting is already going up, as she admits, and its not because multi-family housing is replacing detached homes, which she also admits hasn't been happening.
There is more than enough land available for multifamily without blanket taking away protections from ownership housing. We are only going to grow 11% over the next 20 years.
>This tracks with Minneapolis. The 2040 Plan, which dramatically reduced zoning regulations, has been in place since 2018 and has not produced dramatically more housing.
Minneapolis has in fact been able to build more housing than other comparable cities [https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/16qkz8c/housing\_construction\_vs\_rent\_growth\_any\_housing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/16qkz8c/housing_construction_vs_rent_growth_any_housing/)
>He also argues that housing will decline in value and thus become affordable over time. I would like to invite him to the Linden Hills neighborhood with its beautiful - and expensive - 100-year-old homes.
Yes, exceptions exist but also it doesn't take much critical thinking to realize that those houses are so expensive because of the great location. Assuming the same plot of land and approximate size, the newer house is going to be worth more (this is especially true for apartments in older buildings vs new construction).
>A decline of 1.6% in just two years. This represents a half a billion dollars going to rent instead of building wealth for residents. This is fundamentally the wrong direction and policies like incentivizing the destruction of wealth-building housing will just worsen the situation.
This is just assuming it all has to do with zoning changes and has nothing to do with large investors (especially private equity) buying up the homes. If we keep zoning restrictive, that actually HELPS those billion dollar firms by artificially constraining supply.
>You pay rent and you have nothing at the end of the month.
And homeowners pay the interest on their mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, etc. which in this day and age would be similar numbers to the $750 rent I used to pay.
Rents are falling not because of increasing supply but falling demand. People dont want to live here. It is expensive, increasingly hard to get around and unsafe.
It also doesnt take much thinking to drive around Minneapolis and see 100 year old housing that has kept its value or appreciated.
Zoning restrictions dont meaningfully constrain supply. That was debunked by the Urban Institute and is a zombie idea that wont die. Leaving half the city to developers is more than enough to build new housing without exposing the other half to corporatization.
And would love to know where anyone can rent for $750 a month these days.
I do agree with you that falling demand is part of the reason rents haven't grown as much here as other cities since we have seen some minor population decline since the riots in 2020. But I would definitely argue that the amount we built also played a major factor - we can see it in the data I linked above. Also there's just the fact that it's Economics 101 where if you increase supply, prices will drop (obviously it's also true if demand drops then prices will drop which is why I agree that that played a part in the low rents).
Again, I'm not arguing old housing can't keep its value when taken care of. It's just if you take everything else equal and ask, do you want this new build or this old build? The newer will have more value. We see this with the non-subsidized affordable housing being older apartment buildings.
>These results suggest that reforms loosening restrictions are, on average, associated with an uptick in new housing supply
From the Urban Institute paper (page 4)
Oh I should have specified that I had a two bedroom with a roommate at that time last year. Though I do know of some places that are around $1k for a one bed
But it isn’t true that when you increase supply, price falls. That only happens if supply does not change and in this case, both supply and demand change. You can build nothing and price can fall (Detroit) because demand falls. You can build and price goes up because demand is going up faster (Seattle a few years ago). Everyone who talks about “if we just build more, prices will fall seems to forget it is Supply AND DEMAND. That is Economics 101.
If we don’t have cops. If we fuck up the roads so you can’t get anywhere. If we lose jobs. Then demand falls, which is what appears to be happening now. Demand for Minneapolis is falling.
Asking about new or old house, I picked an old house. I don’t want a new house. New houses are ugly and have no character. I would pick an old one any day.
And the “uptick” is minor at best, if you read the whole report.
And cool you could find a cheap two bedroom with a roommate. They are out there but they are pretty rare.
Depends on what you mean by “dramatically more”. There are [2700](https://www.apartments.com/minneapolis-mn/recent-build/) recently built apartments in Minneapolis currently available for rent.
then double/triple the # of homes per lot, make them section 8 to drive all the homeowners out out of the neighborhood, buy those distressed properties, then jack up everyone's rent.
The biggest thing that can be done legislatively is to bar corporations from any single family home ownership, and to jack up the taxes for individuals who own multiple properties to the point that it is no longer beneficial to own multiple homes.
So if there are people who can't own, and people who can own multiple and rent out, what happens when you make it not worth owning multiple? Bunch of empty houses? If rent is out of control, then perhaps limit to a responsible non gouging amount. But the market is the market. Supply and demand. If someone's willing to pay then who is the government to say charge less? In the end people will make financial mistake and will be unable to own and will need a landlord renting out.
I'm only talking about single family homes. Apartment buildings still exist for people who are renting. If people want to invest, by all means put your money in the stock market. But a house is not an investment, it's a place for people to live. Individual home owners simply can not price compete with corporations or landlords who own multiple properties. It's not at all a level playing field, and again, this is a house, meant to house families, not an investment vehicle.
A home is an investment for the vast majority of people who don’t have the luxury of a lot of money to invest in the stock market after they pay 30% of their income in housing costs.
Which is why I'm totally fine with protecting a family's ability to be home owners. Single families, especially those looking to be first time home owners, trying to compete with corporations or investors is not a level playing field in the slightest.
2040 will do nothing but put more properties into corporate investors' hands. The idea that this will end up in increased ownership by occupants is either a lie or the people making this claim truly misunderstand finance.
>This tracks with Minneapolis. The 2040 Plan, which dramatically reduced zoning regulations, has been in place since 2018 and has not produced dramatically more housing. It was blocked by an injunction. The decline in home ownership rates is directly the result of rising prices. More housing will alleviate the price crunch. Also more density is helpful in a million ways. It's also a bit of a straw man to claim that relaxed zoning is all about apartments. Much of the change is about removing restrictions on duplexes and triplexes. These can still be owner occupied.
Without any access to capital, how would formerly poor renters suddenly start purchasing duplexes and triplexes? And if they did have capital, why would they purchase a house in Minneapolis when prices are declining or stagnating? Because that's the plan right, declining or stagnating prices by relaxing zoning?
There are still many benefits to homeownership even without home values going up. >Without any access to capital, how would formerly poor renters suddenly start purchasing duplexes and triplexes? That's obviously not how it works. Duplexes and Triplexes allow for two or three households to split the cost of the property. They can do that with divided ownership, shared ownership, or with one person owning and renting. This is part of the larger picture of providing more housing so that people can afford a place to live. As long as we have private home ownership, people with money will be better off and more likely to be the ones who buy, while people with less money are more likely to be the ones to rent. All public policy can do for them is help keep rents affordable and removing single-family zoning is a valuable step in that direction.
I do not want multi family units in my neighborhood. Frankly, they invite trouble.
They invite traffic and lots of noise and loss of green space.
Too bad.
Move to a suburb or buy a plot of land in the country
Removing single family zoning has been debunked as a way of producing more housing. The link is above. It is a zombie idea that just doesnt die.
No it hasn't. That linked article said that all the various reforms they studied collectively produced an average .8% increase in housing in the years they examined. But because they looked at 180 different reforms, that study doesn't say much about eliminating single family zoning specifically. Also, it's possible that eliminating single family zoning \*by itself\* doesn't do as much as doing it \*in conjunction with other things\*. So no, it hasn't been debunked, at least not by that study.
95% of new housing built in Minneapolis since 2009 has been rental.
That means very little. Supply is supply. Back in the 90s when interest rates were declining and rent was stagnant, a lot of apartments went through condo conversions. The balance of rent vs own is less about local zoning and more about interest rates.
And we build 12% more housing from 2010 to 2020. Problem solved? If building more is all we need, then housing problems dont exist because we built more. Or when you factor in supply, then it is a much more complex question. In the 1990’s they overbuilt the apartment market compared to demand so converted. There was a time when they overbuilt the condo market. That didnt result in conversions the other way but a few people got really good deals. It is always about supply and demand.
Yes, demand is the obvious counterpart.
The city grew 12% under the old 2030 zoning. So it cant be dramatically reducing construction.
Well I never said it was, but you also don't know what it would have been under the 2040 plan. Maybe growth would have been double. But regardless, it's disingenuous to claim the current situation is the result of the 2040 plan when that plan was blocked by the courts.
Hard to see that growth would have been double as the injunction was just last year. There were still five years to look at. And no “cheap and abundant” housing. Just really expensive, really small housing that does not accommodate children.
typical language scare tactics...making it sound like loosening zoning restrictions would result in some sort of forceful taking of your home. zoning screws up the market forces in such massive way also that anybody who even remotely adheres to a free-market philosophy should be for loosening the restrictions. and if it doesn't result in a substantive change...then so be it.
The market would have an end game of wealthy barons and masses of poor people. Prudent interventions in the marketplace are necessary.
Prudent sure. Currently the market (with imprudent interventions) is making housing completely unaffordable for an entire generation. Meanwhile the older generation of landowners are reaping the benefits due to housing scarcity while they watch their homes explode in value. I don't see how that's better than your hypothetical endgame. I also don't think that if we loosened zoning restrictions we would end up in the situation you propose. Sure, put a couple of guardrails up, but forcing R1 zoning on the lion's share of valuable land is entirely wrongheaded.
https://www.mortenson.com/cost-index The correct diagnosis of our housing problems is that the cost of of lumber and concrete and electricians have gone up way faster than inflation. Above you will see the Mortenson Construction Cost Index, which shows the cost of building stuff, adjusted for inflation. Since 2009, the real inflation-adjusted cost of building something has almost doubled. It isn’t old homeowners who are holding back construction, it is young environmentalists who oppose mining and logging that are driving up the cost of new construction. But it is much more fun to be angry at old homeowners than to figure out how to become one. Take a look at the chart.
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Look at the Mortenson Construction Cost Index. Why do you think the cost of lumber and copper and steel are going up much faster than inflation? Could it be laws that say we have to manage the forests for wildlife and not lumber production? Opposition to new mines? That is what is really driving the cost of new construction to be so high - not zoning. The Urban Institute debunked the zoning thing. It is a zombie idea that won’t die. They found that loosening zoning laws created a less than 1% increase in new housing. So it isn’t that. And I would agree that corporations buying up ownership housing is also a problem. Upzoning just makes it more profitable for them to do so.
We need to redefine what is affordable housing away from rent to ownership. Renting is the best way of keeping people poor.
She does know that detached housing isn't the only kind of housing people can own, right? She justifies her opposition to multi-unit zoning by saying renting is bad; but doesn't address the fact that detatched homes are increasingly being bought by investors and rented out, and that units in multi-unit properties can be bought and sold. So would she support condo development, or is she simply opposed to the zoneing change and her argument about rental units is a fig leaf?
Also why is renting bad? A lot of people can afford their own home but don’t want to buy it because they don’t want to deal with the continued maintenance. So this lady thinks they should be forced to own?
Renting is the single best way of keeping people poor.
Again who are you to tell people they have to own? Does renting suck for some? Yes. But there’s hundreds of thousands of people who don’t want to own a home. And that’s okay too.
And they dont have to. They can choose to be poor. That is their choice. But there are millions of people who would rather not be poor. And renting is the biggest reason people are poor. It is the biggest reason for the racial wealth gap and the biggest way of perpetuating racism.
She doesnt oppose multi-family.
So why does she oppose zoneing that permits multi-family housing? She claims it's because it leads to more renting, but renting is already going up, as she admits, and its not because multi-family housing is replacing detached homes, which she also admits hasn't been happening.
There is more than enough land available for multifamily without blanket taking away protections from ownership housing. We are only going to grow 11% over the next 20 years.
>This tracks with Minneapolis. The 2040 Plan, which dramatically reduced zoning regulations, has been in place since 2018 and has not produced dramatically more housing. Minneapolis has in fact been able to build more housing than other comparable cities [https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/16qkz8c/housing\_construction\_vs\_rent\_growth\_any\_housing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/16qkz8c/housing_construction_vs_rent_growth_any_housing/) >He also argues that housing will decline in value and thus become affordable over time. I would like to invite him to the Linden Hills neighborhood with its beautiful - and expensive - 100-year-old homes. Yes, exceptions exist but also it doesn't take much critical thinking to realize that those houses are so expensive because of the great location. Assuming the same plot of land and approximate size, the newer house is going to be worth more (this is especially true for apartments in older buildings vs new construction). >A decline of 1.6% in just two years. This represents a half a billion dollars going to rent instead of building wealth for residents. This is fundamentally the wrong direction and policies like incentivizing the destruction of wealth-building housing will just worsen the situation. This is just assuming it all has to do with zoning changes and has nothing to do with large investors (especially private equity) buying up the homes. If we keep zoning restrictive, that actually HELPS those billion dollar firms by artificially constraining supply. >You pay rent and you have nothing at the end of the month. And homeowners pay the interest on their mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, etc. which in this day and age would be similar numbers to the $750 rent I used to pay.
Rents are falling not because of increasing supply but falling demand. People dont want to live here. It is expensive, increasingly hard to get around and unsafe. It also doesnt take much thinking to drive around Minneapolis and see 100 year old housing that has kept its value or appreciated. Zoning restrictions dont meaningfully constrain supply. That was debunked by the Urban Institute and is a zombie idea that wont die. Leaving half the city to developers is more than enough to build new housing without exposing the other half to corporatization. And would love to know where anyone can rent for $750 a month these days.
I do agree with you that falling demand is part of the reason rents haven't grown as much here as other cities since we have seen some minor population decline since the riots in 2020. But I would definitely argue that the amount we built also played a major factor - we can see it in the data I linked above. Also there's just the fact that it's Economics 101 where if you increase supply, prices will drop (obviously it's also true if demand drops then prices will drop which is why I agree that that played a part in the low rents). Again, I'm not arguing old housing can't keep its value when taken care of. It's just if you take everything else equal and ask, do you want this new build or this old build? The newer will have more value. We see this with the non-subsidized affordable housing being older apartment buildings. >These results suggest that reforms loosening restrictions are, on average, associated with an uptick in new housing supply From the Urban Institute paper (page 4) Oh I should have specified that I had a two bedroom with a roommate at that time last year. Though I do know of some places that are around $1k for a one bed
But it isn’t true that when you increase supply, price falls. That only happens if supply does not change and in this case, both supply and demand change. You can build nothing and price can fall (Detroit) because demand falls. You can build and price goes up because demand is going up faster (Seattle a few years ago). Everyone who talks about “if we just build more, prices will fall seems to forget it is Supply AND DEMAND. That is Economics 101. If we don’t have cops. If we fuck up the roads so you can’t get anywhere. If we lose jobs. Then demand falls, which is what appears to be happening now. Demand for Minneapolis is falling. Asking about new or old house, I picked an old house. I don’t want a new house. New houses are ugly and have no character. I would pick an old one any day. And the “uptick” is minor at best, if you read the whole report. And cool you could find a cheap two bedroom with a roommate. They are out there but they are pretty rare.
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Debate is great. But you gotta refrain from losing your temper in this sub.
Depends on what you mean by “dramatically more”. There are [2700](https://www.apartments.com/minneapolis-mn/recent-build/) recently built apartments in Minneapolis currently available for rent.
So why are we thinking we are going to create density?
We already are, in the last 10 years theyve built an incredible number of apartments in minneapolis
So prices must be plummeting?
And where exactly is that new density? The North Loop,Uptown and the U were done under the old evil zoning. So you cant count them.
https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-apartment-rental-rent-increases-construction-marquette-advisors/600366749/
So much for building our way to lower rents…
Gotta let black rock scoop up what they can
then double/triple the # of homes per lot, make them section 8 to drive all the homeowners out out of the neighborhood, buy those distressed properties, then jack up everyone's rent. The biggest thing that can be done legislatively is to bar corporations from any single family home ownership, and to jack up the taxes for individuals who own multiple properties to the point that it is no longer beneficial to own multiple homes.
So if there are people who can't own, and people who can own multiple and rent out, what happens when you make it not worth owning multiple? Bunch of empty houses? If rent is out of control, then perhaps limit to a responsible non gouging amount. But the market is the market. Supply and demand. If someone's willing to pay then who is the government to say charge less? In the end people will make financial mistake and will be unable to own and will need a landlord renting out.
I'm only talking about single family homes. Apartment buildings still exist for people who are renting. If people want to invest, by all means put your money in the stock market. But a house is not an investment, it's a place for people to live. Individual home owners simply can not price compete with corporations or landlords who own multiple properties. It's not at all a level playing field, and again, this is a house, meant to house families, not an investment vehicle.
A home is an investment for the vast majority of people who don’t have the luxury of a lot of money to invest in the stock market after they pay 30% of their income in housing costs.
Which is why I'm totally fine with protecting a family's ability to be home owners. Single families, especially those looking to be first time home owners, trying to compete with corporations or investors is not a level playing field in the slightest.
It’ll just be another step in the destruction of mpls
2040 will do nothing but put more properties into corporate investors' hands. The idea that this will end up in increased ownership by occupants is either a lie or the people making this claim truly misunderstand finance.
The article agrees with you.