Donald Trump Goes YIMBY!

These diverging interpretations of the president’s announcement point to the strange politics of housing deregulation.

Opposition to new housing — and support for zoning rules and bureaucracies that effectively block it — is bipartisan, particularly among homeowners. But the case for building more housing is bipartisan, too, even if liberals and conservatives making it often sound as if they’re not describing the same thing.

Some liberals see in the web of cumbersome housing regulations an effort to exclude renters, minorities and lower-income residents from many neighborhoods and entire communities, perpetuating segregation. In this view, large-lot single-family zoning and neighborhood review boards are the tools of Nimbyism.

Some conservatives see a tangle of red tape that restricts the construction industry and distorts the market for housing. A conservative ideologically opposed to rules that prescribe how bankers and businesses operate might well feel the same about regulations that say where builders must build and how many times they must defend their plans to the public.

Both camps may be happy to put many of these regulations on the cutting block. But they won’t agree on all of them.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/upshot/trump-regulations-build-new-housing.html


With our new multifamily housing in downtown Maplewood, I believe the owner/builder just paid a fine in order to not include low-income units. Does this address that part of the issue? 


My issues with local development are:

1)  excessive subsidies given to developers (why are taxpayers subsidizing private developers?)

2)  development that occurs in a bubble with zero planning around additional infrastructure that is needed

3)  the use of PILOTs that ultimately harm the school system and take funding away from the school system


the problem that I have is that anything Trump touches goes to ****.  So my concern is that the only regulations that will be cut will be the ones protecting the environment and workers. 


sprout said:
With our new multifamily housing in downtown Maplewood, I believe the owner/builder just paid a fine in order to not include low-income units. Does this address that part of the issue? 

 It was not a fine but a one time alternate fee to help provide aid to low income families whose homes were in need of repair.  It saved him a bundle over the years.  This alternative has since been abolished....after the fact.  The owner of the Station House did the honorable thing and provided a few low cost units.


https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/06/trump-yimby-affordable-housing-reform-crisis-executive-order/592582/


Nut graf:

This gets at a fear shared by other housing advocates: That the way HUD will nudge cities and states to comply with deregulation is by threatening to defund their Community Block Development Grants, a strategy favored by some Republicans, as well as California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters. Since those grants generally support growth in lower-income housing tracts, a White House plan tying them to density could put lower-income neighborhoods on the hook to build faster than their more prosperous—and probably less dense—neighbors.

IOW, probably this is about shoving more people into East Orange, not increasing affordable housing stock in SOMA.


On this topic, Oregon just upzoned much of the state:

https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/30/oregon-just-voted-to-legalize-duplexes-on-almost-every-city-lot/


Oregon legislators took a historic leap toward greener, fairer, less expensive cities Sunday by passing the first law of its kind in the United States or Canada: A state-level legalization of so-called “missing middle” housing.

If signed by Gov. Kate Brown in the next month, House Bill 2001 will strike down local bans on duplexes for every low-density residential lot in all cities with more than 10,000 residents and all urban lots in the Portland metro area.
In cities of more than 25,000 and within the Portland metro area, the bill would further legalize triplexes, fourplexes, attached townhomes, and cottage clusters on some lots in all “areas zoned for residential use,” where only single-detached houses are currently allowed.
Or, as some more dramatic headlines have summarized it: The bill bans single-family zoning.



PVW said:

IOW, probably this is about shoving more people into East Orange, not increasing affordable housing stock in SOMA.

Counterpoint: East Orange has the infrastructure to support much more housing because it used to be a more populous city. SOMA does not.


jimmurphy said:


PVW said:

IOW, probably this is about shoving more people into East Orange, not increasing affordable housing stock in SOMA.
Counterpoint: East Orange has the infrastructure to support much more housing because it used to be a more populous city. SOMA does not.

The problem isn't the adding housing in East Orange, but rather the second part, the "not increasing affordable housing stock in SOMA."

SOMA will never be as dense as East Orange. As you note, the infrastructure is different. Where increased density in East Orange often means tall structures, increased density in SOMA would probably look more like allowing smaller scale upzoning like "granny flats".

Living in SOMA provides opportunities that living in East Orange does not. To insist that upzoning be confined to lower opportunity towns is to insist on perpetuating and worsening dangerous and unjust segregation.




jimmurphy said:


PVW said:

IOW, probably this is about shoving more people into East Orange, not increasing affordable housing stock in SOMA.
Counterpoint: East Orange has the infrastructure to support much more housing because it used to be a more populous city. SOMA does not.

 Check your math. (https://www.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/census/2kpub/njsdcp3.pdf)


PVW said:
Where increased density in East Orange often means tall structures, increased density in SOMA would probably look more like allowing smaller scale upzoning like "granny flats".

 It'll never happen in SOMA. There are too many people in SOMA willing to spend serious money to "protect" their neighborhoods from any form of additional housing. 



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