Name: The Left-NIMBY canon
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The Left-NIMBY canon

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SubscribeSign inShare this postThe Left-NIMBY canonnoahpinion.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailJan 19, 2021Share this postThe Left-NIMBY canonnoahpinion.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailThe Left-Nimby Canon goes something like this:I’m trying to summarize rather than straw-man this package of ideas. I think it’s mostly wrong, but it’s worth engaging rather than dismissing. Current AffairsNear the beginning of his piece, Robinson alleges that YIMBYs believe dogmatically in the power of Econ 101 and Supply-and-Demand. As evidence for this, he quotes…me!….[I]t has become an article of faith that building market-rate housing raises rents, rather than lowers them.&nbsp; The logic of Econ 101 — that an increase in supply lowers price — is alien to many progressives, both in the Bay Area and around the country.But what is called the “logic” of Econ 101 is often a fairy tale, a story about a world that could theoretically exist rather than the world that actually does exist. Well, I’m glad Nate is willing to spend the money for a Bloomberg subscription! But I’m sad he wasn’t willing to spend the time to read one paragraph down in my article that he quoted. Because what I actually wrote in the article that he quoted was this:The logic of Econ 101 -- that an increase in supply lowers price -- is alien to many progressives, both in the Bay Area and around the country. Instead, the theory is that price is something set by the government. If the city government decrees that a new apartment block be affordable, the theory goes, it will be. But since rents for non-rent-controlled apartments are now very high, allowing new market-rate development will simply create more luxury units, whose prices will be out of reach for the average person. The only way to lower the cost of living, according to the progressive canon, is to have the government mandate lower prices.increasesThe same could be true of housing development.A little different than what Robinson quoted, eh? ;-)theoreticallyempirical evidence1) For every 10% increase in the housing stock, rents decrease 1% and sales prices also decrease within 500 feet. In addition, I show that new high-rises attract new restaurants, which is consistent with the hypothesis about amenity effects. However, I find that the supply effect is larger, causing net reductions in the rents and sales prices of nearby residential properties. That’s a very localized effect! If induced demand were a big deal, you’d expect the opening of a new “luxury” building to at least raise rents on its particular block! But yet, she finds the opposite. 2) I find that rents fall by 2% for parcels within 100m of new construction. Renters’ risk of being displaced to a lower-income neighborhood falls by 17%. Both effects decay linearly to zero within 1.5km. Next, I show evidence of a hyperlocal demand effect, with building renovations and business turnover spiking and then returning to zero after 100m. Gentrification follows the pattern of this demand effect: parcels within 100m of new construction are 2.5 percentage points (29.5%) more likely to experience a net increase in richer residents. So she finds that richer residents do move in, but poorer residents are less likely to move out! Because rents fall. (Note: You might think that fires aren’t really random, and some landlords are committing arson in order to take advantage of rising rents. But if true, that actually strengthens Pennington’s conclusion, since that sort of shenanigan would be more likely to happen in places where rents are rising faster and the financial incentive is greater!)3) New buildings decrease nearby rents by 5 to 7 percent relative to locations slightly farther away or developed later, and they increase in-migration from low-income areas. Results are driven by a large supply effect—we show that new buildings absorb many high income households[.] Yet another similar result. New market-rate housing goes up. Rich people move out of poor neighborhoods into the new market-rate housing. And surrounding rents go down. Kind of the exact opposite of gentrification.Of course, no amount of studies will prove that market-rate housing always reduces rents everywhere. There are probably cases where it doesn’t! Market-rate housing driving down rents and pulling high-income people out of low-income neighborhoods not a law of the Universe, it’s just starting to seem like a general tendency.The YIMBY solution to the problem [of gentrification] is simple: Build more of the pretty glass fishtanks to catch the incoming yuppies as they arrive. Most of the yuppies would probably rather live in the fishtanks. The fishtanks tend to be located downtown, near to where the yuppies work (SoMa, Embarcadero, etc.), rather than in the older residential neighborhoods…Even more importantly, long-time working-class residents and struggling artists and disadvantaged minority families are highly unlikely to go live in a yuppie fishtank. That means that every unit of yuppie fishtank housing - i.e., new market-rate housing - that you build will either A) be occupied by a yuppie, or B) sit empty on the market. Landlords want to fill all of their units, so if there are too many fishtanks and (B) happens, they'll drop the rent until more yuppies move in.Eventually, every yuppie fishtank unit that you build will be occupied by a yuppie.prevent them from invadinglure yuppies awayhurtBut what about the YIMBYs? Do they really think that allowing the market to do its thing will be sufficient, as Robinson alleges? Nope.The YIMBY pitch is generally quite simple: everyone knows there is a housing crisis in many of America’s cities, and that the rent is too damn high. Thus we need more housing. Increased supply will reduce prices…[But] YIMBYs are not anti-capitalists. They are allies of developers who believe in letting the “free market” determine what kind of housing will be built…Real Deal’requiring&nbsp;every single oneNor is this some kind of new position or recent conversion for him. Here’s Hanlon in 2016:Or 2015:Or here is Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, another group that Robinson mentions:Here’s Ben Carlos Thypin, founder of Open New York — the other of the groups that Robinson singles out by name:Robinson doesn’t mention East Bay for Everyone, but here’s Darrell Owens, who organized that group:Do any of these sound like Randian shills to you? Do. Your. Homework.In fact, I know almost all these YIMBYs (except for Thypin), and Robinson just doesn’t understand who they are. In reality, they’re just a bunch of lefties who like public housing and rent control but also hate zoning and other NIMBY regulations. They take a “do all the things” approach toward housing, as opposed to Left-NIMBYs who refuse to build any new housing if it’s not up to their exacting standards. YIMBYs don’t imagine that simply allowing more market-rate housing will solve the housing crisis or create affordable cities — they view it as just one piece of the puzzle, along with public housing, rent control, anti-eviction measures, etc.allLeft-NIMBYs seem to have a vision of cities that’s deeply tied to the past. Robinson staunchly defends the idea of neighborhood preservationism:nobody&nbsp;shapeMaybe I’m drawing too stark of a distinction. But that’s the best way I can see to characterize the dividing line between these two left-leaning movements. I think the Left-NIMBY Canon is wrong on most counts, and the ways in which it’s wrong have little to do with free markets and nothing to do with Ayn Rand. It’s about a future of building versus a future of grasping for an unreachable stasis.By the way, remember that if you like this blog, you can subscribe here! There’s a free email list and a paid subscription too! 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SubscribeSign inShare this postThe Left-NIMBY canonnoahpinion.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailJan 19, 2021Share this postThe Left-NIMBY canonnoahpinion.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailThe Left-Nimby Canon goes something like this:I’m trying to summarize rather than straw-man this package of ideas. I think it’s mostly wrong, but it’s worth engaging rather than dismissing. Current AffairsNear the beginning of his piece, Robinson alleges that YIMBYs believe dogmatically in the power of Econ 101 and Supply-and-Demand. As evidence for this, he quotes…me!….[I]t has become an...

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