Category Archives: Housing

Last week, the Antiplanner participated in a Federalist Society debate over housing issues, which can now be downloaded as a podcast. Leading off the debate was Richard Rothstein, an NAACP-affiliated attorney whose book, The Color of Law, argued that zoning and lending has historically discriminated against blacks. His presentation claimed that such discrimination continues in today’s suburbs and his solution was to rezone the suburbs to allow lower-cost housing such as garden apartments and townhouses.

Land-use policies that artificially increase housing shortages force more people to live in apartments when they would rather live in single-family homes. Photo by Pubdog.

Next came Vanderbilt University law professor Christopher Serkin, who said that he personally favored higher density development but noted that most Americans did not. He was followed by Notre Dame law school professor Nichole Garnett, who was also a little skeptical about planning for density. Continue reading →

Many surveys have found that the vast majority of Americans, including Millennials, prefer or aspire to live in single-family homes. But surveys rarely ask whether they prefer that single-family home to be in a low-density neighborhood or if they would mind living next to a bunch of apartment buildings.

Would you want one to move next-door to your single-family home? This is real affordable housing, by the way: one of these condos is currently selling for $527 per square foot.

However, a polling firm called YouGov recently asked Americans whether they thought low-density neighborhoods were better than high-density ones. Specifically, they were asked whether low densities meant more or less congestion, more or less crime, and were better or worse for the environment. Planning advocates, of course, claim that high densities mean less congestion, are better for the environment, and have less crime because there are more “eyes on the street.” Continue reading →

A French politician who wants to prioritize housing for French residents, as opposed to Middle Eastern immigrants and refugees, is considered extreme right. But a Canadian politician who proposes to ban purchases of homes by foreigners is considered a liberal.

Foreigners occupying low-income housing makes less subsidized housing available for French residents. Of course, if the government liberalized land-use laws, there could be plenty of housing for everyone with fewer subsidies.

What’s the difference? Mainly that Canada has approved the ban while polls show that the “extreme right” candidate is likely to lose. I guess if you call yourself a liberal you can get away with a lot that leads people to demonize conservatives. Continue reading →

Sightline Institute researcher Michael Andersen offers Willamette Week readers “five ways to make [housing] cheaper.” Sounds good, except none of them will work.

Here’s a duplex in a Portland single-family neighborhood. According to the Sightline Institute, this was supposed to make housing more affordable, but nobody seriously thinks that it will, so now they are upping the ante for even more density. Photo by Mark McClure of the Sightline Institute.

Andersen starts with the erroneous assumption that “the main factor driving the rising cost of all housing in Portland is the cost of building new housing.” In fact, the main driving factor driving the high cost of housing in Portland is the cost of land, thanks to the region’s urban-growth boundary. Everything else about housing, including high construction costs, is derived from that, so housing will remain expensive until Portland abolishes the growth boundary. Continue reading →

Vancouver, BC, had the least affordable housing in North America in 2021, according to Wendell Cox’s latest International Housing Affordability report. The median home price in Vancouver was 13.3 times the median household income, which means almost no one can really afford to buy a home. According to Zillow, condos typically sell for around a million dollars while single-family homes sell for $3 million to $6 million. Yes, those are Canadian dollars, but still unaffordable.

Click image to download a 3.2-MB PDF of this report.

Vancouver was followed by San Jose, whose median home prices were 12.6 times median incomes, and San Francisco, at 11.8. Vancouver was exceeded by Sydney, Australia, at 15.3, and Hong Kong, at a stunning 23.2. As Cox takes pains to point out, all of the most-expensive housing markets are in areas with urban-growth boundaries, greenbelts, or other containment policies. Continue reading →

Portland’s housing prices aren’t as high as San Francisco’s, but they are still too high. As indicated Tuesday, median home prices are more than five times median family incomes, which makes housing unaffordable because under standard mortgage rules it’s not possible to get a loan for five times someone’s income.

This is the kind of home Portlanders aspired to in 1888.

Portland’s solution to this problem is densification, but Portland State University real estate professor Gerard Mildner says this won’t work. In an op-ed published on January 18, Mildner argues that Oregon’s land-use planning system “has been manipulated so that NIMBY objections are raised to a regional level.” Although the region’s population has doubled since 1979, the region’s urban-growth boundary has grown by only 15 percent. Continue reading →