California is divided into two different types of cities: those whose zoning laws allow these $375,000 3-D printed homes to be built, and those whose zoning laws ban them.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/yuba-county-3d-printed-community-home-for-sale/
Yuba County is home to California’s first 3D-printed community as first home hits the market
By Kayla Moeller
February 13, 2026
A first-of-its-kind neighborhood is taking shape in Yuba County. California’s first 3D-printed community is being built in Linda.
The first home is already for sale and the second and third homes are being printed right now.
“Five 3D-printed homes are going to be here,” said Nan Lin, founder of 4Dify.
The new neighborhood in Linda is being built one layer at a time with the latest in 3D printing technology from the company 4Dify.
The 1000-square-foot home for sale was printed from the dirt up within 24 days. It’s made up of mostly concrete.
“We’ve done ballistic testing on these, shot at it with 9mm, 45, 556, machine guns. These are bulletproof walls,” said Lin.
As the crew is getting the hang of things, they anticipate the next homes to be printed within just 10 days. Lin said printed homes are stronger and more efficient than regular homes.
“Because of how thick the walls are and the energy transfers between a concrete wall to a wood wall, the energy efficiency is extremely high. So you’re looking at half the energy bill and half the insurance costs,” said Lin.
Lin comes from Sacramento but has hit too much red tape to start construction there yet, but it’s on the horizon.
“I have a lot of good things to say about Yuba County. I didn’t know they were going to be so welcoming and also they’re also very innovation driven,” he said, “we’re looking to keep one machine here in Yuba County. We want to build more of these houses and more of these communities. However, we are expanding to Sacramento, Bay Area, SoCal.”
He says 3D printing increases productivity. The same five-person crew is able to print 10 to 12 homes per year, saving two months of construction time on each home compared to the traditional way.
“The issue I saw with construction is that the cost of employment and materials were all uncontrollable, always going up and there’s so many different variables that constantly change,” said Lin. “So 3D printing made a lot of sense because we get to control variables.”
It also helps to keep the cost down, with the first home priced at $375,000.
“We started construction on the second and third houses last week. The second house is about halfway up and the third, we’re just starting the foundation process,” said Lin.
Lin anticipates the entire community to be finished in June.
Bronx building Mamdani used to showcase new housing commish’s talents has 200 violations – after favored nonprofit ran it into the ground
Bronx building Mamdani used to showcase new housing commish’s talents has 200 violations – after favored nonprofit ran it into the ground
By Rich Calder
January 11, 2026
A Bronx apartment building Mayor Mamdani showcased to highlight the talents of his new housing commissioner, Dina Levy, has racked up nearly 200 unresolved violations, The Post has learned.
The 102-unit building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights as of Saturday had a staggering 194 open housing-code violations dating back to 2016 — including 88 “Class C” violations considered “immediately hazardous.”
They included rat and roach infestation; broken doors and refrigerators; and mold, records show.
Mamdani visited the affordable-housing complex best known for being the birthplace of hip-hop on Jan. 4 to introduce Levy, 54, a longtime tenants’ rights advocate and former state housing honcho, as his new Housing Preservation and Development commissioner.
He gushed how Levy — who grew up the silver-spooned daughter of two high-powered DC lawyers – has non-profit experience in building and overseeing affordable housing, a perfect fit for his leftist housing agenda that seeks to replace private landlords wherever possible.
Levy, who will make $277,605 a year as HPD commissioner, helped facilitate a 2011 deal for nonprofit Workforce Housing Advisors to buy and rehab the Sedgwick Avenue complex from private landlords.
Levy did this with help from a $5.6 million HPD loan she and her own nonprofit, the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, brokered to stabilize the building’s finances and maintain its “affordable” rental status, recalled Mamdani.
“Dina will no longer be petitioning HPD from the outside,” the mayor touted. “She will now be leading it from the inside, delivering the kind of change that can transform lives.”
However, the 59-year-old building isn’t the success story Mamdani and Levy claim it to be, The Post found.
It has more than double the dangerous “Class C” violations racked up at 85 Clarkson Ave., a dilapidated, privately owned 71-unit complex in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, Mamdani showcased three days earlier as a poster child for everything he believes is wrong with the city’s publicly-subsidized housing stock.
Tenants told The Post conditions were better under the old, private landlord.
“I have been here over 20 years, and I preferred it when it was under private management because they used to screen people in and out of the building,” said Mordistine Alexander, among the dozens of tenants at 1520 Sedgwick whose homes have open HPD violations.
Alexander, 49, who has rented her three-bedroom apartment since 1999, said the unit routinely lacks heat and hot water, its bathroom and kitchen facades are crumbling and windows need to be replaced
She said she’s been without a kitchen light for months — despite asking for fluorescent light bulbs to be replaced since October.
And she said she had to take care of fixing a major rodent problem in the unit herself because she “couldn’t wait any longer” for Workforce Housing Group to respond.
“Since [the nonprofit] took over, the building has deteriorated. They lack porters. No one is maintaining it, and the complaints fall on deaf ears – especially if you complain a lot,” said Alexander, adding she wishes Levy never won her fight to turn the building over to the nonprofit.
Yet Mamdani wants more complexes like the Sedgewick Avenue building. He supports Stalinesque legislation designed to control how private property is sold so that more nonprofits can oversee rent-stabilized apartments.
“You have to laugh at the hypocrisy,” said Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens). “These nonprofits are proving themselves to be little more than taxpayer-funded slumlords, and this blatant double-standard is all part of the administration’s planned attack on private ownership in New York City.”
Like Cea Weaver, the much-maligned lefty boss of Mamdani’s newly created Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, HPD Commissioner Levy grew up in privilege.
She is the twin daughter of lawyer Ed Levy and his late civil-rights attorney wife Mary, who owned multiple properties, including a townhouse in historic Georgetown they sold in 2023 that is currently worth $1.4 million. She has said she is a native of affluent Maplewood, NJ.
Levy, a Delaware University graduate, has been a rebel-rousing, radical tenant advocate for decades, even spending time in the slammer as a young organizer.
“It was cool,” Levy once told Crain’s New York Business of her 1997 Dallas arrest for criminal trespassing at a run-down affordable-housing complex. “I got really hooked.”
Levy boasted in the 2011 interview that her “rough, caustic style” irks landlords.
The Sedgwick Avenue site has more open HPD violations than roughly three-quarters of the privately owned, rent-stabilized buildings in NYC — but Mamdani is “too focused” on pushing the abolition of private property, said Kenny Burgos, a former Bronx assemblyman who heads the New York Apartment Association that represents landlords of rent-stabilized units.
Nonprofit-managed housing “consistently run higher violation counts despite having government-backed loans and [being eligible to avoid] paying property taxes, so they should have a lot more freed-up cash to make these buildings run efficiently, and yet are unable to do so — even with good intentions and no goal of profit,” added Burgos.
Workforce Housing Group did not return messages, but the HPD defended Levy’s involvement in the sale of the Sedgwick Avenue building to the nonprofit group.
“When the building was at risk of being purchased by a predatory buyer, Dina Levy organized alongside the tenants and kept the building affordable,” said agency spokesman Matt Rauschenbach.
“And now the building is undergoing an $8 million preservation renovation to improve conditions and make sure it is a safe, affordable place for the tenants who live there to call home.”
New construction makes homes more affordable – even for those who can’t afford the new units
New construction makes homes more affordable – even for those who can’t afford the new units
New market-rate housing can lower housing costs in neighborhoods across a metro area
In cities with tight housing markets, policymakers have struggled to help lower-income residents afford homes. New research shows that just building new housing—even expensive housing—can quickly drive down housing costs across metro areas, including in low-income neighborhoods.
Building housing sets off a process called a migration chain, as people leave their homes to move into new units. When people vacate a given type of unit, it loosens the market for that type of unit, which lowers prices. Other people move into the newly vacant homes, leaving their previous units vacant, and the process repeats itself again and again.
In “The Effect of New Market-Rate Housing Construction on the Low-Income Housing Market,” Evan Mast of the Upjohn Institute looks at the ripple effect of new multi-unit buildings in 12 large U.S. cities. Mast finds that building 100 new market-rate units opens up the equivalent of 70 units in neighborhoods earning below the area’s median income. In the poorest neighborhoods, it opens up the equivalent of 40 units.
That’s far more than the five to 15 affordable units policymakers often require new developments include as a condition of approval, a practice called inclusionary zoning. Faced with such requirements, developers may choose not to build, or to build fewer projects, limiting housing supply and driving up rents.
Although some have speculated that what happens in the luxury housing market has little effect on the lower-income market, Mast used individual address histories to follow 52,000 residents of new market-rate units back to their previous residence and likewise through the migration chain. He found the entire housing market is deeply connected, with people moving between neighborhoods of different income levels.
While only 20 percent of new-building residents moved in from neighborhoods earning below the area median income, that percentage rises for people who move into their now-vacant units, and again for the people who move into those people’s old homes.
By the sixth round, 40 percent of residents came from below-median-income neighborhoods. This migration chain continues round after round, creating vacancies—and lowering costs—for the lowest-income neighborhoods within two to five years.
The chain can break at any point, however. Families who expand into second homes, or children who leave a parent’s house, for example, don’t vacate a unit in the process. Landlords faced with vacancies may sit on empty units instead of lowering rents to fill them.
Most of the time, though, the chain continues to the next round. The longer the chain lasts, the better chance it has to reach lower-income residents. Vacancies typically get filled in 1 to 3 months, and most of the vacancies in below-median-income areas are created by the 15th round.
Of course, the benefits of new housing units don’t reach everyone equally. In particularly poor neighborhoods with high vacancy rates, adding vacant housing units might not affect prices much. It might even compound a neighborhood’s deterioration.
Vacancies also won’t lower rents in areas currently charging the minimum cost of housing, that is, the lowest rent required to keep a habitable unit on the market. Housing people who can’t afford this rate requires a different policy solution, such as rent vouchers, public housing, or incentives to landlords to lower prices.
For most middle- and low-income families, however, the research indicates that building more market-rate housing will make homes more affordable throughout a region.
Read the policy brief:
https://research.upjohn.org/up_policybriefs/13/
Read the full paper:
https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/307/
Published version:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119021000656?via%3Dihub
Zohran Mamdani: “When I’m Mayor, slumlords will be held accountable for safety and repairs. If they won’t, we’ll put them out of business.” Me: “Actually, when you become mayor, you will also become the biggest slumlord in New York City.”
https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1910714770249961729
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1987710215475650811
In the four minute video posted below, the housing conditions at a three bedroom apartment at a public housing project in the Bronx in New York City are absolutely horrible.
There are rats, roaches, and black mold.
There are leaks in every room.
And every time the tenant calls maintenance to ask for repairs, the government employees always make up some bogus excuse for why they can’t fix anything.
And why should the government employees fix anything, when they know they can’t get fired?
And as all of this is going on, the federal government is giving them $30 million per week to make these repairs.
Since they’re not actually making these repairs, what are they really spending that money on?
The video also says that at other apartments in the same building, sometimes there is no heat, sometimes there is no hot water, and sometimes there is even no running water at all.
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9PJOrDaXk
Why do New York City voters want to repeat this disaster from the 1960s and 1970s?
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1986536881585017013
The textbook case against rent control comes from New York City.
Many New York neighborhoods became blighted and abandoned buildings became common. Over 200,000 rental units were abandoned in the 1960s and ‘70s as rent control restrictions, along with other policies, reduced the South Bronx and parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem to rubble.
This video shows the kind of government owned housing that Zohran Mamdani wants to build more of in New York City
In the four minute video posted below, the housing conditions at a three bedroom apartment at a public housing project in the Bronx in New York City are absolutely horrible.
There are rats, roaches, and black mold.
There are leaks in every room.
And every time the tenant calls maintenance to ask for repairs, the government employees always make up some bogus excuse for why they can’t fix anything.
And why should the government employees fix anything, when they know they can’t get fired?
And as all of this is going on, the federal government is giving them $30 million per week to make these repairs.
Since they’re not actually making these repairs, what are they really spending that money on?
The video also says that at other apartments in the same building, sometimes there is no heat, sometimes there is no hot water, and sometimes there is even no running water at all.
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9PJOrDaXk
We will never get the cost of housing down until we go back to the levels of per capita construction that we had in the 1960s and 1970s. Current zoning laws make that impossible.
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1986118070667256176
I asked Grok to fact check my own claims about these 12 things being far better today than in the 1950s.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 7, 2025
I asked Grok:
Fact check:
Compared to the 1950s, here are some things that are far, far better in 2025:
Average life expectancy.
Square footage of housing per person. Houses today are much bigger, but the number of people in each house is much smaller.
Number of bathrooms per person in each house.
Percentage of homes with air conditioning.
Number of dental cavities for the average 18 year old.
Percentage of the population that is vaccinated against polio and measles.
Percentage of the population that has indoor plumbing.
Percentage of the population that takes a daily shower.
Being able to watch any movie that you want, whenever you want.
Size of average TV screen.
Percentage of the population that owns a color TV.
Percentage of the population that works at a desk inside an air conditioned office, instead of outside in the hot sun doing manual labor.
Every single one of these things is far, far better today than in the 1950s.
(end of my question)
This is Grok’s response:
Below, I’ll fact-check each claim by comparing the 1950s to 2025, using available data and historical context. I’ll aim to be concise while addressing each point thoroughly, citing sources where relevant. All claims will be evaluated for whether they are “far, far better” in 2025 compared to the 1950s.
1. Average Life ExpectancyClaim: Average life expectancy is far better in 2025 than in the 1950s.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 68.2 years in 1950 (65.6 for males, 71.1 for females).
2025: Life expectancy in 2023 was 78.4 years (75.8 for males, 81.1 for females), with projections suggesting a slight increase or stabilization by 2025.
Analysis: Life expectancy has increased by about 10 years, a significant improvement driven by advances in medical care, vaccines, and public health. However, recent stagnation due to chronic diseases and socioeconomic factors slightly tempers the “far, far better” claim. Still, the increase is substantial.
Verdict: True, life expectancy is significantly better in 2025.
2. Square Footage of Housing per PersonClaim: Houses are much bigger, with fewer people per house, leading to more square footage per person in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: In 1950, the average new single-family home was ~1,000–1,200 square feet, with an average household size of ~3.37 people, yielding ~300–350 square feet per person.
2025: In 2015, the average new home was 2,687 square feet, with a median of 2,467 square feet, and household size dropped to 2.54. This results in ~971–1,058 square feet per person. Recent data suggests a slight decline in home size (e.g., 2,386 square feet median in 2018), but the trend of larger homes persists.
Analysis: Square footage per person has nearly tripled due to larger homes and smaller households, strongly supporting the claim.
Verdict: True, square footage per person is far better in 2025.
3. Number of Bathrooms per Person in Each HouseClaim: Number of bathrooms per person is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Data is sparse, but homes typically had 1–1.5 bathrooms, with an average household size of ~3.37, yielding ~0.3–0.4 bathrooms per person. Many homes, especially older or rural ones, lacked full bathrooms.
2025: Modern homes often have 2–3 bathrooms, with new homes in 2015 averaging ~2.5 bathrooms for a household size of 2.54, yielding ~1 bathroom per person.
Analysis: The increase from ~0.3 to ~1 bathroom per person is a clear improvement, driven by larger homes and modern design standards.
Verdict: True, bathrooms per person are far better in 2025.
4. Percentage of Homes with Air ConditioningClaim: Percentage of homes with air conditioning is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: In the 1950s, air conditioning was a luxury; fewer than 10% of homes had it, with ~50% of new homes by the mid-1970s having AC.
2025: By 2015, 93% of new homes had central air conditioning, and ~87% of all U.S. households had some form of AC (central or window units) by 2020. This percentage likely increased slightly by 2025.
Analysis: The rise from <10% to ~90% is a dramatic improvement, making this claim accurate.
Verdict: True, the percentage of homes with air conditioning is far better in 2025.
5. Number of Dental Cavities for the Average 18-Year-OldClaim: Number of dental cavities for the average 18-year-old is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Limited data exists, but dental care was less advanced, with minimal fluoridation and poorer oral hygiene practices. Studies suggest 18-year-olds had ~4–7 cavities on average, with higher rates of untreated decay.
2025: By 2011–2016, CDC data showed ~1.5–2 cavities (decayed, missing, or filled teeth) for adolescents aged 12–19, with fluoridated water, better dental care, and sealants reducing decay rates. This trend likely holds or improved slightly by 2025.
Analysis: A reduction from ~4–7 to ~1.5–2 cavities is a significant improvement, supporting the claim.
Verdict: True, dental cavities for 18-year-olds are far better in 2025.
6. Percentage of the Population Vaccinated Against Polio and MeaslesClaim: Percentage of the population vaccinated against polio and measles is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Polio vaccine was introduced in 1955, with ~50% of children vaccinated by the late 1950s. Measles vaccine wasn’t available until 1963, so 0% were vaccinated in the 1950s.
2025: By 2020, ~93% of U.S. children (19–35 months) were vaccinated against polio, and ~92% against measles (MMR). Adult vaccination rates are lower but still significant. Rates may have slightly declined due to vaccine hesitancy but remain high.
Analysis: The jump from ~50% (polio) and 0% (measles) to ~92–93% is a massive improvement.
Verdict: True, vaccination rates for polio and measles are far better in 2025.
7. Percentage of the Population with Indoor PlumbingClaim: Percentage with indoor plumbing is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: In 1950, ~85% of U.S. homes had indoor plumbing, with rural areas lagging (some as low as 50%).
2025: By 2020, >99% of U.S. homes had indoor plumbing, with near-universal access in urban and rural areas.
Analysis: The increase from ~85% to >99% is significant, though the 1950s baseline was already relatively high.
Verdict: True, but the “far, far better” claim is slightly exaggerated due to the high baseline in the 1950s.
8. Percentage of the Population that Takes a Daily ShowerClaim: Percentage taking a daily shower is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Limited data, but daily showering was less common due to fewer bathrooms, cultural norms (weekly baths common), and water access issues in rural areas. Estimates suggest ~20–30% showered daily.
2025: Surveys (e.g., 2020 YouGov) indicate ~60–70% of Americans shower daily, driven by more bathrooms, better plumbing, and changing hygiene norms.
Analysis: The increase from ~20–30% to ~60–70% is notable, supporting the claim, though cultural factors influence showering habits.
Verdict: True, daily showering is significantly better in 2025.
9. Being Able to Watch Any Movie Whenever You WantClaim: Ability to watch any movie whenever you want is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Movie access was limited to theaters, with ~4–5 billion annual theater admissions. Home viewing was rare, with no VCRs or streaming.
2025: Streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, etc.) allow instant access to millions of movies. Over 80% of U.S. households have streaming subscriptions, and physical media (DVDs, Blu-rays) are widely available.
Analysis: The shift from theater-only to on-demand streaming is a revolutionary improvement.
Verdict: True, movie-watching availability is far better in 2025.
10. Size of Average TV ScreenClaim: Size of the average TV screen is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: TVs were ~12–20 inches (diagonal), with small, bulky CRT screens.
2025: Average TV screen size is ~50–55 inches, with some households having 65–85-inch screens, driven by affordable flat-screen technology.
Analysis: The increase from ~12–20 inches to ~50–55 inches is a dramatic improvement in size and quality.
Verdict: True, TV screen size is far better in 2025.
11. Percentage of the Population that Owns a Color TVClaim: Percentage owning a color TV is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: Color TVs were introduced in 1954, but only ~1% of households had them by 1959 due to high costs.
2025: Virtually 100% of TV-owning households (~95% of all households) have color TVs, with modern TVs exclusively in color.
Analysis: The rise from ~1% to ~95% is a clear improvement.
Verdict: True, color TV ownership is far better in 2025.
12. Percentage of the Population Working in Air-Conditioned OfficesClaim: Percentage working at desks in air-conditioned offices, rather than manual labor in the sun, is far better in 2025.
Fact-Check:
1950s: ~30% of jobs were in manufacturing, agriculture, or construction, often outdoors or in non-air-conditioned spaces. Office jobs were ~15–20%, with limited AC (est. <20% of offices).
2025: ~80% of jobs are in service or office-based sectors, with >90% of offices air-conditioned. Manual labor jobs are <10% of the workforce.
Analysis: The shift to office work and near-universal office AC strongly supports the claim.
Verdict: True, the percentage working in air-conditioned offices is far better in 2025.
Summary
All claims are true, with most showing dramatic improvements that justify the “far, far better” description. The only slight caveat is indoor plumbing, where the 1950s baseline (~85%) was already high, making the improvement to >99% significant but less “far, far” than others. Advances in healthcare, housing, technology, and work conditions have driven these changes, though socioeconomic disparities and recent health trends (e.g., obesity) warrant consideration.
If you’d like further details or specific data for any point, let me know!
(end of Grok’s response)
In 2021, Zohran Mamdani said he wants to “seize the means of production,” and to abolish private ownership of housing, and to have multiple families share the same kitchen and the same bathhouse.
Resurfaced video shows NYC mayoral hopeful saying he wants to replace private homes with communal living
Zohran Mamdani’s 2021 video reveals plans for communal housing with shared laundry, kitchens and bathhouses
By Alec Schemmel
July 3, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has come under fire from critics who label him a “communist” – a charge he dismisses as a distraction.
However, the criticisms may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims. Videos show the NYC mayoral candidate espousing language and theories rooted in communist revolutionary language.
In one 2021 video, Mamdani urges fellow socialists at a conference to not compromise on goals like “seizing the means of production.” In a second video, released on YouTube by progressive advocacy group The Gravel Institute that same year, Mamdani discusses the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one, calling for luxury condos to be replaced with communal style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.
“Why do so many people end up homeless?” Mamdani asks in the video. “It’s not because there aren’t enough homes to go around, there are plenty of empty homes. No. It’s because housing people is not a primary goal of developers or landlords. Their goal, simply put, is to make a profit.”
According to Mamdani, this is a problem. He lamented in the video that housing is “a consumer product, just like clothes or cars” that private businesses sell on the market to make a profit. As a result, Mamdani complains, there is plenty of housing for “the rich” but not nearly enough opportunities for poor and working-class people.
“[It’s] not efficient or beneficial for the rest of society,” Mamdani says. “Housing doesn’t have to be seen as a market at all.”
In the video, Mamdani points to post-war communist Vienna as an example of how removing privatization from the housing market can be good for society. However, he does concede that currently in Vienna, “residents still pay part of their earnings in rent to cover operational costs and a sizable chunk of the population lives in private housing.”
After describing the so-called Vienna model, during which he puts forth a vision of communal living with shared laundry, kitchens, food co-ops, bathhouses, pharmacies, lecture halls, swimming pools and more, he suggests a way forward that includes establishing “community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership.”
“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing,” Mamdani says. “In other words, moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right.”
President Donald Trump has referred to Mamdani as a “100% Communist Lunatic” and vowed to “save New York City” from Mamdani if he gets elected. He has suggested a willingness to withhold federal funds from the city if Mamdani doesn’t “behave.”
“As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social Wednesday. “Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City, and make it ‘Hot’ and ‘Great’ again, just like I did with the Good Ol’ USA!”
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
I knew it! Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass were lying when they said it would be “easy” for fire victims to get a permit to rebuild their homes. From March 1 through June 30, 2025, more than 5,000 fire victims have visited the government’s “one stop center,” and 948 of them have applied for a building permit. But only 44 of them have actually received a building permit.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
June 30, 2025
The very first time that I heard California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass say that they were creating a “one stop center” that would make it “easy” for fire victims to get a building permit, I knew they were lying.
These 3 screenshots from their own website prove that they were lying.
This is the link to their website:
https://recovery.lacounty.gov/rebuilding/permitting-progress-dashboard/
This first screenshot is dated June 30, 2025.
These other two screen shots are close ups taken from that first screenshot.
This close up shows that from March 1 through June 30, 2025, more than 5,000 fire victims visited the “one stop center.” I’m assuming that these were more than 5,000 unique fire victims, and none of them went more than once, because it’s called a “one stop center.”
This other close up shows that as of June 30, 2025, 948 fire victims had applied for permits to rebuild their homes.
But out of those 948 requests for permits, only 44 have been approved.
That’s less than 5% of building permit requests that have actually been approved.
And when we take into account that more than 5,000 unique fire victims have visited the “one stop center,” and that only 44 building permits have been approved, that’s actually means that less than 1% of the fire victims who visited the “one stop center” have received permission to rebuild their homes.
Less than 1%.
So the claim by Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass that their “one stop center” would make it “easy” for fire victims to get a building permit was a complete lie.
Of course it’s possible that some fire victims did in fact visit the “one stop center” more than once. But if that is the case, then it only proves that the phrase “one stop center” was a lie.
Anyway, given the huge number of homes that burned down, it’s an absolute disgrace that only 44 building permits have been approved.
Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass were lying when they said it would be “easy” for fire victims to get a building permit.
The poor are better off when we build more housing for the rich
Archive: https://archive.ph/8c6Rv
The poor are better off when we build more housing for the rich
By Emily Badger
February 12, 2016
To low-income residents and the groups that fight for them in expensive cities, new market-rate housing often feels like part of the problem. If San Francisco and Washington are becoming rapidly unaffordable to the poor, why build more apartments for the rich?
New housing, these voices fear, will only turn affordable neighborhoods into unaffordable ones, attracting yet more wealth and accelerating the displacement of the poor. And so protestors rally against new market-rate apartments in Oakland. Politicians propose halting construction in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Economists typically counter with a lesson about supply and demand: Increase the sheer amount of housing, and competition for it will fall, bringing down rents along the way to the benefit of everyone.
It’s understandable that skeptics raise their eyebrows at this argument. It’s theoretical, based on math models and not peoples’ lives.
It seems counterintuitive — that building for people who aren’t poor will help the poor. But the California Legislative Analyst’s Office just released some very good data backing up this point: Particularly in the Bay Area since 2000, the researchers found, low-income neighborhoods with a lot of new construction have witnessed about half the displacement of similar neighborhoods that haven’t added much new housing:
Here’s another way to look at that: Places without much new market-rate construction are more likely to have displacement. That is, no doubt, the opposite of what protestors want.
Importantly, the benefits of all this building aren’t about inclusionary policies, which require developers to set aside some affordable units in market-rate buildings. There’s less displacement in high-construction neighborhoods whether they have inclusionary policies or not.
In this research (hat tip to Daniel Hertz for noticing it), displacement is defined when census tracts have population growth over time but a simultaneous decline in low-income households. The researchers also counted census tracts where the overall population was falling — but falling particularly rapidly among the poor.
In tight markets, poor and middle-class households are forced to compete with each other for scarce homes. And so new market-rate housing eases that competition, even if the poor aren’t the ones living in it. Over time, new housing also filters down to the more affordable supply, because housing becomes less desirable as it ages. That means the luxury housing we’re building today will contribute to the middle-class supply 30 years from now; it means today’s middle-class housing was luxury housing 30 years ago.
Here is the average rent for housing built in San Francisco and Los Angeles between 1980-1985. Relatively speaking, these homes were substantially more expensive in 1985 when they were brand new than they were in 2011:
If you don’t build much new housing, though, this filtering process breaks down over time. And, in fact, the LAO report shows that rents have risen a lot faster for the poor in coastal California communities that have been stingy with new housing than in counties across the nation that built a lot:
The report concludes that boosting private construction would do more to broadly help poor households than expanding small and costly affordable housing programs that can serve only a fraction of them. Those programs also don’t resolve the underlying cause of high rents — the housing shortage itself.
And that shortage actually undermines affordable programs like housing vouchers, because it’s a lot harder for the poor to use vouchers in a market where they’re fiercely competing with everyone else.
Adding one more point: None of this dismisses the very real fact that displacement from specific homes happens when low-income housing is literally knocked down to build high-end towers. A good amount of new supply in cities, though, can rise on under-utilized land (former industrial plots, surface parking lots, abandoned properties, etc.). And the cumulative effect of all that new supply can hold down rents across neighborhoods and cities, including for the poor.
Austin Rents Tumble 22% From Peak on Massive Home Building Spree
Archive: https://archive.ph/U1oVB
Austin Rents Tumble 22% From Peak on Massive Home Building Spree
One tenant got two months free, $600 credit for signing lease as deals abound
By Joe Lovinger
February 27, 2025
Yasmine Acebo makes her living by hooking up renters with deals on Austin apartments. In recent months, they haven’t been hard to find.
In the midst of a pandemic-era population surge, rents jumped a staggering 25% in 2021 in the Texas capital for one of the biggest increases in the nation. But a development boom and new policies encouraging housing density have sent vacancy rates soaring. Now, landlords are struggling to fill gleaming new developments and offering major discounts to lure newly empowered renters.
“Nearly all apartments in Austin are doing some sort of specials for move-ins,” said Acebo, an agent with Pauly Presley Realty. One recent example: a client was searching for a one-bedroom apartment in South Austin and settled on a unit at Perch Apartments about 20 minutes from downtown. It normally would have cost $1,420 per month, but in return for applying the day after her visit and leasing at least 13 months, she received two months free rent, a waived administration fee and a $600 credit.
“It was inevitable once you noticed how many apartments were going up,” Acebo said.
As the US confronts a housing crisis so severe that it became a wedge issue in the presidential election, helped fuel some of the fastest inflation in decades and made it all-but-impossible to recruit teachers, fire fighters and restaurant workers to high-cost areas, the Texas capital has become the poster child for advocates who say the only way out is by building more homes. And while other cities run by progressives including San Francisco and Chicago face criticism for onerous permitting processes, Austin has cut regulations to speed up development. It appears to have worked.
Nowhere in the country have rents declined as much as they have in Austin — now 22% off the peak reached in August 2023, according to Redfin. The median asking rent is $1,399 per month, down $400 in less than three years.
Once the “slacker” capital of the country, Austin’s reputation as a low-cost city had already been waning when it was completely upended during the pandemic. But now, as rents nosedive, the picture has changed yet again, so much so that the capital city is no longer the priciest place to rent within Texas. The drop has sparked fresh debate between Yimbys, shorthand for pro-development, “Yes-in-my-backyard” advocates, and Nimbys, the pejorative name for those who resist change.
“This is really Economics 101; it’s supply and demand,” said Cindi Reed, the director of sales at MRI Apartment Data.
In 2021 — which Reed calls “the year of extreme” — developers poured into Austin as pandemic-era corporate relocations surged and remote workers flocked to the city seeking lower taxes, sunny weather, a plethora of tech startups and a robust social scene. Builders typically take two years to go from buying land to welcoming tenants, and as their cranes climbed into the sky, the new arrivals crammed in to the existing apartment stock.
The rental occupancy rate reached 91.7%, the highest level since 2015. Housing became the dominant issue of the city’s mayoral race as businesses worried pricey apartments might complicate the city’s cost-friendly image.
“There is no question that we are in a cost-of-living emergency in this town,” Kirk Watson said during his successful campaign for mayor in 2022.
Then came the flood of new apartments. Developers dumped almost 50,000 rental units on the city in 2023 and 2024, according to Fannie Mae data. That represented a 14% increase in the supply, the biggest on a percentage basis for any major US metro area.
“The rental market here is saturated with availability,” said Jody Lockshin, a veteran Austin broker and the owner of Habitat Hunters. Landlords have almost no leverage, and she has seen buildings offer three months free to new tenants and rate reductions to keep ones already in place.
Developers Tishman Speyer and Ryan Cos. are offering as long as eight weeks free rent at ATX Tower, a high-end residential and office development in the heart of downtown. With about 370 units, the building features some of the most elaborate amenities in the city, including an indoor cinema, a co-working lounge and a 20th-floor pool overlooking Republic Square Park. Prices start at $2,352 for a studio and climb to almost $8,000 for a three-bedroom.
RPM Living, a management and development firm, is offering four to six weeks free at its high-end rentals, including The Bowie and The St. Mary, where residents can get a tan by poolside cabanas.
Managers at some of the country’s biggest real estate investment trusts expect it will be a while before Austin landlords regain power.
“The supply picture is really tough and there may be a year or so of delay before we kind of reengage in that market,” Mark Parrell, the chief executive officer of Equity Residential, one of the country’s largest apartment REITs, said in a recent earnings call.
Camden Property Trust assigns letter grades to each of its markets at the start of the year based on their expected performance. Last in its class: Austin, with a C-minus. The firm expects to see rent growth pick back up eventually, but says the supply glut needs to work itself out first.
Building at Speed
The last attempt at significant building code reform, called CodeNEXT, burned $8.5 million and five years on a rewrite that went nowhere before the city council spiked it in 2018. But as it became harder to find an affordable place to live, a new political consensus emerged in Austin.
“After years of inaction, everyone felt the urgency of the moment,” said Zo Qadri, a Democrat who was elected to the city council in 2022. “Housing was the No. 1 issue. It was the lack of affordability.”
That year, Watson, who had led the city as mayor during the dot-com boom, returned to the job. He focused on slashing delays in the permitting process, and the city scaled back rules that limited the height of buildings within 540 feet (165 meters) of single-family homes. Austin also became the largest city in the US to end parking mandates.
More recently, Austin has focused on boosting the supply of single-family homes by allowing developers to build as many as three units on lots that were previously restricted to one home and slashing the minimum lot size to 1,800 square feet from 5,750. The city has received about 350 applications for homes under those two programs.
“Everyone in the building and development community was surprised by the change in winds from a housing perspective,” said Cody Carr, a homebuilder who has completed two projects that take advantage of the three-units-per-lot change and is working on four more.
Home prices have also dropped from pandemic heights, down 23% since May 2022 as interest rates climbed, but like apartment rents remain well above pre-pandemic levels. The median sale price last month was $515,000, up about 34% from the median of $383,380 buyers paid in January 2020, according to Redfin.
The push for greater affordability has also made for strange bedfellows as conservatives in the state legislature — which is dominated by the far right — embrace some of Austin’s moves with similar policies at the state level.
One bill signed into law last session opened a pathway for developers facing long permit delays to get approval from officials in other municipalities or any licensed engineer. This session, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who leads the state Senate, declared affordable housing one of his top priorities. Already, a raft of bills have been introduced to promote accessory dwelling units, reduce minimum lot sizes and slash parking minimums.
“I think that the lege does a lot of horrible stuff,” Qadri said, citing state lawmakers’ efforts to block cities from enacting more liberal legislation in areas like labor and finance. “But there are at times, at least as it relates to housing, these glimmers of hope and good work that can be done.”
In Austin, rents fell by 22% in less than two years, after the government allowed higher density and taller apartment buildings, made it easier to get building permits, and eliminated the parking space requirements. This is the exact opposite of what San Francisco has been doing.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 1, 2025
This is one of the best pieces of news that I’ve read in a long, long time.
The New York Post just reported:
https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/
This COVID boomtown is seeing the biggest decline in rents in the country
By Emily Davis
February 27, 2025
A building boom in Austin, Texas has paid off big for renters.
There, residents’ rents have tumbled 22% from their peak in the summer of 2023, Bloomberg reported. The formerly low-cost city took on a new reputation in 2021 as a prohibitively pricey locale, as companies and young workers flocked to the Lone Star State’s capital. Heavy investment in development and ambitious housing policies, however, have flipped the script between renters and landlords.
It was the year of runaway growth, as tech companies like Tesla and Oracle relocated to the city and workers followed. Rents jumped 25% and the rental occupancy rate reached 91.7%, Bloomberg reported. The city was at risk of losing its low-cost-of-living reputation.
The housing shortage and cost-of-living crisis dominated the city’s political races in recent years, Bloomberg added. The name of the game became supply.
Developers poured into the city and new policies were enacted to encourage greater housing density. City leaders scaled back height rules, ended parking mandates and shortened the permitting process.
It worked. Almost 50,000 rental units were completed in the city in 2023 and 2024 — a 14% increase in supply.
Austin’s median rent was $1,399 in January, according to Redfin. That’s a 16% year-over-year decrease, marking the largest decline out of 44 major metropolitan areas.
From their peak in August 2023, median asking rents in Austin declined a total of 22%, or $400.
This is the exact opposite of what San Francisco has been doing.
This 15 minute video from the YouTube channel of Reason magazine, which I’ve posted on my blog quite a few times, explains exactly how San Francisco makes it illegal and impossible for developers to build enough new housing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
One thing that’s interesting is that the left wing, woke, progressive activists and protestors who are interviewed in the video actually believe that building new apartments would cause rents to go up instead of down. These economically illiterate idiots don’t understand the single most basic, simple concept that is taught in every introductory level economics class.
Another one of the left wing, progressive activists’ ridiculous objections to building new apartments is that they would cast a shadow.
Hillary Ronen, one of San Francisco’s elected officials, is also opposed to building new apartments because they would cast a shadow. But the voters keep electing her again and again.
This is why the one of the most left wing, progressive cities in the U.S. has such a severe shortage of housing.
Will San Francisco decide to copy Austin’s successful policies that are very clearly explained in the New York Post article?
I very much doubt it.
I also very much hope that I am mistaken.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/
This COVID boomtown is seeing the biggest decline in rents in the country
By Emily Davis
February 27, 2025
A building boom in Austin, Texas has paid off big for renters.
There, residents’ rents have tumbled 22% from their peak in the summer of 2023, Bloomberg reported. The formerly low-cost city took on a new reputation in 2021 as a prohibitively pricey locale, as companies and young workers flocked to the Lone Star State’s capital. Heavy investment in development and ambitious housing policies, however, have flipped the script between renters and landlords.
Nearly all apartments in Austin are doing some sort of special for move-ins, one agent told Bloomberg.
The city of Austin has a lot to recommend for itself — live music, outdoor adventures, mouth-watering brisket and low taxes. But in 2021, the city lacked one major amenity: enough housing.
It was the year of runaway growth, as tech companies like Tesla and Oracle relocated to the city and workers followed. Rents jumped 25% and the rental occupancy rate reached 91.7%, Bloomberg reported. The city was at risk of losing its low-cost-of-living reputation.
The housing shortage and cost-of-living crisis dominated the city’s political races in recent years, Bloomberg added. The name of the game became supply.
Developers poured into the city and new policies were enacted to encourage greater housing density. City leaders scaled back height rules, ended parking mandates and shortened the permitting process.
It worked. Almost 50,000 rental units were completed in the city in 2023 and 2024 — a 14% increase in supply.
Landlords have lost a lot of leverage, Bloomberg reported, as they struggle to fill their brand new apartments and offer big discounts to potential tenants. Renters are fielding offers of two to three months of free rent, even at the luxury downtown developments.
Austin’s median rent was $1,399 in January, according to Redfin. That’s a 16% year-over-year decrease, marking the largest decline out of 44 major metropolitan areas.
From their peak in August 2023, median asking rents in Austin declined a total of 22%, or $400.
Renters are having no trouble discovering good deals. In one case, Bloomberg reported, a renter interested in a $1,420-a-month apartment was offered two months free, a $600 credit and waived fees, all to get them to sign up fast and for at least 13 months.
There are, of course, those who lose out when renters win. Large real estate investment trusts have been gloomy in recent earnings calls, Bloomberg reported, with one REIT downgrading the performance of the Austin market.
But these REITs expect to see rent growth pick up again. Both rental and home prices remain well above their pre-pandemic price tags, and are expected to remain there.
San Francisco elected official Hillary Ronen said she’s against building new housing because it would cast a shadow. Instead, they want people to live in tiny little “pods.”
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1857467164891963460
https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1857467164891963460
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
https://rollingout.com/2024/11/14/san-francisco-sleeping-pod-housing/
San Francisco’s sleeping pod solution to affordable housing crisis
Hundreds apply for scarce rentals at $700 per month
By Amari Apple
November 14, 2024
As the cost of living continues to soar in major cities across the United States, innovative housing solutions are emerging to address the growing crisis of affordability and homelessness. One such solution is the introduction of sleeping pods in San Francisco, a city notorious for its exorbitant rental prices.
The sleeping pod initiative
Brownstone Shared Housing, led by CEO James Stallworth, has recently made headlines by revealing that a staggering 300 individuals have applied for just 17 available sleeping pods in downtown San Francisco. Each pod is priced at $700 per month, a fraction of the average rent in the city, which is reported to be around $4,000.
These sleeping pods are designed to provide a low-cost housing option in one of the most expensive urban areas in the country. Measuring approximately 3.5 feet by 4 feet by 6.5 feet, the pods are large enough to accommodate a twin mattress. Each pod is equipped with privacy curtains, interior lighting and charging ports, making them a practical choice for those in need of affordable shelter.
Addressing the housing crisis
The concept of sleeping pods first gained traction last year, and despite facing coding hurdles in 2024, Brownstone Shared Housing remains committed to serving the community. This initiative highlights the urgent need for creative solutions to combat homelessness and provide affordable living spaces in urban environments.
With the rising number of applicants for these sleeping pods, it raises an important question: Should more cities adopt similar innovations to tackle the homelessness crisis? As urban areas continue to grapple with the challenges of high rent and limited housing options, the sleeping pod model could serve as a blueprint for other cities facing similar issues.
Potential benefits of sleeping pods
Affordability: At $700 per month, sleeping pods offer a significantly lower cost of living compared to traditional housing options in San Francisco.
Space efficiency: The compact design of sleeping pods maximizes the use of limited urban space, allowing more individuals to find shelter.
Community building: Shared living spaces can foster a sense of community among residents, providing social support and reducing feelings of isolation.
Privacy and comfort: Despite their small size, the inclusion of privacy curtains and personal lighting enhances the living experience for residents.
Challenges and considerations
While the sleeping pod initiative presents a promising solution, it is not without its challenges. Concerns about zoning regulations, health and safety standards and the overall acceptance of such living arrangements in urban neighborhoods must be addressed. Additionally, the psychological impact of living in a confined space should not be overlooked, as it may affect residents’ well-being.
Moreover, the sustainability of such initiatives relies heavily on community support and government policies that prioritize affordable housing solutions. As cities explore innovative ways to combat homelessness, collaboration between private organizations, local governments and community members will be crucial.
The introduction of sleeping pods in San Francisco is a bold step towards addressing the housing crisis that many urban areas face today. As more individuals seek affordable living options, initiatives like these could pave the way for a new era of housing solutions that prioritize accessibility and community.
As we continue to navigate the complexities of urban living, it is essential to remain open to new ideas and solutions that can provide relief to those struggling with housing insecurity. The sleeping pod model may just be the beginning of a transformative shift in how we think about affordable housing.
CNN understands that prices are based on supply and demand: “An influx of new residents drove up housing costs in the Tampa Bay region, leaving it with one of the highest annual inflation rates in the country last year. Now, the Tampa metro has one of the lowest rates, mostly thanks to beefed-up housing supply.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-affordability-america-finally-improving-133523145.html
Housing affordability in America is finally improving. Not so much in these cities
By Bryan Mena, CNN
August 27, 2024
With the Federal Reserve all but confirmed to cut interest rates next month, there is finally some light at the end of the tunnel for Americans grappling with the most unaffordable housing market in decades. But the old saying that “real estate is local” still rings painfully true.
In June, home-price growth accelerated the most in New York, San Diego and Las Vegas, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index released Tuesday. For several months, San Diego led with the fastest increase in home prices, eventually getting toppled by New York in May — a corner of the country already notorious for its high cost of living.
And it’s not just home buyers feeling the sting: A recent report from Moody’s Analytics showed that the situation is dire for renters, too. New York City, Miami and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, Los Angeles and Northern New Jersey were the five most rent-burdened places in America during the second quarter, the report found, based on rent prices and family incomes (or the rent-to-income ratio.) Renters in those cities allocate more than 30% of their income toward rent, Moody’s said.
That’s in contrast to regions seeing declining shelter costs, such as Tampa, Florida; Denver and Minneapolis, according to Consumer Price Index data. A pickup in home construction has been key for those metropolitan areas because it can ease upward pressure on prices. An influx of new residents drove up housing costs in the Tampa Bay region, leaving it with one of the highest annual inflation rates in the country last year. Now, the Tampa metro has one of the lowest rates, mostly thanks to beefed-up housing supply.
Nationwide, the housing market has finally shown signs of improvement. Year-over-year home-price growth has slowed over the past several months, as measured by the national Case-Shiller index, rising 5.4% in June from a year earlier, down from 5.9% in May, though the index itself reached a fresh record high that month. The average 30-year mortgage rate is currently at its lowest level since May 2023, housing inventory has expanded every month this year so far, and household incomes have continued to grow at a brisk pace, which is factored in to housing affordability,
Good luck living comfortably in New York
Affordability is being stymied for different reasons across different places, but the one region currently taking the crown as America’s most unaffordable housing market seems to be New York.
The Big Apple is the most rent burdened place in the US by far, according to the Moody’s report, where renters dedicated about 58% of their income toward rent during the second quarter. Nationally, that figure stood at about 27% in the April-through-June period. The New York-Newark-Jersey City metro had one of the nation’s highest annual inflation rates in July, with the month-over-month increase “primarily driven by higher prices for shelter,” the Labor Department’s Regional Commissioner William J. Sibley said in a release.
“It’s heartbreaking when I look at the data for New York,” said Lu Chen, senior economist at Moody’s who was the lead author of the group’s report. “There is just no way that many families, depending on the household structure, can afford to live in any unit without sharing.”
The median rent in Manhattan, home to Times Square and New York’s iconic skyscrapers, was $4,300 in July, according to a report from brokerage firm Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants. In Brooklyn, the median rent in July was $3,600; and in northwest Queens, it was $3,450 that month, the report said. The median national rent for all bedrooms and property types is $2,106, according to Zillow.
Home-price growth in New York was the nation’s fastest, rising 9% in June from a year earlier, according to Case-Shiller data.
Miami’s unaffordability problem persists
Regions that have seen strong population growth in recent years, particularly many cities in the Sun Belt, have seen housing costs climb. From Miami to Atlanta and Phoenix, an influx of new residents in many American cities — either because folks were seeking warmer weather or a lower cost of living — has driven up demand, including for housing. Initially, that resulted in some growing pains: The shelter indexes for the Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa metros areas each reached a record high in 2022, CPI data shows.
But nearly all of those metros have now reversed course: Inflation in Atlanta, Tampa and Phoenix has plummeted over the past year, thanks to slowing housing costs. The one exception is Miami, standing in contrast to its counterpart across the state.
“Tampa is a fast-growing area and there’s significant building going on because we have a lot of available land in surrounding areas like Hillsborough County and Pasco County,” Brian Adcock, chair of the Tampa Bay Chamber, told CNN previously. “There are a lot more neighborhoods now and that’s the key difference with Miami.”
Miami was the second-most rent-burdened place in America, Moody’s reported, with renters dishing out about 37% of their income for rent. The CPI shelter index for the metropolitan area registered at a 5.8% annual rate in June, according to the latest data, compared to the 5.1% rate seen nationally in July.
The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning for Progressives
The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning for Progressives
In large urban metros, the number of children under 5 years old is in a free fall.
By Derek Thompson
August 5, 2024
Children—and the millions of private decisions to have or not have them—are in the news these days, for regrettable reasons. Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, has made a habit of excoriating progressives who don’t have a record of procreation. In November 2020, he implied that childless Democratic leaders are “sociopathic.” In an interview with the Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2021, he lamented that the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” Later that year, in an address in Southern California, he said he wanted “to take aim at the left, specifically the childless left … because I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country.”
Vance’s commentary is rude and revisionist. Childless adults aren’t psychotic, and many childless people are desperate to bear children. Suggesting that their unsuccessful reproductive efforts amount to sociopathy is cruel. More substantively, in 2022, it was progressive Democratic leaders—that witchy coven of child-loathing felinophiles—who pushed for an extension to the refundable child tax credit, while Republicans overwhelmingly rejected a deal that would have sent tens of billions of dollars to parents.
But, at the risk of giving Vance any credit here, I must admit that progressives do have a family problem. The problem doesn’t exist at the level of individual choice, where conservative scolds tend to fixate. Rather, it exists at the level of urban family policy. American families with young children are leaving big urban counties in droves. And that says something interesting about the state of mobility—and damning about the state of American cities and the progressives who govern them.
First, the facts. In large urban metros, the number of children under 5 years old is in a free fall, according to a new analysis of Census data by Connor O’Brien, a policy analyst at the think tank Economic Innovation Group. From 2020 to 2023, the number of these young kids declined by nearly 20 percent in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. They also fell by double-digit percentage points in the counties making up most or all of Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
This exodus is not merely the result of past COVID waves. Yes, the pace of the urban exodus was fastest during the high-pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. But even at the slower rate of out-migration since then, several counties—including those encompassing Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—are on pace to lose 50 percent of their under-5 population in 20 years. (To be clear, demographics have complex feedback loops and counter-feedback loops; the toddler population of these places won’t necessarily halve by the 2040s.)
Nor is the exodus merely the result of declining nationwide birth rates. Yes, women across the country are having fewer children than they used to. The share of women under 40 who have never given birth doubled from the early 1980s to the 2020s. But the under-5 population is still declining twice as fast in large urban counties as it is elsewhere, according to O’Brien’s census analysis.
So what’s the matter with Manhattan (and L.A. and Chicago)?
After the Great Recession, during a period of low urban crime, young college-educated people flocked to downtown areas to advance their career. Retail upscaled, and housing costs increased. Soon, families started to leave. In 2019, the economist Jed Kolko showed that in cities including San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., young, high-income, college-educated whites were moving in, and multiracial families with children were moving out. The coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in school closures and loosened the tether between home and office, pushed even more families to flee.
“I’m deeply worried about a family-exodus doom loop,” O’Brien told me. “When the population of young kids in a city falls 10 or 20 percent in just a few years, that’s a potential political earthquake. Almost overnight, there are fewer parents around to fight for better schools, local playgrounds, or all the other mundane amenities families care about.”
Behavior is contagious, as the Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis has shown. If you have a friend who smokes or exercises, it significantly increases the odds that you will do the same. The same principle might hold for having or not having kids. As young children become scarce in big cities, people in their 20s and 30s who are thinking about having children will have fewer opportunities to see firsthand how fulfilling parenthood can be. What they’re left with instead are media representations, which tend to be inflected by the negativity bias of the news.
At a glance, these trends may not seem like they have anything to do with contemporary progressivism. But they do. America’s richest cities are profoundly left-leaning, and many of them—including New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—are themselves ensconced in left-leaning states. These places ought to be advertisements for what the modern progressive movement can achieve without meddlesome conservatism getting in the way, at the local or state level. If progressives want to sell their cause to the masses, they should be able to say: Elect us, and we’ll make America more like Oakland. Or Brooklyn. Or suburban Detroit. If they can’t make that argument, that’s a problem.
Right now it’s hard to make the argument, because urban progressivism is afflicted by an inability to build. Cities in red states are building much more housing than those in blue states. In 2024, Austin, Raleigh, and Phoenix are expected to expand their apartment inventory more than five times faster than San Diego, Baltimore, or San Francisco. Housing policy is the quantum field of urban life, extending across every sector and making contact with every problem. When cities fail on housing policy, the failure ripples.
Housing has for several years been the most common reason for moving, and housing in America’s biggest and richest blue cities is consistently the least affordable. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, among the cities with the highest median price-to-income ratios in 2023, nine of the top 10 were in California or Hawaii. The five cities with the most cost-burdened renters and owners were Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego, Honolulu, and Oxnard, followed by Riverside, Bakersfield, the New York metro area, and Fresno.
One hidden effect of expensive housing is that it raises the cost of local services and creates shortages of workers willing to accept low wages in labor-intensive industries, such as child care. As a result, large urban areas have more expensive child care, even relative to their higher levels of income. A 2023 analysis by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Women’s Bureau found that infant child care devoured the highest share of family income in large urban counties. Nationwide, the average family with at least one child under the age of 5 devotes about 13 percent of family income to pay for child care. But the typical infant day-care center in San Francisco and Chicago consumes about 20 percent of a local family’s income. In Boston, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, it’s more like 30 percent. Child care is just another example of how constrained housing supply can poison parts of the economy that don’t immediately seem to have anything to do with it.
To be fair, one might argue that federal policy nudges families toward the suburbs. Federal spending on highways lubricates suburban transportation while urban transit sputters, and the mortgage interest deduction reduces the tax hit from homeownership. But a national trend toward the burbs doesn’t explain why cities in red states have managed to build houses, or better restrain child-care inflation, better than those in blue states.
Conservatives like J. D Vance think they’re getting mileage out of judging the private-life decisions of urban progressive men and women. But these decisions exist … well, in the context of all in which we live. They are shaped by place and by policy. The steady march of the childless city is not merely the inevitable result of declining birth rates. It’s the result of urban policy, conceived by, written by, and enacted by liberals. Progressive leaders aren’t family-hating sociopaths, but they currently preside over counties that young families are leaving. They should pride themselves instead on building places where those same families would want to stay.
Los Angeles recently gave developers an incentive to limit new apartment buildings to no more than 15 units
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 13, 2024
The Los Angeles Times recently reported:
Though it’s known as the “mansion tax,” except for rare exceptions it applies to all properties sold for more than $5 million, no matter if they are gas stations, strip malls, apartment buildings or actual mansions. Under the measure, a seller is charged 4% of the sales price for properties sold above $5 million and below $10 million.
At $10 million and above, the tax is 5.5%.
Apartment developers and real estate brokers said additional costs from ULA make it even harder to earn a reasonable profit in what can be a risky business.
That’s because when building apartments, developers often sell their finished product, which would probably trigger the ULA tax for any building over 15 units, according to Greg Harris, a real estate broker with Marcus and Millichap. Even developers who hold onto their properties typically need to take out a mortgage on the finished building — and Harris said lenders are willing to give less because they too would need to pay the tax if they foreclose and sell the property.
Los Angeles recently gave developers an incentive to limit new apartment buildings to no more than 15 units.
Given that the city already has a severe shortage of housing, I think this new policy is a bad idea.
To me, this is what it means to be a libertarian
https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1740615275182264577
In Los Angeles, a 49-unit apartment complex is taking 17 years to complete, the result of complex laws that exacerbated California’s affordable housing crisis
https://www.yahoo.com/news/los-angeles-49-unit-apartment-014226893.html
In Los Angeles, a 49-unit apartment complex is taking 17 years to complete, the result of complex laws that exacerbated California’s affordable housing crisis
By John L. Dorman
December 17, 2023
For decades, California has struggled with a persistent affordable housing shortage.
A WSJ report detailed how one LA housing project was unable to get off the ground for over 15 years.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has made it a priority to obtain project approvals in a timely manner.
Los Angeles has long attracted new residents with its warm weather, abundant outdoor amenities, and the lure of opportunities in the media and entertainment industry.
But the state of California has also become widely known for its severe housing crunch, with affordability being the leading issue that has driven many natives and longtime residents to inland communities and lower-cost states.
According to The Wall Street Journal, California’s complex regulations have played a major role in delaying the construction of a 49-unit apartment complex known as Lorena Plaza in the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles.
In 2007, A Community of Friends, a local nonprofit organization, was given land to build a small affordable housing development, but construction on the project only began roughly a year ago.
The project was slowed down by the need for various approvals from politicians and commissions and higher construction costs caused by multiple delays, the Journal reported.
The city wants to build 450,000 new units of housing by 2029, according to The Los Angeles Times.
But the absence of housing remains a significant obstacle for many Angelenos right now. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, in their 2023 report, estimated that roughly 46,000 people in the city are experiencing homelessness on any given right.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a former congresswoman who this month completed her first year in City Hall, said last December that the glacial pace of progress regarding Lorena Plaza was emblematic of policies she sought to reshape as mayor.
“How on earth could we expect to house 40,000 [homeless] people if we continue to do business as usual?” the mayor said at the Lorena Plaza site at the time, per The Journal.
Bass has prioritized projects that only contain affordable units, but there’s still a need for more subsidies to build additional buildings, per The Journal. And there’s also the issue of some cities in California carefully scrutinizing projects to such a degree that long construction delays are inevitable if the projects even get off the ground.
According to a UCLA and CSU-Northridge analysis of building permits from 2010 to 2022, constructing an apartment building in California took an average of four years during that period.
According to the analysis, 36% of the projects awarded permits in the state during that timeframe have yet to be finished.
“Thinking about building in a city like Los Angeles and dealing with the politics, navigating the bureaucracy, it’s the last place I want to be,” Pacific Companies CEO Caleb Roope told The Journal.
A 1970s-era state law permitting an appeals process for environmental reviews further halted construction at the Lorena Plaza project before it was revived.
However, Bass has pushed for major changes in Los Angeles that would seriously limit the sort of delays that previously plagued the Lorena Plaza project, per The Journal.
And Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a slew of laws in October to help ease the state’s housing crisis, according to Business Insider.
Environmental appeals can no longer drag on for a year or more, and hearings must be conducted within a 75-day timeframe. And the zoning approvals for affordable housing projects are occurring more swiftly, sometimes within a few months, as part of an executive order signed by Bass.
Strained housing affordability is a ‘manufactured crisis’ created by bad zoning—just look at L.A.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/strained-housing-affordability-manufactured-crisis-170452391.html
Strained housing affordability is a ‘manufactured crisis’ created by bad zoning—just look at L.A.
By Alena Botros
August 13, 2023
There’s a project in Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, that started in 2004. After two decades of lawsuits, they just broke ground, Artem Tepler, an L.A.-based real estate developer, told Fortune, because “it is so hard to do a big project in L.A.”
The city’s supply, or lack thereof, is pushing local house prices up. New construction is heavily restricted, but people still want to live in Los Angeles, it’s as simple as that. So with an average home value of $901,291, and a median household income of $69,778, it’s a “drive until you qualify market,” as Tepler put it, who’s also the cofounder and managing partner of Schon Tepler.
“You almost have to be a statistical anomaly to own a house anywhere in prime Los Angeles,” Tepler said. “You have to kind of drive far away and buy a home for like $600,000 to $700,000. There’s no starter homes under $700,000 and $800,000.”
In New Jersey, where Tepler is from, he says $700,000 buys you a 4,000 square-foot home that’s basically a mansion. It’s not a far-fetched statement, as the average home value in New Jersey is $451,559, although there are areas like Ridgewood, where that number is much higher. In Tepler’s view, L.A.’s housing problem comes down to an inability to build. That’s largely because of zoning, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the state’s 10-year liability defect on new construction, Tepler said.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles was downzoned, as measures passed that cut floor-to-area ratios, limiting development, particularly for multifamily housing. As for the California Environmental Quality Act, some suggest it’s being used to block housing. Earlier this year, the University of California Berkeley’s plan to build student housing was blocked by a state appellate court. The court cited the state’s Environmental Quality Act and ruled that students could potentially have an environmental impact. The ruling garnered a response from none other than California Governor Gavin Newsom, who said: “Our CEQA process is clearly broken when a few wealthy Berkeley homeowners can block desperately needed student housing…California cannot afford to be held hostage by NIMBYs.” Additionally, California’s construction defect law allows homeowners to file a claim against builders, if their building standards are violated, for up to 10 years (although there are some caveats.)
“That’s the reason why we don’t go bigger here…we don’t want to get caught up in lawsuits,” Tepler said—and it’s crippling the city’s supply and pushing home prices, which are already detached from local incomes, further up.
So the further you drive from, let’s say, Downtown Los Angeles, the cheaper housing gets. That can mean driving all the way to Riverside County (where the average home value is $568,515), until housing gets cheaper and more affordable, and commuting to work, Tepler said. That’s why he says you’ve got to be a statistical anomaly, in terms of how much money you make, to afford to buy a home in parts of Los Angeles, like Studio City that’s average home value is $1,490,859—or have family money. If it’s not a successful business owner or an executive at a big company, the buyer has family money for the down payment, Tepler said.
“Average people can’t live in the city,” Tepler said. “And it’s not an issue that developers can’t provide the housing because if the developers were let loose they would build bigger condos, two and three bedroom condos, go higher up, build six, seven story buildings. But L.A. has been downzoned to the point where there was an anti-growth sentiment.”
Look no further than Stan Oklobdzija and his partner, Sarah Boyd, a couple making around $225,000 annually that said the thought of ever owning a home in Los Angeles is “hilarious.” As a professor of public policy, whose research tends to focus on housing policy, Oklobdzija’s reasoning wasn’t far-off from Tepler’s. Oklobdzija previously told Fortune it’s the “refusal to build” that’s creating a housing crisis, one by choice, and he and his partner have left Los Angeles.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Tepler said. “It’s just this artificially created problem because we’ve been too downzoned. You need to upzone and make everything by-right, [and] reform CEQA…And then let developers build.”
When Tepler says by-right, he’s referring to a zoning code, which is considered to be “by-right” if the approval process is streamlined to comply with zoning requirements, without undergoing a discretionary review process. Tepler also mentioned measure ULA, dubbed the “mansion tax,” which he said “is going to destroy new supply,” if it doesn’t get repealed. As Fortune’s previously reported, L.A.’s high-end realtors and brokers were almost apocalyptic when referring to the tax and its implications on the city’s real estate market. Clearly, Tepler shared the same sentiment.
“Every major developer, institutional developer is basically shelving their projects…They don’t want to touch L.A. now,” Tepler said, adding later that despite it being well-meaning, the measure will make the city’s housing crisis worse because almost no one wants to build.
It’s the restrictions on zoning, on permitting, on development and construction of new housing that’s created a “manufactured crisis,” Tepler said, adding that he says the housing crisis is manufactured because it’s just policy, in his view.
“We’ve run out of land. When you run out of land, the way to solve it is to go vertical, to go up,” Tepler said. “You don’t have to make this into Manhattan, but you should make it into six, seven story buildings… but L.A. is still zoned for a lot of single family homes. It needs to get upzoned for the population.”
It so happens that a lot of voters are homeowners, so politicians that want those votes are less inclined to upzone and allow for greater density housing, Tepler suggested. Cue NIMBY-ism, which economics writer Noah Smith, previously argued worsens already restricted developing and permitting rules in the country.
“Everyone wants it, they just don’t want it in their own backyard,” Tepler said. “So everyone wants housing for the homeless, they just don’t want it near them. Everyone wants more apartments, they just don’t want it near them. And no politician wants to upset their constituency.”
S.F. supervisors shelved townhome project because of shadows. What does it mean for the city’s housing shortage?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-supervisors-nob-hill-18177181.php
S.F. supervisors shelved townhome project because of shadows. What does it mean for the city’s housing shortage?
By Danielle Echeverria
June 30, 2023
A decision by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week to delay a 10-townhome project in Nob Hill, in part from concerns over how shadows would affect a neighboring park, raised fresh doubts among housing advocates and political leaders that the city can break old habits and meet an ambitious, state-mandated goal to build housing.
The move “raises serious doubts about the viability of SF’s housing element,” state Sen. Scott Wiener wrote on Twitter, referring to the state’s requirement that San Francisco build 82,000 new units during the next eight years.
Mayor London Breed said Thursday that the supervisors halted the project at 1151 Washington St. for “complicated, kind of unsubstantiated reasons,” undercutting the city’s stated commitment to building much more housing.
“We say we support it, but our actions show something completely different,” she said on the steps of City Hall. “We have to get out of our own way.”
The California Department of Housing and Community Development said in a statement Thursday that it was aware of the supervisors’ vote and is taking it into consideration in its investigation of housing issues in San Francisco.
Though a tiny project by San Francisco standards — the 10 townhomes would replace one single-family home — the supervisors’ move to delay it for months or possibly years reminded many of the board’s well-known rejection of a proposed 495-unit tower on a Nordstrom valet parking lot in the Mid-Market neighborhood in 2021. That case became exhibit A in arguments for reform of San Francisco’s housing-approval process.
But the Washington Street project’s opponents, including the next-door neighbor who brought the appeal forward and the community groups that joined it, said that’s not a fair comparison, and that there were specific reasons the development needs environmental review.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, whose district includes the development and the park, as well as Chinatown community members, said the situation is unique, especially in a neighborhood that is so densely populated with many people living in cramped, single-room occupancy homes, where many people rely on the park to get fresh air and sunlight.
“Chinatown is the city’s densest area with very little open-space opportunities, and the Chinatown community, pursuant to the law, raised a number of questions that the board of supervisors found to be compelling enough to ask for additional analysis,” Peskin said.
Malcom Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, a group that opposed the project, said it is reasonable to require the developers to examine alternatives that don’t block sunlight on a public space. That’s especially true in Chinatown, where high rises are common, he said.
“To characterize this fight as anything other than a fight for equity and to characterize this fight as ‘blocking housing’ erases the critical issues faced by Chinatown and low income places like Chinatown,” he said in a statement. “Given the dependence of all San Franciscans on open space for their health and wellness, all developments should be required to implement designs that avoid blocking essential sunlight to our city’s urban parks.”
Peskin echoed that concern. “I think the city and its leaders have a particular obligation to Chinatown, a community that historically has been ignored by generations of City Hall leaders,” he said. “I’m pleased that the Board of Supervisors listened to them.”
Shadows have historically been one successful type of objection used in San Francisco to block housing that otherwise has no issues to prevent building, according to Annie Fryman, director of special projects for urban planning think tank SPUR.
“At the point people are fighting about shadows, they’re really grasping at straws to stop a project,” she said.
It isn’t the first time San Francisco has stopped housing projects because they would cast shadows on parks — in 2016, shadows over Chinatown parks created a challenge for the still unfinished 50 First St.; in 2018, the Board of Supervisors required more review on a Mission housing project that would cast shadows on an adjacent school’s playgrounds, during hours that the playground was closed; and in 2019, the board rejected a 63-unit housing project in South of Market that would cast an evening shadow on a park.
Each project had similar concerns about disadvantaged communities being disproportionately affected by shadows cast by the buildings and residents who would not be able to move elsewhere.
While state law does not require cities to analyze shadows as an environmental impact, San Francisco has its own law intended specifically to protect public parks from shadows. A 1984 ballot measure, Proposition K, blocks construction of any building more than 40 feet that casts an adverse shadow on Recreation and Park Department property unless the Planning Commission decides the shadow is insignificant.
But the Washington Street project, the Planning Commission argued, is not subject to that law because it is not above the 40-foot height limit. Opponents to the project argued that it is unique because it’s uphill from the recreation center, which makes its shadow more prominent, though the city’s planning staff countered that urban parks downhill from buildings are not unusual in San Francisco.
Fryman said that, while she empathizes with the Chinatown community’s resistance to changes to their beloved recreation center, shade in parks isn’t inherently bad, and that in a warming climate, it’s appropriate to have shaded areas in parks where people can cool off.
“We don’t see anyone ever complain about shade cast from trees. We don’t ever hear people complain about shade cast from other types of things,” she said. “We selectively care about shadows when it is a tool that can be used to stop or delay housing or water down housing.”
Public commenters at the meeting said that a shadow shouldn’t be a good enough reason to block new homes, especially in an urban environment.
“Housing for all means housing for all, even if there’s a little bit of a shadow,” said Kent Mirkhani, a YIMBY Action member who spoke at the meeting. “And that really sucks, but we have to pretend we live in a city and sometimes there’s a little bit of a shadow.”
The owners of the building previously sought to expand their home by building out the back — an effort that was turned down by the Planning Department in 2021 because it did not maximize the amount of housing possible on the lot. Neighbors also complained about obstructed views and shadows for that project.
Fryman said the move was an example of how illogical San Francisco housing decisions can be. The city first rejected it because it was not dense enough, then because a more dense proposal would cast shadows.
But Peskin said he thinks the developer can work with the community to design the housing such that it doesn’t block the sunlight — a solution, he said, that has helped resolve issues of shadows on parks, including in Chinatown, in the past.
“This can be done in a way that doesn’t adversely affect a precious community resource that adds to the quality of the neighborhood’s life,” he said.
The same day Peskin voted to block the townhouses, he and Breed proposed legislation that would reduce the amount of affordable units builders need to include and cut the fees they have to pay to try to speed up the city’s stalled housing development market.
Also on Tuesday, the board let through a proposal to build a similarly unpopular apartment building at 3832 18th Street. Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district the project is in, said the city would likely lose in court if it blocked the project because previous challenges using environmental law had already been resolved. Thus, he said, the state would have more power to overrule the city’s decision if it blocked the development.
Peskin said the seemingly contradictory decisions are examples of how complex development issues are.
“We can encourage the development of more residential housing in San Francisco and take care of precious resources,” he said. “These are not mutually exclusive concepts, but they require care and consideration and listening to our constituents, and particularly constituents who have an outsize reason to be listened to.”
The writer of this article seems to be implying that black people and white people should not live in the same neighborhood
https://www.yahoo.com/news/historically-black-neighborhood-watches-itself-171204871.html
Historically Black neighborhood watches itself disappear
May 2, 2023
Dallas historian Donald Payton says gentrification like that in Gilbert-Emory is common nationwide. It’s a story, he said, about the fight to endure and protect in the face of development in traditionally Black communities.
A historically Black neighborhood in Dallas is watching itself vanish as gentrification continues to sweep in.
Gloria Johnson’s residence is in West Dallas’ Gilbert-Emory neighborhood, one of the city’s most sought-after areas. According to The Dallas Morning News, the community received its name for Cecil and Helen Emory and Nathan and Margaret Gilbert, two Black families who ran grocery stores that provided food for the locals during a time when segregation prevented them from doing their shopping in white districts.
Many old homes in the formerly redlined area have already been destroyed by the swift gentrification sweeping through Dallas. Johnson believes developers have taken the historically Black neighborhood’s identity.
“We actually feel like the place that time has forgotten,” said Johnson, who believes developers are trying to force her out of the neighborhood, the Morning News reported. “Not important. Not significant. They don’t care.”
While many of Johnson’s childhood friends no longer reside in the area, she wishes to remain on the land her father worked two jobs to acquire.
According to census block data, roughly half of the neighborhood’s population was Black in 1990. Black people now make up only one-fifth of its populace.
Dallas historian Donald Payton noted that the issue Gilbert-Emory residents face is common nationwide. The story, he said, is about the fight to endure and protect in the face of costly development that puts housing in traditionally Black communities in danger.
According to research, Black homeownership rates in Dallas are significantly lower than white ones. Payton says the effect is a loss of Black culture, generational wealth and community.
“When you say gentrification, that’s a new word,” Payton contended, the Morning News reported. “At one time it was called ‘urban renewal,’ then it was called ‘urban redevelopment,’ and then it all boils down to relocation.”
Greater Mount Pilgrim Church is the largest church in Gilbert-Emory. While most congregants have moved to other neighborhoods, Pastor Ned Armstrong asserted that the church is here to stay.
Armstrong said Greater Mount Pilgrim had had a few new visitors after contacting neighbors and passing out fliers containing church information. However, he also noted that a few weeks ago, one of the church’s neighbors complained about noise, which was upsetting. For parishioners who sit outside, speakers are positioned on the structure and project the sermons and musical selections into the parking lot.
Armstrong said the church attempted to purchase the property across the street, where the Frederick Douglass School stood years ago. The school — which produced its own set of teachers and even a school principal — was so significant that many longtime neighbors still use the abolitionist’s name when talking about the neighborhood.
Some residents in the neighborhood wanted to see the land developed into a city park after the school closed in 1980. Armstrong yearned for a neighborhood center. However, Dallas Independent School District sold the land to a private developer for $1.7 million six years ago.
A street sign pointing to a housing development is the only clue that a school once stood there. The site of one of the first Black schools in Texas is now home to 27 gray townhomes with asking prices over $500,000.
“They came in, and we can’t compete with those guys. They have millions of dollars,” Armstrong said, the Morning News reported. “Next thing we know, it was sold. Boom. No notice. Man, really. That was pretty cruel.”
Check out this hypocrisy from Yahoo News! March 19, 2023: “A Landlord Got a Low Appraisal. He Is Black, and So Are His Tenants.” Yahoo News March 20, 2023: “‘We don’t deserve to be priced out’: Law aims to end gentrification in Black neighborhoods”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 20, 2023
On March 19, 2023, Yahoo News published this article, which is called, “A Landlord Got a Low Appraisal. He Is Black, and So Are His Tenants.”
Source: https://news.yahoo.com/landlord-got-low-appraisal-black-143506573.html
Then on the very next day, March 20, 2023, Yahoo News published this other article, which called, “‘We don’t deserve to be priced out’: Law aims to end gentrification in Black neighborhoods”
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/dont-deserve-priced-law-aims-090417689.html
So, at the same time, racism is causing the price of housing in black neighborhoods to be both too low, and too high.
The people who see racism everywhere will never be happy with the price of housing in black neighborhoods.
If the price is too low, that’s racism.
But if the price is too high, that’s racism too.
For the people who see racism everywhere, there is no price for housing that is not racist.
No matter what the price is, it is always racist.
This is what happens when you see racism everywhere.
Now I’m going to give my own opinion about the price of housing.
If you’re the buyer, then low prices are a good thing. But if you’re the seller, then low prices are a bad thing.
Likewise, if you’re the seller, then high prices are a good thing. But if you’re the buyer, then high prices are a bad thing.
And the best thing about this is that it applies to all races.
Buyers of every race want the price to be low.
And sellers of every race want the price to be high.
See how that works out? It’s got nothing to do with race. Instead, it’s all about whether a person is the buyer or the seller.
The great thing about my way of seeing this is that it is consistent for every person, every race, every house, every neighborhood, and every price. No matter what the combination of race and price is, my way of viewing this is 100% consistent.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 