
More Housing for Better Public Transit: A Grand Bargain for New York City - ayanai
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/more-housing-better-public-transit-11134.html
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jseliger
For a little more context, about 40% of the buildings in Manhattan couldn't be
built under today's zoning laws:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-
percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html)

In other words, the very thing that people move to NYC for can no longer be
built in much of NYC. Pretty perverse.

In the 1950s, nice apartments in Greenwich Village or the UES might be $800 –
$1,500, adjusted for inflation:
[https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/what-a-
wes...](https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/what-a-west-village-
apartment-cost-in-1955) .

What changed between then and now? Zoning:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-
in-...](https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-the-1970s)

~~~
hapless
The main thing that changed was an explosion of cheap money to borrow, and
high construction costs to pay with it.

ALL real estate, everywhere in America, including places that are in no way
bound by land, has exploded in cost against inflation.

In no state nor Puerto Rico will the minimum wage pay for an apartment.

~~~
closeparen
As I understand it, nterest rates determine purchase prices in a way that’s
mostly irrelevant to you unless you’re a cash buyer. Lower housing prices
combined with proportionally higher interest rates will not make housing more
affordable. You’ll just pay more interest and less principal.

You don’t borrow to pay rent. Low interest rates and high asset prices could
increase the rate of condo conversion, diminishing the supply of rental
housing, but doesn’t in general explain exploding rents.

~~~
hapless
Rental markets and real estate costs are only loosely coupled.

A tidal wave of cheap money does drive up costs. Most home purchasers have a
fixed budget to spend on a home, whether that money pays down interest or pays
down principal.

Low interest = higher housing prices, because borrowers will borrow more money
at the lower rate.

This is equally true for apartment construction -- if firms can borrow money
cheaply, they borrow more of it, and bid more for land.

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hapless
The grand bargain is impossible, not due to NIMBYs and zoning conflict but
rather because more funding for the MTA won't help a damn thing.

The MTA has repeatedly been caught lying to the public about their finances,
hiring ghost employees, etc etc. They have the highest capital costs in the
world, full stop -- it would cost them a billion dollars to erect a mailbox.

The MTA's annual _capital_ expenditures budget is already larger than any
transit system in America. Their operating budgets are among the healthiest in
the world, due to very high farebox recovery ratios on the buses and subways,
but the fares go up without bound and there is somehow never enough money to
get existing service back to 2010 levels, to say nothing of modernization or
expansion.

There's no money for new transit in New York City because no one in City Hall
_or_ Albany is damn fool enough to believe that tossing additional billions
into that bottomless pit will yield meaningful results.

Lastly, property taxes are pretty low in NYC. Property tax is less than 30% of
total City revenues. Massively expanding property tax bases in localized areas
will not move the needle on the city's budget.

------
tropdrop
California is currently attempting to pass a bill doing almost exactly this -
SB 827:
[https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/03/03/sb-827/](https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/03/03/sb-827/)

A lot of people are up in arms because if you include Muni bus/rail as
"transit hubs," supposedly 96% of San Francisco is vulnerable to significant
and sudden height increases (from 4 to 8 stories).

That would, indeed, be a pretty drastic change to the landscape, but more
housing is desperately needed, so it seems the pros (better for climate,
better for lower income residents, etc.) outweigh the aesthetic cons here.

~~~
Tempest1981
Even pro-growth Mountain View doesn't like Wiener's SB 827 because it cripples
their power to negotiate with developers -- to get money for transit, schools,
parks, utility upgrades, etc.

[https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/03/25/housing-bill-
draws-...](https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/03/25/housing-bill-draws-
pushback-from-local-leaders)

~~~
jphelan
The whole point is that city councils today have complete discretion over the
allocation of building permits. Of course city councils won't like a rule that
limits their power.

Software developers are rarely happy when security people make it harder to
ssh into prod machines, but sometimes it's better for some powers to be
restricted and more carefully applied.

Also I'm just curious, how many of the mtv city council are renters and how
many are home owners?

Edit: typo

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ardit33
"...estimate that a grand bargain would allow the building of roughly 411,000
new private housing units over 10 years, as well as generate some $54 billion
in extra revenue for the MTA during the same period."

Thats a lot of money for the MTA.... it ends being about 12-15k per apt, which
is chump change for NYC standards.

Too bad the MTA is a semi-corrupt organization, that can't build efficiently
enough.

~~~
hapless
The MTA is already budgeted for 32 billion in new capital acquisitions across
the next five years.

City revenues are 93 billion annually. The City government could easily fund
the extra 5bn/year out of the general fund without any hinky schemes. It
chooses not to because the MTA wastes substantially all of its capital
spending -- adding City money to the bonfire won't be rewarded by voters.

Given the MTA's track record, an extra $5 billion a year would buy us what,
_one_ extra subway station, ten years from now?

