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TOO_DAMN_YGLESIAS
November 11, 2021
About a Michael Dorsi review of the
Matthew Yglesias book "The Rent is [link]
Too Damn High", from back in 2012:
"The core argument in the book is that government
policies restrict density. This creates scarce housing
in highly productive cities in the Northeast and on the
West Coast, thereby pushing up the price of housing and
driving many people to move to sprawling sunbelt cities
where people are less productive, less healthy, and
cause more harm to the environment."
Wouldn't it be cool if we could fix those underperforming
sun belt cities?
"High prices provide two key signals: first, people find
it desirable to live in dense urban cities, and second,
high prices indicate that there is insufficient supply to
satisfy all of the people who would like to live there."
The point I keep coming back to is that this should be a signal
to the less desirable places that they need to change their
strategy.
This isn't a bad point:
"Yglesias explains how it is better to think of a home as a
place to live than as an investment, since, if homeowners ever
want to cash in on the successful investment, then they would
have to pay for another place to live (which, especially if the
new home is nearby, may well appreciate in cost as much as the
old home appreciated in value)."
Though Yglesias misses what is now a pretty common strategy
for a San Francisco home-owner: rent your place out, and
move to some place like Oakland. The rents SF-side can
easily pay for your housing costs elsewhere.
"I was disappointed that the book did not do much to discuss
the institutional questions regarding who can do what to
promote density. There was no discussion of inclusionary
zoning requirements or integrated land-use planning with
growth requirements such as California's SB 375. The law has
caused a good deal of controversy by requiring cities to
permit the construction of new housing, often at a greater
density than is typical in California cities."
That's an interesting one. More recently I think Governor
Newsom has mandated some further changes like that.
"Readers familiar with rent control and struggles against
gentrification will be disappointed by the treatment of these
issues. Yglesias criticizes rent control as a disincentive to
new construction, without acknowledging that rent control
explicitly excludes new construction in New York City,
California, and everywhere else I could find (except this
Principles of Economics textbook.)"
I suspect you could still make a similar economic case against
rent control as a market distortion, though it does make the
argument more complex. If the existing housing stock had
rents tracking the current (elevated) market rate, you'd
expect it would be used "more efficiently". People living in
rent controlled apartments often feel like they're "trapped":
they can't possibly leave town, or they'll never be able to
afford to come back.
Rent control as we practice it at least, is certainly a flawed
institution, but I think it's important to recognize the
percieved need that it actually addresses-- it's not really
intended to lower rents actoss the board, and neither is
intended as a subsidy for lower income people: it's an attempt
at preserving character, it's a way of putting the brakes on
rapid changes that make residents fear the place they live is
turning into something unrecognizeable.
But there are actual troubles with rent control, I would ts
say, though they're rarely expressed by the free market
fundamentalists like Yglesias...
For one: over time it starts seeming grossly unfair
to give one faction of the citizenry a better deal
than another.
Another: rent control helps the established residents,
but doesn't make it any easier for young people to
consider moving into the city. A city without an ARTSY_TOWN
up-and-coming new generation is a city that's subtly
dying.
Rent control may very well help preserve the character in the
short term, but in the long term you need to do *something else*,
and I don't think anyone has ever worked out what that is.
As I've said:
"Attempts at preservation
can be a subtle destruction."
UNINTENDED
Here Michael Dorsi gets to a key point that seems completely
beyond most of our East Coast intellectuals:
"Too Little Housing in San Francisco, or Too Few San Franciscos?"
That is, I would say *it*.
"As I reached the end of the book, I was somewhat unsure
if Matt Yglesias thinks the problem is that there are no
skyscrapers in Haight Ashbury, or that there are not
enough places with the density of Haight Ashbury in the
Bay Area suburbs."
Myself, I would be amazed if Yglesias thought to mention that later
possibility. Nothing I've seen from him even hints in that direction.
"I suspect his answer would be probably both, but to let
the market decide by deregulating development in both
places."
"This argument for deregulation is troubling."
You mean, because whining about regulations is the first
refuge of the scoundrel? "What do you mean *safety*? I
trust the customer to worry about that."
"It reminds me of the argument advanced in the 1990s that
electricity regulation created bad incentives, which, like the
regulations on density Yglesias criticizes, harmed
productivity, health, and the environment. However, the
deregulation-focused strategy failed."
And that's not the only example, is it?
"Residential housing, like electricity, is bound up in a web of
government activities and regulations, many of which cannot
realistically be avoided. For instance, the density that a
neighborhood can support depends on transportation access."
More to the point I think is the water supply. Yglesias casually
talks about a San Francisco with 4 times the population--
I have my doubts he has any idea where the water in SF comes
from, and how uncertain the supply of it is.
"This isn't to say that Yglesias' main argument in favor of
density is wrong, but rather that he points in the wrong
direction for a solution. Rather than deregulation, density can
be achieved through managed growth, permitting and encouraging
residential density near job centers and transit stations."
Another review, by Nathan Taylor quotes https://praxtime.com/2014/05/19/inequality-rent-yglesias/
Yglesias closing paragraph:
"Americans are not blocking proposals for new
development and then whispering, 'Not in my
backyard,' while grinning with pleasure at the
prospect of contributing to national economic
stagnation and ecological decline."
This kind of thing does not make me go "my what clever,
effective writing". My reaction is more like "what an asshole":
NIMBY is a common phrase used to attack people who won't
let developers do whatever they want, it's not used much
by the people opposing the developers-- they do say
*other* things, which Yglesias ignores, and dismisses
without argument because *he's* got the big picture, and
all of us ignorant selfish bastards just don't see it.
Yglesias seems determined to
come to dubious conclusions on
every bit of factoid he can
find. Is he a professional Maybe you shouldn't
troll? trust an "intellectual"
that's into sports...
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