{"id":36211,"date":"2024-09-17T12:52:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T19:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=36211"},"modified":"2024-09-17T21:09:50","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T04:09:50","slug":"vancouver-study-shows-how-the-yimby-narrative-has-failed-in-real-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/09\/17\/vancouver-study-shows-how-the-yimby-narrative-has-failed-in-real-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver study shows how the Yimby narrative has failed, in real time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Planner and professor says massive increase in density and new housing didn’t bring costs down; in fact, costs are way up.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By TIM REDMOND<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEPTEMBER 15, 2024 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Condon was once what they now call a Yimby. A landscape architect, urban planner, and professor at the University of British Columbia, he worked with hundreds of others to build a sustainable, affordable city in Vancouver, BC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, Vancouver was a case study for city planning. The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association used to take local officials on tours of the Canadian city, talking about the \u201cslender towers\u201d and grand amenities that they said come with orderly but aggressive growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Condon told me, Vancouver has allowed and seen built more new housing compared to its population than any other city in North America. And it was all what\u2019s known as \u201cinfill housing,\u201d not suburban sprawl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if the Yimby doctrine is right, and removing \u201cobstacles\u201d to growth and adding more infill housing results in prices coming down, Vancouver \u201cought to be the most affordable city in North America,\u201d Condon said.
Except it\u2019s not; it\u2019s the most expensive. He has 30 years of solid data: The Yimby approach didn\u2019t work. It backfired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Author and planner Patrick Condon joins Sup. Aaron Peskin for a discussion on upzoning.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Condon came to San Francisco this weekend to address a crowd of at least 200 in an event planned by Neighbors and Communities United, which is organizing against the attempt by Mayor London Breed and her allies to upzone commercial corridors<\/a> to eight stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That prospect has all kinds of downsides:<\/a> Since it will only work if there\u2019s massive demolitions of existing buildings in those areas and the displacement of rent-controlled tenants and small businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the mayor and the Yimbys say it\u2019s worth risking, because the affordable housing crisis can only be solved with tens of thousands of new units of housing, including market-rate housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State Sen. Scott Wiener is among those who have authored, and won, legislation requiring cities to eliminate neighborhood notifications, streamline the planning process, and make it cheaper for developers to build more and more housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Condon told the audience that he once believed that was true. Now, he realizes it was a total failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf your only reason to give up land rights is affordability,\u201d he said, \u201cyou are in for a big disappointment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Condon, the author of a new book called \u201cBroken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and the Urban Crisis,\u201d<\/strong> said that upzoing increases the value, and thus the price, of land, and that global speculative capital, not Nimbys, is the force making housing so expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the price of urban land, and how is absorbs all of our good work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Vancouver, he said, \u201cwe have tripled the housing stock since 1970. If there\u2019s a case where adding supply should mean cheaper housing, the median price of housing compared to income has increased by 600 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is all happening at a time when, as the economist Thomas Piketty notes,<\/a> the economy is moving from one based on jobs and income to one based on assets. The rich make more money from existing wealth and investments than they, or any of the rest of us, can make from job-based wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urban land as a speculative asset makes perfect sense for global capital, he said. \u201cIn markets like San Francisco, you have a guaranteed return of about 8 percent a year. You can\u2019t lose money investing in land in Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Condon said that it\u2019s essential for cities to recognize that upzoning land is a huge giveaway to property owners\u2014it can double or triple the value of the land\u2014and that the city needs to recapture some of that increased wealth by taxing it. The tax can come in the form of mandatory fees that consider the added value and make sure that the community gets its share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sup. Aaron Peskin, who joined Condon for a discussion after the talk, noted that \u201cthe industry that does not want this has created a narrative that says if you insist on affordable housing you don\u2019t want any housing at all \u2026 opposing that means standing up to the real estate industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met with Condon over lunch before his talk. From our interview:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

48HILLS:<\/strong> You have said in interviews that you wrote this book in anger after seeing all the claims about density creating affordability turn out to be false.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PATRICK CONDON<\/strong>: I wrote in a cold fury that came from a life of disappointment. I have been working to create sustainable, affordable communities, and I was among those who believed that adding a lot of different types of housing would bring us affordability. Our efforts were to create more affordable housing, and Vancouver has seen the most residential development in the past 30 years of any city in North America. And it\u2019s correlated with the highest housing prices in North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

48HILLS<\/strong>: So why is that happening? What went wrong?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PATRICK CONDON<\/strong>: You have to understand the shift we are seeing from a wage-based economy to an assets-based economy. And shelter is the major asset globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re seeing a free flow of money globally, and if you park money in some places\u2014San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver\u2014you know you\u2019re going to see your asset increase by 8 percent a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People don\u2019t own land; they own certain rights to land. The government gives those rights, and with upzoning now, the government is giving away rights. You double the allowable density of land, and you give the owner of that land tremendous increased value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

48HILLS<\/strong>: So what do we do about it?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PATRICK CONDON<\/strong>: One way is to tax what we call the \u201cland lift.\u201d In Vancouver, we used to tax 80 percent of the increase in land value due to upzoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

48HILLS<\/strong>: This all seems so clear and obvious, and the data you are presenting is so compelling. Why is the Yimby movement still dominating the discussion?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PATRICK CONDON<\/strong>: All of these smart people who don\u2019t see this, it\u2019s almost like they have been attacked by some sort of brain worm, and something that\u2019s so obvious has been totally obscured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full disclosure: Both of my kids work for the Peskin for Mayor campaign.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planner and professor says massive increase in density and new housing didn’t bring costs down; in fact, costs are way up. By TIM REDMOND SEPTEMBER 15, 2024 (48hills.org) Patrick Condon was once what they now call a Yimby. A landscape architect, urban planner, and professor at the University of British… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36232,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36211\/revisions\/36232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}