This post incorporates content from Streetsblog Chicago Cofounder and Advisor Steven Vance’s development data website Chicago Cityscape. This week there was reason to celebrate for both Chicago sustainable transportation fans, and folks working to make housing more plentiful in our city. Prior to Wednesday’s City Council vote, Chicago’s Connected Communities Ordinance, passed in July 2022, […]
Making space for storing large metal boxes is no longer mandatory.
the answer is most likely lobbying. induced demand is a thing and car companies know it. I’d be shocked if these laws weren’t originally written by a car company representative.
That means their property values go down if housing is just generally cheaper.
Thus, anything, literally anything that lowers construction costs is opposed by them.
…
They climbed the ladder over the wall, then they built the wall higher, and took away the ladder.
They will fight for every single possible, arbitrary costly thing that can be tacked on to make a ‘bare minimum viable housing unit’ as expensive as possible, because they are directly financially incentivized to do so, vis a vis their own wealth being reliant on property values never ever going down, in real or nominal or relative terms.
No public transit, no bike lanes, no rent a bike/scooters, no tax breaks nor subsidy programs for renters at anywhere near the scope and magnitude offered to homeowners, no solutions for food deserts, no tenants rights, no goddamned nothing that in a direct or indirect way might make their next home value on appraisal go up by too little, or their property taxes go up by too much.
They are demons, they want you to be broke and suffer so they can be rich and lazy, and they will lie to your face about this being their motivatiom, and they will hire others to do so.
Landowners vs non-landowners, tale as old as time, just looks a bit different in our particular setting.
They can charge more for the place if it has a parking garage or lot with it. It’s like how I was looking to buy a laptop recently and a bunch of them came with a wireless mouse or a year long subscription for Microsoft office. I didn’t want or need those things, but they bundle them into the laptop so they can say “look at all the stuff you’re getting! Give us more money for this stuff you don’t want!” The parking availability makes the property more valuable technically, so they can charge more for renting or buying
When I was looking for an apartment, one apartment I was considering came with a parking space, and they explicitly told me that if I didn’t need a parking space, I could rent it out to someone else. I probably would have done that if I had ended up moving there (which I didn’t, for a different reason). Not sure if that is a thing in many places.
@humanspiral@schnurrito The entire society is not conditioned to need a car. In many large US cities, particularly those that were built mostly before freeways and minimum parking requirements, around 30% of households don’t own cars. A massive PR campaign by the auto industry, combined with classism and racism, has convinced much of the middle class that everyone needs a car, but statistically that belief is not supported. Even in rural areas about 7% of households are carless.
the answer is most likely lobbying. induced demand is a thing and car companies know it. I’d be shocked if these laws weren’t originally written by a car company representative.
That and the HOA / NIMBY crowd.
They hate affordable housing.
That means they make less money.
That means their property values go down if housing is just generally cheaper.
Thus, anything, literally anything that lowers construction costs is opposed by them.
…
They climbed the ladder over the wall, then they built the wall higher, and took away the ladder.
They will fight for every single possible, arbitrary costly thing that can be tacked on to make a ‘bare minimum viable housing unit’ as expensive as possible, because they are directly financially incentivized to do so, vis a vis their own wealth being reliant on property values never ever going down, in real or nominal or relative terms.
No public transit, no bike lanes, no rent a bike/scooters, no tax breaks nor subsidy programs for renters at anywhere near the scope and magnitude offered to homeowners, no solutions for food deserts, no tenants rights, no goddamned nothing that in a direct or indirect way might make their next home value on appraisal go up by too little, or their property taxes go up by too much.
They are demons, they want you to be broke and suffer so they can be rich and lazy, and they will lie to your face about this being their motivatiom, and they will hire others to do so.
Landowners vs non-landowners, tale as old as time, just looks a bit different in our particular setting.
Maybe, but one would think companies that build houses have a lobby too.
They can charge more for the place if it has a parking garage or lot with it. It’s like how I was looking to buy a laptop recently and a bunch of them came with a wireless mouse or a year long subscription for Microsoft office. I didn’t want or need those things, but they bundle them into the laptop so they can say “look at all the stuff you’re getting! Give us more money for this stuff you don’t want!” The parking availability makes the property more valuable technically, so they can charge more for renting or buying
When I was looking for an apartment, one apartment I was considering came with a parking space, and they explicitly told me that if I didn’t need a parking space, I could rent it out to someone else. I probably would have done that if I had ended up moving there (which I didn’t, for a different reason). Not sure if that is a thing in many places.
If entire society is conditioned to need a car, then that is not the battle the builders fight.
@humanspiral @schnurrito The entire society is not conditioned to need a car. In many large US cities, particularly those that were built mostly before freeways and minimum parking requirements, around 30% of households don’t own cars. A massive PR campaign by the auto industry, combined with classism and racism, has convinced much of the middle class that everyone needs a car, but statistically that belief is not supported. Even in rural areas about 7% of households are carless.