[HN Gopher] New York Is Full. And it's the housing market's fault
___________________________________________________________________
New York Is Full. And it's the housing market's fault
Author : fortran77
Score : 18 points
Date : 2023-08-26 21:01 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| lordfrito wrote:
| NYC has a population of 8.8 million people and only 300 sq miles
| of land [1], which works out to about 30,000 people per square
| mile, or 46 people per acre. That's about 90 sq ft per person.
| Sounds tight to me.
|
| Seems like the problem is that the land is pretty much full. How
| is that the housing markets fault? How many people _should_ NYC
| be capable of handling, and who gets to decide that?
|
| Can't NYC be free to decide it's big enough? What's preventing
| people from moving elsewhere? Plenty of land in this country.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_Cit...
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| About 950 sqft of land per person, but only a small part of
| that would be residential.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Still, pretty much every city in the country has more room to
| fill in density.
| alexlesuper wrote:
| I think zoning is a big part of the problem. Before WW2, it was
| much easier to build the housing that new immigrants needed when
| they arrived. Toda, there is miles of red tape and zoning
| regulations that keep new neighborhoods from forming and
| maturing. It's a real shame.
| ungruntled wrote:
| I'm sure there is a lot more available space than the city lets
| on. You can see residential luxury high-rises where most of
| lights on every floor are off at night. Nobody is living in
| them. 10s of empty rent controlled units in each of many
| buildings where those units stay empty for years.
|
| The city may be struggling to house these migrants, but I'm
| sure there is a strong incentive to keep normal housing units
| unavailable so friends of politicians can fill their low demand
| hotel rooms and supply catering at very favorable rates.
| madengr wrote:
| [dead]
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Where are you going to build housing in the boroughs?
| ok_dad wrote:
| Upwards
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The bigger problem is there is only one New York City, and
| zoning is one issue that prevents another New York City from
| coming into existence.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Everyone wants to live in NYC and they can't. So I guess
| your ideas are to build more desirable cites to live in to
| take the pressure off of NYC?
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| >I think zoning is a big part of the problem.
|
| I don't think so. The problem is simply to many refugees for
| the infrastructure/system to absorb. Do we build 10's of 1000's
| of housing units for future refugee's and immigrants every
| year, where are the funds for these units procured?
|
| My grandfather slept in a park on a bench when he arrived after
| WW2 as a DP. No one provided him with anything, he had to look
| for work, find a way to feed himself and finally he managed to
| split a room in a rooming house with 2 other people. He said
| the bed they slept in was always warm because someone was
| getting up to go to work and someone came home from work and
| was going to sleep. Many families lived the same way. What's
| interesting is they had no social assistance or help of any
| kind. Today there is a belief these types of people should be
| provided with everything. It just isn't plausible.
| morelisp wrote:
| Benches are now designed to be impossible to sleep on, plus
| park cops will kick you out if you try.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| so the system says "f*ck poor people, gotta kick them while
| their down"?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Today there is a belief these types of people should be
| provided with everything. It just isn't plausible._
|
| Living standards were lower back then and WW2 USA was far
| less wealthy than it is today. Now it can afford to provide
| humane present-day conditions to people until they can find
| work and housing themselves. Just count the money the US
| spent on the war on terror and the war on drugs, it's more
| than the GDP of some countries.
|
| Refugees don't want hand-outs, they want opportunities to
| work and provide for themselves. If you deny them decent
| opportunities and humane living conditions from the start,
| they're guaranteed to turn to crime to survive, then everyone
| looses.
| SenAnder wrote:
| I don't know about WW2 USA, but 1970s USA was wealthier -
| wages have not kept up with house prices [1], car prices,
| education, gas [2], or rent [2,3]. But GDP is up...
|
| [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/fgkb83
| /its_...
|
| [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/439
| mr8/e...
|
| [3] https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-
| since-...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I don't know about WW2 USA, but 1970s USA was
| wealthier _
|
| You mean the average american was wealthier in 1977. The
| USA of today is wealthier than the USA of 1977, just that
| the wealth in more unevenly spread. Maybe fixing wealth
| inequality is something to look into, but who am I
| kidding, we both know that aint gonna happen.
| chrismcb wrote:
| "... In a rooming house..." Personally I think this is part
| of the problem today. We no longer have rooming houses. We no
| longer have really cheap housing due to zoning and other
| regulations.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Houston, Tx is a good counterexample to the generic "zoning is
| the problem" idea.
| bombcar wrote:
| Houston has zoning by other names (mainly land covenants).
| 1over137 wrote:
| https://archive.is/kjhyN
| soderfoo wrote:
| The inept Federal government is at fault and has been for
| decades.
|
| The incompetence and inaction demonstrated by the legislative
| branch on issues clearly within their purview (e.g.immigration)
| is stupefying. This behavior would surely result in termination
| in the private sector, why is it continuously tolerated in by
| voters?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| - gerrymandering districts to ensure perma majorities for
| established candidates for either party
|
| - easy to blame the other 400 or so Congress members for all
| the problems
|
| - a relative malaise and sleepy cynicism in the population in
| general when it comes to politics
|
| - the executive branch is equally inept, inconsistent, and
| corrupt
| moneycantbuy wrote:
| "I don't know if you guys understand what's going on right now,"
| Adams said at a press conference this month. "There's no housing,
| folks. There's no housing."
|
| well there ever be enough affordable housing again?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Not with Texas shipping immigrants north
| thedrbrian wrote:
| New York is a sanctuary city. They want to help
| Simulacra wrote:
| Is it possible to say that a city is "full" and how would a
| government enforce that? What I see in the news is that there is
| a large influx of immigrants to New York City at the moment. The
| City is required to house them. Besides taxes and zoning, which
| could reduce the number, how else can the government reduce the
| number of people in the city?
| tayo42 wrote:
| Where is new wave of migrants coming from? It feels like it's
| always on the US to accept them all. Where's the rest of the
| first world in this?
| SonOfKyuss wrote:
| Take a look at Europe if you really think this is exclusive to
| the US
| morelisp wrote:
| > It feels like it's always on the US to accept them all.
|
| Your feeling is not backed by actual data.
| tayo42 wrote:
| There are European countries accepting more people then the
| US is?
| morelisp wrote:
| Germany had 1.2e6 show up last year (~1e6 from Ukraine,
| ~200k from places the US fucked up).
| https://www.dw.com/en/migration-to-germany-to-
| hit-12-million...
|
| The US admitted 22465.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/200061/number-of-
| refugee... They are considering 125k in 2023.
| https://www.state.gov/refugee-admissions/
|
| Turkey is absolutely overwhelmed, hosting 10% of all global
| refugees. (Also mostly from US fuckups.)
| https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/statistics/
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| "Admitted" refugees is not the right number. The US had
| net migration of about 1M people last year. https://apnew
| s.com/article/18497b8743335f6196bb9f884f31ef9b
| morelisp wrote:
| Sure, then we can also say Germany had another 250k. It
| doesn't change anything about what I said.
| https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-
| Environment/Popula...
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >1.2e6
|
| >22465
|
| >125k
|
| Standardized representation, please!
|
| Edit: The parent has chosen partisanship (in a reply that
| may or may not still exist), so I've copy-pasted the
| parent and done the editing myself for convenience (I am
| not endorsing this research):
|
| Germany had 1200k show up last year (~1000k from Ukraine,
| ~200k from places the US fucked up).
| https://www.dw.com/en/migration-to-germany-to-
| hit-12-million... The US admitted ~22k.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/200061/number-of-
| refugee... They are considering 125k in 2023.
| https://www.state.gov/refugee-admissions/
|
| Turkey is absolutely overwhelmed, hosting 10% of all
| global refugees. (Also mostly from US fuckups.)
| https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/statistics/
| morelisp wrote:
| [flagged]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-26 23:01 UTC)