40 bad ideas (and a few good ones)

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” So wrote H.L. Mencken. It will be hard to have sensible public policy as long as our fellow citizens have foggy ideas about cause and effect.

This thought came to mind reading the New York Times “40 Big Ideas to Make New York City More Affordable” last weekend. It is an interesting insight into how people think of these things. And these are not just average people, most are civic or community leaders of one sort or another. Plus of course, it tells us the New York Times filter of what is a good idea.

Housing is simple. There is supply, and there is demand. When there isn’t enough supply, prices go up. That’s all folks. You can make price go down by allowing people to build, at reasonable cost, or by making the city so unlivable that demand falls, the Detroit model. Cost of other goods is the (astronomical, in New York) cost for competitive businesses to provide them. Period.

So what do New York’s community leaders come up with for housing and other costs? Mostly varieties of “bankrupt government should give us things.” Interestingly, not for everybody, but restricted to lists of sympathetic recipients — low income, immigrant, senior, teachers, child care workers, long time residents, newcomers — everyone needs a category.

Buckle up:

Construct affordable housing on public housing parking lots… create about 15,000 homes for seniors. -The Rev. David K. Brawley, pastor of St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn

Who does this “creating,” with whose money? Why are those parking lots not already filled with buildings? (Can’t get permits? Parking requirements of existing buildings?) Why “seniors?” Most of the people in glass high rises are pretty old.

Find space for 12,000 new, actually affordable apartments …the city should invest in building at least 12,000 new units of deeply subsidized affordable housing per year for five years, with half of those units targeted specifically for homeless households and half for extremely low-income households. David Giffen, director of Coalition for the Homeless

Dear Lord, let it rain money. At California prices that would be $12 billion per year, all to people who sort of by definition pay no taxes. How many homeless will then move to New York? Oh, director of Coalition for Homelessness.

Rent control is always popular — the best way known to ruin a city short of bombing. Or, how to make sure that landlords don’t rent to people with low incomes.

Make it illegal to charge more than 30 percent of household income for rent That law could also guarantee that new and renewed leases would not be tied to an abstract idea of “market rate” housing, but to each tenant’s actual earnings. That would help end the rat race of people negotiating better wages only to have them swallowed by higher rents, or having to move because the “market rate” in their neighborhood exceeded their wages. Lauren Melodia, an economist at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs

Proposed by someone with “economist” in her title. Market prices are “abstract ideas.” The logic of the middle sentence seems backward. If I get a better wage, my rent doesn’t go up. The 30% of income proposal does that, not normal rents.

In the eternally popular category “Subsidize demand against fixed supply,” (a subcategory of “a bankrupt government should give us free stuff,” )

Fund housing vouchers to shrink the shelter population New York City spends over $2 billion on homeless shelters. Shifting a significant portion of that funding toward housing vouchers will ensure all New Yorkers have access to long-term, affordable homes. Beatriz de la Torre, oversees philanthropy at Trinity Church

Eliminate citizenship requirements for those vouchers…The Rev. Chloe Breyer, director of the Interfaith Center of New York

I’m all for vouchers instead of government services, but there are still only so many apartments. Supply curve anyone? And I can’t imagine even New York spends as much on a homeless shelter bed as an apartment costs.

Government should give money to people like me programs are always popular:

Create an affordable housing program for teachers New teachers make about $62,000 a year, but to afford an apartment in New York City, you have to show proof of income that is 40 times the rent. And at the same time, veteran teachers are often left out of down payment assistance programs because the income cap is too low.

My wife and I make decent money, but we’re paying for child care for both our kids, plus our apartment in Brooklyn, plus living expenses.

I applied for affordable housing and I got denied because when they looked at our income we made too much, by just a small amount. My wife and I are talking about whether we need to leave New York. We can’t afford it and be able to live comfortably. I want to be able to put my daughter in swimming, gymnastics and dance classes. Emmanuel Jeanty, eighth-grade public school teacher and real estate agent

I left the whole quote as it has some interesting features. “Affordable” housing has an income cap. That leads to a big disincentive: Earn a dollar too much and lose your subsidy. The income cap is always “too low” for someone.

The nanny providing those child care expenses (as well as the teachers of all those classes) want subsidies too, however. See below.

The quote brings up the simple hard fact created by New York’s housing restrictions: Either allow the building of new housing, allocated as efficiently as possible (i.e. by the market not by special categories, of senior, homeless, teacher, low income, etc.), or the game of musical chairs means somebody can’t live here. I’m not the heartless one for pointing it out, the city’s policies are heartless. If you subsidize low income, homeless, seniors, etc. then only the very rich and very poor live in NY.

“Tax the rich,” along with “fiddle with tax breaks” are always popular:

Lower taxes on rental buildings … Manhattan townhouses would pay more while large rental apartment buildings in the Bronx would pay less. Carol Kellermann, former president of the Citizens Budget Commission

Give mom-and-pop landlords more tax breaks Elizabeth Morrissey, president of Brooklyn’s Madison-Marine-Homecrest Civic Association

Give homeowners relief from the cost of local laws on climate and repairs …Every local law that we have to comply with becomes a financial burden upon our shareholders. For example, complying with Local Law 11, which requires regular facade inspections, cost shareholders $77 million between 2018 to 2024. … Rod Saunders, board president of Co-Op City in the Bronx

The last one sounds sensible. I presume the inspections are more than needed to keep bricks from falling on passers by so this is one of many needless city cost increasers. Still, there is an error here. The all-in rent is set by the demand to live in New York intersected with the supply of housing. If costs like this go down without new housing, the all in cost to renters doesn’t change. The property value goes up. No change to numbers of people housed or rent, though a nice capital gain to land owners.

[Construct affordable housing ] on top of public libraries —Brian Bannon, who oversees The New York Public Library’s 88 branches

use old Staten Island Ferry boats in dry docks as temporary housing -Nicholas Siclari, chair of Community Board 1 of Staten Island

I loved these for their charming total impracticality. Public libraries are, as one would think a public librarian would know, typically old buildings. Building on top of an existing crumbling structure? I can just imagine the army of permit inspectors going down to examine ferry boats that even homeless people don’t live on.

*****

There were a few good ideas too.

Build more six-story buildings, and fast! Back around 1960, building rules allowed six-story apartment buildings almost everywhere in the five boroughs, and far more housing was built than today. After 1961 the rules changed: Large areas now allow only small homes, or don’t allow housing at all. …We need to go back to flexible rules once again allowing as many new six-story apartment buildings as we can get.

At last a sensible idea! Oh, wait,

Eric Kober, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank

Well, it’s progress that the Times will even interview someone from the Manhattan Institute. The Times usually either studiously ignores them or waits to try to photograph them with a right arm raised to hail a taxi (Musk reference).

…And use modular construction to help build all of it. Josh Greenman, managing editor of the policy journal Vital City

Or at least “allow the use of…” Most cities forbid modular construction, precisely as it avoids the use of union construction workers.

Don’t stop there! Deregulate the housing market Don’t just loosen permitting requirements and zoning restrictions to promote more housing construction, consistent with health and fire safety, of course. But also eliminate rent regulations, reform inequities in property tax treatment within and between different classes of residential properties, and reduce property taxes in general. E.J. McMahon, senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany think tank

Wow! They found one of the three free market economist in New York City. Oh, wait, Albany.

There were even a few reasonable ideas with flaws:

Revamp zoning laws to focus on housing, not manufacturing We have an abundance of underutilized manufacturing areas that could easily be transformed — without displacing a single resident — into hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing. Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal of SHoP Architects, the firm that designed Barclays Center

You had me until the word “affordable.” See above. Just make housing, and get rid of zoning.

Allow housing in backyards…Homeowners should be able to allow their adult children to erect a foldable, tiny home in their backyards with a simple permit.The Rev. R. Simone Lord Marcelle, president of the Southeast Queens Chamber of Commerce

This is really interesting as it reveals so much of the public policy mindset. Yes, allow housing in backyards. but why only “homeowners,” why only “their adult children” and why only “foldable tiny homes?” Progressives seem to need to paint a picture of some deserving unfortunate to allow simple economic advancement.

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Meanwhile the NYT’s coverage of the “City of Yes” zoning changes did record some progress, at least conceptual, in a well written article

After 175 community board meetings and two public hearings, each of which unfolded over nearly 15 hours, the City Council passed the most extensive set of zoning changes in more than 60 years.

Given what I just read, those hearings and board meetings must have been torture.

The new rules … roll back arcane restrictions that have long stifled housing supply in an era of staggering demand, and they have come about largely under the radar of New Yorkers, a vast majority of whom do not immerse themselves in the wonkier corners of planning and policy.

As we have just seen!

City of Yes does not — and isn’t intended to — resolutely end the city’s housing emergencies,

That’s too bad.

…But it represents a vital new approach, one that shifts the focus away from the current paradigm, where the answer seems to consistently and tenaciously lie in building glass towers in high-density neighborhoods in Manhattan, northern Brooklyn or the waterfront in Queens and making some percentage of them “affordable,” a term subject to multiple interpretations. Again and again, this model tends to invite fierce community opposition — as it has with proposed projects across from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and in Gowanus — that plays out over years and mountains of litigation.

Nicely put.

Say you are a homeowner with an underused backyard. Under certain conditions, you can now build or repurpose a structure of up to 800 square feet to rent out long term (Airbnb use is not approved) or generously hand over to your aging parents.

It sounds like Rev. R. Simone Lord Marcelle is going to get his (?) wish. Of course, the idea that maybe those seniors, low income, teachers, child care providers, and other worthy people might want to make some money on an Airbnb ADU in the back hard got missed. Or that low income, homeless, immigrants, people looking for scarce apartments might benefit from short term rentals. Let them eat subsidies.

The crux of the plan, though, is an emphasis on modest structures of five or six stories rather than 30. This is meant to address what urban planners characterize as “the missing middle,” the void of a certain housing style that cities across the country are now trying to fill. … The plan further incentivizes development of all types of housing by relaxing — and in some places eliminating — the expensive requirement that a certain number of parking spaces be allotted for new apartment complexes.

Well, it’s a start.

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Back to 40 bad ideas, the “to make it easier to raise a family” ideas (notice the missing subject in these sentences!) consist entirely of “bankrupt government should send us money.” Worse, actually: Bankrupt government should provide more services. The same government that runs the MTA should run more child care centers?

This is the most disappointing. Did nobody even think of one idea to make it easier for businesses to serve people at low cost?

Better support thousands of struggling child care workers …

Mandate child care in big new buildings

Create 24-hour child care centers for essential workers

Add a few days to the school year to reduce child care costs

Create a diaper stipend for low-income families

Fund universal after-school programs …

and what about after-school activities that help migrants adjust to New York?

Create meal swipes for high school students

Only one lonely respondent had even a suggestion of an idea that a person could use to make life more affordable, rather than just plead for more benefits:

Consider local alternatives to college

Granted the question was “to put public benefits to work,” but the gravy train continues:

Increase the minimum food stamp benefit to $100 a month …

… and find new locations for more food pantries

Fill the many vacant jobs that help New Yorkers access affordability programs

Fund free, universal health care coverage

Help elderly New Yorkers get benefits they already qualify for

… and help families apply for child care benefits

Make it easier for small businesses to get grants

Pilot one day a month of free subway rides

Just jump the turnstiles like everyone else

Fund free Metrocards for CUNY students

Stop charging so much for cultural sites

No more starving artists: put them to work in city institutions a majority of artists earn less than the living wage.. put money in the pockets of creative workers. Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, director of the Museum of the City of New York

Maybe New York has too many not very talented artists, and not enough money? (and a few very good ones, who don’t get this kind of subsidy.)

MAGA central this isn’t. I’m glad the holiday is over and I can go back to the Wall Street Journal.

Seriously, it is important that regular people and civic leaders have some better ideas than more of the idiocy that got us into this mess.