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Six Policy Ideas for the Next Mayor of New York City

Jason M. Barr              June 22, 2021

Today is primary day, and New Yorkers are heading to the polls. This year, the Big Apple is using ranked choice voting, a bold new experiment in democracy. It shows that New York is still capable of adjusting policies when the need arises. And now that the state has eliminated nearly all pandemic-related restrictions, the city is poised for a rebound.

The next mayor will need to deal with several issues put aside because of the pandemic: Improving housing affordability and fixing transportation. These problems stem from decisions made over sixty years ago. Attempts to alter course have run into push-back from residents who resist policies that will aid in wide scale modernization. Bolder approaches are required to bring New York fully into the 21st century.

The ultimate question then is: How does New York reform itself in a way that does not just tinker on the margins but embraces much-needed, larger-scale reforms? To this end, I propose six policy ideas that will help grease the wheels of change and allow the city to accommodate a larger population while improving affordability and the quality of life.

New York City Subway Map. While adding subway lines will helpful for New York, the next mayor should institute a transportation pricing scheme that charges fares and tolls based on changing supply and demand conditions throughout the day.

1. The Transportation System

The Problem

New York’s transportation system is outdated and too easily subject to frustrating congestion and delays. Nearly all the various routes and modes we have today were completed by 1960, and there have been no significant increases in subway lines, highways, railroads, and bridges and tunnels since then.[1] The transportation system is like an overweight 45-year-old man trying to cram into the same jeans he wore in college. The problem is made worse by the decentralized nature of management. Subways and buses are operated by one agency, another maintains the highways, and multiple entities oversee the bridges and tunnels.

The Policy Solution

The goal of any transportation network should be maximum mobility—to move as many people as quickly and efficiently as possible. The solution begins when the city considers all types of transportation—car-based, rail and subway, and bike and pedestrian—as one interconnected system. Then, using big data technology, the system should be operated to allocate this finite resource much more efficiently.

Prices should be continuously set based on relative supply and demand. Prices for congested routes should quickly become expensive, while costs for uncongested routes get reduced nearly instantaneously. If a specific bus line is underutilized while a close-by subway line is over-utilized, prices should rise for the subway and fall for the bus. This means that some routes can be free or nearly free, while parallel but congested routes are relatively costly. This also means that all tunnels and bridges need to have tolls, which should move up or down based on congestion levels, and how empty or full the city’s streets are at any given time. The pricing scheme also applies to street parking meters.

Prices can be announced via a website, mobile phone app, on digital signs at bus and subway stops, and on billboards. Data analysis can also reveal what trips will cost and their likely duration say 30 to 60 minutes ahead, to help travelers better plan. During rush hour, people would choose the alternatives that entail the best benefit to cost ratio. Not in a rush? Take a cheaper but longer option. In a hurry? Take the route that gets you there quickest, but possibly at high expense. In this way, people have complete information about the best way to travel, facilitating the movement of the most people possible and limiting congestion and frustration.

2. Zoning and Housing Affordability

The Problem

New York City regulates land uses and building densities through zoning. The last time New York undertook a citywide rezoning was in 1961, which was a massive reduction in allowable density from the previous set of rules established in 1916. This was accomplished by limiting the so-called floor area ratio (FAR), which gives the maximum square footage that can be built on a lot. The FAR is given in multiples, so an FAR of 1 means that for a 2,500 square foot lot, 2,500 square feet of floor area can be erected. With a FAR of 10, reserved for the densest residential neighborhoods, a developer can build a 10-story building on the whole lot or, say, a 20-story building on half the lot.

One of the main ways to make housing more affordable is through new supply—more units from new construction, subdividing houses, or conversions. The current zoning regulations act as a barrier against new construction, causing housing costs to rise. For example, it is illegal in over half of New York’s residential land to build anything that is not a one- or two-family home.

This was by design. The 1961 zoning codes originated from two—now obsolete—core beliefs. First was that urban density was an evil that must be curved through strict zoning regulations. And second, New York City should zone itself for stabilization rather than growth. From 1960 to the early 1990s, that assumption was born out because of population declines and big-city problems. But since Gotham’s renaissance, those notions have become outmoded and harmful.

The Policy Solution

However, any significant adjustments to the zoning rules, naturally, lead to the cry, “Not in my backyard!” because of the fear that change will harm neighborhoods and affordability while seemingly to be applied unfairly.  To help solve these problems, the city needs to implement “automatic rezonings” that loosen FARs based on four key affordability metrics.

  1. The 30% rule: The majority of low-income renters should be paying 30% or less of their income on rent.
  2. Rental vacancy rates: A higher vacancy rate (due to extra supply) gives apartment dwellers more options and lower prices. A vacancy rate close to 10% is healthier for the market.[2]
  3. The 4 to 1 rule: The median house price should not be more than four times the median household income since, at that ratio, housing costs will remain at or below 30% of household income for most people.
  4. The “Astor Index”: Officials should compare the cost of vacant lot sales to land values with buildings on them. If vacant lot prices diverge from land values with structures, there is a “shortage” of land in the neighborhood.

When the “needle turns red”—when these indicators hit certain thresholds—the market is signaling that local housing costs are too high and would benefit from new supply. This would automatically trigger a neighborhood upzoning of, say, 0.5 FAR “points.” So, if you live on a property with an FAR of 1, the rezoning becomes 1.5. Neighborhoods very close to subway or rail lines should get higher FAR adjustments to encourage more sustainable transit-oriented design.

The benefits of automatic rezonings are: First they are not gameable, given they are automatic. Second, they apply to everyone and are fair based on observable, clear metrics. No neighborhood is singled out. Housing will get built where it is in the most demand. The extra supply will moderate prices—in all communities.

New York City Zoning Map. The map shows the maximum allowable residential floor area ratio for each lot in the city. The majority is zoned for one- or two-family homes.

3. Neighborhood Infrastructure and Services

The Problem

Another problem that generates resistance to change is the fear that neighborhoods will be gummed up with congestion after a rezoning. However, careful planning can assuage people’s fears and improve neighborhood quality.

The Policy Solution

The way to do this is to announce ahead of time automatic infrastructure and public services upgrades when the population is close to hitting a new threshold. The city should maintain key metrics—so many acres of park space per 1,000 people per neighborhood, for example. When the population grows by 1,000 people, the city adds that much more acreage. The same system can be implemented with schools, bike lanes, etc. Residents need confidence that the quality of their lives will improve as their neighborhood densifies. These upgrades can be paid for by the economic growth engendered by more people moving in.

4. Land Value Insurance to Reduce NIMBYism

The Problem

One reason why homeowners cry, “Not in my backyard!” is due to the fear that changes will negatively impact their home values, which, for many families, is the largest component of their wealth.

The Solution

To assuage fears that change will not harm their investments, the city needs to create a land value insurance program. When a household purchases a house, the program determines the property’s value and how much of the value comes from the structure versus how much comes from the land. For a fee, the homeowners are then insured against reductions in the land values, which are determined by what is going on in the neighborhood.[3] If, for some reason, densification or change should reduce a property’s value, then the homeowner can rest assured that she will not lose the value of her investment.

5. Renters Benefits

The Problem

Until World War II, May 1st of every year in New York was Moving Day. In early February, landlords would give notice of the upcoming rents. The tenants would then look for new housing and the best deals. On May 1st  all leases expired, and mass moving ensued.

The existence of a Moving Day meant that people not only expected to move as their circumstances changed, but also that they could find better deals. It also allowed for more turnover in the housing stock because of increased choices for renters and competition among landlords, which kept prices in check (landlords frequently lured new tenants with a free month’s rent—a hearty discount).

In the 21st century, New York has become an “immobile” city in the sense that there are tremendous forces at work that prevent people from leaving their residences, even if they want to move. A large fraction of renters is getting below-market rates through rent stabilization. If they move, there is a good chance they will have to pay more. Similarly, homeownership keeps people in their houses for much longer because it takes time to develop a large equity stake if you have a 30-year mortgage.

The problem is that the lower the turnover, the less dynamic is the real estate market. A dynamic market allows for better matching of supply with demand. When people are willing to move (to get better deals or better-quality units as they come online), the easier it is for a landlord to empty a building, and the faster it can be redeveloped to add housing units. More dynamism means more supply and lower prices.

The Policy Solution

The city should create policies that help renters against the vagaries of the market (more housing availability is a big way) and encourage would-be owners to rent. A problem with homeownership is that it turns households into “banks”—the home becomes a store of wealth, so homeowners do what they can to ensure monopoly power over their investment by limiting competition—i.e., by stopping or slowing down new construction. If renting were more of an appealing option, it would give the market more flexibility to match housing supply with housing demand.[4]

Renters Savings Accounts

The next mayor should work toward creating renters savings accounts. The idea is that renters would add an extra payment each month on top of their monthly rent, going directly into a savings account, say 3-5%. The state would make sure the account offers a minimum return. This way, renters can create wealth similar to a homeowner. Plus, if the tenant falls on hard times, the savings can be used to stave off eviction (thus also reducing homelessness).

Eviction Vouchers

Densifying neighborhoods means getting people to move out of lower-density homes or apartment buildings so developers can build more housing. Suppose a property owner empties her rental building to tear it down and erect a denser structure. In that case, the evicted occupants should get a voucher or payment from the city to move to another location nearby.

Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. StuyTown is one of many large private housing developments in the city built after World War II. New York should encourage new developments like this, especially in the outer boroughs, as way to add to the affordable housing stock.

6. Revisit Large Housing Developments

The Problem

While the above policies are designed to create more housing options and lower prices for the vast majority of residents in the city, the lowest-income residents will always be at a relative disadvantage. For these groups, extra help is needed to incentivize new construction and give low-income renters more affordable options.

In low-income neighborhoods, upzonings may not trigger new construction since construction costs are so high. Housing vouchers can help households, but only if voucher holders are on equal footing with non-voucher holders. For this to be the case, there must be significant housing vacancy, which gives renters a relative advantage with landlords. Construction subsidies can also help, especially if builders in low-income neighborhoods get relatively greater subsidies than upper-income areas. But the city should revisit getting back into the large-scale housing game.

Policy Solution

Today we see large-scale, low-income housing developments in a bad light. The mistakes of public housing have severely damaged the government’s reputation when it comes to providing low-income housing. However, part of the success or benefits of large housing developments is that they can take advantage of economies of scale. By building everything at once over a large land area and arranging the buildings and infrastructure more efficiently, housing can be built more cheaply on a per-unit basis.

We tend to forget that from the 1950s to 1970s, large privately-owned housing developments were erected, which gained the benefits from scale: Stuyvesant Town Village in Manhattan, Coop City in the Bronx, and LeFrak City in Queens, to name a few. Admittedly, Jane Jacobs soured America on these kinds of urban projects. But, in the 21st century, they can be built to allow for more affordable housing construction and adhere to good urban policy designs.

In this vein, the next mayor should establish a land-lease authority. The authority buys up large lots, especially old industrial areas in the outer boroughs, cleans them up, and prepares them for redevelopment. Next it issues a call for development to private developers, which specifies the important parameters: the population density, the number of units, the amount of units for low-income residents, and the types of services and infrastructure to be provided. The authority then auctions off the construction rights to the winning developer by issuing a 50- or 75-year lease.

In other words, the authority initiates the development through an auction. The winning bidder pays for the land lease, and bids based on a calculation of how much the developer can pay and to get a sufficient return on investment. This process is done in many Asian cities and has the benefit that the city gets much-needed housing, the developer locks in a minimum return, and the land value gains get captured by the municipality.

The Future of New York

While the COVID pandemic has made us rethink the nature and functions of cities, the truth is that cities are the engines of our modern world—they provide jobs, entertainment and culture, and housing. New York City will continue its global importance. But for too long, Gotham has pretended that it can move into the future by tinkering on the margins. The time has come for the next mayor to embrace new policies that incentivizes change for the better and allows the city to embrace its greatness.

 

I would like to thank Maria Thompson for editorial assistance.

—

[1] While there have been some important completed or initiated projects, like the Second Avenue subway, the AirTrain to JFK Airport, the East Side Access tunnel to Grand Central Station, and congestion pricing in Manhattan, they do not fundamentally alter the problem—the system is still a 20th-century one.

[2] Before the pandemic, apartment vacancies in the rent-stabilized and non-stabilized sectors were 2.4% and 6.1%, respectively. A higher vacancy rate is better for consumers.

[3] Homeowners would not be insured against the value of their structures, so as not to create an incentive to under-maintain the property.

[4] Note that I am not saying we should eliminate homeownership. But I am saying that renting should be made more appealing.

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New Yimby City: A Roundtable Q&A with Open New York (Part II)

Jason M. Barr (@JasonBarrRU)           April 19, 2021

Editor’s Note: In the Skynomics Blog, I frequently discuss the subject of housing affordability in New York City. It thus piqued my interest when I learned about a group of New Yorkers who have become politically engaged through their organization, Open New York, to increase the city’s housing stock. This is Part II of a two-part roundtable Q&A with four of their members. Part I is here.

The Panelists

Casey Berkovitz is an Open New York board member and senior associate at The Century Foundation, a public policy organization. He tweets at @caseyberk.

Kyle Dontoh is a board member of Open New York and an independent strategy and transformation consultant. He tweets at @kynakwado.

Amelia Josephson is an Open New York board member and program manager at The Financial Health Network, a nonprofit that unites industries, business leaders, policymakers, innovators, and visionaries in a shared mission to improve financial health for all. She tweets at @JosephsonAmelia.

Will Thomas is the Executive Director of Open New York, an independent, grassroots pro-housing organization fighting for more housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods.

Roundtable Q&A

JB: People in New York care strongly about preserving the city’s building heritage. How do you think New York can balance the demand for preservation while still providing more housing?

Amelia

New York City has a tremendous architectural heritage, and of course, we have lost some iconic buildings along the way. So, we understand where the desire for historic preservation comes from. The problem we see is that New York City currently has what we consider excessive landmarking in some of the areas that are best served by transit and closest to job centers.

Around 28 percent of Manhattan is landmarked, for example. Historic districts (as opposed to the landmarking of individual buildings) really restrict our ability to build homes and welcome more neighbors to amenity-rich parts of the city, which is why those historic districts tend to be whiter and have much more expensive housing stock.

We’d like to shift priorities to make it easier to build more homes in high-opportunity neighborhoods while also giving greater protection to historic treasures in the outer boroughs that really haven’t gotten much love from the existing historic preservation movement.

Will

Going off of Amelia’s points, I think a distinction has to be made between district landmarking and individual landmarking. To me, individual landmarking seems harder to abuse as exclusionary zoning by another means. You can even craft reforms that would allow these sorts of landmarks to sell their development rights, or “air rights,” more broadly, ensuring that a similar amount of housing is ultimately produced even if the landmarked site isn’t developed itself.

However, declaring whole neighborhoods to be “historic districts”–where current scale and architecture is forever preserved––strikes me as more problematic. I’m sure defenders of these sorts of districts would note that New York’s landmark regime is not at all a blanket ban on new housing––projects in historic districts simply must pass muster with the Landmarks Preservation Commission. But in practice, requiring new housing to go through a somewhat capricious and onerous process surely impedes construction that would otherwise occur. And this is assuming that everyone is acting in good faith to preserve history, which is unfortunately not the case.

We recently supported a mixed-income housing proposal in a historic district–250 Water Street, in South Street Seaport. The project would not have replaced any historic building, just a parking lot. Importantly, it also would have provided a $50 million lifeline to the Seaport Museum, which is in danger of going out of business.

Unfortunately, the LPC [Landmarks Preservation Commission] deferred to local opposition, who argued that the building would be too tall and dense for the historic district––despite the fact that the district itself would not have existed if not for the efforts of the Museum. In rejecting a project that would save the Museum and further historic preservation, the LPC has revealed that historic districts do not necessarily have preservationist interests at heart.

Kyle

For me, this is an interesting question, as someone whose interest in urbanism ultimately stems from a preservationist impulse. It’s a story a little too convoluted to tell in the space we have here, but I will say that as my understanding of the process of how cities grew and declined matured, the importance of the built form diminished in importance relative to the process through which that built form came about.

This is where I have a problem with New Urbanism, an urbanist framework which I think many in the preservationist community are proponents of, and something I used to be a passionate advocate for. It takes the great traditional communities of the past and tries to replicate their forms without really understanding the process through which those communities came about.

There seems to be a certain idea that if you get the built form right, after a certain point you will be “done,” but this is completely alien to cities as they actually exist. Cities are never “done,” they are a continual work in progress. This is the problem with preservation as it currently exists: it tries to freeze the city in time. This might work on a building-by-building level or even for blocks, but when you try to do this to multiple neighborhoods across the city it becomes untenable.

You can hardly go a day without hearing about Jane Jacobs and Greenwich Village, but the West Village of Jacobs’ day and the one we have now are, built form notwithstanding, are two completely different beasts. In the 1950s, it was an affordable, diverse, mixed income neighborhood that had a wide array of housing types. Today, it’s an ultra-elite ghetto; the buildings have been saved, but the community has been completely transformed.

So we really need to interrogate what exactly we’re trying to preserve: buildings or communities? Because it should by now be clear that, in the dynamic and perpetually changing landscape of a city, in the long-run, it’s all but impossible to do both, especially when, as Amelia said, those neighborhoods you’re preserving are the very same ones which have the best transit connectivity and are adjacent to employment centers. And this is before you broach the issue of landmarking being weaponized for other NIMBY objectives as opposed to actually preserving any building of aesthetic or historical significance.

One of the more eye-opening moments here came during the fight over the 14th Street Tech Hub (now called Zero Irving) when the GVSHP [Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation] demanded that either nearly 200 buildings be landmarked or the surrounding area be downzoned. It was transparently obvious that historic merit was completely orthogonal to what they were demanding: it was solely about preventing development.

Seaport Skyscraper Before and After. The top left proposal for 250 Water Street  was not approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Based on feedback, the developer submitted a new, scaled-down plan (top right), which, once again, was not approved, even though it would have included affordable units and a cash infusion to the South Street Seaport Museum, which helps maintain New York’s heritage. Image source: NewYorkYIMBY.com.

JB: What will it take to get buy-in—both from local leaders and residents—for a more market-oriented approach to expanding New York’s middle and low-income housing stock?

Kyle

There’s this conventional wisdom, I think we can say, that solving the affordability crisis will involve some degree of exclusion. Restricting foreign buyers, taxing pied-à-terres or other second homes, trying to slow down development in gentrifying neighborhoods, or by some other means inhibiting change. We, of course, disagree very, very strongly with this conventional wisdom, which has held sway really since the early 1960s, which is when you see permits for new construction rapidly begin to taper off; they’ve never even come close to pre-1961 levels, with the exception of 2015, when 421-a was expiring.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that many, if not most, of the people who adhere to this conventional wisdom regard themselves as progressives who are in all other fields great advocates of inclusion, of welcoming newcomers, of diversity, of tolerance and acceptance of the foreign or the other, but when it comes to the housing crisis, it’s taken for granted that there will need to be some degree of excluding newcomers. Very rarely is this exclusionary impulse openly directed towards, say, immigrants, people of color, or otherwise disadvantaged groups—although it’s apparently okay when directed towards people from, say, Ohio—but the effect is the same. But if you want to have an open, welcoming city, you ultimately need to build one that is physically capable of accommodating newcomers. Or you need to be forthright and pull up the drawbridge. But this status quo, of saying one thing but doing another, is ultimately untenable.

In one of the candidate forums, we held in January, one of our endorsed candidates for City Council, Althea Stevens, running in District 16 in the Bronx, raised an excellent point. It was that this zero-sum framing helps no one; that underprivileged communities of color need—and I would say deserve—new, high-quality housing, more public services, better parks, more restaurants, and more stores. We should be able to provide these communities these amenities, but we should be able to do this without displacing people. Ultimately, the best way to prevent displacement is by ensuring that there are enough homes being provided in high-opportunity neighborhoods rather than people fighting over a shrinking pie, and if we can show that this is possible, we can generate the  buy-in needed for a more market-oriented approach.

Casey

I think it’s important, too, to show that our vision of abundant housing is actually different from the status quo of how development has worked in recent decades. There’s understandable suspicion among some communities toward market-driven development, because what that’s looked like under recent mayoral administrations is downzoning white, wealthy neighborhoods, concentrating new development in majority-POC, working class neighborhoods. So it’s natural for people who have seen new amenities and construction as being for “somebody else” to be suspicious when it comes to their neighborhood. (One reason that Open New York only advocates for projects in white, wealthy neighborhoods, by the way.) So we need to make it clear that what we’re advocating for is a city where everybody can benefit from new amenities and new homes, rather than a vicious cycle where neighborhood improvements mean that gentrifiers are on the way to steal your slice of pie.

Will

I think Casey has it exactly right––many people don’t feel like new development is for them, which makes it really hard for them to support new development. Part of the solution here would be legalizing cheaper housing typologies first––ADUs [accessory dwelling unit], SROs [single room occupancy], basement apartments, mid-rises in more suburban areas. But I also think simply pointing to places that build a great deal of housing and see far cheaper prices can also do a lot to convince people that new development doesn’t necessarily have to be for millionaires. In Jersey City, just across the Hudson, I’ve seen brand-new studio apartments––30 minutes to Manhattan by the PATH, with dishwashers and in-unit washer/dryers––leasing for $1,400 a month. We can have that in New York too.

The White Horse Tavern. This bar on Hudson Street is a remnant of the Greenwich Village that Jane Jacobs wrote about in the 1960s. Today the neighborhood is a landmarked museum, and is unaffordable to the kinds of people that made it so dynamic in the first place.

JB: A CurbedNY article on Open New York quoted Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation [GVSHP] as saying, “This small group of pro-development fetishists seems to make no distinctions between good or bad development, or have any recognition of the need for balance and mitigation…I think most New Yorkers agree that simply allowing the barons of real estate to have their way with our neighborhoods and our city, as this group proposes, is not the way to cure our ills or plan for our future.” Your Response?

Casey

The idea that we don’t have preferences for which types of development we support, or that we only serve “big real estate,” is unhinged from the reality of our work, and shows how weak the actual arguments to keep wealthy neighborhoods preserved in amber are. A core part of our mission is that we only advocate for projects in white, wealthy neighborhoods, because that’s where exclusionary interests have been able to lock others out of opportunity, and all of the projects we advocate for have an affordable component.

In addition, parts of the real estate industry oppose our work—the way that some developers, brokers, and realtors ensure a steady profit is by limiting the supply of new homes, and therefore competition. (Some of whom fund Berman’s own organization, I should add.) We’ve seen the fruits of GVSHP’s approach: the Village and nearby neighborhoods are unaffordable to anyone who doesn’t have millions of dollars to spend to buy a brownstone or loft, and our city is among the most segregated cities in the United States. I’m proud that our approach to “cure our ills or plan for our future” has won us allies among fair housing groups, tenant advocates, planning organizations, and progressive politicians from across the city.

Kyle

Well, I suppose I can speak to this question as an open and unrepentant “pro-development fetishist.” I personally like tall buildings, and I don’t understand the kind of person who lives in New York City, literal home of the skyscraper, yet feels the need to complain about shadows or tall buildings being “out of character.” The fact that there are infinitely many other places one could live where they would not have to deal with tall buildings aside all the things that draw people to New York: the jobs, the diverse cultural life, the restaurants, etc., are all downstream of density. The sheer number of people here is what makes this bewildering array of opportunity possible, and as nice as it would be (and it would be nice, at least as far as I am concerned), they can’t all live in 18th- or 19th-century townhouses.

As someone who’s struggled to balance their understanding of land use and exclusionary zoning—and the desire to move away from that paradigm which stems from that understanding—with their very strong aesthetic preferences in favor of traditional architecture. In a perfect world, this would not be a problem, because all new buildings would be designed by Peter Pennoyer, Roman & Williams, Robert Stern, Morris Adjmi, Studio Sofield, and so forth (I would note I am very much an outlier from the group on this). But obviously we don’t live in that world. So at the end of the day, we have to ask what is more important: our subjective aesthetic preferences or giving people a place to live?

Read Part I of the Roundtable Q&A with Open New York here.

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New Yimby City: A Roundtable Q&A with Open New York (Part I)

Jason M. Barr (@JasonBarrRU)           April 5, 2021

Editor’s Note: In the Skynomics Blog, I frequently discuss the subject of housing affordability in New York City. It thus piqued my interest when I learned about a group of New Yorkers who have become politically engaged through their organization, Open New York, to increase the city’s housing stock. This is Part I of a two-part roundtable Q&A with four of their members.

The Panelists

Casey Berkovitz is an Open New York board member and senior associate at The Century Foundation, a public policy organization. He tweets at @caseyberk.

Kyle Dontoh is a board member of Open New York and an independent strategy and transformation consultant. He tweets at @kynakwado.

Amelia Josephson is an Open New York board member and program manager at The Financial Health Network, a nonprofit that unites industries, business leaders, policymakers, innovators, and visionaries in a shared mission to improve financial health for all. She tweets at @JosephsonAmelia.

Will Thomas is the Executive Director of Open New York, an independent, grassroots pro-housing organization fighting for more housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods.

Roundtable Q&A

JB: What is the mission of Open New York, what is the history behind its formation, and what motivated you to get involved?

Kyle:

Our mission is simple: we want to build more homes in New York City, particularly in places with good access to jobs and transit connectivity—what we refer to as “high-opportunity” neighborhoods––that are not building enough.

We were formed in late 2016, and I joined in early 2017, so I wasn’t present from the very beginning, but what happened is that some folks who had interacted with each other––largely on Twitter—and had been talking about these questions about access to housing, exclusionary zoning, and the utter dysfunction of the status quo when it comes to land use, decided to get together and form a group to try and move the discussion.

They were all aware of the YIMBY movement that had started out in the Bay Area; so from the very beginning, they had a good idea of what they wanted to accomplish, although I would stress that it was never a question of copying that model wholesale. Still, New York is unique, but not so unique that, contrary to what the political and planning establishment seems to think, that we can’t draw lessons from the experiences of other cities.

I was unaware that this group existed, though, until I DMed one of the people in that original group who I followed on Twitter, asking what could be done to make YIMBYism politically appealing, and he told me some people had gotten together to tackle that very issue—and I guess you can say the rest is history.

Will:

I have some backstory from the very beginning––although, like Kyle, I haven’t been around since the group’s start. A critical mass of future Open New Yorkers met at the YIMBYTown conference in 2016 in Boulder, Colorado. We’ve always wondered to some extent why the YIMBY movement took off first in the Bay Area, as by certain metrics, New York’s housing crisis has been just as bad for even longer. On a per-capita basis, San Francisco frequently outbuilds New York––and has done so for eight out of the last ten years.

Enough New Yorkers met in Boulder and were inspired to start meeting and build a similar movement in New York––which is the seed that ultimately grew into Open New York. I personally got involved in 2018––but my journey to the pro-housing movement started in 2015 when I first moved to New York after college for an entry-level marketing job. I still consider myself extremely fortunate in finding a place to live––two of my friends had been sharing a relatively affordable East Village one-bedroom with a third roommate, who conveniently moved to Minneapolis just before I moved in. But our set-up was less than ideal––my friends slept in a bunk bed, I slept in a non-bedroom ‘office’ space without windows, and neither of our rooms had doors.

At that time, I had been reading a lot of Matt Yglesias, who turned me onto urbanist Twitter, which turned me onto Open New York––and it just gelled for me that we didn’t have to live like that, that in fact, it was perverse that I felt so lucky to live three-people to a pre-Civil War tenement. Then, in early 2018, Open New York specifically got involved in my neighborhood: to stop the GVSHP [Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation] from adding a downzoning as part a rezoning for a tech incubator space near Union Square, which is when I really started volunteering with the group. We successfully stopped the downzoning, and I realized how much impact simply showing up to these sorts of hearings could have. And I’ve been involved with the group ever since.

JB: So far, what have been the organization’s accomplishments? What do you feel went better than planned, and what things did you run up against that you did not expect?

Will:

We’ve been mostly involved in rezoning fights so far––both around individual projects and at the neighborhood level. So far, we’ve supported rezonings that will ultimately result in over a thousand homes across mixed-income and 100% affordable developments––and I’d consider those projects to be substantial wins.

That said, I think our largest accomplishment (so far!) is the inclusion of a substantial residential upzoning within the SoHo/NoHo rezoning. This has the potential to be the first neighborhood-wide upzoning of a wealthy, residential neighborhood––and in that sense would mark a very real contrast with the rezoning policies of the past, which have focused new growth in either low-income or industrial neighborhoods.

Amelia:

I would also say that Open New York has started changing the conversation in New York City housing and has helped shine a light on some of the dysfunctional aspects of the way we approach housing in this city, including the historic landmarking process.

One challenge that we’ve faced is that the mayoral administration burned a lot of political capital on rezoning lower-income neighborhoods of color (rezonings Open New York did not back because they don’t fit our mission of adding homes in whiter, more amenity-rich neighborhoods with low displacement risk). This meant that the rezonings we do back, in the wealthier neighborhoods of Gowanus and SoHo, have been received with more skepticism, and we and our allies have had to work harder to explain the difference between rezoning a wealthy neighborhood like SoHo that is the third-largest job center in NYC versus rezoning a lower-income neighborhood in upper Manhattan.

JB: It seems that much of your activities have been about engaging local leaders and the community in supporting the idea of loosening zoning regulations or in promoting new projects in New York. Overall, what kind of feedback have you gotten? How much is resistance versus agreement?

Casey:

We’ve gotten a ton of positive feedback, actually! The nature of our advocacy is that most of our time is spent in venues where there’s opposition, but we’ve heard from all sorts of New Yorkers—regular neighbors, other community and advocacy organizations, people who work in and around government and have seen firsthand how broken our status quo is—who say they appreciate our advocacy and show up in various ways to support Open New York’s mission.

Of course, because we advocate for more housing in exclusionary neighborhoods, we’ve seen our share of resistance too. There’s a small group of people who have opposed the prospect of new housing especially forcefully, of course, but they’re a tiny fraction of the city, who unfortunately hold disproportionately large sway in our land-use politics. We’re working to change that.

Will:

I think something we’ve seen is just us showing up to lend support for a particularly contentious project will oftentimes give others the confidence to come out in support as well. There are a lot of people who want to see their neighborhoods grow, but the structural dynamics of in-person community input can usually make it easier for those opposing change to organize and then intimidate those who disagree. Having a few of your neighbors on your side can make a lot of difference in giving people the confidence to speak their minds.

The Jenga Building. High-rise projects like this one at 56 Leonard Street, in historic Tribeca, are highly controversial. Source: here.

JB: What do you see as the root causes of the housing affordability problem in New York? Is it plain old “NIMBYism” (“Not in my backyard”) in a crowded city? Or is it overly tight zoning and building rules?

Amelia:

The housing affordability problem in New York has several causes. We haven’t built enough homes to keep up with the rise in jobs and the number of folks who either want to move here or to form new households here. We’ve lost a lot of affordable units. And, of course, many New Yorkers, like folks across the country, aren’t being paid enough to afford housing.

We need to—using a shorthand term—“legalize housing” where it’s not already permitted, and we need to make it easier to build that housing by cutting down on the extensive (and expensive) land use planning processes. Even 100% affordable housing on City-owned sites takes several years to get off the ground, so we’d like to see those processes streamlined. We also have a problem where projects are held up by lawsuits, further delaying the bringing of new homes online for people who need them. And we need to provide adequate subsidies so that residents who aren’t able to afford market-rate units have the housing they need.

NIMBYism is absolutely an obstacle to getting every New Yorker the housing they have a right to. We’ve seen even 100% affordable housing trigger NIMBYism from folks who are worried about their views, or about noise from ground-floor community space. NIMBYism is especially vitriolic when it comes to shelters for unhoused New Yorkers. So, at the same time that we need to change laws and rules to realize our vision of abundant housing, we also need to change the conversation and change hearts and minds so that people get out of this scarcity mindset and start welcoming more neighbors to their communities.

Will:

In my opinion, the NIMBYism is why we have the overly tight zoning and building rules, so Amelia is totally right in suggesting this is a hearts and minds process. We need to organize and build political support for changing these regressive rules.

The Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn. The cleaned-up canal is the process of being rezoned for residential buildings.  Photo source:  Nathan Kensinger at Curbed.com

JB: More broadly, what kind of policies do you think the City should enact? Is there any low-hanging fruit that the City can do quickly that is not so politically charged?

Casey:

To be clear, pro-housing rezonings in affluent neighborhoods should be the low-hanging fruit! It doesn’t cost the City anything to facilitate more housing development, and with MIH [Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning] or other inclusionary zoning policy in place, it often even facilitates affordable housing that would otherwise cost the City money. I do think there are citywide policy tweaks that are worth pursuing, even if they aren’t going to solve the housing crisis on their own without much-needed affordable housing funding or land-use changes: a reinstatement of the basement pilot program that was cut from the pre-COVID budget, ADU [accessory dwelling unit] legalization more broadly, permitting and Department of Buildings reform, that sort of thing. At the state level, lifting the FAR cap should be an easy item.

Will:

I would add ending parking minimums, which can really make it difficult for projects to pencil in the outer boroughs. Even under the current zoning, there are a lot of projects that would start to pencil if you could simply loosen the amount of parking that developers are required to provide. Places from San Francisco to Buffalo have ended these sorts of minimums, proving that it is politically possible. I also think a national consensus is starting to emerge around ending single-family zoning, and as so little of New York City is still zoned for only single-family homes, it should be easy enough to eliminate wholesale.

JB: How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your mission and your work? Do you see the effects of the pandemic in terms of lower rents and housing prices as lasting into the future?

Amelia:

COVID-19 has impacted our work in a few ways. At first, the pandemic meant that construction and land use planning processes were halted altogether. Once those processes started back, the community engagement all took place virtually, as opposed to the in-person meetings we were used to attending. The switch to virtual meetings has been a boon to our members who want to be engaged and speaking up for more housing without having to commute to community board meetings all over the city after a long workday.

Across the city, virtual community engagement has seen a bigger and more diverse audience than the pre-pandemic in-person meetings. We’re very happy about that change, but unfortunately, a lot of the anti-housing voices who are used to dominating the land use planning process know that virtual engagement is taking away their edge. Opponents of the Gowanus Rezoning, which would add, in addition to market-rate units, 900 units of affordable housing, have even gone so far as to sue the City, arguing that the rezoning can’t proceed because the virtual hearings are invalid.

So the pandemic has prompted a very important and contentious conversation around how we engage the community and make that engagement accessible to folks who might not be able to sit in an auditorium for four hours on a weeknight. Looking ahead, we expect that the recovery from the pandemic will make the issues we fight for even more salient.

People who have lost income will need affordable housing more than ever. Construction and building services jobs will be key to getting New Yorkers back to work. We want to see New York come back from COVID better and more equitable than ever, and housing is a huge part of that. We’re bullish about New York City’s recovery.

 

Part II of the roundtable Q&A with Open New York will be posted on April 17, 2020. More posts on housing and zoning can be found here.

 

by Jason Barr 2 Comments

Skyscrapers and Housing Affordability: Debunking Misconceptions

Jason M. Barr (@JasonBarrRU)            March 23, 2021

Erin go Tweet

On March 9, 2021, Professor Ronan Lyons, an economist at Trinity College Dublin, tweeted about one of my research papers on global tall building construction.[1] Dr. Lyons has 24,000 followers (two orders of magnitude more than me, but you can follow me on Twitter here). His tweet mentioned the paper’s findings for Ireland. This set off a tweetstorm, with no shortage of opinions—mostly against—about skyscrapers in ancient Dublin town. This post is my response to that tweetstorm.

The Paper

Before I get to Ireland, let us turn to the research that started the whole kerfuffle. The paper is “Cities without Skylines: Worldwide Building-height Gaps, their Determinants, and their Implications” (by Remi Jedwab, Jan Brueckner, and me). The study attempts to understand the causes and consequences of building height restrictions around the world. It is the first to measure global differences and attitudes towards tall buildings.

We estimate the degree to which skyscrapers are “missing” from every country due to stringent building height regulations. To do this, we come up with a prediction of how much building height a nation “should have” if its real estate market was relatively open, and then compare this to the actual total building height. We call the difference the “building-height gap.” Higher gaps mean more “missing” buildings, given the income levels.

No Free Lunch from the Fear of Heights

The paper shows that the building-height gap is highest for richer countries and is driven mainly by stringency in the housing sector. The evidence also suggests that wealthier countries with higher gaps have older cities and are more interested in preserving their national heritage. Just as importantly, we also find that the gaps are positively related to sprawl, air pollution, and higher housing prices. In short, we see that countries with more restrictive building height regulations are imposing a degree of economic harm on their residents. One might say that there is no free lunch from the fear of heights.

Irish Developer Johnny Ronan Seeks to Building Ireland’s First Skyscraper. The 45-storey residential tower in the Dublin docklands would be the tallest building in the country Source: The Times.

The Tweebate

When we crunched the numbers and came up with the country that had the largest height gap per million urban residents, it turned out to be Ireland, which has no skyscrapers (100 meters or taller), though one is seemingly in the works. Across the world, there is a strong correlation between national income and building heights. Richer countries build taller, on average, because they are more urbanized. However, Ireland—and Dublin, in particular—is both relatively wealthy and has robust business services and financial sectors, which tend to promote tall building construction for both office and residential purposes.[2]

Professor Ronan argued that Dublin should not be so afraid of heights if it is genuinely concerned with housing affordability. Building upper-class high-rises can help, albeit in a small way, to reduce housing prices more broadly. This comment set off a flurry of responses about tall buildings’ impacts on affordability and urban form. Common among them were the typical tropes about skyscrapers and cities. I want to take this chance to rebut some common misconceptions. It is better to do it in long-form than on Twitter with endless 280-character back-and-forth jabs—peppered with personal attacks—which I find emotionally stressful and ultimately a poor vehicle for fruitful discussion.

 

Heights versus GDP. This graphs shows a country’s total tall-building height per thousand urban residents versus its gross domestic product (on log scales). Given Ireland’s relatively large GDP, it has fewer tall buildings than expected. The line gives the average tall-building height intensity for each GDP level. Source: Jedwab, Barr and Brueckner (2020).

Revisiting the Myths

Myth #1: “Building up is pricing up”

Because skyscrapers are expensive to build and operate, people believe that, by their very nature, they increase the price of housing, or as one Tweeter put it, “building up is pricing up.” But the opposite is true. The idea that building up is pricing up confuses correlation with causation.

Skyscrapers are a response to high land values. When land is expensive, it signals that the demand for that location is high and that people are willing to pay more to be there. As a result, developers respond to the demand by building tall. A high-rise building in a low-density suburb makes no economic sense. The prices of land do not justify the expense of going tall. This is why the vast majority of tall buildings around the world are in central metropolitan areas.

Anytime a building comes online, it slightly increases the supply, which reduces prices. This impact is often hidden in large cities with relatively little new construction because the demand side–which pumps prices up–swamps the supply side. However, if you dumped many high-price units on the market at the same time, it would push prices downward. Would it reduce prices all around the city? No, but it would certainly help in, say, a one-kilometer radius around the new construction.

Myth #2: “Skyscrapers cause gentrification” 

Gentrification is caused by high demand relative to low supply. When a new high-rise goes up, it has two effects. First is the supply-side effect, which reduces neighborhood prices, ever so slightly. However, because the tall building now allows for a denser neighborhood, it increases the demand for neighborhood services, such as coffee shops and pubs, which can draw more people in, further raising real estate prices.

But in a smooth-functioning market, rising prices due to increased amenities will be met with more housing, which would reduce the number of people who feel pushed out by the neighborhood’s increased attractiveness. Gentrification is caused by frictions or barriers to new construction, including tight building regulations and high construction costs. These barriers generate “fixed-pie” neighborhoods: those who can afford it can get a slice of the pie. The rest need to go elsewhere. More housing increases the size of the pie.

Myth #3: “Hong Kong has lots of skyscrapers. Hong Kong is expensive. Therefore, skyscrapers must make Hong Kong expensive.” 

While I will have more to say about Hong Kong in a future post, the opposite of this idea is true. Hong Kong is expensive not because of its skyscrapers, but despite them. Hong Kong’s problem is due to its unique land and housing markets.

The first is land scarcity. A large swath of the city has mountainous, steep terrain and is unsuitable for building. More importantly, the government owns all the land and doles it out in varying amounts. While the precise nexus between land supply and housing supply remains debatable, developers’ ability to quickly adjust the housing stock based on demand is highly constrained.

Additionally, Hong Kong has a dual housing market, which tends to lower affordability. 45% of housing units are owned by the government. The rest is free market. This two-tiered system encourages high-prices in the free one because no one leaves the cheap public housing (once you apply, the average waiting time is 5.7 years to get a public housing apartment), forcing the rest to seek out scarce market-rate shelter.

When big cities have two-tiered systems, the lower and middle-class residents who cannot get into the subsidized units are the ones who invariably suffer. Because new construction in the unregulated sector is limited, it will mostly be dedicated to high-priced housing accessible to the upper classes, leaving the rest to bear the brunt of the shortages.

Myth # 4: “Developers want to build skyscrapers everywhere.” 

Skyscraper construction is only profitable in locations where land values and real estate prices are high enough to incentivize construction. Because of their size and their occupants—upper-income folks—they tend to be viewed as agents of income inequality and gentrification.

But in any city with many building restrictions, developers find a way to provide new housing where there are the greatest profits—in the city center. There are many low-rise, middle-income neighborhoods throughout a city where new construction at slightly higher densities—for example, replacing one-family homes with four-story apartment buildings—could be profitable. But residents do not want new construction in their neighborhoods.

They shout, “Not in my backyard!” and then complain when skyscraper developers build high-rises in other people’s backyards. If you limit construction throughout the city, skyscrapers appear in the central pockets where developers can “squeeze” them in and make money satisfying the demand. They cannot satisfy the demand elsewhere because restrictive zoning or building regulations prohibit them from doing so.

Myth #5: “Goldilocks density should be imposed throughout the city” 

Jane Jacob’s 1961 classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, sparked a debate about the ideal urban neighborhood. Jacobs wrote about her Greenwich Village street in virtually utopian terms. Recent research has confirmed that dense, low-rise mixed-use neighborhoods have all sorts of desirable characteristics: They have a diversity of people and amenities, their carbon footprints are lower, and they “feel” warm and cozy. These historic, pre-automobile neighborhoods represent in the minds of many a Goldilocks neighborhood—not too hot, not too cold, but just right.

The Goldilocks supporters rail against the “plutocrat” developers destroying neighborhoods with their elitist skyscrapers. The policy implication of this view boils down to “Not in my backyard!”—preserve the historical communities in amber to keep them precisely as Jane Jacobs described them six decades ago and ban tall buildings in urban centers. In essence, take the Paris route to urban land use policy: Forbid anything that does not conform to their notion of the perfect city.

In the Balance

Do not get me wrong: I love Greenwich Village and old New York, and historical preservation is vital! But we must also recognize the costs of these positions—historic preservation limits new construction, which raises prices. Additionally, the notion that there is one ideal density that should be mandated by law is absurd.

Skyscrapers in the center represent the demand to live in dense central areas, and if people demand more density, then tall buildings fulfill a need.[3]  Areas farther out from the center should be leafier and less dense—that is the benefit of living farther away. True Goldilocks density is a moving target, and land-use policies should reflect this by being flexible.

Having said this, if New Yorkers, like Parisians, want to “vote” to preserve their city as it existed a century ago, they should be clear that they prioritize aesthetics and historic preservation over affordability and that the closed city is to be only for the rich who can buy million-dollar studio apartments in low-rise Greenwich Village and let everyone else fend for themselves.

 Myth #6: “Skyscrapers destroy the ‘human scale‘” 

The perception is that tall buildings next to low-rise buildings or tall tower-in-the-park style high-rises destroy the “feel” of the city. This is an issue, aside from the economics of housing supply, that merits serious discussion. The fundamental question we face in the 21st century is how to create cities that are both affordable and enhance life satisfaction.

Detractors of tall buildings say that towers make the city “feel cold” and dampen the vitality of the streets. True, not all tall buildings fit within the urban fabric, and glass boxes can be alienating to passersby, but two important points need to be made.

First is that human scale and quality of life are more directly harmed by dependency on automobiles. Dense urban neighborhoods are inherently more vibrant than those with, say, sprawling suburban tracts and strip malls, or big cities that build six-lane highways directly through the center. If the aim is to create more livable cities, we should focus on creating critical densities that promote diverse populations, various uses, and more mobility.

Automobiles are a bad way to move people. They take up a lot of urban land for roads, parking and storage, and they are too easily subject to congestion. Four automobiles will, optimistically, carry eight commuters during rush hour. For the same length, a bus or streetcar can carry perhaps 50 or more people. Cars also promote sprawled-out, low-rise living.

If cities are really concerned about the quality of life, the focus should be on improving non-car-based mobility among urban residents first and then allowing neighborhoods to densify up based on where people want to be. Increasing density along subway lines and commuter rails is a great way to start.

Urban Umami

Secondly, as I have argued elsewhere, if we want to improve the feel of cities, we have at our disposal new methods and technologies that allow us to better understand human preferences and the psychology of streetscapes. Once we know this, municipal regulations can incentivize good urban design—to make new construction feel less oppressive in people’s minds, and blend better with the historical urban fabric.

Imposing low-rise density in the city center is inherently exclusionary since it generates housing shortages in the name of “human scale.” We all want to live in a city that feels nice, but only the rich can build cities that uphold their notions of ideal beauty but ignore economic realities.

The Manhattan Skyline from Central Park. Photo by Jason M. Barr.

Guiding Principles

While I will have more to say in future posts about urban policies that get us to cities that are both affordable and high-quality, we need to begin by clearing away the misconceptions about tall buildings. So, at the risk of repeating myself, let me summarize.

Supply and Demand

First, real estate markets operate like all markets—according to the laws of supply and demand. The more these laws are subverted, the more they wind up harming residents, usually in the form of unaffordable housing due to excessive building regulations and other frictions. All cities need to find the right balance between regulation and growth, and the current global affordability problem is driven, in large part, by the desire to guard and preserve the present and past city against fears of the future city.

Tall Buildings are Efficient

Second, skyscrapers are built in central areas where demand for housing is high. As such, they represent an efficient use of land. The fact that skyscrapers are more visible and tend to be for upper-income residents should not distract us from the fact that more housing is needed at all income brackets and at locations where cities experience an extreme “shortage” of housing.

A look at New York, for example, shows that about 50% of the entire residential land area is currently used for one- and two-family homes. This is inefficient. We should spend less time worrying about Manhattan skyscrapers and more time getting neighborhoods with four houses per acre (10 houses per hectare) to add more units.

Skyscrapers do not Belong Everywhere

Third, skyscrapers do not belong everywhere. They are not economically rational or practical outside central areas. In suburban districts, densification should entail converting smaller buildings to those that are a bit denser. People should have the right to convert one-family housing to two- or three-family housing or convert garages to rentable apartments, for example.[4]

More housing, regardless of the occupants’ income, can help reduce the price of housing. The key is that for a city to remain affordable, it must increase its supply faster than prices rise. When this happens, housing prices moderate. Tall buildings can help, though by themselves, they are not sufficient.

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Fourth, getting angry about one high-profile project each time it crops up is missing the forest for the trees. Focusing on one building or neighborhood at a time is not only inefficient but harmful for residents more broadly. Policies need to be citywide, and they must ensure that every neighborhood gets its fair share of housing based on the demand for those neighborhoods.

Livable Cities

Fifth, livable cities must begin with sound economics. If we want livable cities, we should abide by three principles.

  • Let density naturally arise where people want to be and let mixed-uses and diversity emerge along with it. High-rises should go where high-rises should go, and low-rises should go where low-rises should go.
  • Excessive automobile dependency subverts quality of life more than tall buildings. Simply creating central-city congestion pricing is not the answer. Any transportation system needs to maximize mobility and access, including pedestrian routes and bicycle usage.
  • Modern social science methods can now be used to better understand what kinds of building and street designs make people feel more at ease and encourage people to come out onto the streets. But implementing good design practices while ignoring the economic and transportation issues is insufficient to produce better cities. If we limit new construction, we wind up getting better-designed cities for rich people.

The Future City

All cities—ancient and new alike—must find the right balance between preserving the past and promoting the future. New York is New York and Dublin is Dublin because, historically speaking, these cities had the flexibility to add housing as the demand arose. Of course, the process was messy and led to a whole suite of building regulations to slow down cities’ ability to change. That is where we are today; the result is an affordability problem. We forget that the historical city was a much more dynamic place, and this dynamism created the magical metropolises we have today. We have nothing to fear but the fear of heights.

 

Thanks to Maria Thompson for her help with proofreading editing.

—

[1] In the interest of full disclosure, Professor Lyons and I are research collaborators, though he did not work on the research paper discussed in this post. His Tweet was not discussed with me before he posted it. Professor Ronan has no relationship with Johnny Ronan, the developer proposing to build a 45-story tower in Dublin.

[2] Ireland has 4.9 million people, and the Dublin metro area has 1.23 million—nearly 20% of the population. Relative to other European nations, its urbanization rate of 63.41% is relatively low. But given its high income and Dublin’s successful economy, it under-produces tall buildings relative to similar countries.

[3] I also want to be clear that luxury high-rises should not be used by shell corporations to hide or launder money. I have written on this debate here and some policies that can address the negative externalities that might arise from billionaire condo skyscrapers.

[4] When I was in college, my friends and I rented the bottom floor of a large Victorian house near campus. Legend had it that was occupied by Vladimir Nabokov when he was teaching at Cornell. The top floor was converted to a separate two-bedroom apartment. All told, that house was able to comfortably accommodate at least six college students (and their dating partners). Today, such a conversion would be illegal in many cities and would mean that a small household living there would need to keep otherwise usable space unoccupied because the law requires it.

 

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