An October OpEd on truthout.org commenting on their recently published The Vacancy Report argues that because vacancy and houselessness occur simultaneously at high rates in many of our cities, we cannot rely exclusively on the market to solve the housing affordability and homelessness crises. While I am supportive of significant regulation of the speculative housing market (like the vacancy tax recommended in the report) to make our cities affordable to all, I was disappointed by the weakness of the authors’ attacks on YIMBY talking points. Ultimately, I was unswayed by their unsupported conclusion that it is necessary to dismantle the real estate market, because “the capitalist market is the problem.”
The authors do make a solid case that the high rates of houseless cannot be explained by a lack of available units. They cite a “surplus of luxury homes existing alongside tens of thousands of desperately poor families without roofs over their heads” in Los Angeles and how the Venice neighborhood in particular saw “[vacancy] rates as high as 15 percent. The data suggest “prolonged periods of housing units sitting idle in these neighborhoods,” which cannot be explained by the time it takes to lease-up newly constructed units.”
From there they insinuate that the level of vacancy is exacerbated by the fact that “what’s getting built is in this top end of the market,” since “the higher a unit’s rent, the more likely it is to be vacant.” Hardly surprising that investors and vacationers with choice would be most interested in the newest units. Next, they invoke my favorite argument, “97 percent of the units currently under construction in the city’s downtown area fall under what CoStar categorizes as the “4 & 5 star” class.” This is nearly a tautology; a large part of what defines the 3-star and below classes is the age and condition of the unit. While it’s likely true that flourishing demand for investment properties will drive up the price of the newest units being built, I am not convinced that in the absence of that speculative market the material units being constructed would be dramatically different.
YIMBYs “suggest that we can build our way out of this crisis of tenancy”
“never provide relief for poor, or even middle-class Angeleno renters”
““filtering” … fails to materialize”
“never come close to matching the scale of what is needed.”
“The coveted prize from all this building is that rents in the neighborhood have “remained flat,” while elsewhere they’ve gone up.”
“despite the “incredible amount of units” built in this neighborhood over the past years, rents are just down 1 percent.”
Overall this piece feels like a cathartic, pseudo-data backed harp on the new construction people see around their changing city. So long as that construction continues to increase density (and ideally density of people, not just units), I will still call myself a YIMBY.
