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  • The US doesn't have enough homes.

  • This line shows how many months it would take

  • for the current supply of housing to run out.

  • It's a measure of housing supply and it's been dropping for a decade.

  • And this line shows how housing prices have changed.

  • They've skyrocketed in the past year.

  • For rental units, the percentage of empty buildings is the lowest it's been in 3 decades

  • while rent prices keep going up.

  • But here's the thing.

  • Often, when new buildings go up in these places

  • people hate them.

  • "It's hard to describe... but...

  • you know it when you see it."

  • "Gentrification building."

  • Most often, they're talking about new buildings like this:

  • boxy, modern, multi-family homes.

  • I saw one one day that sort of hit me.

  • And it was a TikTok that was showing this building in Camden, New Jersey.

  • That's Jerusalem Demsas, a Vox policy reporter.

  • You know, the comments range from a bunch of different things.

  • It was people kind of deriding the building itself

  • saying that it was causing displacement

  • saying, get ready for a Starbucks to come and pop up.

  • Comments like this are a common narrative.

  • To many, these buildings don't just look bland and artificial.

  • They signal raised rents, displacement, and

  • the complete transformation of a neighborhood

  • to a place that's richer and whiter.

  • But in this case, what happened next might surprise you.

  • So I started like, kind of like, going around

  • trying to find the specific location, walking around Google Maps.

  • And eventually, I find it.

  • And I find the building, I look at the address.

  • I look into property records to figure out what this building was.

  • And not only is it new housing, it's actually new affordable housing.

  • Turns out, there's a lot we get wrong

  • about how we see new construction in the US.

  • Whether it's DC, Oakland, or Austin

  • newer apartment buildings in the US have a distinct look

  • one that sticks out against older architecture.

  • But these buildings don't look like historic homes for a reason.

  • This building is actually one of the cheapest ways

  • to build an apartment building right now.

  • The design is strategic.

  • According to reporting from Curbed

  • this kind of architecture is built to fit within restraints

  • like cost, height limits, and safety requirements.

  • It's why many of these structures are what's known as “5-over-1” or “1-plus-5”.

  • That means there's several levels of wood-framed construction

  • which usually contain apartments and is known as Type 5 in building code.

  • That's over one level with a concrete base

  • which usually contains commercial space or parking, known as Type 1.

  • The light-frame wood construction, flat windows, and paneling around the building

  • are all ways to build as affordably as possible.

  • And that means you're able to build more affordable housing.

  • I think a lot of the time people don't understand that

  • in order to get affordable housing, the actual components of the building have to be

  • cheap to develop and to construct.

  • The results can be bland and look artificial

  • but that authenticity problem is an old one.

  • In this book, "The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn"

  • Suleiman Osman writes about the iconic brownstones of Brooklyn

  • a design that today, is widely considered to be deeply authentic to New York.

  • But in the 19th century, compared to the mostly wooden homes which predated them

  • critics actually dismissed brownstones as "modern and artificial”.

  • They called them out asproducts of the mechanical age

  • poorly built and subject to decaywith a “dehumanizing monotony”.

  • Sound familiar?

  • Comments in a lot of those Tik Tok videos, they say things like,

  • "Oh, it looks mass-produced. They look phony."

  • I mean, that's literally the exact same language that was being used

  • in the 1900s to talk about the brownstones.

  • That building we mentioned earlier in Camden, New Jersey

  • was built using low-income housing tax credits.

  • It has 245 units, geared towards seniors

  • and families making less than 60 percent of the area's median income.

  • It's easy to see why the construction of affordable housing like this is a good thing

  • but what about the new, market rate buildings that service middle and higher-income people?

  • They've come to symbolize displacement.

  • Or the idea that existing residents could be forced, involuntarily, to move out.

  • Often for reasons like rent increases or eviction.

  • Since developers like to build in places where prices are already rising

  • new buildings tend to correlate with those increased rents and displacement.

  • But a growing number of researchers have tried to find out whether these new buildings

  • are the cause of displacement.

  • They were testingthe demand effect

  • or the idea that the new buildings increase demand for the neighborhood

  • which in turn causes rent hikes that force people to leave.

  • But the research suggests the opposite.

  • An overwhelmingsupply effect”.

  • Where increasing the supply of new buildings

  • even if they are market rate

  • made housing less scarce and decreased rents and risks of displacement

  • especially in the areas closest to the new buildings.

  • New housing freed up space within a neighborhood

  • for new residents to move in without taking up existing homes.

  • And it also meant when they moved from theirpast homes

  • they freed up housing units in those neighborhoods as well.

  • But here's the thing:

  • less displacement was happening near new construction

  • but it didn't necessarily mean less gentrification was happening.

  • Because gentrification and displacement aren't the same thing.

  • While displacement happens to people, gentrification happens to a place.

  • When an area experiences demographic change

  • typically going from lower income tenants to higher income ones

  • shown here in the darker green.

  • Over time, demographic shifts in the neighborhood could still occur

  • not because existing residents were displaced

  • but for other reasons: maybe people decided to move to more desirable neighborhoods

  • or some passed away.

  • And the research suggests when that happened

  • residents were more likely to be replaced by richer people.

  • Meaning gentrification was happening, but without forced displacement.

  • So, to reduce both displacement and gentrification

  • you need more market rate and affordable housing

  • like that building in New Jersey.

  • Affordable housing, along with policies like rental assistance

  • preserve income diversity, making sure those with lower incomes

  • can always live in a particular neighborhood.

  • If there is a scarcity of a product, we know this in every market:

  • when there is not enough of something, the only people who get anything are rich people.

  • And so you have to make sure that there's enough for everyone at every level.

  • But there's one very big obstacle to building housing for everyone, everywhere.

  • Wealthy neighborhoods across the US are really good at blocking new housing developments.

  • Take a look at this map of New Haven, Connecticut

  • compared to the nearby, wealthier town of Woodbridge, Connecticut.

  • When we take a look at local zoning laws and where multi-family developments

  • are allowed in these areas.

  • There's virtually no land in Woodbridge zoned for them.

  • Single-family zoning laws block the vast majority of apartments

  • or affordable housing in this area.

  • When you have political power concentrated in the hands of very few wealthy homeowners

  • and they say, "We're not going to allow housing here."

  • Of course, there's going to be an unequal distribution of housing.

  • In 2020, after a 4-unit multi-family building was proposed in Woodbridge

  • a group of residents even created these flyers sayingDo we want this next door?”

  • Pitting single-family homes against multi-family buildings.

  • And this kind of conflict happens everywhere

  • from Woodbridge, to Soho, to San Francisco.

  • In some places, activists have found a way to use the language of gentrification

  • against changing zoning laws.

  • For example, in response to a proposed California bill

  • pushing for more housing near areas with transit

  • including a specific percentage of affordable housing

  • a group called Livable California said

  • building more housing would addjet fuel to a gentrification crisis.”

  • They see the power of this rhetoric

  • and they are using it as a tool to muddle the debate to make it seem like

  • building new housing is actually going to create displacement

  • when we know what creates displacement

  • is not building new housing.

  • That's what's so kind of dangerous about this entire debate.

  • We have gotten to a place where the actual policy solution

  • is seen as part of the problem.

The US doesn't have enough homes.

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