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1minuteman12 t1_ittcz7f wrote

Reply to comment by IntelligentCicada363 in Cambridge completely eliminated parking minimums yesterday!! by RealBurhanAzeem

Developers will charge the same market rate and pocket the saved costs

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itufi1t wrote

That’s not how supply and demand work but ok

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1minuteman12 t1_itva7hx wrote

You’re assuming that removing parking mandates will increase housing supply enough to meet or exceed an ever increasing demand, which I think is a massive, massive assumption. You’re also assuming that building more would saturate the market such that buyers and renters will have enough leverage to send prices downward, another massive assumption. The most likely scenario is that roughly the same number of housing is developed, or a little more, but the prices are set at market rate and developers hold firm on pricing because they know eventually someone will pay it. Developers and real estate investors would rather and often do have places go unoccupied for months or even a year before they’ll lower prices. It’s naive to think otherwise.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itveqb0 wrote

I don’t know how to argue with someone who believes increasing housing supply isn’t a solution to a housing crisis. Every other town every where says the same thing you are saying, so no housing is being built anywhere.

Cambridge has a tremendous amount of opportunity for growth in terms of 4-6 story multi families being allowed City wide, but it is impossible to build that and mandate everyone home must have a parking spot.

Having a roof over someone’s head is more important than your right to store your car on public streets. If you don’t agree then we will never see eye to eye and this discussion is pointless, sorry.

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1minuteman12 t1_itvko8p wrote

I didn’t say it wasn’t a solution, you are arguing with a straw man. I said that the amount of increased housing development that this individual legislation will create is not going to be anywhere near enough to make a meaningful difference in housing affordability. It’s a step in the right direction but people in here are acting like this will cause rents to drop. It won’t.

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crazicus t1_iu4rauo wrote

For now yeah. But down the line when we can get more housing friendly policies passed (like the relaxing of zoning), the prices of the apartments aren’t going to pegged to a higher value just so the developers can meet costs. Like you said, a step in the right direction

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Cav_vaC t1_itugy4e wrote

They will charge what the market will pay, like always. If they want to charge the same and others offer lower, they will lose money for each month their unit goes unrented

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1minuteman12 t1_itvb6a0 wrote

The market has an endless supply of people willing and able to pay current rates. Developers and investors frequently hold firm on pricing and let places go unoccupied for long periods of time before lowering prices, which is only done as a last resort and rarely happens. There would need to be an enormous influx of housing to make a dent in a market where there are millions of people willing to pay out the ass to live in a closet in Cambridge.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itvgnlm wrote

Right, and decades of NIMBYism has led to the need of a “enormous influx” of housing.

The need for housing isn’t a very good argument against policies they make it easier to build housing. In fact… it is just confusing.

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1minuteman12 t1_itvkzrj wrote

I don’t know what you even mean to say. My point is that, although we need more housing, this policy is not going to create anywhere near enough new housing to have a perceptible effect on housing prices. It’s a step in the right direction for sure. We should be moving on from car dependent urban planning anyway.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itzdsi3 wrote

There are a large number of policies, including the one being discussed in this thread, that individually don’t move the needle much, but when combined will move the needle in the right direction. However, every single time one of these policies come up, the above argument is used to oppose such policies. “This won’t move the needle on housing, and it will inconvenience me, so I oppose it!” So the policies don’t get enacted, or get neutered, and then the needle never moves because nothing ever gets done.

There are millions of people and hundreds of thousands of homes in the greater boston metro area. Any developer trying to fix prices is just going to be undercut by another developer to make money. The market is too big for the type of collusion (at the scale of the whole region) you are describing.

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1minuteman12 t1_itzfxwc wrote

I’m not opposing the policy, it’s good policy and I support it. My commentary is aimed at the people in this sub who are like “this is it, housing will be cheap now!” If we want a systematic drop in rental and real estate prices we need radical change.

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Cav_vaC t1_itxn55k wrote

There's not an endless supply of people willing and able to pay current rates. That's just nonsense. There is a large supply, which is different. There are a lot of people making and buying wheat or oil in the world, but the price still goes down if supply increases.

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1minuteman12 t1_itxte8f wrote

The price of grain or oil doesn’t drop if the supply only increases marginally and that increase still doesn’t meet or exceed demand. That is especially true if grain and oil sellers decide that long term profits will be higher if they set a price based on the current market and hold or let spoil some of the product that doesn’t sell, while making fewer sales at a higher price point. People in here learned supply and demand in high school and just regurgitate that term as if it will cause some magic fix. There are literal studies and theories widely accepted in macroeconomic circles that argue capitalist society has moved beyond supply and demand based concepts for staple goods such as housing, food, etc.

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IntelligentCicada363 t1_itzddaw wrote

And yet, here we are living in a region with artificially constrained housing supply with incredibly high demand for that housing. Sounds like “high school economics” to me.

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1minuteman12 t1_itzfs3r wrote

No that’s late stage capitalism, which is significantly worse

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Cav_vaC t1_iu18vrv wrote

There are a ton of studies showing the also obvious truth that more market rate housing reduces rents (compared to what they would have otherwise been).

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