Quote:
Originally Posted by allovertown
Rent control would be a huge relief to residents across the city and severely tamp down on people fighting against development in their own communities. It would also make building new housing supply less profitable of course. But that's why you slash red tape and up zone everything and make building dense housing easier to try and offset that decrease in profitability so as to encourage developers to continue increasing supply.
|
I would contest that residents of densifying neighborhoods would be suddenly onboard with new construction if rent control was implemented. I think a large part of their unhappiness comes not only from the pecuniary changes that gentrification would bring, but the demographic and aesthetic changes as well. People who have lived in the same neighborhood for 20+ years are not going to jump at the chance to suddenly have 5 over 1s built everywhere, for the reasons I mentioned above: the majority of new residents are chasing the white collar, well paying jobs that are currently on offer in American cities today (as opposed to the blue collar working class jobs of the early 1900s) and potentially have different cultures, tastes, habits, etc. I think you'd also be hard pressed to argue that most of what is built nowadays is in any way more aesthetically pleasing than the surrounding neighborhood. This isn't a slash at contemporary architecture
styling, rather a slash at how cheap construction looks and feels in a neighborhood. You could show me a new Second-Empire building, but if it uses concrete panels instead of bricks, plastic siding, etc I would still say it looks out of place.
I understand what you're saying, and I'm happy that both of us see that the ultimate solution here to ensure that Chinatown residents stay where they are is to build more housing. However, instead of city-wide rent control, why not require the developer of the Stadium to build well-constructed, below market-rate
homes on some of the vast sea of parking lots currently in Chinatown? Sell them to the existing Chinese diaspora and you've just ensured that they'll stay there for at least a generation.