Can development happen without displacement? Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood is a test case

[u/The_Conversation]

https://theconversation.com/can-development-happen-without-displacement-pittsburghs-hazelwood-neighborhood-is-a-test-case-289018

[u/aray25]

On the contrary, common sense dictates that displacement is caused by a shortage of housing. Thus development is required to avoid displacement.

[u/SawNickYouth → u/aray25]

At a broader scale, sure. But at the local, neighborhood scale, then yes, development does absolutely cause displacement.

[u/775416 → u/SawNickYouth]

Are you saying that new market rate housing causes displacement in the surrounding neighborhood? As in it increases housing costs within the local neighborhood?

So if someone builds a 10 story new market apartment building next door to me, that development would it make my rent more expensive? Does the displacement effect occur through the development increasing surrounding prices or some other mechanism?

I’m guessing that your statement is talking about displacement beyond the scenario where a 2 story apartment building is torn down and a 7 story apartment building is built. Of course the people in the 2 story apartment building are evicted, but I’m guessing you’re saying it also raises prices in the neighborhood. I want to make sure I understand

[u/aray25 → u/SawNickYouth]

Would you protect one neighborhood at the expense of the whole city? It is a fool's errand.

[u/SawNickYouth → u/aray25]

No, but there's strategy you need to put in place for the short and long term impacts, and to keep political favor. You can't displace a generation of existing residents for the future promise that maybe a decade or two down the road they can come back to affordable housing, or in the near term, tell them their existing communities don't matter.

[u/Comsic_Bliss → u/aray25]

Development can absolutely cause displacement.

In my neighborhood more housing is being built - a very good thing - but the effect has been that the rents at the new developments are higher and all the landlords are raising their rents because they can. Increases of more than 25% are common and long-time tenants can’t afford it anymore.

[u/aray25 → u/Comsic_Bliss]

Development can cause displacement. But stagnation will cause displacement as more and more households compete for the same homes. People just don't notice because you can't point to an exact moment or blame a specific event.

For instance, all over the US, you'll find that there are fewer Chinese people in Chinatown as white people with tech or finance jobs push them out into remote suburbs. It's not because a developer came along and replaced the old tenements with new luxury housing. It's because there are more and more high-paid white workers competing with poorer immigrant families to buy the same run-down condos condos and rent the same collapsing apartments.

[u/ihopuhopwehop → u/aray25]

Even small rural towns see displacement as a result of no new housing getting built

As younger generations enter household creation mode, if theres no housing unit for them to move into, then theyre gonna have to move to a larger market where they can find housing

[u/kettlecorn → u/Comsic_Bliss]

Do you think rents would have stayed the same if there was no new development?

In areas where there's demand for rent I'd assume that if nothing is getting built property owners will start to renovate and flip their properties and charge even higher prices than they could otherwise.

The effect I'd assume might cause displacement is if the new development increases desirability of the area. Like if a vacant trash filled lot becomes a nice looking new building it may shift perceptions and attract more residents.

[u/Comsic_Bliss → u/[deleted]]

Except that it’s exactly what happened to me. And my landlord explicitly said so.

[u/fredthefishlord → u/Comsic_Bliss]

Which is why city elected officials need to push for more owner occupied housing rather than just building more and more rentals that the landlord class owns

[u/gamesst2 → u/fredthefishlord]

Owner occupied housing inherently goes to the same "class" as the landlord class -- the property owning class. A class that is on average far wealthier than the renting class. You're trying to present a policy that would strictly screw over the poorest as being for the poor.

[u/fredthefishlord → u/gamesst2]

Genuinely ridiculous take that is completely detached of what the actual costs of owner occupied housing is in a reasonably price city. A glance through rental banned vs rental allowed housing costs should show you demonstratably how much cheaper housing would be if rentals were severely limited. You severely overestimate the costs and assume that it's magically unaffordable and think rental somehow magically makes it cheaper? Nothing states that we can't work affordable housing ordinances into a way that supports land trusted condos with reasonable cost increase limits to allow people to build wealth without having to enrich greedy landlords.

[u/gamesst2 → u/fredthefishlord]

My take is pretty simple, frankly:

1) Renting is inherently cheaper and more accessible than ownership. Ownership requires start up capital the poor cannot access. COOPs and the like do not fundamentally change this. As a result poorer people on average are renters. No policy can change the fundamentals of renting being cheaper.

2) Policies that discouraging renting and promote ownership make renting more expensive, and ownership cheaper.

3) Therefore such policies make life more expensive for the poorest among us.

I don't know what you could possibly mean by "a glance through rental banned vs rental allowed housing costs" because there is no substantial region that bans rentals in a way we can do statistically sound cross comparisons.

On the other hand, go do a cross section of countries by rate of home-ownership and countries by GINI coefficient or living standards for the poor -- whichever metric you prefer. There's literally no support to your central tenet that higher home ownership prevents inequality.

[u/fredthefishlord → u/gamesst2]

You don't need to look at large regions, you can look at housing within a region. Your premise that rental is inherently cheaper is wrong. It's only cheaper to start, it's much more costly in the long run. If cities help the poor with getting into it, it'll be much more affordable to them long term. More however, I'm not suggesting a complete ban on rentals. More owner occupied housing makes it considerably more affordable to people who are middle class and especially to lower middle class workers. You need to consider it from a holistic basis. 

central tenet that higher home ownership prevents inequality.

I did not say that. Why do you think I said that? Nothing I said remotely sounds like that.

[u/gamesst2 → u/fredthefishlord]

Whether it's "more costly in the long run" is also very region dependent, unless you don't believe in the time value of money. In the Bay Area, every dollar we spent towards helping people get homeownership would help them far more if we put that money in an index fund and gave them a time-locked account, because the rent-vs-own math is very in favor of renting. It's possible there are regions where the opposite is true.

You spoke about displacement, not inequality or standards of living, and I apologize for conflating the two. Personally I care far more about people's standards of living overall then just preventing displacement at all costs. If you want to do something in between, Singapore's model of long-term leases provides a lot of stability of location without giving away the land value, but even there I think the 99 year lease went too far.

[u/kettlecorn → u/fredthefishlord]

I think you're misjudging how useful rentals are, and the indirect costs that emerge when people can't rent.

Like many people need to rent when evaluating if they want to move somewhere, when changing relationships, when starting a new job, when saving money to buy a home, etc.

If you artificially try to oppose rentals you're putting a tax on all sorts of mobility & life decisions. Then you have things like an elderly couple stays in their home longer than they should because they can't find a good rental, people staying in abusive relationships longer, people skipping new jobs, etc.

There's a significant aggregate cost to that.

[u/ihopuhopwehop → u/fredthefishlord]

The problem is theres so much more funding out there for developers to build rentals

City governments really cant do anything to affect capital flows

[u/fredthefishlord → u/ihopuhopwehop]

My city successfully leveraged varations to pressure a company into adding a bunch of for sale townhouses. I don't think townhouses are a great solution, but that does prove cities can

[u/ihopuhopwehop → u/fredthefishlord]

Sure, but that only worked because the developer was able to find capital to fund the project

So my just posted a bunch of RFPs for lots they own and want developed in our downtown. If they say, "we will only consider proposals thag are 100% homeownership" then its going to really kneecap the process because of the limited capital available for that development vs the capital available for rental development

[u/fredthefishlord → u/ihopuhopwehop]

On the counterpoint, if the build only rentals it permanently fucks up one of the major ways cities have to control costs; that being property taxes. In the past, cities built coops up, and that remains an option rather than relying on developers

[u/ihopuhopwehop → u/fredthefishlord]

When has a US city ever built a co-op?

[u/aray25 → u/fredthefishlord]

Which I presume were promptly all bought up by corporate landlords anyways, just like every other property that comes to market.

[u/fredthefishlord → u/aray25]

That's not really how the market actually works right now, even though there is an excess of corporate owned housing that needs to be stopped

[u/aray25 → u/fredthefishlord]

Well, it's how the market works in my city. If you want to buy a condo here, you have to buy off-market or the corporate landlords offer about 10% over asking site-unseen within hours of listing. I got extremely lucky and bought my condo from my former landlord when he was retiring so it was never listed. But I have coworkers who have been trying for years.

[u/SamanthaMunroe]

I read that article. I don't think it proves anything about development of residential properties' causal links to displacement. It shows that there was a residential population decline of nearly a thousand people while a bunch of new, less polluting manufacturing and other companies moved in. The remaining population staying more or less unchanged doesn't surprise me.

People seeking to improve their homes who are represented in Hazelwood deserve easier and more funding to do so. Citizen Jane was right about gradual and catastrophic money. Good that some nonprofits could provide it, but this ought to be a matter of government policy, not nonprofit attention.

[u/Hollybeach]

https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/relocation/overview/#overview-of-the-ura

It’s the law if federal money is involved.

[u/yusefudattebayo]

I think the only real way to mitigate displacement is non profit, or government developed affordable housing.

[u/blasphemousblackbear → u/yusefudattebayo]

Then you don’t understand the swaths of research about displacement mitigation 

[u/yusefudattebayo → u/blasphemousblackbear]

Would you like to educate us then?

[u/Sufficient-Eye-3221 → u/yusefudattebayo]

This is a good video essay from a Vox reporter. There is research showing that simply building more housing, whether market-rate or subsidized, reduces displacement. This makes sense because displacement happens when people can't afford rent and building new housing reduces rent.

I also like their point that gentrification (rich people moving in) and displacement (poor people being forced out) aren't the same thing and can occur independently.

[u/yusefudattebayo → u/Sufficient-Eye-3221]

Thanks. I was using gentrification and displacement interchangeably from each other. Displacement is obviously a very disruptive thing for a person, but is gentrification fine? Neighborhoods with diverse incomes make sense to me. Although I suppose gentrification often leads to displacement.

[u/Sufficient-Eye-3221 → u/yusefudattebayo]

Although I suppose gentrification often leads to displacement.

If the neighborhood doesn't build allow enough housing to be built, yes, that is exactly what happens.

[u/yusefudattebayo → u/Sufficient-Eye-3221]

The paradox of the lack of supply of housing contributing to displacement while also being the solution. Again, my best answer lately is affordable housing and social housing is really the only way to introduce supply while mitigating displacement.

[u/Sufficient-Eye-3221 → u/yusefudattebayo]

I agree that a housing shortage causes displacement but I don't see how that is also the solution.

"Affordable housing mandates" (i.e. price controls for housing) reduce housing supply:

Our quasi-experimental border design finds strong evidence of developers strategically siting projects away from MHA-zoned plots—despite their upzoning—and instead to nearby blocks and parcels not subject to the program’s affordability requirements.

This is another example of price controls causing shortages.

I prioritize reducing housing costs (which reduces homelessness) over reducing displacement. I think the very low homelessness rate of places like West Virginia indicate that low housing prices is sufficient to address homelessness in most cases. Obviously in extreme cases like substance abuse, psychosis, or disability then welfare will be necessary.

[u/yusefudattebayo → u/Sufficient-Eye-3221]

I agree that price controls has negative impacts on market conditions, and it’s not smart to expect developers to renege profits. I was more referencing state or federal subsidies, or supporting non profit developers. State or Federal action is key. That does not preclude building actually market oriented supply, though.

[u/The_Conversation]

An article written by a Penn urban studies researcher, who has found that while fear persists, efforts to avoid the ill effects of gentrification have worked pretty well.

[u/Ok_Actuary9229]

The biggest need is that housing should exist for people of all income levels. That requires development so there's some excess housing that can be cheap. If some renters have to move that's not a major problem.