Noah Smith has a lot of praise for the economic policy proposals from Elizabeth Warren. I’ll mention only one:
With costs for shelter eating a bigger piece of Americans’ paychecks, and local government paralyzed by incumbent homeowners, the country needs a big solution. Warren’s would combine incentives for raising zoning density with increased public construction”.
This is interesting in light of John Cochrane’s rant attacking the Democrats on the housing issue. Read it for yourself. Cochrane only noted the increased public construction aspect and tried to tell his readers that only Cory Booker wanted to reform zoning issue. While Cochrane admitted increased housing supply would be a good idea – he slandered any government efforts to do so. No wonder he’s the “grumpy economist”!
Cochrane’s latest rant includes this whopper:
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-phillips-curve-is-still-dead.html
“Well, I think Keynes will go the way of phlogiston, but I agree with the point, and anyway a good 19th century scientist should know what phlogiston is.”
This slur is not exactly novel. Proponents of the New Classical school were calling Keynesian economic blood leaching some 40 years ago. Now someone should ask Cochrane – how well did his New Classical view of the world fare during the Great Recession?
PGL:
It is not as though the US lacks for land. It does not with 90+% of it being unoccupied (Joel Garreau’s “300 Million and Counting”). The cities are in the wrong places; but, this is where the work is today. Out by me west of Detroit and north of Ann Arbor, we are no longer considered rural. We are doing a Mixed Village Use development which will incorporate small stores like Trader Joes, apartments, townhomes and single residents. The idea is, you do not need to leave the development if you need to buy bread and milk and indeed you can walk to the store. This took us months to develop the zoning for this.
In another develop we had requested a number of homes in it be made affordable at ~ $150,000 per lot + home. Smaller homes and lots. They did do this and the developer went bankruptpre-2008. The development was bought out and the township allowed them to build bigger homes on combined lots. It is a struggle to push on affordable housing.
The issue seems to be the need is where the jobs are and the costs are high because of the lack of space in cities.
“The issue seems to be the need is where the jobs are and the costs are high because of the lack of space in cities.”
We can take New York City as one example. Of course one could live further out getting a bigger place or something cheaper if there were a reliable public transportation system. Yes – we have a subway system and multiple ways of traveling from New Jersey. But we need a yuuuge new transportation infrastructure investment commitment for that to remain viable. And yet I see nothing from Cochrane and little from the Republican side on this issue.
PGL:
I have done the subway thingee in NYC as well as my wife who hails from NYC. You are right on outdated transportation. Chicago is not quite as bad if you train-it or subway-it into the city. The property still is expensive in Chicago and enough so for us to stay put in Michigan and pay off the mortgage. I think I might do the “Cop Land” thing and get a job local in New Jersey rather than commute into the cty.
Where I am we have been talking about “affordable” housing for decades.
The only affordable housing built was a new 12 unit apartment complex built on the reservation, because they can build whatever they want without interference.
Three models were built for a small lot “affordable” development a long time ago, but they sat vacant for at least 5 years before going up for sale. I think the for sale sign is still up. They weren’t affordable enough.
A couple of other smaller than surrounding lot sizes developments have been floated, both faced strong opposition from the neighbors, one may even still be active, but it has been 3 or 4 years and not one lot has been graded yet.
There are help wanted signs all over town. None of those jobs will pay enough to let someone rent here, much less buy here.
And they wonder why small rural communities dry up and blow away.
There is no housing shortage. More like a mal-investment.
We can always count on Bert to go Austrian on us. Sort of like The Onion!