Interesting and timely piece -- thanks, Professor Schleicher (and welcome).
I'm a non-New Yorker, and I tend to follow NYC politics casually like a lot of Americans because it's the country's biggest city and because I'm interested in politics. This year's race seems to be getting more coverage than any previous one I can remember (not sure why; the newfangled voting system, perhaps?).
Anyway, the candidate I've been favoring up to now has been Kathryn Garcia, partly because of Matt Yglesias's endorsement, and partly because she seems to exude no-nonsense, nuts and bolts competence. But I've definitely warmed up to Eric Adams's candidacy, too. No, the outcome doesn't and won't affect me very directly. But as someone who very much wants Democrats to do well in next year's midterms, the crime issue scares the crap out of me, and I think a Democrat who happens to be A) non-woke, B) a former cop, C) Black, D) tough on crime, might be a positive for Democratic optics and messaging. Also, I'm vaguely aware of criticisms leveled against Adams that's "he's too close to developers," and to my ears that's a proxy for "Realizes building as much as possible is good, not bad, for NYC." And so for me that registers as praise, not criticism. (For the exact opposite reasons Maya Wiley's candidacy leaves me cold: soft on crime, hard on building stuff).
For the record I don't expect New York voters to share my concerns (why would they?) and I readily concede I haven't followed the campaign in minute detail (so I could have some of the positioning stuff wrong). But these, in any event, are my outsider's impressions.
The NYC mayoral election has been a stark reminder of how heavily the city is overly represented in our talking heads class. I don't live in New York nor have any ties or interests in New York, but I've seen 20x more tweets about this election in my timeline than I have ever seen about our local elections here in DC.
Anyhow, it's interesting to watch as someone with little vested interest in it other than hoping the most pro-development candidate wins. Seeing national progressives line up behind Maya Wiley, whose campaign seems to have little substance beyond the progressive aesthetics, is disheartening. Like DeBlasio, and I guess Bloomberg before him, it seems like Adams will win despite everyone with even a tiny platform seemingly hating him. I'm genuinely interested to read more about the "silent majority" in New York who keeps electing these much loathed mayors.
To be fair, NYC has 12x the population of DC. So 20x is not THAT far out of proportion.
And while Albany can interfere with NYC government, it's nothing compared to the control Congress wields over DC. So 20x might be reasonable!
Full disclosure: I live in New York City, aka the center of the universe.
Of course, this doesn't address the fact that LA, Chicago, and Houston won't get anywhere near this much attention for their next mayoral race. But we all know why that is. #eastcoastmediaelite
I think the fact that this is the first ranked-choice election for NYC mayor also makes it a bigger story. If this were a first-past-the-post election, Adams would be the clear front-runner and there wouldn't be that much drama. But while he's still probably the one I'd bet on if I had money on the race, the dynamics are much more fluid. Exciting!
Not to defend the East Coast Media Elite, but the mayor of LA is a much less important position than the mayor of NYC because of the fragmentation of the LA area. While Los Angeles is certainly a huge city in its own right, the larger LA metro is (literally) a hundred different cities, plus the County supervisors (who are mini-kings in their own right).
The power of the mayor of LA can extend for 25 miles from city hall, or less than 5 miles.
New York isn't all *that* different from LA in that regard. About 2/3rds of the metro area's population (NY CSA) resides outside the city limits. (The corresponding figure for LA CSA is about 3/4s). We tend to think of NYC as being dense, and it is, but it also anchors a vast, sprawling and far-flung suburban hinterland, too (literally about 400 different cities) like other large US metros.
Broadly speaking, I see it as kind of seen as a vote on AOC vs. more centrist liberalism.
It's amazing what a single election can do. In 1991 Harris Wofford won a PA senate seat by running on universal healthcare. That win made it a huge issue in the 1992 presidential election.
Wondering if anyone can translate this bit of news I caught last night that soured my impression of Adams.
Garcia and Yang formed an alliance to encourage their supporters to rank the other. Adams says this alliance is designed to keep him from winning (makes sense, he's the front runner), keep a person of color from winning (starting to get weird), is a backroom deal (seems to be out in the open?) and amounts to voter suppression (huh???).
It's this last bit I really don't get. If I understand the explanation from the Adams' campaign correctly it's close to the most racist things I've heard a politician say in my lifetime, amounting to "my black and brown supporters still don't understand ranked choice, so alliances confuse them and therefore suppress the black vote". Can't guess if he really believes that or just hates RCV, but that seems like a shockingly awful thing to say or perception to harbor about your own voters. But maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the way in which he referred to voter suppression. Or maybe I'm just taking campaign mudslinging BS much too seriously
It was an extremely racist thing for him to say. So now we know his go-to, which isn't all that different from the woke progressives. I would have given him a #3 slot, but didn't for precisely this reason. No way, not enabling that.
I would love to hear more about why exactly a Tammany machine style, coalition based government was more effective at saying no to constituencies, because that’s not immediately clear why that was (if it was). And I don’t really see an obvious intuitive reason that this Adams coalition would be more courageous on land use - is any member of the coalition pushing for that? Maybe construction unions want it, but there’s stuff to construct without upsetting NIMBYs.
I think if a coalitional candidate is elected they hire top people who represent those constituencies and have chiefs of staff types who see their job as minimizing people being actions that upset constituencies and instead favor incrementalism.
Sadly, I think the bigger reason NYC is likely to get incrementalism is that nothing is really bad (which is good), unlike say SF or a city with declining population or such, and so the cost of big ideas outweighs the voter desire for them.
The idea -- in Fuchs and in the broader political science literature on this -- is that because machines are judged as a whole (no one cared who the individual council person was because everyone knew Daley was in charge) they have incentives to produce citywide ends. The model in the literature is that machines basically bring party politics to cities, with the divide being the machine v. reform, rather than Republican v. Democrat.
Adams has as part of his coalition lots of groups that in theory are pro-growth -- municipal unions, doormen and building staff, a bunch of developers, a lot of big business support -- but that practically have not been, because land use decisions are fragmented. As I argue here, land use procedure (making most changes through amendments) defangs growth coalitions, as employers et al can't be bothered about a change in one neighborhood or another, while neighbors can https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/city-unplanning.
Whether this story will turn out to be true in an Adams administration (if it happens) is unclear. Machines that can boss around council members, in theory, can push land use changes. Whether they will is still uncertain!!
Is a prerequisite then for this to work that the “party” factions have more longevity than just one campaign? What you’re describing (like what is in SF, for instance) involves some level of ongoing polarization, where multiple elected officials at various levels identify with a faction or another; I suspect you get the effect of voters adjusting their positions on some issues to align with their “party,” etc.
So here, does the literature suggest this effect of having a more courageous administration could happen right away, or is it that if Adams is elected the process fo creating durable factions could move forward to build the dynamics for it?
Also, I’d love to read more of the literature on this stuff. What would you recommend? Thank you!
An interesting post, but I would like to make a meta-point about this, and all other articles on the New York mayoral primary (i.e., not even the general!):
I posit, pending empirical verification, that this New York mayoral race has received more media attention than the election campaigns of all other American cities combined. Over the past decade. If not more.
I mean I like New York. New York is important. It's not *that* important.
I really don't get the appeal of someone who is going to be powerful when you don't know what their policies will be. Why would I want someone to have the ability to do unspecified things very effectively?
Yeah, I think that's a reasonable point of view. My counterargument is I assume most people with decent qualifications have a bare minimum of competence, and that competence should keep the basic wheels of government keep moving. Whereas an outsider, non-politician, might so gum up the works that even the basics grind to a halt.
I guess I can easily imagine a competent insider make decisions I find so objectionable that the basics grinding to a halt temporarily would be preferable.
Given his personal commitment to petty corruption, shouldn't the default assumption be that his mayoralty will be deeply corrupt? It is certainly possible someone who has flouted ethics rules his entire career would suddenly grow a conscience after being elected mayor, but that would be pretty surprising.
I am so happy I live in a suburb and no one writes stories about who my mayor is lol. I have read more about the ins and outs of the NYC mayor race than I have ever read about my town.
So... another case of focusing on NIMBYism. As if those struggling to find housing in NYC want to live in tiny apartments in massive apartment buildings, fulfilling the vision that technocratic elites have for them. They want better wages, they want to be NIMBYers themselves. Are the Slow Boring-style advocates of new massive housing developments (you know... everyone's favorite part of European cities, they stop in the Paris suburbs to revel in their glory and never make it to the city proper) the technocrat version of the "woke" meritocracy? Proposing things that make them feel better, i.e. that make them feel like they're not part of the elite that does not fight for a progressive income tax and stronger unions? Your case for Adams is that somehow he'll build more cheap housing that you would never live in yourself? The enemy are Greenwich Village preservationists? Sure, because everyone goes to Greenwich Village and says it's too bad they saved so many buildings. What a joke.
Yes, our only choices are NIMBYism or cheap “tiny apartments in massive apartment buildings.” Personally, I want more construction because I’m tired of living in a tiny, old, overpriced apartment.
That's understandable, and if those are your interests you should pursue that. In my own case, I rent what is essentially a mother-in-law suite/ garage apartment on the outskirts of town that I am very lucky to get, because the city I live in (Athens, Ga.) has experienced dramatic increases in property values and has limited options for someone such as myself living on a librarian/ educator's salary. But there are large apartment buildings going up in town, it's just that they're directed toward students, with the units organized like dormitories. There are a host of other problems that need to be addressed: the University not housing its own students as it continues to increase enrollment; the lack of buying power of lower-income non-student residents; and the fact that the wealthy have bought up such a large percentage of the land. I cannot but conclude that, especially once beyond the unique case of NYC, this new generation of young policy wonks advocating for big housing have fixated on a solution that only they support. As with the 1970s busing controversy, a solution is proposed that does not fix the underlying problems and will only incite the anger of many people.
It would be good if more new apartment construction had compact three and four bedroom apartments that would be usable and affordable by families, rather than all being structured for students and young singles/couples.
But the bigger point is just that you can't fix a housing shortage unless you add housing.
Do many families in college towns want to live in downtown apartments? I don't think anyone is stopping them from renting a four-bedroom apartment intended for four students. Usually, they want single-family detached homes.
The lack of four-bedroom apartments in downtown is stopping them. Usually downtown apartment buildings are a mix of studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom, partly due to an assumption that singles, couples, and roommates will take all of them, and also partly due to requirements that increase the amount of mandatory parking with the number of bedrooms in an apartment.
But there's also a spiral where lack of family-suitable apartments means lack of demand for schools and playgrounds, and lack of schools and playgrounds means lack of demand for family-suitable apartments. Intervention on both sides is needed to stop this spiral.
It may well be the case that a majority of families want single-family detached homes. But in a market, we absolutely should not want every product to be the one that the majority prefers - there should be sufficient product of each category in proportion to the amount of people that would prefer it. My claim is that apartments for families are a minority preference that is currently under-served by the market, not that it's a majority preference.
The apartment buildings marketed to students in places like Athens have floor plans like those seen here: https://www.uncommonathens.com/apartments/ga/athens/floor-plans. This is typical of the large buildings that have been built in downtown Athens since 2004. There are some that are four bedrooms-four bathrooms, obviously not intended for families. Even those that four bedrooms-two bathrooms are arranged in a way that clearly shows they're intended for single persons. Then, they emphasize "college life" and to be frank probably discourage older (i.e. 25 and up) people from seeking interest.
I just have trouble seeing it as an especially pernicious problem. We can't get everything we want, even if that includes something very nice like cheap apartments for families with playgrounds.
How do you propose that the proper balance of housing options should be determined if not the free market?
So the problem in Athens is that UGA, part of the government of Georgia, didn't build cheap housing for people (students) who want to live there? But the market is doing it instead and that's...bad?
I'm curious what you think the solutions are then.
It's not bad at all that private interests step in to respond to a demand. The solution is, spread out the college population to more colleges, use zoning and preservation laws to restrict development downtown so that at least more of the large buildings are spread out into different parts of town. There are still parts of town that need new residents and new investments. As with many local and state-level problems, though, solutions to broader issues must come from the federal level. That's where the money is. The progressive income tax, cutting military spending... the obvious starting points that new generation of activists largely ignore in favor of pet peeves and an obsession with trolling each other online.
Georgia has added 2.5 million people in the 20 years since I lived there; you're going to need more housing regardless of what UGA does. The pre-zoning planning of allowing high-density housing on high-value land and low-density housing everywhere else seems more rational than the inflexible and arbitrary system we have now. Then people can make the choice of amenities that suits them.
Athens could do better by allowing things like "in-law suites" and other domiciles to be constructed on single family properties, especially useful in Five Points and Normaltown. (There's a guy who rents out an old red train caboose off Southview; all under the table of course, but that should be more permissible!) Or, preferably, rezone much of that territory to no longer be single-family at all and allow for more dense developments. There are also lots of parking requirements, so any large new development requires parking for each unit in the development, adding to the land used up for cars.
IMO the biggest challenge Athens has is that the student body is quite wealthy. You've got kids from families that make a lot of money every year, and all the in-state kids have their tuition subsidized thanks to HOPE. They are flush with cash to spend on apartments and people will respond to that by offering them apartments and competing through better amenities, location, etc.
I think, too, that all the development is focused right in and around downtown Athens, exacerbating the issue there while much of Athens-Clarke county remains underdeveloped - everything out by the M. Oconee River is quite spaced out and leaves room for further construction.
Also, drive up Baxter. On the right you have small, poorly maintained public housing. On the left you have several ten-story high rise dorms. Yet when you hear people at the committee hearings talking solutions, nobody is asking the state or the county or the city to build more public housing or add density to housing in existing public properties.
Instead, you get weird formulations where professor so-and-so name-checks Marx and argues that the "use value and exchange value are becoming twisted". (And let me be pedantic for all the Dr. Boltons out there: in Marxian economics, use value and exchange value refer solely to *commodities* whereas land is a subject of labor, something akin to a factor of production rather than a commodity to be traded. . If you're going to cite Marx, you should have read Marx! The dude wrote like 600 pages on rents.) It's maybe time for Athens to get its economics advice out of the 1860s. Athens deserves better.
I'm not sure if there's the support--if there is support, the money--for making the old housing projects in Athens denser. I agree that ideally they would be, but of course you may run into opposition from the residents themselves. At least allowing for more in-law suites and the like is on the table. It may have already passed--it's hard to keep up with our turbulent city commission.
NIMBYs are often opposed to rentals such as yours as well. This can be enforced through parking regulations, plumbing requirements, and occupancy restrictions. That's why it was a big deal that California started allowing ADUs recently (accessory dwelling units). I'm still not very knowledgeable in this area, but Matt is starting to win me over!
No one (except governments) are interested in building cheap housing. New housing will not be cheap. But it will increase the pool of available housing and thus make housing more affordable and available across the board.
Personally, I don't live in NYC and would rather stick pins in my eyes before moving there, but as I understand it living in tiny apartments in massive apartment buildings has been the NYC way since before my parents were born.
That's all true--not only that, but many of the buildings that preservationists would want to save are large (or large-ish) apartment buildings (though not necessarily with small units). But the concern many people have with the large private apartment buildings currently being built is that in the long run they will look a lot like the large public housing projects of the past that were not maintained. Those projects were not cheap compared to the housing they replaced in "slums" like old Boston or the Beale St. neighborhood, but in retrospect few say that those Urban Renewal programs and other government-run efforts to build housing worked out well.
I am only trying here to point that historic preservation is an odd target for advocates of new housing to focus on. Preservationists may have allied with the kind of neighborhood associations that want to tell you what kind of mailbox you're allowed, but they did so in the same way that any activist makes alliances and compromises. Preservationists are not in power, they know very well that few support their cause, and you're only picking an easy target to blame for larger problems.
The reason public housing got so bad is investors had no incentive to buy and improve them. Rent-controlled buildings in NYC are similar. Why buy a property and improve it if the rent will not go up?
(I'm a real estate investor.)
If the federal government *really* wanted to lower housing costs, they'd phase out the mortgage interest deduction and 1031 exchanges. There's no way that would get through Congress, though.
They allow investors to defer taxes if they sell a property then put the money in a new property within 60 days. That amounts to a 15% subsidy on the buy side.
As an investor I love 1031 exchanges, but no other asset gets this treatment.
>>>No one (except governments) are interested in building cheap housing.<<<
You think governments are really interested in building cheap housing? That's not the impression I get from most governmental units in the USA. Though sure, some of them talk a good game...
I'd say the main backers of "building cheap housing" are low(ish) income and poor people, along with perhaps some developers and consultancies specializing in that market.
It's entirely possible to: 1) greenlight much more housing construction than most US cities manage while simultaneously 2) refraining from flattening every charming city block.
A city can be a victim of its own success, creating so many jobs that you run out of places to house the workers. There are two paths forward and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
You can increase both commercial and residential density to accommodate more businesses and people. You can also encourage/allow businesses and jobs to locate other places that are not as crowded and expensive.
Some types of businesses and (and some people) are not well suited to a high density urban environment. A steel mill in Times Square would be an interesting challenge.
"These groups are part of the warp and woof of the city and its politics, providing campaign workers in off-off-cycle city council races..." This should say "warp and weft" in place of warp and woof. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_and_weft
Because we're processing "councilman" as a single unit of meaning instead of as a compound word; the "man" ceases to matter. So it's like "German"->"Germanic", "Magellan"->"Magellanic", "ocean" -> "oceanic", "Satan" -> "satanic".
A major change that has significantly reduced decision making to benefit the city as a whole was the elimination of the old Board of Estimate. The BOE had the trick of the three citywide officials able to override the borough presidents. And the City Council was much weaker.
Interesting and timely piece -- thanks, Professor Schleicher (and welcome).
I'm a non-New Yorker, and I tend to follow NYC politics casually like a lot of Americans because it's the country's biggest city and because I'm interested in politics. This year's race seems to be getting more coverage than any previous one I can remember (not sure why; the newfangled voting system, perhaps?).
Anyway, the candidate I've been favoring up to now has been Kathryn Garcia, partly because of Matt Yglesias's endorsement, and partly because she seems to exude no-nonsense, nuts and bolts competence. But I've definitely warmed up to Eric Adams's candidacy, too. No, the outcome doesn't and won't affect me very directly. But as someone who very much wants Democrats to do well in next year's midterms, the crime issue scares the crap out of me, and I think a Democrat who happens to be A) non-woke, B) a former cop, C) Black, D) tough on crime, might be a positive for Democratic optics and messaging. Also, I'm vaguely aware of criticisms leveled against Adams that's "he's too close to developers," and to my ears that's a proxy for "Realizes building as much as possible is good, not bad, for NYC." And so for me that registers as praise, not criticism. (For the exact opposite reasons Maya Wiley's candidacy leaves me cold: soft on crime, hard on building stuff).
For the record I don't expect New York voters to share my concerns (why would they?) and I readily concede I haven't followed the campaign in minute detail (so I could have some of the positioning stuff wrong). But these, in any event, are my outsider's impressions.
The NYC mayoral election has been a stark reminder of how heavily the city is overly represented in our talking heads class. I don't live in New York nor have any ties or interests in New York, but I've seen 20x more tweets about this election in my timeline than I have ever seen about our local elections here in DC.
Anyhow, it's interesting to watch as someone with little vested interest in it other than hoping the most pro-development candidate wins. Seeing national progressives line up behind Maya Wiley, whose campaign seems to have little substance beyond the progressive aesthetics, is disheartening. Like DeBlasio, and I guess Bloomberg before him, it seems like Adams will win despite everyone with even a tiny platform seemingly hating him. I'm genuinely interested to read more about the "silent majority" in New York who keeps electing these much loathed mayors.
To be fair, NYC has 12x the population of DC. So 20x is not THAT far out of proportion.
And while Albany can interfere with NYC government, it's nothing compared to the control Congress wields over DC. So 20x might be reasonable!
Full disclosure: I live in New York City, aka the center of the universe.
Of course, this doesn't address the fact that LA, Chicago, and Houston won't get anywhere near this much attention for their next mayoral race. But we all know why that is. #eastcoastmediaelite
I think the fact that this is the first ranked-choice election for NYC mayor also makes it a bigger story. If this were a first-past-the-post election, Adams would be the clear front-runner and there wouldn't be that much drama. But while he's still probably the one I'd bet on if I had money on the race, the dynamics are much more fluid. Exciting!
Not to defend the East Coast Media Elite, but the mayor of LA is a much less important position than the mayor of NYC because of the fragmentation of the LA area. While Los Angeles is certainly a huge city in its own right, the larger LA metro is (literally) a hundred different cities, plus the County supervisors (who are mini-kings in their own right).
The power of the mayor of LA can extend for 25 miles from city hall, or less than 5 miles.
New York isn't all *that* different from LA in that regard. About 2/3rds of the metro area's population (NY CSA) resides outside the city limits. (The corresponding figure for LA CSA is about 3/4s). We tend to think of NYC as being dense, and it is, but it also anchors a vast, sprawling and far-flung suburban hinterland, too (literally about 400 different cities) like other large US metros.
As a non-American, I think the reason aside from it being a huge and influential city, is that it’s seen as a mini-primary of Democrat politics
Broadly speaking, I see it as kind of seen as a vote on AOC vs. more centrist liberalism.
It's amazing what a single election can do. In 1991 Harris Wofford won a PA senate seat by running on universal healthcare. That win made it a huge issue in the 1992 presidential election.
Wondering if anyone can translate this bit of news I caught last night that soured my impression of Adams.
Garcia and Yang formed an alliance to encourage their supporters to rank the other. Adams says this alliance is designed to keep him from winning (makes sense, he's the front runner), keep a person of color from winning (starting to get weird), is a backroom deal (seems to be out in the open?) and amounts to voter suppression (huh???).
It's this last bit I really don't get. If I understand the explanation from the Adams' campaign correctly it's close to the most racist things I've heard a politician say in my lifetime, amounting to "my black and brown supporters still don't understand ranked choice, so alliances confuse them and therefore suppress the black vote". Can't guess if he really believes that or just hates RCV, but that seems like a shockingly awful thing to say or perception to harbor about your own voters. But maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the way in which he referred to voter suppression. Or maybe I'm just taking campaign mudslinging BS much too seriously
It was an extremely racist thing for him to say. So now we know his go-to, which isn't all that different from the woke progressives. I would have given him a #3 slot, but didn't for precisely this reason. No way, not enabling that.
I would love to hear more about why exactly a Tammany machine style, coalition based government was more effective at saying no to constituencies, because that’s not immediately clear why that was (if it was). And I don’t really see an obvious intuitive reason that this Adams coalition would be more courageous on land use - is any member of the coalition pushing for that? Maybe construction unions want it, but there’s stuff to construct without upsetting NIMBYs.
I think if a coalitional candidate is elected they hire top people who represent those constituencies and have chiefs of staff types who see their job as minimizing people being actions that upset constituencies and instead favor incrementalism.
Sadly, I think the bigger reason NYC is likely to get incrementalism is that nothing is really bad (which is good), unlike say SF or a city with declining population or such, and so the cost of big ideas outweighs the voter desire for them.
Great question!!
The idea -- in Fuchs and in the broader political science literature on this -- is that because machines are judged as a whole (no one cared who the individual council person was because everyone knew Daley was in charge) they have incentives to produce citywide ends. The model in the literature is that machines basically bring party politics to cities, with the divide being the machine v. reform, rather than Republican v. Democrat.
Adams has as part of his coalition lots of groups that in theory are pro-growth -- municipal unions, doormen and building staff, a bunch of developers, a lot of big business support -- but that practically have not been, because land use decisions are fragmented. As I argue here, land use procedure (making most changes through amendments) defangs growth coalitions, as employers et al can't be bothered about a change in one neighborhood or another, while neighbors can https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/city-unplanning.
Whether this story will turn out to be true in an Adams administration (if it happens) is unclear. Machines that can boss around council members, in theory, can push land use changes. Whether they will is still uncertain!!
Thank you! That makes sense.
Is a prerequisite then for this to work that the “party” factions have more longevity than just one campaign? What you’re describing (like what is in SF, for instance) involves some level of ongoing polarization, where multiple elected officials at various levels identify with a faction or another; I suspect you get the effect of voters adjusting their positions on some issues to align with their “party,” etc.
So here, does the literature suggest this effect of having a more courageous administration could happen right away, or is it that if Adams is elected the process fo creating durable factions could move forward to build the dynamics for it?
Also, I’d love to read more of the literature on this stuff. What would you recommend? Thank you!
An interesting post, but I would like to make a meta-point about this, and all other articles on the New York mayoral primary (i.e., not even the general!):
I posit, pending empirical verification, that this New York mayoral race has received more media attention than the election campaigns of all other American cities combined. Over the past decade. If not more.
I mean I like New York. New York is important. It's not *that* important.
I really don't get the appeal of someone who is going to be powerful when you don't know what their policies will be. Why would I want someone to have the ability to do unspecified things very effectively?
Yeah, I think that's a reasonable point of view. My counterargument is I assume most people with decent qualifications have a bare minimum of competence, and that competence should keep the basic wheels of government keep moving. Whereas an outsider, non-politician, might so gum up the works that even the basics grind to a halt.
I guess I can easily imagine a competent insider make decisions I find so objectionable that the basics grinding to a halt temporarily would be preferable.
Maybe Adams will do the same thing that Yang suggested he would as mayor—ask Kathryn Garcia to join his administration to fix things.
Given his personal commitment to petty corruption, shouldn't the default assumption be that his mayoralty will be deeply corrupt? It is certainly possible someone who has flouted ethics rules his entire career would suddenly grow a conscience after being elected mayor, but that would be pretty surprising.
I live in Central NY and only follow intermittently city politics. What is the corruption that people are hinting about?
He's a big fan of parking illegally:
https://www.brooklynpaper.com/borough-president-adams-if-everyone-else-can-park-illegally-i-can-too/
He likes to raise money from people with business before his office:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/nyregion/eric-adams-fund-raising.html
There's also lots of smoke around things in the vicinity of law breaking:
https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/6/17/22539214/eric-adams-dodges-gift-tax-questions-on-brooklyn-co-op-he-gave-friend
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/06/08/burning-the-midnight-oil-eric-adams-mysterious-whereabouts-off-the-campaign-trail-1385412
I am so happy I live in a suburb and no one writes stories about who my mayor is lol. I have read more about the ins and outs of the NYC mayor race than I have ever read about my town.
I live in LA, and would like to read more coverage of our upcoming mayor election. I'm a big politics junkie, and I know next to nothing about it.
Why not go for Garcia who has proven competence as opposed to the risk that Adams has been bought and paid for and debts will be due.
That doesn't sound at all like her. People who know her tend seem to emphasize how tough she is.
'childless'?
And why is controversial better?
So... another case of focusing on NIMBYism. As if those struggling to find housing in NYC want to live in tiny apartments in massive apartment buildings, fulfilling the vision that technocratic elites have for them. They want better wages, they want to be NIMBYers themselves. Are the Slow Boring-style advocates of new massive housing developments (you know... everyone's favorite part of European cities, they stop in the Paris suburbs to revel in their glory and never make it to the city proper) the technocrat version of the "woke" meritocracy? Proposing things that make them feel better, i.e. that make them feel like they're not part of the elite that does not fight for a progressive income tax and stronger unions? Your case for Adams is that somehow he'll build more cheap housing that you would never live in yourself? The enemy are Greenwich Village preservationists? Sure, because everyone goes to Greenwich Village and says it's too bad they saved so many buildings. What a joke.
Yes, our only choices are NIMBYism or cheap “tiny apartments in massive apartment buildings.” Personally, I want more construction because I’m tired of living in a tiny, old, overpriced apartment.
That's understandable, and if those are your interests you should pursue that. In my own case, I rent what is essentially a mother-in-law suite/ garage apartment on the outskirts of town that I am very lucky to get, because the city I live in (Athens, Ga.) has experienced dramatic increases in property values and has limited options for someone such as myself living on a librarian/ educator's salary. But there are large apartment buildings going up in town, it's just that they're directed toward students, with the units organized like dormitories. There are a host of other problems that need to be addressed: the University not housing its own students as it continues to increase enrollment; the lack of buying power of lower-income non-student residents; and the fact that the wealthy have bought up such a large percentage of the land. I cannot but conclude that, especially once beyond the unique case of NYC, this new generation of young policy wonks advocating for big housing have fixated on a solution that only they support. As with the 1970s busing controversy, a solution is proposed that does not fix the underlying problems and will only incite the anger of many people.
It would be good if more new apartment construction had compact three and four bedroom apartments that would be usable and affordable by families, rather than all being structured for students and young singles/couples.
But the bigger point is just that you can't fix a housing shortage unless you add housing.
Do many families in college towns want to live in downtown apartments? I don't think anyone is stopping them from renting a four-bedroom apartment intended for four students. Usually, they want single-family detached homes.
The lack of four-bedroom apartments in downtown is stopping them. Usually downtown apartment buildings are a mix of studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom, partly due to an assumption that singles, couples, and roommates will take all of them, and also partly due to requirements that increase the amount of mandatory parking with the number of bedrooms in an apartment.
But there's also a spiral where lack of family-suitable apartments means lack of demand for schools and playgrounds, and lack of schools and playgrounds means lack of demand for family-suitable apartments. Intervention on both sides is needed to stop this spiral.
It may well be the case that a majority of families want single-family detached homes. But in a market, we absolutely should not want every product to be the one that the majority prefers - there should be sufficient product of each category in proportion to the amount of people that would prefer it. My claim is that apartments for families are a minority preference that is currently under-served by the market, not that it's a majority preference.
The apartment buildings marketed to students in places like Athens have floor plans like those seen here: https://www.uncommonathens.com/apartments/ga/athens/floor-plans. This is typical of the large buildings that have been built in downtown Athens since 2004. There are some that are four bedrooms-four bathrooms, obviously not intended for families. Even those that four bedrooms-two bathrooms are arranged in a way that clearly shows they're intended for single persons. Then, they emphasize "college life" and to be frank probably discourage older (i.e. 25 and up) people from seeking interest.
I just have trouble seeing it as an especially pernicious problem. We can't get everything we want, even if that includes something very nice like cheap apartments for families with playgrounds.
How do you propose that the proper balance of housing options should be determined if not the free market?
So the problem in Athens is that UGA, part of the government of Georgia, didn't build cheap housing for people (students) who want to live there? But the market is doing it instead and that's...bad?
I'm curious what you think the solutions are then.
It's not bad at all that private interests step in to respond to a demand. The solution is, spread out the college population to more colleges, use zoning and preservation laws to restrict development downtown so that at least more of the large buildings are spread out into different parts of town. There are still parts of town that need new residents and new investments. As with many local and state-level problems, though, solutions to broader issues must come from the federal level. That's where the money is. The progressive income tax, cutting military spending... the obvious starting points that new generation of activists largely ignore in favor of pet peeves and an obsession with trolling each other online.
Georgia has added 2.5 million people in the 20 years since I lived there; you're going to need more housing regardless of what UGA does. The pre-zoning planning of allowing high-density housing on high-value land and low-density housing everywhere else seems more rational than the inflexible and arbitrary system we have now. Then people can make the choice of amenities that suits them.
Athens could do better by allowing things like "in-law suites" and other domiciles to be constructed on single family properties, especially useful in Five Points and Normaltown. (There's a guy who rents out an old red train caboose off Southview; all under the table of course, but that should be more permissible!) Or, preferably, rezone much of that territory to no longer be single-family at all and allow for more dense developments. There are also lots of parking requirements, so any large new development requires parking for each unit in the development, adding to the land used up for cars.
IMO the biggest challenge Athens has is that the student body is quite wealthy. You've got kids from families that make a lot of money every year, and all the in-state kids have their tuition subsidized thanks to HOPE. They are flush with cash to spend on apartments and people will respond to that by offering them apartments and competing through better amenities, location, etc.
I think, too, that all the development is focused right in and around downtown Athens, exacerbating the issue there while much of Athens-Clarke county remains underdeveloped - everything out by the M. Oconee River is quite spaced out and leaves room for further construction.
Also, drive up Baxter. On the right you have small, poorly maintained public housing. On the left you have several ten-story high rise dorms. Yet when you hear people at the committee hearings talking solutions, nobody is asking the state or the county or the city to build more public housing or add density to housing in existing public properties.
Instead, you get weird formulations where professor so-and-so name-checks Marx and argues that the "use value and exchange value are becoming twisted". (And let me be pedantic for all the Dr. Boltons out there: in Marxian economics, use value and exchange value refer solely to *commodities* whereas land is a subject of labor, something akin to a factor of production rather than a commodity to be traded. . If you're going to cite Marx, you should have read Marx! The dude wrote like 600 pages on rents.) It's maybe time for Athens to get its economics advice out of the 1860s. Athens deserves better.
I'm not sure if there's the support--if there is support, the money--for making the old housing projects in Athens denser. I agree that ideally they would be, but of course you may run into opposition from the residents themselves. At least allowing for more in-law suites and the like is on the table. It may have already passed--it's hard to keep up with our turbulent city commission.
NIMBYs are often opposed to rentals such as yours as well. This can be enforced through parking regulations, plumbing requirements, and occupancy restrictions. That's why it was a big deal that California started allowing ADUs recently (accessory dwelling units). I'm still not very knowledgeable in this area, but Matt is starting to win me over!
No one (except governments) are interested in building cheap housing. New housing will not be cheap. But it will increase the pool of available housing and thus make housing more affordable and available across the board.
Personally, I don't live in NYC and would rather stick pins in my eyes before moving there, but as I understand it living in tiny apartments in massive apartment buildings has been the NYC way since before my parents were born.
That's all true--not only that, but many of the buildings that preservationists would want to save are large (or large-ish) apartment buildings (though not necessarily with small units). But the concern many people have with the large private apartment buildings currently being built is that in the long run they will look a lot like the large public housing projects of the past that were not maintained. Those projects were not cheap compared to the housing they replaced in "slums" like old Boston or the Beale St. neighborhood, but in retrospect few say that those Urban Renewal programs and other government-run efforts to build housing worked out well.
I am only trying here to point that historic preservation is an odd target for advocates of new housing to focus on. Preservationists may have allied with the kind of neighborhood associations that want to tell you what kind of mailbox you're allowed, but they did so in the same way that any activist makes alliances and compromises. Preservationists are not in power, they know very well that few support their cause, and you're only picking an easy target to blame for larger problems.
The reason public housing got so bad is investors had no incentive to buy and improve them. Rent-controlled buildings in NYC are similar. Why buy a property and improve it if the rent will not go up?
(I'm a real estate investor.)
If the federal government *really* wanted to lower housing costs, they'd phase out the mortgage interest deduction and 1031 exchanges. There's no way that would get through Congress, though.
Why are 1031 exchanges a problem?
They allow investors to defer taxes if they sell a property then put the money in a new property within 60 days. That amounts to a 15% subsidy on the buy side.
As an investor I love 1031 exchanges, but no other asset gets this treatment.
1031’s are a good and joyful thing!
>>>No one (except governments) are interested in building cheap housing.<<<
You think governments are really interested in building cheap housing? That's not the impression I get from most governmental units in the USA. Though sure, some of them talk a good game...
I'd say the main backers of "building cheap housing" are low(ish) income and poor people, along with perhaps some developers and consultancies specializing in that market.
Is this a parody comment?
It's entirely possible to: 1) greenlight much more housing construction than most US cities manage while simultaneously 2) refraining from flattening every charming city block.
A city can be a victim of its own success, creating so many jobs that you run out of places to house the workers. There are two paths forward and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
You can increase both commercial and residential density to accommodate more businesses and people. You can also encourage/allow businesses and jobs to locate other places that are not as crowded and expensive.
Some types of businesses and (and some people) are not well suited to a high density urban environment. A steel mill in Times Square would be an interesting challenge.
Who goes to the Paris suburbs? What glory do they have? You must be thinking of a different city.
I just hope the city council works with him productively.
"These groups are part of the warp and woof of the city and its politics, providing campaign workers in off-off-cycle city council races..." This should say "warp and weft" in place of warp and woof. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_and_weft
"Councilmanic privilege" is a funny phrase somehow.
Why is it -manic? We don't use "manic" to mean relating to men.
Maybe it should be "councilmale privilege" ...
Because we're processing "councilman" as a single unit of meaning instead of as a compound word; the "man" ceases to matter. So it's like "German"->"Germanic", "Magellan"->"Magellanic", "ocean" -> "oceanic", "Satan" -> "satanic".
It is also an allusion to the “aldermanic privilege” of Chicago
A major change that has significantly reduced decision making to benefit the city as a whole was the elimination of the old Board of Estimate. The BOE had the trick of the three citywide officials able to override the borough presidents. And the City Council was much weaker.
>>>The worst thing is that he's laughably corrupt. But I think the benefits outweigh the cons.<<<
Nothing wrong with honest graft!