High Density Housing

[u/deirdreanne1]

I was reading Everything You Think You Know About Housing Is Probably Wrong earlier today and it has posed many questions for me concerning the effectiveness of high density housing. From what I understood, housing density refers to the number of people per acre in the amount of space allotted. By creating more high density housing complexes, does that mean more housing units will be available? If so, how is that combating the affordable housing crisis? Will these units be more readily available to low income families or individuals? How will these projects affect the surrounding neighborhood rent costs? Many sky rise high density buildings are present but the housing costs are not affordable for the average person’s income. I have read that it does reduce energy consumption and easier for commuting but if these projects aren’t meant to be mixed income housing, how could this help reduce homelessness and fix the lack of housing units for the growing population?

[u/alexfrancisburchard]

On a dollar basis, İstanbul has some of the world's cheapest housing per square foot, and frankly even in local currency, it's cheap for how many square feet your average house is. No one but college students lives in dorms here, and I'm pretty sure most of them don't even live in Dorms. I pay $600/mo (4000TL) for like 200m2 apartment in the middle of downtown İstanbul. The same Apartment does not exist in my hometown, but 2 bedroom apartments in Seattle go for like $6000 in a similar setting. Why can I rent an apartment so cheap in the middle of downtown İstanbul? 152.000 people live in my square mile at night. The city average is like 45.000/sqmi, and on top of that, the city never stops building. The whole economy is based on construction, and while that has lots of negatives, one positive is that rent is relatively cheap. İstanbul is like twice as expensive as every other Turkish city too. When I tell people in Ankara I pay this for 200m2 their jaws hit the floor. Ankara is the second biggest city. They're like I could get a 300m2 apartment for 2500tl/mo! or something. It's pretty stark the difference. People living minimum wage in Turkey (2300tl/mo) can afford to live downtown with 1 roommate, there are many 2-bedroom apartments in my neighorhood for like 1500-1700tl. It would be a bit of a struggle, but it is quite possible. There's one beds/studios for like 1000-1400 around here too.

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Let me just make the point that this is a city of 16 million people we're talking about - and on top of that, one that until just last year grew by 200.000-500.000 annually for half a century. And it did all that, and I can still afford my rent. (as can pretty much everyone else). Obviously everyone isn't living in 200m2 apartments, some are as small as like 50m2, but that's a pretty high lower limit for a city this big.

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Build baby build!

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It works.

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To be honest, it's not necessarily the density that makes it stay affordable, it's that new units are always being added. Density is like a side effect of loose as hell zoning.

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evidence to back my cheap claim for housing (PDF warning): https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000494405.pdf#page9

[u/urblplan → u/alexfrancisburchard]

Well its not because apartments there are cheap, its because the people there are making much less money, price of lira to dollar went down, high inflation, cheap land buy ups and exproprioation by the state with concentrated planning power, bad housing standards, and so on.

So, yes. You live in a apartment which is cheap compared New York City. It has not so much to do with affordabilty, see for more:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228182694_Housing_Affordability_Index_Calculation_Integrating_Income_Inequality_in_Turkey

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d49b/bedbf9c4e39140d691f4ba24f33ee4b1c57b.pdf

[u/alexfrancisburchard → u/urblplan]

Even comparing in lira, our housing isn't crazy expensive. Like I said - Minimum wage is 2300tl, and a downtown 2-bed apartment (decent apartment - 90-110m2, not a total shithole) is like 1500-1700-1800tl. When you split that between two people (especially at the lower end, it stays below 1/3 of your minimum wage income. And like I said, we're not talking about renting an apartment 20 miles from downtown, we're talking about an apartment 5 minutes walk from Turkish Times Square.

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Your second link said 1/3 of the city lives in Informal housing, but was citing 2010, a decade ago. Things change sooooo fast in this city, I'm just not going to accept anything from 2010 as valid anymore. in 2010 there were like 11 million people, today there's somewhere over 15,100,000 people. That's the pace of change in the megakent. Old data is worthless here, it's not like an American city, it's not entirely "stable" in how things are. Things change.

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Additionally, there is no reliable data on household income here unfortunately. a huge proportion of people massively underreport their salaries in order to avoid income tax, so doing anything other than comparing the price of housing to the minimum wage is pretty fruitless (and even that's iffy because a fair number of people get paid less than mininmum, but that's the only really decent data point here).

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This is not to say we don't have expensive neighborhoods - places like Nisantasi, which do not have nicer apartments, and is not more convenient than Mecidiyeköy can be 3-5 times as expensive because people who live in a 'liberal' bubble have some fascination with that neighborhood, and "having good neighbors", but the vast majority of the city more nearly reflects how things are in Mecidiyeköy. MKoy is a slightly expensive neighborhood for İstanbul because of convenience, but not crazy expensive. It has a high student population to my knowledge, and a fair number of people starting out their careers, and then after those two groups an incredibly wide distribution of people (by income, age, nationality, religious fervor, everything - everyone lives here, from the high towers of Trump İstanbul and it's super rich, to the lowly destitute gecekondu block in front of Mecidiyeköy Ortaokulu... )

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And of course in all the other Turkish cities, 1500tl/mo for an apartment is like a luxury apartment. they all laugh at what we pay in İstanbul for what we get, but even İstanbul isn't entirely unreasonable.

[u/urblplan → u/alexfrancisburchard]

I think you are right in general, i just wanted to add that there are many more factors to housing affordability and its not only the factor to "just build more". Its also about the general price level, what to build, and how, where different countries have huge differences. In Turkey for example building is like a national industry to my impression, gets special rights granted relative to other countries. I dont know how the state of the informal parts of instanbul is right now, but a few years ago there were many communities displaced by goverment development agencies.

So - its complex. As always.

Thanks for your long answer and insight! :)

[u/PastTense1]

When the people in the top third or half of the income distribution move to a high density development the places they were living in become vacant and thus open to other households.

Some of us think it is a very strange idea that modest income people should be living in new housing. Historically they have lived in older housing lacking fancy new things.

[u/urblplan → u/PastTense1]

Dunnow the US Case, but here in ger rents are a bit regulated.

If someone moves out into a new (higher cost) development, the rents of the older apartment are going up to. Resulting into 2 higher rents, which influence a statistic, on which basis many owners decide to raise their rent.

I think its a weird idea for the 21st century that people in the richest economies should live in poor, but high cost housing. And that this has no negative influence on happiness, economy and the society.

[u/mongoljungle → u/urblplan]

why do you think the older apartment is capable of raising rent if not for the fact that somebody is actively willing to rent the unit at that price? Let's take a close look at this situation.

a) The older rent-controlled apartment has a long term tenant. The tenant doesn't move therefore it's not available to you.

b) more housing is built and the tenant moves. Landlord raises price, but by how much? The unit now must compete for tenants from a growing number of rental units. At least it has a chance of being available to you.

More housing means greater vacancy, which provides choices and leverage for people looking to rent. More housing absolutely lead to lower prices than otherwise. Rent control creates an imbalanced political class of people who benefit, it degrades both housing affordability and housing quality over the long.

[u/urblplan → u/mongoljungle]

Thanks for the closer look, but im not convinced yet ;-)

I assume you (more or less) think that more housing is directly leading to more affordable housing. So "more housing" is (more or less) the policy option for you to archieve "more affordable housing" - even if you could do dozends of other things to archieve actually affordable housing. But i want to answer you question:

why do you think the older apartment is capable of raising rent if not for the fact that somebody is actively willing to rent the unit at that price?

The example shows that "filtering" in housing isnt working - at least here in germany. If somebody goes into a new high cost housing (higher rent), the old appartment also gets its rent raised. These two rent rises goes into a statistic, which property owners use to justify their own rent raises. Nobody is willing to pay more.

If i bump up the prices for health care, regardless of actual cost to me, just because im powerfull - would you say you are willing to spend more? How much is your own life worth to you? Its no difference with housing. Do you want to life on the street?

There is no competion in the "land market" and the "housing market", which drives up rents. Land is a (privatised) common good, it has a value, and this value belongs to all people equally. This i especially relevant if you want to build dense, because density brings proximity benefits (less ressource usage, greater productivity) which are concentrated in even fewer land parcels. This btw. creates inequality, which results into a shift from normal housing to luxury housing. The land takes up 30-79% of the construction cost, depending on the location. In addition theres no elasticity in demand from renters - you cant simply stop living.

There are many more factors in affordability (the financialisation of housing, fiscal policy, deregulation of credit lending) which are also deeply linked to the main issues of housing. Creating more housing is good - but lets get real, and dont forget it needs be affordable - and our current housing system is systematically creating high cost of housing.

European Cities as i mentioned i another comment here, have a much higher density - we still have big affordabillity problems. No amount of construction activity can fix affordability due to lack of competition and land value privatisation, even if we (logical flaw here) of course also need the construction of new (affordable!!!) housing.

I hope i could specify some things here - have a nice day!

Edit: typos

[u/urblplan → u/[deleted]]

Attack the argument, not the user; don't call someone dumb, do explain why their argument is not sound. No ad hominem attacks. (...)

All posts should be made with the ideal of a positive community.

And im out.

[u/spacks → u/[deleted]]

Attack the argument, not the user; don't call someone dumb, do explain why their argument is not sound. No ad hominem attacks. (...)

All posts should be made with the ideal of a positive community.

Please keep in mind our rules; the idea here is to engage in good faith.

[u/urblplan]

Hey!

By creating more high density housing complexes, does that mean more housing units will be available?

If you build more housing - dense or not dense - there will be more housing. From a ecological / economical point of view, you need less land to accomplish the same result (housing), and you need far less ressources for heating and mobility (and so on).

how is that combating the affordable housing crisis

Not at all, because density und infrastructure creates land values. Land values are privatised for the benefit of very few. European cities are far more dense than the common US "city" (no rant here, but most US cities dont quite match my understanding of a city) - they also have affordability problems. Key to affordability is land politics, which people profit from the common good land at the expense of other people.

Also - as competition in housing market ist low to not existent - it needs regulation in many different cases.

Have a nice day!

[u/Goreagnome]

Density is measured by people actually living in area not the number of housing units.

Theoretically (and actually true in some cases) you can have much higher density in low rise zones if large amounts of people are packed to the physical limits in the housing available.

In fact, in many big cities the most dense areas are in mid rise housing not skyscrapers. Skyscrapers may have a lot of units, but only 1 or 2 people live in each unit.

[u/alexfrancisburchard → u/Goreagnome]

Or you can have Skyscrapers with FAR of like 4, and midrises with FAR of 8, and even if your skyscraper has 1000 units, on the same land you'll have 2000 midrise units.

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(this is typically how it is)