Denver takes 264 days to approve "multi-family or industrial projects with a valuation in excess of $1.5 million, such as a new apartment or office building, large additions" [1]. Construction loans in Colorado cost "8% to 13%" [2]. For a project with $1.5mm up-front costs, from land purchases to permit fees and legal costs, that comes to $87 to 141 thousand per project.
This isn't as bad as San Francisco, where permiting delays alone add hundreds of thousands of dollars to housing costs. But in addition to upzoning, it's something to be considered, particularly since Denver seems to categorise practically all impactful residential development as "major commercial."
[1] https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Of...
[2] https://www.clearhouselending.com/commercial-loans/colorado/...
This isn't an accident. They know what they're doing.
Every municipality tries to do this to the extent they think they can get away with it because it's an end run around your property right. There's all sorts of residential exemptions and precedents and case law and courts and politicians tend not to be in a hurry to screw homeowners because there's tons of them.
By classifying you as commercial it gives them a) all sorts of capricious authority to micromanage the pettiest of details and/or force you to expend money with no recourse except "haha, sue us peasant".
And this is how they get it: don't literally refuse housing, but make it economically impossible in practice. Then they can go "welp, nothing's getting built, I guess there's nothing we could've done", and as an added bonus they also get to say "looks like the free market can never fix our housing shortage!"
It's only real gentrification when upper-middle class YIMBYs get forced out.
The author acknowledges that a lot of the gentrification is the result of zoning rules, and has only proposed what are primarily less restrictive zoning rules as a potential solution.
Doesn't gentrification happen not from spontaneous combos of zoning rules but when someone with money wants to live somewhere, so they do? It's part of the golden rule: he with the gold makes all the rules, unless you can go asymmetric economic warfare and fire back with zoning & NIMBY laws.
This is a good thing!
Overall I think this is simply an outcome of NIMBYism, regulators over regulating to justify their existence, and a K shaped economy.
There's nothing wrong with the market building what there is actual money in. No one should be forced to lose money to serve those who cannot afford the product. (That's the space of charities)
Denver seems to have done an amazing job, relative to other places I've been, at actually adding a lot more housing. The market likely would be _worse_ had there not been so much built (and building)
1. Remove Zoning / Deed Restrictions / Parking Minimums
2. Remove Red Tape (Environmental impact assessments, time cap approvals to a couple weeks, at cost fees)
3. Land Value Taxes
Watch as Gentrification suddenly goes away and infill development occurs. These complicated schemes are unnecessary.
>Remove Red Tape (Environmental impact assessments
I absolutely understand what prompts this desperation, but much like the desperation that prompted the election of Trump, it's very, very much more bad than it is good.
Every idiot (they're not even useful anymore FFS, look at the results) says this based on abstract assessments of individual rules and laws but in practice those environmental assessments and stormwater permits and all the other things aren't even speed bumps for big business interests with lawyers and engineers on staff. Those interests can construe any evil as compliant and do so at cost. The rules are unscalable cliffs to "normal" people and businesses who can't justify paying mid four to low five figures up front for projects that might not even generate that much value.
Yes, there are laws that, if passed, would stop or slow or even reverse the increasing price of real estate. Would they pass? Hard to say and probably not quickly.
As has been repeated many times: it's in the financial interest of people who own property to increase their property's value by constraining supply via zoning/building codes, and they usually have a good amount of influence in the local politics that determine these rules.
The solve is fairly straightforward: allow absolute maximum density so long as it is built safely.
You'll get tall apartment buildings pretty quick. Then everyone can go to the schools and enjoy the low crime and fast fire response.
But that isn't allowed because incumbents don't want it.
There's not much new about this... it's the same story all over the US.
At least some places are different:
throw-the-towel•30m ago