(2005-12-15) Nyc Downzoning

NYC has been doing down-Zoning to limit residential Real Estate development. (Good way to restrict supply and maintain a justification for Rent Control, I suppose...) Most of that has been outside Manhattan, but: Even in Manhattan, where the city has recently rezoned former manufacturing areas to make high-rise residential development possible, it has at the same time downzoned parts of the West Village. Part of the problem is the responsiveness of BigGov Infrastructure - People started to realize: "This is a problem in my Neighborhood. You know what? This is leading to overcrowding in my school (Public School). This is why we have a Street Traffic problem. We're getting Sew Er backups because the Infrastructure can't handle these developments." People started to realize, "Wow, this really does affect our Quality Of Life."

Nathan Newman sees the cost of this. This Harvard study last year estimated that as much as half the costs of housing in New York City is due to zoning and other regulations that restrict the housing supply. So working families could potentially be paying half as much for housing costs, but instead the trend in the City is in the opposite direction as the supply of new housing is even further choked off... As the Harvard study notes, "there were 13,000 new units permitted in Manhattan in 1960 alone, only 21,000 new units were permitted throughout the entire decade of the 1990s. In spite of skyrocketing prices, the housing stock has grown by less than 10 percent since 1980."

A problem for the Middle Class, which is a problem for Urban Development.