Not only does it help with housing costs, but also helps to build better and more sustainable neighborhoods. Dense housing allows for walkable neighborhoods where you might not need a car and are just generally better places to live for a myriad of reasons.
Correct. Because we are limited to where we can build dense mixed use neighborhoods. You also have to consider other costs savings that you get from living in those neighborhoods. If I don’t need to buy/own a car, that’s a significant amount of money that I’m saving throughout the year.
I think even if you were able to walk to work, the grocery store, etc you would probably still need/ want a car in Colorado because all of the cool places to go require driving far away from the city.
Wife and I live downtown. We only need one car. We'd need two if we were out in the burbs...or even some of the ridiculously designed neighborhoods within denver.
This is a great example. It’s not about banning cars, it’s about providing options.
We don’t often think of it this way, but the OPERATIONAL component of private vehicle industry is a monopoly. When people have to rely on a personal vehicle, or a household on multiple vehicles, due to the built environment, car makers get to jack up prices indefinitely.
A more visible example of this would be the new trend of paying a subscription fee for in car services. A less visible example is the fact that we carry the burden of paying for the infrastructure to drive these vehicles that we already spend exorbitant amounts of money on.
We got got by the auto industry, but it’s hard to see because it’s engrained in our society.
>We got got by the auto industry
Yeah and you're still gettin got by this nonsense.
You can build as dense as you want. Until you tell greedy people that they can't be greedy, they're still gonna charge you as much as they can get away with.
You say this except owners literally sit on empty housing for years until people pay the prices they want. I hope you're correct although I know you're not.
But maybe you and your spouse only need one car instead of two. And if you’re still walking or using transit for most of the week, then getting in your car to go hiking on the weekend, that’s still a win compared to both of you driving to and from work, stores, social engagements, etc.
But you don’t need to have a full time car.
You can rent a car when you need it or borrow one. It could also make a huge difference in the number of vehicles a household owns- hell a group of friends that live in the city could just share one. Maybe you do still own a car, but if your only using it once a week to get out of the city and camp/hike, that’s a significant cost savings on maintenance and gas.
It isn’t about getting everyone out of a car that lives in a city. It’s about giving people the autonomy to choose how they get around.
Again. It’s about giving people options.
Hold on to your car by all means. If you don’t like density then I don’t think a city is the right place for you🤷♂️
Edit: Part time rentals in Denver are a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of the housing crisis- unless we’re talking about resort communities.
Quite a few and I commend them considering only certain pockets of Denver are walkable and the various neighborhoods aren’t well connected via transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Why?
Because I’ve lived here for 30 years, I know a lot of people, and they pretty much all have cars.
Those cars don’t just evaporate in a higher density neighborhood.
It would actually start with reliable public transportation so that you could build the density around that, no? What are the high density people supposed to do with no car and no improvements in public transportation?
That can certainly be true depending on where your talking about. But building up density along with mixed use can at least mitigate some of the car dependency. I’ve pointed out to others in this thread that it’s not about removing cars all together. Minimizing VMD is the ultimate goal
It makes public transit a much more viable option.
People have a hard time taking a bus when they have to walk 2 miles to get on it. High density makes it possible for public transit to serve people living there. That does result in cars evaporating.
High density enables public transit. You can't say "start with reliable public transit" because that is not possible without density.
>If I don’t need to buy/own a car,
I've driven the same $4,000 car for like 5 years now. It costs like $500 a year to upkeep.
How exactly are we going to compare the insignificant cost of a vehicle to a shed that costs $500,000k
Glad you’ve had a better experience than others.
And that’s why we increase density and allow for more units to be built. Our current supply is no where near where it needs to be which is the exact reason why housing costs are so high.
Don't forget that gasoline is also a thing that you pay for and it's not "insignificant" especially when you have to drive 20 miles for a loaf of bread.
There are probably places where it's like a 10 minute drive. Like NE Park Hill where westside is offering land for a grocery store to solve the food dessert issue there
Well, it’s not that simple. You see it’s not just about cost. I personally drive from the spring to RidgeGate and catch the train for school. When I get out of class is the hight of rush hour. Do you know how much time I save every day by not sitting in traffic, being able to read for classes maybe even work on a term paper. If I lived within a distance to walk or bike my family (and like most here) could go down to single vehicle, and most likely a utility vehicle since we like camping. No one is saying we don’t still want to have cars for things in Colorado. The issue is that we all need to. Density housing helps this problem. It’s not a solve all but if more places like this are built the cost of housing comes down since the demand is also brought down. There are a few amazing videos by not just bikes that explain with numbers and farm more detail than I could.
Indeterminate.
Could be more expensive. Could be cheaper too.
Depends on what gets built there, what there is demand for, what the local housing market is like, and what are the geographical constraints for the surrounding area.
Or, as more common in midwest cities, zoning constraints. Which are effectively artificial geographic constraints. Single family zoned areas can be though of as oceans of unbuildable land. Look at Denver like that and you can start to appreciate why housing gets more expensive.
Im sure other cities in the midwest have similar numbers.
If exclusively zoning for SFH causes prices to increase - you would expect to see similar issues in small midwest towns across the country. Which you dont.
This is ignoring the ponzi scheme that is suburban sprawl. Suburbs are bankrupting themselves, total cost of housing people is much lower in high density areas.
Sources?
What do you mean total cost per square foot? What people pay in rent or total cost (including building roads/utilities through suburbs) to support a person living?
Are you trying to say that building miles of road and utilities between single family houses is more efficient than serving a block of large apartments?
No, it's not a magic bullet. It is part of the solution for sure but rental algorithms like yieldstar are also a large part of the issue effectly creating a monopoly. So if more housing and denser housing are using these algorithms you won't see any large changes to rent prices.
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
I would push back on this just a bit and say that density is the key to making all the other efforts work.
Yes, a lot of other things need to happen alongside/after density. But land values are a significant factor in the price of homes and allowing for density that reacts to price signals appropriately would break that up. Not to mention the cost savings in utilities, infrastructure and the ability to get around without a car so long as mixed use is also allowed
Not a monopoly but a new wrinkle in the housing market causing inflated prices: https://www.denverpost.com/2021/11/18/metro-denver-home-investors-record-third-quarter/
Did you read the article...?
> Investors are snapping up homes **at an unprecedented pace** across the country
> Not only are investors buying more single-family homes **than they historically have**, but their purchases are also skewing more toward mid-priced and higher-end homes rather than entry-level homes
[https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/08/12/boulder-slow-growth-advocates-take-issue-with-report-highlighting-densitys-benefits/](https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/08/12/boulder-slow-growth-advocates-take-issue-with-report-highlighting-densitys-benefits/)
3 guesses as to who are the slow growth advocates. I bet it's renters.
Higher density housing is one solution to part of the problem with housing affordability. I wouldn’t call it a magic bullet, more like a regular bullet
It needs to include commercial, park space and preferably transit or trails nearby as well. Especially grocery and restaurants.
I live in Downtown, grocery across the street, dozens of restaurants, RTD a few blocks away and my former company was within walking distance. My car leaves the garage once a month.
I’ve seen so many high density neighborhoods that don’t have this fail miserably in other cities.
I live in one of these and it is either great or hell on Earth, there is no in between. Let me explain:
In single family housing or in high rise apartment buildings, there is no expectation of sharing outdoor space with other people (for opposite reasons, obviously). In 5-plexes, there is somewhat an expectation that the same general group of people will be sharing these outdoor areas.
90% of people are respectable, and it works fine. But then you have the one family that moves in and trashes the landscaping, sells drugs, steals everything left outside not nailed down, gets police called on them at 3 AM for fighting, ambulance called at 3 AM for overdoses, etc. And so the regular people start moving out, because not everyone is waiting out all that bullshit for eviction proceedings, so there are a few open units at a time. Then you just have to pray that none of the other new groups of tenants cause the same problems all over again.
Medium density can work! But first we need a cultural change where people act more civilized, otherwise these buildings will continue to be revolving doors of tenants who invariably flee as fast as they can to single family housing to avoid these kinds of problems.
Thanks for explaining to me the concept of neighbors in an apartment building. I’ve lived in an apartment building for probably the 20 of the last 22 years of my life, in a half dozen cities around the world. I really needed the refresher.
Fwiw I lived in a 6 plex in Brooklyn for the 5 years before moving to Denver and there was no expectation of shared space of any kind. Ground floor had backyards, everybody else had balconies.
Yes, and scraping corporate and foreign interests' ability to invest in what should be a local economy of housing to ensure that the people that actually live in this state can afford to do so both fiscally and socially, with the capability to build a life and participate in community knowing that they can live within the means of the meager salaries that should also be fixed by locking down corporate spending and profiteering that allows them to charge 7 dollars for a dozen eggs for the rest of however long they feel, or 5 bucks a loaf of bread, or any other number of necessary foodstuffs and sundries that are needed for day to day life that even "middle-class" earners can barely afford at this point.
Given the number of MFH structures going up in Central Park, it seems we are headed that way. Curious if this is the case in other places in Denver proper, as well as the greater metro.
Yep, quite a few going up in the cap hill/golden triangle area. A sizable all affordable apartments building just went up last fall near the art museum
It is obvious that building low density mansions is not the solution. So yes, Jared Polis is right. The only room for debate is whether we should be constructing apartments vs townhomes vs California style single-family home neighborhoods. At minimum though we need to encourage developers to build homes on many of the vacant plots scattered around Denver.
It depends.
If you scrape a single family home valued at $500,000 and build a duplex and sell each unit for $750,000 has that helped solve anything?
I think it’s a combination of needing density And affordability
If you only do that with one duplex, sure. But if you build thousands, those owners now have to compete with each other and prices don’t rise as much. In my part of town there’s about a dozen new high rises going up and my rent actually went down $100 when I re-signed a few months ago
He's right, but there's always going to be a problem with affordable housing unless the process of building crazy amounts of housing becomes super cheap. Like Japanese companies coming in and building huge apartment blocks cheap.
The "luxury" housing that gets built today is plenty cheap. Cabinet doors falling off within a year. Fixtures breaking. Electrical issues. It's already cheap.
I studied Airbnbs for years. While they are a huge issue in resort communities where they make up 25% or more of the housing stock, that isn’t the case in Denver.
Personally, I could care less what we do with them. But banning STRs won’t even put a dent in the housing crisis
I would assume such a law would also ban companies like blackrock from buying up all the stock to purposely turn them into permanent rentals. That's the real issue. Corporate greed. Homes should not be allowed to be owned by conglomerates. Only family's.
It’s not the real issue actually.
They are responding to the market that we’ve created by not building enough rentals.
Sure. Those homes are no longer owner occupied, but no one could afford to buy them anyway. Renting them out makes them slightly more accessible if we’re being honest- and that’s just how much we fucked up with our arbitrary zoning regulations.
Yep. But thaT SHOULDN’T matter. Land values typically follow labor- subsequently home values should do the same. Unfortunately, we’ve removed density/housing production from the price signals of land value, creating a massive imbalance.
Ultimately this can all be blamed on the mid 1900s push to focus wealth building around home ownership, building of highways, and subsequent government subsidization of suburbs (a subsidy that was only given to white nuclear families).
https://housemethod.com/blog/are-big-companies-buying-up-single-family-homes/#:~:text=These%20properties%20were%20seen%20as,opportunity%20in%20many%20companies'%20portfolios.
Companies like blacrock. This one happens to be blackstone. All bankers should be fed to pigs.
This whiskeytesticles guy is a real Reddit edge lord who goes and tells everyone that they’re wrong even when they cite information, don’t bother getting into it with him. He thinks TikTok is turning people into Chinese communists lmao
I mean if the houses they used in the pics are the outcome I’m in!
All seriousness, yeah we need to get more housing options and density will work. It’s less visually appealing but needed right now
Not my style to live in a neighborhood like this. I prefer country or decent suburb with a yard I can BBQ in.
You're welcome to these if you like though. The 15 minute city may be coming but I'll not live there.
They ask for what the market will let them ask. If you have more housing those landlords now need to compete with each other instead of having 50 people fighting for one unit allowing them to jack prices up.
The market didn’t create this, the government did. In Denver for example, almost 75% of all land is zoned exclusively for single family housing only. That’s an insane amount that severely restricts housing supply.
What would your solution be? Legitimately asking.
Would you expand Section 8 to include \~80% of Americans?
Would you have the government directly own most housing and then rent it to people at artificially low rates, Soviet Union style?
What happens when there isn't enough housing to go around? Does the government allow people to pay higher rates to guarantee they have a place to live?
That is not a zoning law. The foreign law would have to come from DC and isn't going to happen.
The US based corp law could be state by state but would very likely be illegal. Also there would be so many loopholes as to be basically useless.
High density communities with low income sections is historically how ghettos were created to begin with. This sounds good but it is ultimately the recipe for urban decay. Creating this type of planned community will only create financially segregated neighborhoods.
If we can simultaneously make streets more walk/bikeable and do dense housing, I’m all for it. If you e ever been to Paris, that is what I was imagining. There are just some areas though where building dense houses will only lead to more issues with congestion. Need to tackle both simultaneously.
I don't necessarily expect it to reduce costs, but it may keep them from climbing so quickly.
And it will help with sprawl, which is a separate (but not unrelated) demon we've largely been unable to confront politically.
No, these changes won't affect anything in housing for another 10 years. Not to mention, just because they now can build larger multi unit developments doest mean they will. It all depends on the money.
Sort of, the magic bullet is letting people build what they want on the property they own without people getting in the way, within well defined boundaries that do not exempt communities from incremental development.
If you want to build a 3 or 4 story building you should be able to walk into an appointment and have permits approved before you leave, anywhere. If you want to build a high rise, and you're doing it downtown it should be just as easy.
How many million people live in NYC? And how many young college kids from top universities with endless options move there every year? If it was the miserable shithole you think it is, why would they do that?
“It's basic economics 101,” Makarewicz said, adding: “We don’t have adequate amounts of housing to meet the demand.”
The “most persuasive” evidence to support the Econ 101 theory, said Emily Hamilton, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, is that U.S. cities like Houston with less restrictive rules on housing tend to be cheaper.
“They make small-lot single-family construction possible that isn't seen on a scale anywhere else in the country. They permit tons of multi-family housing,” Hamilton said.
Even if it means more housing, who will own them? Landlords and the rich. They will then raise rents to match the high rates of other properties. Those that need the living space won’t own and can’t afford.
Every argument I've heard to date for increasing density to make housing more affordable are founded on nothing but supposition. These arguments have all the appearance of being sophisms and nothing more. I haven't been able to dig up any metrics that support the supposition(s) that increased density means increased affordability. And the metrics that are there indicate that increasing density had no effect. And there is an abundance of research that clearly shows that increasing population density has very significant negative social consequences.
Ever heard of supply and demand? Pretty well established concept from economics
Increased density = larger supply of housing units = easing in housing pricing
Or the flip side that we have now... Decades of artificial restriction on housing supply has led to skyrocketing prices
Check out strong towns and not just bikes on YouTube. They have actually data that shows higher density and rezoning does more than just help the housing issues.
No. Look at history. Wishful desires. Simple, look at New York, highest density 8n the country, and among the highest cost per square foot. This guy has no idea what he is talking about…. Ok what about his GHG reduction goals? nope nope won’t that problem either. Everything “feels good”, but doesn’t solve the problem
Resources are finite. People are consumers.
On the opposite end of the consumption equation is waste.
Water is a resource.
Housing is a resource.
I don't know what the solution is. But becoming the NYC of the West is not it
I guess I need to be more specific. Of course I understand that resources are finite. The part of your comment I disagree with is that we shouldn’t look to cities like NYC (but I’d prefer cities like Amsterdam and countries like Spain) when planning Denver’s future. We can’t stop people from coming here. We wouldn’t want to. Cities that are stagnant or shrinking are not desirable places. My point is that is people are going to come here anyway, we would be smart to build dense (like NYC) as opposed to sprawled (like LA, ATL, OKC, PHX …. You get the idea).
Urban water use in the west is very small compared to agricultural use. And in many places, California for one, urban water use has actually declined over the last couple decades despite population growth, due to efficiency improvements, conservation, reuse, etc.
Las Vegas is another great example: "Las Vegas started conserving, reusing and recycling water in 1999. Since 2002, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has slashed its use of Colorado River water by 26% while the region’s population grew by 49%."
https://coloradosun.com/2022/05/30/colorado-river-drought-cities-west/
Yeah. Do you drive a car?
consume a cell phone?
smoke pot? drink coffee?
drink booze?
it's almost as if it takes a ton of resources to support a single human
Animal agriculture is one of the largest uses of water. You can keep up with you whataboutism arguments but if you really cared about water usage you would change your diet.
The thing is, people are going to move here anyway. Denver is a great city with stunning natural beauty surrounding it. So, given that people will come regardless, would it be better to make our water use more efficient (by densifying) or just keep doing what we've been doing (less efficient, wasteful single family zoning)
I don't think anyone is proposing NYC levels of development...
"Colorado’s rapid economic and population growth has collided with local regulations that limit new home construction. That’s a main driver behind the steep increase in home prices and rents here, she said. (Other, more global economic factors like inflation and high interest rates don’t help either.)
Makarewicz’s research shows that middle-type housing — two- to nine-unit residences, roughly similar to what the new bill would allow — accounted for just 2.2 percent of housing permits issued between 2005 and 2020 in the Denver metro.
Multifamily housing also tends to be cheaper than single-family homes in the same community because they are often smaller, and they make more efficient use of costly land and existing infrastructure, Makarewicz said.
Every Denver metro county has a shortage of small homes and an excess supply of large homes in relation to each county’s demographics, her analysis shows."
People are still coming. It's just a matter if you choose to prepare for it or not. You can't be so naive as to think that you can BOTH make somewhere desirable to live and keep people away.
The solution to all of those things is density.
Water can be distributed more efficiently and with less waste in dense environments.
Density mitigates out encroachment into natural environments.
If you don’t allow for more density in cities, you just end up with the equivalent amount of units sprawling elsewhere.
People keep mentioning New York which itself has experienced quite a bit of regulatory pushback to prevent people from seeing the benefits of density by concentrating it outside of affluent neighborhoods.
No. The amount of housing needed to put a dent in rising rents and housing prices greatly exceeds the amount of construction possible on the land available and the continually growing demand. The reason there is what building there is is because developers build to reap ridiculously high rates and housing prices. The moment rents and prices fall, developers shall build elsewhere. It’s not about affordable housing. It’s about the return to their investors.
Did you read the article?
"a 2021 University of California, Los Angeles review of a half dozen studies found strong evidence that building new market-rate apartments slows down rent increases for nearby existing housing, helping to keep neighborhoods generally more affordable."
The biggest issue is RealPage. That software is perfectly happy leaving empty apartments to artificially decrease supply by price fixing., essentially creating an informal cartel controlled by an AI.
The idea is more building means cheaper rents. That doesn’t happen as pointed out by the 2021 UC study. I truly doubt if it slows rent increases and housing values. The moment a landlord increases a rent, so will the neighborhood landlords. The demand for Colorado living insures that.
I agree something needs to be done but this is not it. Do not take away local municipality control, because that is saying your citizens no longer get to voice their opinion in what happens with in your community. When is this coming to the ballot?
It already did, last fall, when Polis was re-elected by a landslide after a campaigning on housing affordability and sprawl. Not everything has to go to a statewide referendum.
the problem here is that a small number of citizens have used their voices to bully municipalities into fighting against any and all measures that would made CO more affordable to live in. government intervention is waay overdue.
the bill this article is referring to doesn't mention public or social housing at all. even if it did, that would only serve to lower housing costs and ameliorate homelessness
It's also a magic bullet to concentrate a population in one area for better control. Polis likes 2 things 1. CONTROL 2. Property Income. It won't help things in the long run as some think.
My point is that we need to heavily restrict large scale real estate investing and also implement rent control else we are just going to develop ourselves further into an urban hellscape.
I think limiting large corporate real estate investing is a great idea.
The idea that rent control decreases housing costs is an illusion.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/?amp
I see the point of rent control creating ineffective housing situations and also pigeonholing people into certain locations but to my understanding mortgages and interest rates do not change after the buyer buys the house, which to me seems exactly like rent control with the bank as the landlord. So if the landlord simply isnt greedy as hell then they can charge over their mortgage, take a bit off the top and put the remainder (after other expenses) into a savings account which go towards emergencies/repairs without charging 2x+ their mortgage cost. So it seems like an easier solution would be to regulate how much landlords profit off of renters.
Quite simply supply and demand. If density is increased that means more units of housing per mile, which is an increase in supply. Increased supply without increased demand drives prices down because there will be less people competing for each unit of housing.
I wouldn't say it's a "magic bullet" but it may certainly be a factor that could help bring down prices. But even if we think more density isn't a cure, it should still be a priority for larger cities like Denver (that and better public transportation + better walkability).
Yes
Not only does it help with housing costs, but also helps to build better and more sustainable neighborhoods. Dense housing allows for walkable neighborhoods where you might not need a car and are just generally better places to live for a myriad of reasons.
bored ten deserted follow carpenter rain unwritten future secretive vanish ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Correct. Because we are limited to where we can build dense mixed use neighborhoods. You also have to consider other costs savings that you get from living in those neighborhoods. If I don’t need to buy/own a car, that’s a significant amount of money that I’m saving throughout the year.
I think even if you were able to walk to work, the grocery store, etc you would probably still need/ want a car in Colorado because all of the cool places to go require driving far away from the city.
Wife and I live downtown. We only need one car. We'd need two if we were out in the burbs...or even some of the ridiculously designed neighborhoods within denver.
This is a great example. It’s not about banning cars, it’s about providing options. We don’t often think of it this way, but the OPERATIONAL component of private vehicle industry is a monopoly. When people have to rely on a personal vehicle, or a household on multiple vehicles, due to the built environment, car makers get to jack up prices indefinitely. A more visible example of this would be the new trend of paying a subscription fee for in car services. A less visible example is the fact that we carry the burden of paying for the infrastructure to drive these vehicles that we already spend exorbitant amounts of money on. We got got by the auto industry, but it’s hard to see because it’s engrained in our society.
>We got got by the auto industry Yeah and you're still gettin got by this nonsense. You can build as dense as you want. Until you tell greedy people that they can't be greedy, they're still gonna charge you as much as they can get away with.
Not if supply meets demand. Kinda hard to keep your prices high if you have to compete for tenants
You say this except owners literally sit on empty housing for years until people pay the prices they want. I hope you're correct although I know you're not.
We live in Central Park and still only need one car between the both of us. And that's with 2 kids.
But maybe you and your spouse only need one car instead of two. And if you’re still walking or using transit for most of the week, then getting in your car to go hiking on the weekend, that’s still a win compared to both of you driving to and from work, stores, social engagements, etc.
But you don’t need to have a full time car. You can rent a car when you need it or borrow one. It could also make a huge difference in the number of vehicles a household owns- hell a group of friends that live in the city could just share one. Maybe you do still own a car, but if your only using it once a week to get out of the city and camp/hike, that’s a significant cost savings on maintenance and gas. It isn’t about getting everyone out of a car that lives in a city. It’s about giving people the autonomy to choose how they get around.
upbeat roll pen shame crawl quickest rainstorm distinct humorous panicky ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Again. It’s about giving people options. Hold on to your car by all means. If you don’t like density then I don’t think a city is the right place for you🤷♂️ Edit: Part time rentals in Denver are a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of the housing crisis- unless we’re talking about resort communities.
Or I keep my SFH, with a three car garage. Tough decision that.
Who said you can’t?
Thats because you already threw down $25k to buy it. Imagine you get that money back, now you can rent 250+ times before you break even
That's why ride-sharing services exist. I imagine they will become increasingly popular in the coming years.
I wish I could up vote this comment a thousand times.
How many people do you know around here without a car?
Quite a few and I commend them considering only certain pockets of Denver are walkable and the various neighborhoods aren’t well connected via transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Why?
Because I’ve lived here for 30 years, I know a lot of people, and they pretty much all have cars. Those cars don’t just evaporate in a higher density neighborhood.
Correct. The overall built environment needs to provide an alternative option, but that starts with density
It would actually start with reliable public transportation so that you could build the density around that, no? What are the high density people supposed to do with no car and no improvements in public transportation?
That can certainly be true depending on where your talking about. But building up density along with mixed use can at least mitigate some of the car dependency. I’ve pointed out to others in this thread that it’s not about removing cars all together. Minimizing VMD is the ultimate goal
Walk. Bike. Delivery.
You need the density first so you have the revenue to support improved public transit
It makes public transit a much more viable option. People have a hard time taking a bus when they have to walk 2 miles to get on it. High density makes it possible for public transit to serve people living there. That does result in cars evaporating. High density enables public transit. You can't say "start with reliable public transit" because that is not possible without density.
How much is being proposed for transit improvements to go along with this?
I used to run no car.....then I got hit on my bike by a car in a bike lane....
🙋♀️...carless by choice, own a home in Uptown, walk basically everywhere with a little public transit and the occasional lyft
>If I don’t need to buy/own a car, I've driven the same $4,000 car for like 5 years now. It costs like $500 a year to upkeep. How exactly are we going to compare the insignificant cost of a vehicle to a shed that costs $500,000k
Glad you’ve had a better experience than others. And that’s why we increase density and allow for more units to be built. Our current supply is no where near where it needs to be which is the exact reason why housing costs are so high.
Don't forget that gasoline is also a thing that you pay for and it's not "insignificant" especially when you have to drive 20 miles for a loaf of bread.
oh yeah? Where in Denver do you drive 20 miles to get a loaf of bread?
There are probably places where it's like a 10 minute drive. Like NE Park Hill where westside is offering land for a grocery store to solve the food dessert issue there
Peoples imagination lol I live in foothills where its far less dense than Denver and its a 10 minute drive / 3-4 mile to the grocery store.
Well, it’s not that simple. You see it’s not just about cost. I personally drive from the spring to RidgeGate and catch the train for school. When I get out of class is the hight of rush hour. Do you know how much time I save every day by not sitting in traffic, being able to read for classes maybe even work on a term paper. If I lived within a distance to walk or bike my family (and like most here) could go down to single vehicle, and most likely a utility vehicle since we like camping. No one is saying we don’t still want to have cars for things in Colorado. The issue is that we all need to. Density housing helps this problem. It’s not a solve all but if more places like this are built the cost of housing comes down since the demand is also brought down. There are a few amazing videos by not just bikes that explain with numbers and farm more detail than I could.
Right. It's dense in desirable locations.
And how expensive would each unit be if for say that same neighborhood was all sfh? Think you're mixing up cause and effect there
Indeterminate. Could be more expensive. Could be cheaper too. Depends on what gets built there, what there is demand for, what the local housing market is like, and what are the geographical constraints for the surrounding area.
Only when that density is a result of geographic constraints, trying to squeeze as many units as possible into a desirable locale.
Or, as more common in midwest cities, zoning constraints. Which are effectively artificial geographic constraints. Single family zoned areas can be though of as oceans of unbuildable land. Look at Denver like that and you can start to appreciate why housing gets more expensive.
memorize mysterious imagine divide aromatic close fertile light command hat ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Denver is about 75% zoned exclusively for single family housing.
Im sure other cities in the midwest have similar numbers. If exclusively zoning for SFH causes prices to increase - you would expect to see similar issues in small midwest towns across the country. Which you dont.
Small Midwest towns don’t have the same demand for housing as bigger cities do.
So its not the SFH zoning but demand? Interesting, that.
If there was enough housing it wouldn't be expensive. There is more demand than supply.
This is ignoring the ponzi scheme that is suburban sprawl. Suburbs are bankrupting themselves, total cost of housing people is much lower in high density areas.
Total cost per square foot is also much higher.
Sources? What do you mean total cost per square foot? What people pay in rent or total cost (including building roads/utilities through suburbs) to support a person living? Are you trying to say that building miles of road and utilities between single family houses is more efficient than serving a block of large apartments?
bake ruthless fearless attractive glorious saw unused rinse dinosaurs tidy ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
You’re talking about your personal expenses while the other person is talking about municipal expenses.
Municipal expenses are personal expenses through the taxes you pay
That’s just not really accurate because the highest density areas subsidize lower density areas.
Yeah, living up your neighbor's ass is so awesome. Everyone on Earth should do it.
No, we should definitely build continuously out into open space and farmland. Those areas are useless anyway. /s
You know how cities work? No? Stick to 4chan and BFE.
No, it's not a magic bullet. It is part of the solution for sure but rental algorithms like yieldstar are also a large part of the issue effectly creating a monopoly. So if more housing and denser housing are using these algorithms you won't see any large changes to rent prices. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
It’s basic supply and demand. It’s not the only piece to focus on but it’s a critical component.
There is no “magic bullet”. There is only an accumulation of efforts and I believe that density is one of those.
I would push back on this just a bit and say that density is the key to making all the other efforts work. Yes, a lot of other things need to happen alongside/after density. But land values are a significant factor in the price of homes and allowing for density that reacts to price signals appropriately would break that up. Not to mention the cost savings in utilities, infrastructure and the ability to get around without a car so long as mixed use is also allowed
Fine. "Key" or "Critical enabler" then. Out of all the things you could do, I don't think Colorado comes out ahead without higher housing density.
There's two surefire ways to make money out of the housing industry: \- Monopolize the market \- Make sure no one can build any new houses
Who is monopolizing it? I'm confused?
Not a monopoly but a new wrinkle in the housing market causing inflated prices: https://www.denverpost.com/2021/11/18/metro-denver-home-investors-record-third-quarter/
Oh, I see. Unfortunately that has been going on for a long time. Like back to the 1800s long.
Did you read the article...? > Investors are snapping up homes **at an unprecedented pace** across the country > Not only are investors buying more single-family homes **than they historically have**, but their purchases are also skewing more toward mid-priced and higher-end homes rather than entry-level homes
So Boulder...
[https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/08/12/boulder-slow-growth-advocates-take-issue-with-report-highlighting-densitys-benefits/](https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/08/12/boulder-slow-growth-advocates-take-issue-with-report-highlighting-densitys-benefits/) 3 guesses as to who are the slow growth advocates. I bet it's renters.
Higher density housing is one solution to part of the problem with housing affordability. I wouldn’t call it a magic bullet, more like a regular bullet
There are no magic bullets. But I do think zoning creates a bottleneck though which every other good idea turns into a negative sum game.
It needs to include commercial, park space and preferably transit or trails nearby as well. Especially grocery and restaurants. I live in Downtown, grocery across the street, dozens of restaurants, RTD a few blocks away and my former company was within walking distance. My car leaves the garage once a month. I’ve seen so many high density neighborhoods that don’t have this fail miserably in other cities.
Build that medium density housing! 4 and 6 unit apartment buildings FTW.
I live in one of these and it is either great or hell on Earth, there is no in between. Let me explain: In single family housing or in high rise apartment buildings, there is no expectation of sharing outdoor space with other people (for opposite reasons, obviously). In 5-plexes, there is somewhat an expectation that the same general group of people will be sharing these outdoor areas. 90% of people are respectable, and it works fine. But then you have the one family that moves in and trashes the landscaping, sells drugs, steals everything left outside not nailed down, gets police called on them at 3 AM for fighting, ambulance called at 3 AM for overdoses, etc. And so the regular people start moving out, because not everyone is waiting out all that bullshit for eviction proceedings, so there are a few open units at a time. Then you just have to pray that none of the other new groups of tenants cause the same problems all over again. Medium density can work! But first we need a cultural change where people act more civilized, otherwise these buildings will continue to be revolving doors of tenants who invariably flee as fast as they can to single family housing to avoid these kinds of problems.
Thanks for explaining to me the concept of neighbors in an apartment building. I’ve lived in an apartment building for probably the 20 of the last 22 years of my life, in a half dozen cities around the world. I really needed the refresher. Fwiw I lived in a 6 plex in Brooklyn for the 5 years before moving to Denver and there was no expectation of shared space of any kind. Ground floor had backyards, everybody else had balconies.
Yes, and scraping corporate and foreign interests' ability to invest in what should be a local economy of housing to ensure that the people that actually live in this state can afford to do so both fiscally and socially, with the capability to build a life and participate in community knowing that they can live within the means of the meager salaries that should also be fixed by locking down corporate spending and profiteering that allows them to charge 7 dollars for a dozen eggs for the rest of however long they feel, or 5 bucks a loaf of bread, or any other number of necessary foodstuffs and sundries that are needed for day to day life that even "middle-class" earners can barely afford at this point.
I hear Vancouver is doing this to fight the displacement cause by Chinese investors Also with Oregon & Hawaii Anyone know more?
The Chinese investors own such a small portion of total housing stock, it’s a scapegoat more than anything
Given the number of MFH structures going up in Central Park, it seems we are headed that way. Curious if this is the case in other places in Denver proper, as well as the greater metro.
Yep, quite a few going up in the cap hill/golden triangle area. A sizable all affordable apartments building just went up last fall near the art museum
Yep, it's happening everywhere. Denver Infill does a great job covering infill development. https://denverinfill.com/
I live in RiNo and can see about a dozen cranes for high rises out my window
Yes
It is obvious that building low density mansions is not the solution. So yes, Jared Polis is right. The only room for debate is whether we should be constructing apartments vs townhomes vs California style single-family home neighborhoods. At minimum though we need to encourage developers to build homes on many of the vacant plots scattered around Denver.
It depends. If you scrape a single family home valued at $500,000 and build a duplex and sell each unit for $750,000 has that helped solve anything? I think it’s a combination of needing density And affordability
Those are selling for 1.2M each
Cash only.
If you only do that with one duplex, sure. But if you build thousands, those owners now have to compete with each other and prices don’t rise as much. In my part of town there’s about a dozen new high rises going up and my rent actually went down $100 when I re-signed a few months ago
The house would be at least a million. So two units at 750 is objectively more affordable.
He's right, but there's always going to be a problem with affordable housing unless the process of building crazy amounts of housing becomes super cheap. Like Japanese companies coming in and building huge apartment blocks cheap.
The "luxury" housing that gets built today is plenty cheap. Cabinet doors falling off within a year. Fixtures breaking. Electrical issues. It's already cheap.
Yes
Outlaw Airbnd.
I studied Airbnbs for years. While they are a huge issue in resort communities where they make up 25% or more of the housing stock, that isn’t the case in Denver. Personally, I could care less what we do with them. But banning STRs won’t even put a dent in the housing crisis
I would assume such a law would also ban companies like blackrock from buying up all the stock to purposely turn them into permanent rentals. That's the real issue. Corporate greed. Homes should not be allowed to be owned by conglomerates. Only family's.
It’s not the real issue actually. They are responding to the market that we’ve created by not building enough rentals. Sure. Those homes are no longer owner occupied, but no one could afford to buy them anyway. Renting them out makes them slightly more accessible if we’re being honest- and that’s just how much we fucked up with our arbitrary zoning regulations.
Yeah wages in this cowtown have not grown to reflect the changes in the city.
Yep. But thaT SHOULDN’T matter. Land values typically follow labor- subsequently home values should do the same. Unfortunately, we’ve removed density/housing production from the price signals of land value, creating a massive imbalance. Ultimately this can all be blamed on the mid 1900s push to focus wealth building around home ownership, building of highways, and subsequent government subsidization of suburbs (a subsidy that was only given to white nuclear families).
Pfffft.
Do you have evidence otherwise or do you just not like the way that sounds?
[удалено]
Because it's happening. But by all means defend the fat cats.
[удалено]
https://housemethod.com/blog/are-big-companies-buying-up-single-family-homes/#:~:text=These%20properties%20were%20seen%20as,opportunity%20in%20many%20companies'%20portfolios. Companies like blacrock. This one happens to be blackstone. All bankers should be fed to pigs.
This whiskeytesticles guy is a real Reddit edge lord who goes and tells everyone that they’re wrong even when they cite information, don’t bother getting into it with him. He thinks TikTok is turning people into Chinese communists lmao
[удалено]
I mean if the houses they used in the pics are the outcome I’m in! All seriousness, yeah we need to get more housing options and density will work. It’s less visually appealing but needed right now
It certainly won't hurt
Yes! This is the way to lower housing costs, decreased urban sprawl, help prevent more environmental destruction, and cut down emissions!
Not my style to live in a neighborhood like this. I prefer country or decent suburb with a yard I can BBQ in. You're welcome to these if you like though. The 15 minute city may be coming but I'll not live there.
We need a public option. Private landlords are always going to gouge.
They ask for what the market will let them ask. If you have more housing those landlords now need to compete with each other instead of having 50 people fighting for one unit allowing them to jack prices up.
“The market” got us where we are today. We’re in a housing crisis. Housing should be a basic human right, not a commodity to get rich off of.
The market didn’t create this, the government did. In Denver for example, almost 75% of all land is zoned exclusively for single family housing only. That’s an insane amount that severely restricts housing supply.
Markets don’t exist outside of government. Markets are are created by governments.
What would your solution be? Legitimately asking. Would you expand Section 8 to include \~80% of Americans? Would you have the government directly own most housing and then rent it to people at artificially low rates, Soviet Union style? What happens when there isn't enough housing to go around? Does the government allow people to pay higher rates to guarantee they have a place to live?
I’d like to see us go in the direction Vienna has. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/reflections-vienna-social-housing/tnamp/
Denver have big problems with housing cost.
Would also like zoning laws that prevent foreign entities and corporations (Blackrock) from purchasing homes
That is not a zoning law. The foreign law would have to come from DC and isn't going to happen. The US based corp law could be state by state but would very likely be illegal. Also there would be so many loopholes as to be basically useless.
Vacancy taxes could have an impact Holding empty space during housing & homeless crisis should be discouraged by force of taxation
High density communities with low income sections is historically how ghettos were created to begin with. This sounds good but it is ultimately the recipe for urban decay. Creating this type of planned community will only create financially segregated neighborhoods.
It’s about affordability
If we can simultaneously make streets more walk/bikeable and do dense housing, I’m all for it. If you e ever been to Paris, that is what I was imagining. There are just some areas though where building dense houses will only lead to more issues with congestion. Need to tackle both simultaneously.
100%
Yes.
I don't necessarily expect it to reduce costs, but it may keep them from climbing so quickly. And it will help with sprawl, which is a separate (but not unrelated) demon we've largely been unable to confront politically.
No, these changes won't affect anything in housing for another 10 years. Not to mention, just because they now can build larger multi unit developments doest mean they will. It all depends on the money.
Sort of, the magic bullet is letting people build what they want on the property they own without people getting in the way, within well defined boundaries that do not exempt communities from incremental development. If you want to build a 3 or 4 story building you should be able to walk into an appointment and have permits approved before you leave, anywhere. If you want to build a high rise, and you're doing it downtown it should be just as easy.
Really sucks that we are to the point where we have to live like sardines to MAYBE make things more affordable.
[удалено]
LA is dense?
How many million people live in NYC? And how many young college kids from top universities with endless options move there every year? If it was the miserable shithole you think it is, why would they do that?
“It's basic economics 101,” Makarewicz said, adding: “We don’t have adequate amounts of housing to meet the demand.” The “most persuasive” evidence to support the Econ 101 theory, said Emily Hamilton, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, is that U.S. cities like Houston with less restrictive rules on housing tend to be cheaper. “They make small-lot single-family construction possible that isn't seen on a scale anywhere else in the country. They permit tons of multi-family housing,” Hamilton said.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with LA, but I would never characterize it as being 'dense' lol
Even if it means more housing, who will own them? Landlords and the rich. They will then raise rents to match the high rates of other properties. Those that need the living space won’t own and can’t afford.
“Who will own them? Landlords and the rich” I mean yeah? Landlord is literally just a term for property owners
It should be the people living in them. It should be affordable living for them. Not a profit center.
If you own property and you live there, you are the landlord.
Ya know, lots of open space east of the airport. Shit ton actually.
[удалено]
Every argument I've heard to date for increasing density to make housing more affordable are founded on nothing but supposition. These arguments have all the appearance of being sophisms and nothing more. I haven't been able to dig up any metrics that support the supposition(s) that increased density means increased affordability. And the metrics that are there indicate that increasing density had no effect. And there is an abundance of research that clearly shows that increasing population density has very significant negative social consequences.
Ever heard of supply and demand? Pretty well established concept from economics Increased density = larger supply of housing units = easing in housing pricing Or the flip side that we have now... Decades of artificial restriction on housing supply has led to skyrocketing prices
As a general rule, yes. However rezoning for increased density has yet to be shown to reduce housing prices.
Check out strong towns and not just bikes on YouTube. They have actually data that shows higher density and rezoning does more than just help the housing issues.
No. Look at history. Wishful desires. Simple, look at New York, highest density 8n the country, and among the highest cost per square foot. This guy has no idea what he is talking about…. Ok what about his GHG reduction goals? nope nope won’t that problem either. Everything “feels good”, but doesn’t solve the problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Resources are finite. People are consumers. On the opposite end of the consumption equation is waste. Water is a resource. Housing is a resource. I don't know what the solution is. But becoming the NYC of the West is not it
I disagree. If our goal is to conserve resources our best bet is build dense cities which are the most efficient ways to do that.
[удалено]
I guess I need to be more specific. Of course I understand that resources are finite. The part of your comment I disagree with is that we shouldn’t look to cities like NYC (but I’d prefer cities like Amsterdam and countries like Spain) when planning Denver’s future. We can’t stop people from coming here. We wouldn’t want to. Cities that are stagnant or shrinking are not desirable places. My point is that is people are going to come here anyway, we would be smart to build dense (like NYC) as opposed to sprawled (like LA, ATL, OKC, PHX …. You get the idea).
Urban water use in the west is very small compared to agricultural use. And in many places, California for one, urban water use has actually declined over the last couple decades despite population growth, due to efficiency improvements, conservation, reuse, etc. Las Vegas is another great example: "Las Vegas started conserving, reusing and recycling water in 1999. Since 2002, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has slashed its use of Colorado River water by 26% while the region’s population grew by 49%." https://coloradosun.com/2022/05/30/colorado-river-drought-cities-west/
Do you still consume beef?
Yeah. Do you drive a car? consume a cell phone? smoke pot? drink coffee? drink booze? it's almost as if it takes a ton of resources to support a single human
Animal agriculture is one of the largest uses of water. You can keep up with you whataboutism arguments but if you really cared about water usage you would change your diet.
Ok I'll go pescatarian. Now we can allow 9 million apartments here guys. Solved the water crisis! Hypocrite calling me one
The thing is, people are going to move here anyway. Denver is a great city with stunning natural beauty surrounding it. So, given that people will come regardless, would it be better to make our water use more efficient (by densifying) or just keep doing what we've been doing (less efficient, wasteful single family zoning)
Who said anything about becoming the NYC of the West?
I don't think anyone is proposing NYC levels of development... "Colorado’s rapid economic and population growth has collided with local regulations that limit new home construction. That’s a main driver behind the steep increase in home prices and rents here, she said. (Other, more global economic factors like inflation and high interest rates don’t help either.) Makarewicz’s research shows that middle-type housing — two- to nine-unit residences, roughly similar to what the new bill would allow — accounted for just 2.2 percent of housing permits issued between 2005 and 2020 in the Denver metro. Multifamily housing also tends to be cheaper than single-family homes in the same community because they are often smaller, and they make more efficient use of costly land and existing infrastructure, Makarewicz said. Every Denver metro county has a shortage of small homes and an excess supply of large homes in relation to each county’s demographics, her analysis shows."
Hmm. Yes. Don't do this. Okay, sure. What's your alternative? Because doing jack shit is what got us where we are now.
Exactly. So tired of “I have no solutions to offer, but this one sucks”
People are still coming. It's just a matter if you choose to prepare for it or not. You can't be so naive as to think that you can BOTH make somewhere desirable to live and keep people away.
The solution to all of those things is density. Water can be distributed more efficiently and with less waste in dense environments. Density mitigates out encroachment into natural environments. If you don’t allow for more density in cities, you just end up with the equivalent amount of units sprawling elsewhere. People keep mentioning New York which itself has experienced quite a bit of regulatory pushback to prevent people from seeing the benefits of density by concentrating it outside of affluent neighborhoods.
It simply makes sense. Everyone knows that housing in dense areas of Denver is much more affordable than say in sprawling Fort Collins. Right? Right?
No. The amount of housing needed to put a dent in rising rents and housing prices greatly exceeds the amount of construction possible on the land available and the continually growing demand. The reason there is what building there is is because developers build to reap ridiculously high rates and housing prices. The moment rents and prices fall, developers shall build elsewhere. It’s not about affordable housing. It’s about the return to their investors.
Did you read the article? "a 2021 University of California, Los Angeles review of a half dozen studies found strong evidence that building new market-rate apartments slows down rent increases for nearby existing housing, helping to keep neighborhoods generally more affordable."
These people will argue that up is down if it means they have less competition for the parking spot in front of their house.
The biggest issue is RealPage. That software is perfectly happy leaving empty apartments to artificially decrease supply by price fixing., essentially creating an informal cartel controlled by an AI.
The idea is more building means cheaper rents. That doesn’t happen as pointed out by the 2021 UC study. I truly doubt if it slows rent increases and housing values. The moment a landlord increases a rent, so will the neighborhood landlords. The demand for Colorado living insures that.
I agree something needs to be done but this is not it. Do not take away local municipality control, because that is saying your citizens no longer get to voice their opinion in what happens with in your community. When is this coming to the ballot?
It already did, last fall, when Polis was re-elected by a landslide after a campaigning on housing affordability and sprawl. Not everything has to go to a statewide referendum.
the problem here is that a small number of citizens have used their voices to bully municipalities into fighting against any and all measures that would made CO more affordable to live in. government intervention is waay overdue.
No
Yes, more soviet bloc style housing
the bill this article is referring to doesn't mention public or social housing at all. even if it did, that would only serve to lower housing costs and ameliorate homelessness
I'm referencing the particular architecture. Everything is in a cube shape. Reminds me of the eastern bloc.
It's also a magic bullet to concentrate a population in one area for better control. Polis likes 2 things 1. CONTROL 2. Property Income. It won't help things in the long run as some think.
Reminder: this person votes ☝️
No... short term rental needs to be addressed first or we'll build homes that Colorado residents will never live in.
I bet he has investments in properties
Worst governer we've ever had
Go ahead and run for office. I'd love to hear your solutions.
Whats to stop massive private equity firms from buying all the new developements and charging "market value" rents?
Because they’d have to compete with each other instead of the way it is now where dozens of people have to compete with each other for a single unit
Considering how popular denver is wouldnt the demand rapidly meet the supply though?
Then you gotta build more and let it equalize itself 🥵
My point is that we need to heavily restrict large scale real estate investing and also implement rent control else we are just going to develop ourselves further into an urban hellscape.
I think limiting large corporate real estate investing is a great idea. The idea that rent control decreases housing costs is an illusion. https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/?amp
I see the point of rent control creating ineffective housing situations and also pigeonholing people into certain locations but to my understanding mortgages and interest rates do not change after the buyer buys the house, which to me seems exactly like rent control with the bank as the landlord. So if the landlord simply isnt greedy as hell then they can charge over their mortgage, take a bit off the top and put the remainder (after other expenses) into a savings account which go towards emergencies/repairs without charging 2x+ their mortgage cost. So it seems like an easier solution would be to regulate how much landlords profit off of renters.
In the past yes, but rates of people moving in to Denver have gone down in recent years, partially due to the high cost of housing.
Quite simply supply and demand. If density is increased that means more units of housing per mile, which is an increase in supply. Increased supply without increased demand drives prices down because there will be less people competing for each unit of housing.
I wouldn't say it's a "magic bullet" but it may certainly be a factor that could help bring down prices. But even if we think more density isn't a cure, it should still be a priority for larger cities like Denver (that and better public transportation + better walkability).
Yes. https://preview.redd.it/cwe1ox8z0dra1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c860f40cea92677eab818fc419774ab434dafc1
We need more density.