NYC having the same housing stock as it did in 2000 despite having more than a million more people, is what killed anything.
Not gentrification which is at best a description of one of the many effects of high housing costs.
Not gentrification which is at best a description of one of the many effects of high housing costs.
Not sure if your comment applies here.
Places like CBGB's held on until the 2000s. Working class people could still affordably live in most places in the city until then as well.
I lived in NYC for a summer in the mid-80s. I never set foot anywhere below about 90th in Manhattan.
source: professional urban planners at the time
But if you solve that you may find that you have an additional five million families far from the area, out of state, even out of country that would also like to live there. At some point you can't satisfy everyone, or the Bay Area wouldn't be the Bay Area anymore and it would more resemble New York West.
nonsense like "oh maybe another five million would want to come here" is not only distracting, but bordering on cruel denial.
But, we have such a supply problem (in popular US metro areas) that prices continue to go up, even when we add capacity.
In my immediate area, there is very little SFH stock being added - it's almost exclusively large THs and rental apartments (but not condos).
The apartments rent for "luxury" prices ($2500-$3500+/month) but are just generic 1-2 bedroom flats without any true luxury features.
The THs are "near-luxury" - better than "builder grade" finishes, but nothing special either. And sell for $800-$1.2 million (for a typical 3-bed, 1-2 garage, 2500sqft floorplan).
This doesn't apply to housing at all, because the landlord would simply price in all positive externalities, such as the free road infrastructure mentioned above. The "free shit" would go straight into the pocket of the landlord, which would stimulate supply and discourage demand. The problem is that these places are constrained by geographics, local politics and the willingness of previous land owners to move out so you can't just build more.
This isn't really true in housing. Housing is not a market commodity, it's not priced primarily via supply or demand. Housing is priced based on comparables, quite literally, what is the most expensive thing that sold recently, and how close do we compare to that.
In this way, building a fancy new condo building will literally raise prices, even if the number of people remain constant, and even if it "increases the number of the units in the area", because now pricing comparables will get to take the new condo's higher pricing into effect, and things like comparables and federal interest rates have a much higher effect on sales price than traditional supply or demand.
To be clear, this is NOT an anti-build argument, we need more housing, the only way to get more is to build it. We just need to be mindful of the real-world consequences of it, new luxury condo construction creates a form of financial "pollution" into that area, and all nearby housing stock will absorb that pollution in higher prices.
This is something anyone who cares about affordable housing needs to understand, and plan for.
Because otherwise prices could never decline (because comparable could never decline) - but we know that price drops do occur.
The biggest issue is that when prices are increasing year over year, it can be hard to tease out that "prices would have been X% higher instead of only Y% if Z, G, and B hadn't happened".
Or another way to put it - if you overbuild; prices will drop, because nobody will buy/rent a crappier house/unit right next to a nicer one when both are on the market for the same price - the crappier one has to drop price until competitive, or sit empty. And sure, some people will allow it to sit empty for some time, but eventually carrying costs eat it alive.
If you're going to make a claim this strong, you really should provide a better supporting argument.
> new luxury condo construction creates a form of financial "pollution"
One thing about "luxury" is it's another word for "exclusive." That is relevant because if you flooded an area with "luxury" housing, then the features that define "luxury" would have to change.
One can easily see this has happened as buildings that were "luxury" in the 1960s are (unless they have undergone wholesale renovation) no longer considered "luxury." (Two of my favorite luxury amenities are indoor plumbing and A/C.)
One can also observe this across American cities. Some "luxury" apartments in NYC are not very expensive in other cities, because the supply & demand are not as out of balance.