Fred Wilson published a good post last weekend on the proposed bill that went to New York City Council this week regarding new reporting requirements for Airbnb and their hosts in NYC. You can read more about his position on his blog, but he is in favor of a comprehensive bill that would properly legitimize short-term rentals. He is also not opposed to city and state taxes on the service.
What I wanted to focus on today were his comments around housing. This is already sounding like a broken record, but Fred draws attention to the severe supply-demand imbalance that is occurring in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, precisely because many/most young people were priced out of Manhattan long ago and want to live in these places.
But I particularly like his comments around what makes for good policy and what makes for good politics. I agree with his view that it is often a case of the latter over the former. I think a lot of the excitement around Airbnb is a red herring. For me, it’s akin to the fixation on foreign buyers and their impact on the local housing market in places like Toronto and Vancouver.
Yes, they are factors. But the data suggests they are marginal ones. As Fred points out, they are almost certainly not the root cause of the problem. The reality is that we need a lot more housing – both market-rate housing and subsidized housing. The challenge is that nobody wants to pay for the latter and so we’ve instead decided to focus on things that sound like they’re going to help.
It happened.
Today, Toronto and East York Community Council voted unanimously in favor of adopting a planning framework that would allow laneway suites on lands within the Toronto and East York District that are designated as “Neighbourhoods.”
If you’d like to see the actual vote (and the clapping that ensued), check out this YouTube video at the 41 minute mark. There are also some great speeches prior to the vote by Councillor Bailão, Councillor Perks, and others.
Now, it still needs to go through City Council, but today remains an important milestone and a positive step forward. So kudos to everyone who has been working tirelessly to push this initiative forward.
I would also like to take this opportunity to address some of the comments that I recently received about this blog, one of which is that I continue to offer a one-sided perspective on this issue of laneway housing in Toronto.
Think of this blog – and I’m stealing this analogy from another blogger – as a bar. I am the bartender and I show up here pretty much every day. I’ve been doing that consistently for almost 5 years now.
At this bar I sip on negronis – okay, it’s probably beer – and I talk about topics and issues that excite me and that are usually related to city building. If it doesn’t excite me, I don’t talk/write about it. And I get lots of emails every day asking me to write about things that do not excite me.
If you would like to take a seat at the bar, have a drink, and join the conversation, you are more than welcome to do that in the comment section at the bottom of every post. In fact, it’s encouraged. I make a mean vodka soda.
So maybe I’ll see you at the bar. The bartender is a fairly open-minded guy who enjoys good conversation.
The Seattle Times has an article up about “widespread single-family zoning” that will feel familiar to many here in Toronto who, I know, are having similar conversations about the amount of land dedicated to low-density housing.
The article, by Mike Rosenberg, estimates that 49% of all developable land in Seattle is dedicated to single-family housing; that 8% is dedicated to multi-family housing; and that another 8% is dedicated to commercial and mixed-use buildings. The rest of the land is institutional, open space, vacant, and so on.
Of all the residential lots in the city, the estimate is that 69% of them are occupied by single-family houses. This is compared to 1% in Manhattan.
I tried to reverse engineer the 69% based on the land use areas in the article, but the math didn’t quite add up. In any event, the argument here is, of course, that single-family homes are too expensive in Seattle and that the city needs more land available for multi-family housing.
Housing supply is no doubt important, but looking at the above chart, having a low, or lower, percentage of residential land dedicated to single-family housing doesn’t seem to necessarily guarantee affordable housing.