They are absolutely a bandaid for the politics of homeowners and their rule of housing supply.
Homeowners can see themselves benefitting from ADUs, so they support them. Apartments, townhomes, etc. only weaken their market power, make homeowners think about traffic, etc.
The politics of housing is completely broken because the incentives are broken, and so is the political discourse, which is dominated by creationist-level magical thinking that vacancies, or foreign buyers, or AirBNB, or "financialization" or literally anything could be the cause of the problem rather than a shortage of housing stock.
These are political favors to local interest groups. It actively hurts the ability to find housing for everyone not blessed by the powers that be.
Dense housing is affordable housing. When there's an empty apartment that you're moving into, where do you think the old resident moved to? There's only a few options - a new place got built that they moved into, the old resident died, the old resident moved out of the housing area, or the recursive option that cashes out into one of the previous ones. If you stop building units ("affordable housing" mandates) or arbitrarily keep low-income residents from making housing bids (rent-control), the only bids for housing are going to be from tech workers and market-rate housing gets ridiculous.
Fundamentally, the problem is that there's X people who want to live in the area, and only Y housing units. The price is going to go up until the market clears. Handing out political favors so that the people who vote for you don't feel this reality isn't solving the problem: only building more housing will.
Blaming this on politicians takes voters off the hook too much. There are plenty of homeowners, and ironically, pro-rental groups, strongly advocating for policies that limit supply of new housing.
Yes, especially in local elections, where participation is often ridiculously low, the electorate skews heavily toward long time, older residents, and more on the homeowner than the renter front. So the incentives are clear against new developments.
Edit: Thanks for supporting housing even against your financial interests. I’m on the same boat (across the bay). In my case I just want to live somewhere walkable without breaking the bank.
It has always been but people who vote (homeowners) have a vested interest to shape the narrative to be a demand-side problem.
The only loss when building more dense housing in urban areas is the existing owners whose views are blocked. Otherwise it seems to generally increase the tax base, support more businesses (when mixed-use housing is built), and increase renter mobility.
My guess is that voters who actually care about city level politics or influential people in the city are already home owners. For home owners, building more housing means a decrease in their home value so they have no incentive to push more housing.
The idea is that the politically active homeowners follow their self interest when they support policy which discourages new housing construction, driving scarcity in the housing market to raise prices.
The view that a home is an investment is poisonous to the housing supply. It makes people of all political affiliations into raging NIMBYs. Why would they want to change anything or allow any new construction in their area if it might negatively affect their housing price?
It is a problem; people tend to vote in their own best interests (except in Presidential elections - Zing!), and that generally means voting against new housing nearby.
People do want to live in them. It is the people who control what gets built that don't. Consider a neighborhood with a great school. You don't think families would jump at the chance to live in a new apartment in that town? The town planners, however, will fear apartments will bring in people that might lower the quality of the school, bring town test scores, etc. The only apartments allowed will be retirement communities.
More units, even luxury units, are good for everyone, even lower income people. The people trying to advocate for lower-income people by blocking housing are making it worse for the very people they're trying to help!
I'm not sure it's even necessary to blame politicians with influence.
Over the last few decades, we made home ownership a goal for the vast majority of the US populace. Now we expect those homeowners to vote against their own self-interest (to approve additional housing units/zoning).
Perhaps. It's not hard to imagine that having additional competitors to local real estate with the result of driving up prices is not in the interest of the locals, who need places to live.
That one group has less stake and can be discouraged through legislation while another has some constitutional-like protections is not a compelling problem compared to the one in the paragraph above.
They're actually operating in a way that is very profitable to them. If you own property- a house or business real estate- you want a moratorium on new supply. Because not giving new supply will cause the value of your current property to go up. Of course its an "anti-affordable housing" position... but it's not insane.
The anti-development types are taking a very profitable position for themselves.
It's property/land-owners who fight new construction - they're protecting the value of their investment. People in rent controlled apartments have no dog in that fight.
Some believe it's nice attempt to scapegoat the poor and vulnerable for the sins of the rich though.
"But there's also the side of people wanting single family homes instead of apartment'
Most people who can't afford a home would not reject a decent apartment, they just want somewhere to live.
Also those are not the only two choices, there are duplex and triplex homes, illegal in most of us, and other variations
"Nothing wrong with people in a community wanting to set standards for their area."
So in this "democracy" people who don't own a house have no voice and no right? Why does this remind me of some other mechanism for opressing undesirables?
Homeowners can see themselves benefitting from ADUs, so they support them. Apartments, townhomes, etc. only weaken their market power, make homeowners think about traffic, etc.
The politics of housing is completely broken because the incentives are broken, and so is the political discourse, which is dominated by creationist-level magical thinking that vacancies, or foreign buyers, or AirBNB, or "financialization" or literally anything could be the cause of the problem rather than a shortage of housing stock.
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