{"id":348,"date":"2014-07-28T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/affordable-housing-by-zoning-reform-detroit-as-a-test-case.html"},"modified":"2014-07-28T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T21:43:00","slug":"affordable-housing-by-zoning-reform-detroit-as-a-test-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/affordable-housing-by-zoning-reform-detroit-as-a-test-case.html","title":{"rendered":"Affordable Housing by Zoning Reform: Detroit as a test case?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

[Originally written 7\/26\/14]<\/p>\n

Reiham Salam, who writes at Slate.com and Bloomberg and National Review and, well, all over the place, has multiple times proposed that the fix for affordable housing is zoning reform \u2014 and, as far as it goes, he is correct that, due to simple supply and demand, when there\u2019s a greater demand for housing than supply, prices go up. \u00a0In places like the Bay Area, I imagine that this is a huge issue. \u00a0Certainly, no city should gripe about affordable housing that hasn\u2019t first reformed its laws to enable housing construction with as great a density as the market demands, and no non-profit should whine about the need for more government intervention without first promoting attention to this issue.<\/p>\n

But there are some parts of the country where the price of land is not an issue \u2014 and the most significant of these is Detroit. \u00a0Consider that even in a major historic district, you can buy a house for less than $5,000<\/a>\u00a0(no, not the one pictured in the link), and here\u2019s a table I created<\/a> analyzing the listings on realtor.com \u2014 as of last July, fully two-thirds of the real estate listings had asking prices of less than $25,000. \u00a0Go over there, or to any such real estate site, and sort by price \u2014 a city lot starts at $1, plus the cost of clearing the demolished or ruined home.<\/p>\n

So my plan \u2014 for later this weekend \u2014 is to look at actual costs of renting a home in Detroit, which ought to be a sort of baseline for all the other costs besides land. \u00a0In a way, Detroit is the nearest we have to homesteading in 2014, though with the need to provide ones own police protection.<\/p>\n

Thoughts? <\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/p>\n

So I thought I\u2019d research this by going to Craig\u2019s List. \u00a0Here\u2019s what\u2019s on offer:<\/p>\n

3 br brick cape cod, far east side, $550.
2 bed house on east side, $600.
3 br, $625
3 br brick bungalow, far east side, $700
3 br brick bungalow, east side at 6 mile road, $800.
4 bed brick bungalow, west side, 7 Mile Road (that is, near the city limits), $850 (or $29,999 for sale)<\/p>\n

These properties all look in decent condition, that is, no boarded-up windows, and, though it\u2019s not possible to tell what the overall neighborhood is like, they\u2019re generally on the edges of the city, where, relatively speaking, the decay isn\u2019t as bad. \u00a0If you\u2019re not familiar with Detroit, I didn\u2019t just pull the houses and exclude apartments, but generally what was advertised on Craig\u2019s List was<\/i>\u00a0houses, and most housing in Detroit is in the form of single-family homes because of the way the city developed historically.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m thinking that this is sort of a baseline: \u00a0with minimal lot costs (because these houses are in the \u201d better neighborhoods\u201d), a home in \u201cstandard\u201d (as opposed to \u201csubstandard\u201d) condition would be somewhere around $600 \u2013 $700.<\/p>\n

What does that get you in Chicago? \u00a0A room in an SRO, for one ($145 weekly rate).<\/p>\n

Well, actually, that was the first listing I came across. \u00a0$500 seems to be the starting price for apartments on the South Side, generally studios. <\/p>\n

Then I went over to realtor.com \u2014 surprisingly, there are quite a lot of apartments listed there, so never mind my first comment about prevalence of houses vs. apartments (though many of these seem to be two-flats). \u00a0They generally seem to start at about $400 for one-bedrooms.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s my conclusion? \u00a0Mostly that this isn\u2019t a straightforward project. \u00a0The homes on craigslist in Detroit all seemed to be in good condition; the ones in Chicago I couldn\u2019t as easily assess. \u00a0Is this a true baseline? \u2014 $400 for an apartment, $650 for a house? \u00a0Or do the crappier places get rented by word of mouth, and not even make their way onto Craigslist at all?<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s all I have for you, for now, except that I have a few more general thoughts that I\u2019ll drop into a different post.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Originally written 7\/26\/14] Reiham Salam, who writes at Slate.com and Bloomberg and National Review and, well, all over the place, has multiple times proposed that the fix for affordable housing is zoning reform \u2014 and, as far as it goes, he is correct that, due to simple supply and demand, when there\u2019s a greater demand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAffordable Housing by Zoning Reform: Detroit as a test case?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Reiham Salam, who writes at Slate.com and Bloomberg and National Review and, well, all over the place, has multiple times proposed that the fix for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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