Our neighborhood dodged a bullet. At least that’s the spin the local weekly paper covering our tony D.C. community put on the news that a former museum would become a single-family residence rather than be converted into apartments. This despite the fact that the building boasts 27,000 square feet, easily enough space to create condos for fifteen families (or more—the typical family in this neighborhood lives in a condo with less than 1000 square feet). It sold for more than $20 million.
Those in attendance at the monthly Area Neighborhood Council meeting, where the deal was announced, greeted the news with cheers. “Bravo, thank you!” said one neighbor, while another averred that this was a far better outcome than he could have hoped.
And so, in one fell swoop, there are fifteen less housing units in our neighborhood, and our liberal enclave celebrates the outcome.
When it comes to the problem of affordable housing in Washington, D.C. it may seem silly to point to this as an example of the problem we face: After all, it was inconceivable that, had this building been converted into apartments, they would have been affordable for working class families. But it’s a manifestation of a problem that’s endemic to this part of D.C.: The forces that be are foursquare aligned against the construction of new housing.
Part of the neighborhood opposition to new neighbors (at least those who aren’t billionaires) has to do with people wanting to preserve property values, of course, and another reason is that people would rather keep out the hoi polloi and the trouble they might create. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (the rumored buyer) may throw a party or two at his new estate but we can be sure that he won’t rent it out on Airbnb to some rowdy I-bankers visiting for a weekend.
People here also fiercely fight new housing developments because of the scarcity of on-street parking. The city allows residents to park their cars for next to nothing, creating extreme excess demand for parking so severe that the majority of traffic on the neighborhood streets on many evenings consists of people trolling for a parking space. Everyone with a car who doesn’t possess a private parking spot reflexively opposes more competition for parking spaces.
Every new development in this neighborhood entails a protracted fight with the citizenry, who want every proposed building blocked, or made smaller, or delayed, or to come with more parking. The legal roadblocks put up by the gaggle of citizen activists reduces the amount of housing built and increases the cost of construction. While taking a visitor on a tour of my neighborhood the other day I pointed out an easy way to identify the buildings built recently: They are the ones noticeably shorter than their neighboring buildings.
There is a housing shortage in Washington, D.C., as well as in most other major cities on the east and west coasts. That much of it owes to the actions of liberals acting in their own narrow self-interest is beyond maddening.
One way to combat these forces would be to reduce the regulatory burden to building: Two developer friends of mine—one who builds apartment buildings in big cities and another who builds houses in rural Illinois—estimate that federal regulations have boosted construction costs by 30 percent in the last decade.
In major cities, meanwhile, we might remove one barrier to development by pushing municipalities to rethink their policy of giving street parking away for free and charge a market price to use it, which would nudge some people to get rid of their cars, others to purchase off-street parking. At least, it would force people to make a rational decision about automobiles that reflected the true cost of owning one in a major city with (occasionally) efficient mass transit.
The irony in the nation’s capital is that the left raises housing costs with one hand while making others subsidize low-income workers with the other. Washington will soon have a $15 an hour minimum wage as well as paid family medical leave, funded by a payroll tax on all employers in the District. That both of these will destroy jobs and not come close to making up for the higher housing costs in the District is a point lost on my neighbors.
Jeff Bezos buying the former museum isn’t a problem in itself—if a developer concluded that’s the way to make the most money from this building that’s fine. However, a confluence of forces in this city are aligned to reduce the supply of housing, and this imposes a great cost to the poor and middle class who would like to live in a vibrant neighborhood that’s close to lots of jobs. While the liberal nomenklatura that run this neighborhood may be fine with that outcome, it’s the job of the rest of us to call BS on this farce, and fight for more sensible housing policies in D.C. and the rest of America as well.
Ike Brannon is a senior fellow at Cato and president of Capital Policy Analytics.
