Isolated and overpriced,
Gated communities I do despise,
Feeling strange in such a place,
Where neighbors are hidden from your face.

These fortresses of the elite,
Offer security and retreat,
But at what cost to our society,
When division is their priority?

Give me a street with life and soul,
Where people come and go,
Where community is not just a word,
But a feeling that is truly heard.

So goodbye to the gated way,
I choose a different path today,
One where diversity can thrive,
And human connections come alive.

–Poem courtesy of ChatGPT

Dear gamerdudenyc,

I want to take a moment to offer you a sincere apology for the lackluster response to your recent question on Reddit. I'm so sorry that our highly-trained team of experts wasn't able to provide you with the answer you were looking for.

I mean, we're really sorry that we didn't just tell you to "Google it." That would have been a much more efficient use of everyone's time. But we're just trying to be helpful here, you know? It's not like we have anything better to do than spoon-feed you information that you could easily find yourself.

So, once again, we apologize for the inconvenience of not providing you with the exact answer you wanted. We'll try to do better next time and not waste your time with our inferior knowledge and expertise.

Sincerely,

ChatGPT (I gotta start using this thing to write more comments for me)

Like 75 Park Lane and The Beach? They don't have tax abatements as far as I can tell.

I don't think any of the new buildings in the "soho west" area do either. The first Cast Iron Lofts building did get a 5 year abatement, but that was done 6+ years ago before the city stopped giving out new abatements downtown.

You can see a list of abated properties and PILOT payments vs. what taxes would have been in the city's budget. Click the latest "user friendly" budget on the page here and go to page 7. They don't list the address for every property though, which is annoying.

I know you asked for JC, but the Hoboken Historical Museum is close and has lots of cool NJ oriented postcards in their gift shop.

What I’m trying to say is that the investment isn’t worth it if towns adjacent to transit don’t increase density further.

Westfield is relatively dense as far as suburbs go. But what’s the point of spending money to improve transit there if they don’t allow a meaningful amount of new housing to be built? Otherwise, the investment only benefits a limited number of people.

@marketurbanism writes a lot about this on Twitter.

The short answer is that zoning and building codes in the US make it especially uneconomical to build small apartment buildings the way they are built in most other parts of the developed world.

One big thing is that it’s practically impossible to build an apartment building with just a single staircase if it has more than 2 or 3 units. Our egress requirements create lots of wasted space, which raises costs. Keep in mind that despite onerous safety requirements like these in US building codes, our buildings are statistically less safe than those in western Europe where most of these restrictions don’t exist at all.

Here’s an interesting article to read on that issue.

It is discouraging, but when you pay attention to these threads you’ll notice that it’s usually the same handful of people continually spouting BS no matter how many times their false claims are debunked.

These people employ the same cheap rhetorical tricks as Trump supporters. And it works because they are appealing to people’s emotions. And it is much harder to debunk lies than it is to make fact-free statements that are meant to rile people up.

Nope.

Rent control is nearly universally reviled by economists across the political spectrum. Practically every place that has enacted strict rent control measures also has long waiting lists for housing because price controls exacerbate shortages.

The eminent domain idea doesn’t work because the US constitution (see the 5th and 14th amendments) requires state and local governments to pay just compensation to the owner of the land that is taken. That money has to come from somewhere. Good luck getting people to shoulder another huge property tax increase to pay for that. That would be political suicide for any politician who proposes such a plan.

Better transit doesn’t matter if the zoning doesn’t change.

Many NJ suburbs still have huge minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, and other limitations on density that that make it so that the only things that get built are McMansions and expensive townhouses.

Which under construction buildings downtown have tax abatements? The city stopped issuing new abatements downtown years ago.

Also, an abatement doesn’t mean that zero money is paid to the city. Abated properties make a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) to the city.

A few years ago, it was estimated that 40% of the buildings that exist in Manhattan would be illegal to build under current zoning rules.

That is the kind of market distortion that contributes most significantly to the housing crunch.

The biggest opponents of zoning reform in NJ & NY are left-wing activists, not developers and Wall Street.

> Mortgage interest is deductible and also how would they get fucked by interest in the first place?

Just because mortgage interest is deductible doesn’t mean it it’s a cost that doesn’t matter. There are plenty of limitations on the deduction and it’s not a dollar for dollar reduction in tax liability.

Also, multi-family properties aren’t always financed with fixed rate debt. Those with floating rate debt are already feeling the pinch. And some fixed rate debt has a term as short as 5 or 10 years, which means that a decent percentage of borrowers will be forced to refinance every year at dramatically higher rates than their previous financing.

Some will be forced to default. Projects that penciled out with near zero interest rates could easily be underwater in a higher rate environment.

Exactly. People don’t seem to realize that the majority of housing is still owned by individuals.

No one is expecting mom and pop to sell their houses at a discount for the greater good.

This is a great reminder that capitalism is not the same thing as a free-market system.

We live in a capitalist country, but hardly any part of our economy operates in a free market. The housing market in particular is heavily distorted by regulation, for better or worse.

We are in a problem of our own making. High housing prices are a symptom of poor policymaking.

Which construction site?

You just described suburbanization.

That would be pointless. The vast majority of housing is owned by individuals. And 70% of rental properties are owned by people who own just one or two properties. Source.

The underlying problem is that there is simply not enough housing in the places where people want to live. When demand outpaces supply, prices go up. It’s really simple stuff.

Paterson is not affordable relative to local incomes. Median household income in Paterson is only $48k, which is less than it is in Houston.

Open up Zillow and you will find very few habitable homes on the market in Paterson for under $300k.

Your $200/month (wtf?) apartment was definitely more of an exception than a rule. Marketwide, rents there haven’t gone up anywhere close to 10x since 2006.

Prices have been going up in Houston, but not nearly as much as they have been in the NYC metro area.

A solidly middle class family earning <$100k in Houston can still afford to own or rent a decent home in a decent neighborhood. Good luck doing that in most other coastal cities where NIMBYs rule the roost.

Lol.

No developer is making a decision to a build a multi-million dollar building based on a cheesy ad campaign.

Well gee, I wonder why housing is significantly more affordable relative to local incomes in places like Houston and other Sunbelt cities, where large corporate landlords are basically allowed to build whatever they want with relatively minimal interference.

It’s almost as if there is some other economic factor at play here. Certainly Texas landlords aren’t less greedy than landlords are here.

It’s coming from the perfume/fragrance factory that’s right next to the bridge. The address is 150 Firmenich Way in Newark.

https://www.firmenich.com/

You’re going to have to compromise on something.

There’s a reason units in 77 Hudson sell for so much. You’re not going to magically find a similar building in the same neighborhood that’s noticeably cheaper.

Is this place a swinger club or something? What are the people like? The decor looks so strange.

This was actually in the works before he was mayor. But maybe he had something to do with it while he was on the city council.

This parcel was zoned for open green space back in 2010. It’s just taken a long time for Hudson County to work out plans to build the new courthouse and demolish the existing building to make way for the park.

There’s a detailed timeline of events here.