[fbernier]

> You build as much new housing as you can afford to, and let older housing filter down to "affordable" levels.

In many larger cities, older housing occupy prime location where the value of the land is twice the value of a new building you could build on it, so all these would never filter down to affordable levels.

[slg]

>all these would never filter down to affordable levels.

Another factor contributing to the same thing is that cities aren't closed systems. Building new units at the top of the market doesn't mean that everyone in the city will move up one rung in quality leaving the cheapest unit now vacant. Many cities will have a latent demand for housing that is being suppressed by high prices. When that exists, someone from outside the city will move to the city to occupy the new construction or the newly vacated units at the top of the market. All that latent demand needs to be satisfied before the benefit of the new construction will trickle down to the bottom of the market.

[yellowapple]

Then it's time to break out the one-two punch that would specifically address the land being disproportionately valuable: a land value tax + a citizens' dividend (a.k.a. universal basic income). If anyone's to benefit from that land being valuable, it should be the citizenry as a whole, not some cartel of landlords who lucked into it.

[seanmcdirmid]

Could that really work at a local level where people can freely move cities? Local UBI seems hard to implement in a non city state.

But if we are talking city states, why not take the Singaporean approach? Just have the government build apartments and subsidize sale to citizens? Everyone gets a flat eventually.

[tbihl]

Land being more expensive than the improvements atop it is a great milestone that your restrictive zoning is truly out of control, and that your area has probably bumped up against serious geographic constraints.

Which is to say, what you've described is a signal to demolish and build higher intensity, while the filtering happens elsewhere.

[seanmcdirmid]

No, at some point you tear down the old structure and build a new expensive one. Or in the Japanese extreme, you tear down and rebuild the house whenever it changes hands (since no one wants to live in a second hand house).

[asdff]

Can you describe an example? Generally in my high cost of living area I observe this trend pretty clearly. Pricier apartments are typically newer or nicer, cheap ones are usually at least 50 years old and unrenovated and scarcely maintained beyond what the letter of the law outlines, and these units could have identical square footage measurements, be $400 apart on monthly rent, and exist across the street from each other.

[fbernier]

you're describing apartments or condos and I was referring to the whole building. In Montreal, the central neighborhoods are mostly made of duplex/triplex/fourplex where one unit is often occupied by the owner and the two others are rental units.

For rental apartments, the most expensive ones are both renovated and in a prime location which is often still a centennial building. Brand new buildings are most of the time outside of these locations.