Tag Archives: free market

Who should be able to live on or near the coast?

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A new federal government flood insurance plan highlights an ongoing question: should living near the ocean coast be available to many?

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At the center of the fight are the questions of who gets to live by the water, and who should shoulder the burden of costs that rise with the sea level. The estimated 13 million people who reside in the officially designated floodplain are divided between those who can buy pricey waterfront homes and those consigned to live in less desirable, low-lying areas because that’s all they can afford. Some of the people hardest-hit by major recent storms have been vulnerable communities in New Orleans; Port Arthur, Texas, outside Houston; and poor neighborhoods in the farthest reaches of New York City. The updated flood-insurance system is designed to help those populations, but in coastal communities across the country, uncertainty about the new prices is spreading fear that however well intentioned, the administration’s policy will exacerbate the inequality of beachfront living, pushing out homeowners most sensitive to climbing insurance rates.

Real estate is famously about location, location, location with recent examples – COVID-19 migration and opportunities in the metaverse – illustrating this maxim. The coast may be one of the most desirable locations as there is only so much of it and people like the views and access to the water and beaches. Even though not all coastal properties are really expensive, such land near big cities and destinations can be very pricey with high demand.

Even as the insurance program is updated, perhaps the real long term question is just how many people should be able to live on the coast at all given climate change, environmental concerns including erosion and habitat degradation, and an interest in keeping shoreline available for public use. Is there any chance more coastline in popular areas is protected fifty or one hundred years from now or are the market pressures just too strong?

Where is the construction of cheaper homes in the United States?

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One recent analysis suggests a major contributor to the lack of homes for sale is limited construction of new homes:

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Earlier this year, Realtor.com estimated the gap between the number of homes needed and the number of homes available at 5.24 million. That estimate in June represented an increase of 1.4 million above the estimated 3.84 million gap in 2019, primarily because residential construction hasn’t kept up with household formations.

From January 2012 to June 2021, 12.3 million new American households were formed, but just 7 million new single-family houses were built, according to Realtor.com.

The housing shortage is particularly acute in the more-affordable range. Newly built houses with a median sales price of $300,000 represented just 32 percent of builder sales in the first half of 2021, compared with 43 percent during the first half of 2018, according to Realtor.com. To close the gap between demand and supply, builders would need to double their pace of construction for five or six years, Realtor.com economists estimate.

I have been trying to keep track of this for several years now: where are the new cheaper homes? If home builders are interested in selling homes, why not also create products for this part of the market?

There could be lots of reasons for this present state. But, this is not just a problem of 2021; this has been going on for at least a few years. Who can or will act to address this? Is this a pressing social concern that requires attention or just something to note every so often?

Imagine a time in the near future after this trend of the last ten years or so has truly piled up. How will younger adults pursue homeownership, a goal many Americans still say is desirable? Will a lower end of the housing market simply disappear to be overshadowed by more expensive, larger homes that truly generate profits?

If this continues, I would not be surprised to see more calls for housing interventions beyond the market.

Starting work on a 105 mile long linear city in Saudi Arabia

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The proposed linear city of Neom is underway:

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Saudi Arabia has started moving earth and tunneling through mountains to build a futuristic linear city that officials hope will host its first residents in 2024, the project’s chief executive said.

Employees are still developing regional master plans and a “founding law” for the mega-project called Neom, Nadhmi Al-Nasr said in an interview in Riyadh. But they’ve already started early infrastructure work on its main feature – a 170-kilometre (105-mile) long car-free city called “The Line” that could begin welcoming inhabitants and tourists as early as the first quarter of 2024, he said…

His plans to turn the remote region on the kingdom’s northwest Red Sea coast into a futuristic tech hub encapsulates the major elements of his so-called ‘Vision 2030’ to diversify away from crude, loosen social restrictions and boost investment…

One of the next steps could be the approval of the special regulations that will govern Neom as a “free zone”, with different laws than the rest of Saudi Arabia, Al-Nasr said. That could be completed around the first quarter of next year, he said.

Two features of this possible city are not a surprise. The emphasis on tech is a feature of many city plans, whether for whole new cities or for existing places. Everyone sees opportunity, money, and status in tech. Similarly, the idea of a “free zone” is common as it opens possibilities for business and international culture. Theoretically, a country could reap the benefits of such a location while also overseeing a uniquely setting with fewer regulations.

What may be most unique here is the concept of a linear car-free city. The world’s largest cities today are huge sprawling areas. But, starting with no cars and having a linear city rather than one expanding out from some center sound different. How exactly such a large expanse could be connected to itself so hat it feels like the same community remains to be seen.

Such construction will be a lengthy process, even in a country with lots of resources. And then there is a process of developing a community which adds time. At some point, Neom might join other free zone cities as new kinds of global places.

Private city for business opens in Honduras

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A Honduras city primed for business will soon open for remote operators:

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Próspera is the first project to gain approval from Honduras to start a privately governed charter city, under a national program started in 2013. It has its own constitution of sorts and a 3,500-page legal code with frameworks for political representation and the resolution of legal disputes, as well as minimum wage (higher than Honduras’s) and income taxes (lower in most cases). After nearly half a decade of development, the settlement will announce next week that it will begin considering applications from potential residents this summer.

The first colonists will be e-residents. Próspera doesn’t yet have housing ready to be occupied. But even after the site is built out, most constituents will never set foot on local soil, says Erick Brimen, its main proprietor. Instead, Brimen expects about two-thirds of Prósperans to sign up for residency in order to incorporate businesses there or take jobs with local employers while living elsewhere…

The idea behind charter cities, along with their predecessor seasteading, which sought to create independent nations floating in the ocean, is to compete for citizens through innovative, business-friendly governing systems. For some reason, the idea has long been linked to Honduras, an impoverished country whose governing system is classified as “partly free” by the human rights organization Freedom House. Paul Romer, an American economist who pioneered the idea of charter cities, tried to start one in the country a decade ago. It failed, but Honduras has spent much of the time since then writing a law to enable such cities, which are known in the country as Zedes, short for zonas de empleo y dessarollo económicos (employment and economic development zones).

But the prospect of creating pockets of prosperity that play by their own rules is controversial for obvious reasons. Próspera has drawn protests from local residents who see a lack of transparency and little to gain from its existence, and a group of local political leaders signed a letter of opposition in October. This month, an arm of the Technical University of Munich said it’s reevaluating its relationship with Próspera and that it generally withdraws from projects if there are indications of human rights violations. Representatives for TUM didn’t respond to requests to elaborate. A spokeswoman for Próspera says it has had a “great working relationship with TUM over the years.” 

Although this city has been in the works for years, it seems appropriate that is will open for remote businesses in the COVID-19 era. Even without a physical presence in the city, corporations will be able to incorporate there and enjoy the benefits.

Down the road, it is interesting to imagine what a thriving or beleagured charter city could be like. For some reason, I am thinking of some of the more colorful communities from Star Wars where all sorts of characters come together to conduct their activities. How many people would come to live and work versus how many will access the city’s benefits from afar? What kinds of alterations to the regulations might be necessary? How many free market cities might this inspire elsewhere?

Housing appraisals reflect existing racial inequalities in housing

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A new published sociology study connects housing appraisals and race:

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For decades, research has shown that houses in predominantly Black neighborhoods have been generally appraised at lower values than houses in majority-white neighborhoods. This is true even when comparing housing stocks that have the same characteristics (age, square footage, number of rooms, etc.) and neighborhoods of equal socioeconomic status.

The new study finds that the racial composition of a neighborhood was an even “stronger determinant” of a home’s appraised value in 2015 than it was in 1980, to Black homeowners’ increasing disadvantage. Analyzing reported home values, Howell and Korver-Glenn found that the race appraisal gap has doubled since 1980: The difference in average home appraisals between neighborhoods that are majority-white and those that are predominantly Black and Latina was $164,000 in 2015, up from about $86,000 in 1980.

Rather than explaining the racial inequity as a vestige of historic segregation, the study finds more culpability in a method used to calculate appraisals today, the “sales comparison approach,” which determines a home’s appraised value by looking at the prices of other similar homes that were recently sold from the same neighborhood. The real estate industry sees this as a race-neutral way of appraising homes so that it doesn’t run afoul of fair housing laws, and it is one of the key criteria used for determining property values. But what makes this method problematic, according to the study, is that it basically grandfathers in racist home pricing that existed before fair housing legislation.

In other words, if an appraiser is calculating  the value of a home in a Black neighborhood by comparing it to houses recently sold around it, then chances are she is comparing it to other Black-owned houses that, because of the legacy of segregation, have handicapped values in the market compared to similar homes in white communities appraised at higher prices. The unfairly valued prices of homes in Black neighborhoods before the 1970s thus serves as the baseline for how homes are appraised and priced today. While the Fair Housing Act and Community Reinvestment Act forbade practices like redlining and denying mortgage loans based on race, they did nothing to readjust housing prices in segregated neighborhoods after they were passed.

In other words, past decisions and actions valued homes in white neighborhoods more than homes in black neighborhoods because of racism. Today, appraisals that typically compare homes in like neighborhoods perpetuate those different homes values. The system carries on these inequities even if no appraiser is intentionally racist; the way things are done continues the patterns set decades before.

There is another question here as well: what exactly are appraisals and housing values based on if they contingent on factors like race and not just on the characteristics of the home? Is there inherent value in a particular configuration of home traits – say a three bedroom, two bedroom home with a two car garage – or is the value completely dependent on what society says it is? I know the market is involved and the head of an international appraisal association is quoted later in the article cited above talking about supply and demand. But, if supply and demand says some homes are worth more because of the people who own them and the people in the neighborhood, this does not exactly sound like a desirable “free market.”

Argument: “the real civic religion of America, business at all costs”

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Which values should guide decisions in a time of crisis? Here is one argument regarding how decisions are made in the United States:

These approaches are the horns of America’s corona-dilemma. Every society has reacted to COVID-19 according to its principles or, if no principles were to hand, its habits. It has been America’s misfortune that its principles and habits are ill-suited to managing an epidemic. The federal system, by functioning as it should, prevented the kind of nationwide shutdown that worked in smaller countries like Austria. The real civic religion of America, business at all costs, can accept the redirection of the economy by the Defense Production Act, but it cannot tolerate the suspension of all economic activity. Yet a powerful counter-impulse — averse to risk, trusting of authority, and hence likely to seek out niches in the economy which are immune to booms and busts — prefers to shelter in place.

It is hard to make sweeping claims about cultural values in the midst of significant social change. At the same time, understanding “patterns of meaning-making” (the definition of culture from sociologist Lyn Spillman) is invaluable for analyzing why certain actors respond as they do in such times.

This reminds me of two sociological works that get at the same issue:

1. Emerson and Smiley’s 2018 book Market Cities, People Cities examined cities around the United States and the world to see if they put markets or people first. On the whole, American cities privilege markets with their policies and rhetoric. In American communities, growth – usually measured as economic growth and/or population increases, is always good. (See an earlier post on this book here.)

2. Dobbin’s 1994 book Forging Industrial Policy suggests in the early decades of the railroad the United States pursued a public-private policy regarding develpoment compared to the laissez-faire approach of Britain and the top-down, centralized approach of France. Yet, in the last few decades, a growing chorus of voices argues the United States privileges the interests of corporations over the welfare of all residents.

There could be other contenders for the civic religion of Americans including individualism, the civil religion described by sociologist Robert Bellah, middle-class values, and the importance of private property and private spaces. But, in this particular situation, what exactly should be done regarding businesses and the economy is a particular hot point.

Bringing grocery stores to rural areas and considering free markets

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Declining populations in some rural areas means it is more difficult to sustain grocery stores:

Some states are trying to tackle their rural grocery gaps. Supporters of such efforts point to tax incentives and subsidies at various levels of government that have enabled superstores to service larger areas and squeeze out local independent grocers. Now, dollar stores are opening in rural regions and offering items at lower prices, posing direct competition to local groceries.

Critics see that development as a threat to public health, since dollar stores typically lack quality meat and fresh produce.

But every town and every store is different, making statewide solutions elusive. Some legislators say they are reluctant to intervene too heavily because the market should close the gaps…

In rural areas, the poor tend to live farther from supermarkets than residents with more resources. The median distance to the nearest food store for rural populations in 2015 was 3.11 miles, and a shade farther for rural households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, according to a May 2019 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program.

Providing a range of social services and cultural services is an increasing issue, ranging from medical care to religious congregations to food.

While there are logistical issues in how to run, supply, and sustain organizations across such broad distances with limited participants, the political approach cited in this article is interesting. Should more conservative states provide government assistance for grocery stores? The article suggests there is some reluctance for state governments to step in. But, this might be exactly a good case where free markets simply cannot work well: there are not enough people in certain areas to generate profits or efficiencies. Plus, the federal government over the decades has helped rural areas, such as through rural electrification projects. Will state lawmakers refuse help just because of commitment to certain ideologies?

This situation also suggests Americans could think more about providing services in ways that do not have to generate profits. Instead, the services exist to serve the community. Think cooperatives. Think community-based organizations meant to help sustain each other rather than make a profit.

Trump administration pushes housing deregulation

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A look at the Trump administration’s approach to homelessness includes this summary of how they view housing more broadly:

Housing deregulation is probably the core of the report outlined by the Council Advisors. That lines up with the Trump administration’s overall position on housing—from Carson’s enthusiasm for breaking up exclusionary zoning to the housing plan that the Domestic Policy Council is drafting. Trump signed an executive order establishing a White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing in June.

While making it easier to build housing could ease the affordability crisis, it may be hard to achieve those reforms, Hanratty says. Several of the Democratic Party primary candidates have outlined housing plans with various strategies to promote new construction, but all of them would require sweeping new legislation. And in practice, deregulation might not produce housing that is affordable to very low-income families or people with substance-abuse or mental-health afflictions without subsidies.

This is a common conservative argument to make these days: the housing market needs to be a more free one with less interference from local governments as well as the federal government. Attempts at more explicit intervention – such as in public housing – have not proved popular. If the law of supply and demand could simply take over, the market would provide housing options for all.

However, this may not work as intended. The suburbs, a space seen as desirable by many Americans was not the result of free markets but rather the result of all sorts of social and government interventions. Would Houston’s growth without zoning look attractive for communities around the country? Without any regulations, developers and builders may have little incentive to build cheaper housing and instead pursue units that provide more profit.

Finding some middle ground where specific and limited interventions actually lead to more affordable housing will prove difficult. Without some negative consequences for communities and housing market actors who do not participate in providing cheaper housing, what can be done?

Rebuilding beachfront McMansions

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A journalist argues the construction and reconstruction of large homes near Atlantic beaches is a losing proposition in the long run:

Through federally funded flood insurance, huge appropriations for beach nourishment projects, and generous, well-intended relief aid, government policy allows developers and wealthy investors to build huge houses and hotels on beachfronts and low-lying barrier islands at high risk from coastal flooding as well as hurricanes. Uncle Sam’s generosity makes it all possible…

Writing just as the extensive damage from Hurricane Florence became apparent, Gaul covers the waterfront, so to speak — from Hurricane Katrina to South Florida, to the halls of Congress. In North Carolina, he stops Down East in Columbia, Creswell and other towns of North Carolina’s “Inner Banks,” where rising water levels and flooding are washing away entire communities…

According to Gaul, things began to tip in the 1980s, when multistory “McMansions” began to supplant the simple Cape Cods. (A similar trend has transpired on the north end of our state’s Outer Banks). Disasters such as the Ash Wednesday flood of 1962 did little to discourage development. On the contrary, real estate dealers saw storms as “clearing the market,” blowing down older, ramshackle structures and making way for the new, bigger units that buyers seemed to want.

Real estate prices went up, and increasingly retirees and residents with modest incomes were squeezed out. But there were always more customers in line for resort property.

I wonder if the primary objection is that big homes are being built and someone is profiting from the government money or should there be no homes on these properties? If the goal is to protect the beach and taxpayer dollars, less development in these areas is better. If the problem is profiting with the government’s money, there could be restrictions on the size of the new home or how the money is used.

It would be an interesting thought experiment to consider what this would look like without any government intervention. The argument here is that the government’s funding for rebuilding simply encourages the cycle of building larger and larger homes. If there were no regulations, what would the market bear? Or, as the author seems to suggest, would different regulations be better for the long-term fate of the beach and tese communities?

Housing as the ultimate marker of poorly functioning (free) markets

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Alexis Madrigal considers generational access to housing and the high real estate prices in some markets:

There are obviously many reasons that coastal housing markets have gone so bonkers. But it is an ironic twist that residential property, which once served as the bedrock for American capitalism, has become the most obvious sign for young people that something is deeply wrong with the markets.

What exactly has gone “deeply wrong” with these housing markets? Madrigal lays out a number of factors. But, I wonder if we could extend the analysis a bit further from “housing markets” to “economic markets” more broadly. Here is what two opposing sides might say:

One side: these housing markets with high prices have never truly been free. For decades, federal policy has privileged single-family homes. Local policies have made particular choices, often toward protecting property values and limiting density. Open up these markets to true competition. If affordable housing is needed, limit regulations and let all the money of potential buyers drive new development.

The other side: housing markets have not been regulated enough. The federal and local policies have tended to privilege certain actors – like the white middle-class and connected developers – over the needs of many working-class and poor residents as well as non-white residents. Policies aimed at providing more housing for all need more teeth and the ability to compel protected wealthier residents to accept development near their own homes.

As a sociologist who has studied this for over a decade, I tend to side with the latter argument: (1) markets are rarely ever completely and free and (2) the scales have been tipped toward whiter and wealthier residents for a long time. Perhaps the true lesson of these high-priced housing markets is that calls for regulation and oversight only go so far when property values and who neighbors are is truly at stake.