Matt Yglesias: evaluation

Transcript context

…But if you see a lot of the YIMBY movement as coming for the Bay Area, the impetus to build there might be much weaker. Support from builders might be weaker. Rents could be, say, 15 percent, maybe 20 percent lower. Palantir’s moving out of Palo Alto. Maybe COVID-19, in a sense, is the rent-lowering mechanism, not in a good way, but — Yeah. I think you’ve seen, in some ways, the biggest YIMBY political successes in Oregon rather than in the Bay Area, and the people who work on that — they all say to me that the fact that the prices are not as high as they are in the Bay Area is helpful to them, that it becomes more comprehensible to people why new construction, new market-rate construction improves the market because it’s not so mindbogglingly out of reach for normal people. It’s like, “Okay, this nice new house might just be better than the house that I’m in, and I could move into it.” So I have a case for new construction. I think that unless we see cities unraveling, having somewhat of a decline in the incredible pressure on prices in the Bay Area could be constructive. Also, there’s at least some chance — with fiscal problems affecting cities — that the municipal budget stakeholders get more involved in the fact that . . . A city like New York actually has the ability to increase and enhance its tax base anytime they want to, by making it easier to do market-rate building. That constituency — even though there’s a robust group of people who would like their salaries and their pensions to be paid — have not really been mobilized on behalf of that cause, so we’ll see. I don’t want to go too into this “it’s a crisis, but it’s also an opportunity”–type paradigm. But places prove themselves when they are hit with problems. It forces you to either try to address your issues in order to survive or get much, much worse. I think we’re going to see a bit of a turning point. Say 10 years from now — how do you think New York City will be different for having had Covid-19 as compared to a non-Covid trajectory?…

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