In my part of Massachusetts, zoning laws are doing EXACTLY this. Towns are allowing building of retirement communities while forbidding market rate housing and especially multi-family housing. Their rationale is explicitly what you are saying - they will pay property taxes and won't "burden our already struggling school system" with additional students.
"because our absurdly expensive public schools are largely funded by local property taxes"
This is flat out wrong, like not even a little true.
Essentially every school district in America uses a mix of state and federal level funding to equalize spending in every school district. Poor districts usually get slightly more than average total funding.
Honestly, voting to increase education funding by raising property taxes is a complete suckers game. You will get lose more state subsidies.
What people don't like about the poor is how they act. They don't like that Jamal beats their kid up on the playground and disrupts the classroom. They still won't like that even if Jamal is fully funded. Just type "school brawl" into Youtube and it doesn't take much to see why people don't want the poors in their school district.
"Poor yet permanently childless folk, in contrast, can easily be net local taxpayers."
Yeah, Baltimore was such a better place to live then my SFH exurb with nothing but families.
Oh wait, it was a crime ridden shithole with dramatically higher taxes to pay for welfare that was miserable.
I think you ought to run some empirical tests here. Aging areas with few children are not exactly economic powerhouses or libertarian low tax utopias.
"Communities with single-family zoning rarely deign to make a standard exception for retirement housing."
Literally every single big development in the exurbs usually has a 55+ sister community nearby from this same builder. But it is also SFH, just a downsized footprint, and rarely cheap for the size. It almost as if the same middle class people that wanted their kids to grow up near other middle class people want to downsize when the kids leave the house but still want to live near the exact same type of people they raised their kids around.
Of course such people have money, and at 55 are often still working.
There is a lack of building huge depressing Medicaid LTC facilities for really old poor people who want to die, but they are not exactly a source of tax revenue and quite frankly depressing to be around. And rarely are those people the older versions of the people that moved into the town when they were younger and raising a family. And here's a hint, those old poor people have young poor family that will come by.
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The fundamental problem is that the value of real estate is related to the quality of life of someone living there and the biggest driver of quality of life is the demographic characteristics of your neighbors.
My parents moved to a 55+ community. A large one. The locals thought they had the gravy train for the schools. Then the oldsters voted to crush school spending.
The most intellectually credible NIMBY arguments are local arguments. They take local characteristics of a specific place - it's very nice as it is, if there's more development of whatever type it'll cause problems, and so on.
Many of these arguments are, in fact, correct. Zoning regulations are not bad in every single case. Our political system just doesn't have a great way to balance these local arguments with a regional need for more housing.
I think you are misunderstanding a key aspect of NIMBY belief. The NIMBY position is not anti-housing. A NIMBY can be a very strong supporter of building housing. The NIMBY just thinks that housing should be built *elsewhere*.
I believe this is why YIMBYism is starting to succeed in California. Many of the same people who are NIMBYs when it comes to their own neighborhood can agree at a state level that California needs more housing.
I think many of the claims here could do with some numbers to back them up. If you don’t like to break up the flow of your argument, footnotes would be fine.
I doubt most NIMBYism is that narrowly financial. A lot of it is much like deciding who to let into your club. Making it too easy to join or letting in the wrong people will negatively affect not only your reputation but your sense of identity as a member as well.
In the modern us projecting youth and vitality is seen as desireable and lots of retirees threaten that image. Look at how ppl feel about parts of Florida with large retiree populations.
Coordinating multiple localities to build more housing is going to be painful no matter how good the argument. I’m afraid the only plausible and *fast* solution I see is top-down mandates, coming from state or federal government
In walking distance of my house is a new housing development that is restricted, and was marketed to the community as being restricted, to those 55+ and wealthy.
In my part of Massachusetts, zoning laws are doing EXACTLY this. Towns are allowing building of retirement communities while forbidding market rate housing and especially multi-family housing. Their rationale is explicitly what you are saying - they will pay property taxes and won't "burden our already struggling school system" with additional students.
"because our absurdly expensive public schools are largely funded by local property taxes"
This is flat out wrong, like not even a little true.
Essentially every school district in America uses a mix of state and federal level funding to equalize spending in every school district. Poor districts usually get slightly more than average total funding.
Honestly, voting to increase education funding by raising property taxes is a complete suckers game. You will get lose more state subsidies.
What people don't like about the poor is how they act. They don't like that Jamal beats their kid up on the playground and disrupts the classroom. They still won't like that even if Jamal is fully funded. Just type "school brawl" into Youtube and it doesn't take much to see why people don't want the poors in their school district.
"Poor yet permanently childless folk, in contrast, can easily be net local taxpayers."
Yeah, Baltimore was such a better place to live then my SFH exurb with nothing but families.
Oh wait, it was a crime ridden shithole with dramatically higher taxes to pay for welfare that was miserable.
I think you ought to run some empirical tests here. Aging areas with few children are not exactly economic powerhouses or libertarian low tax utopias.
"Communities with single-family zoning rarely deign to make a standard exception for retirement housing."
Literally every single big development in the exurbs usually has a 55+ sister community nearby from this same builder. But it is also SFH, just a downsized footprint, and rarely cheap for the size. It almost as if the same middle class people that wanted their kids to grow up near other middle class people want to downsize when the kids leave the house but still want to live near the exact same type of people they raised their kids around.
Of course such people have money, and at 55 are often still working.
There is a lack of building huge depressing Medicaid LTC facilities for really old poor people who want to die, but they are not exactly a source of tax revenue and quite frankly depressing to be around. And rarely are those people the older versions of the people that moved into the town when they were younger and raising a family. And here's a hint, those old poor people have young poor family that will come by.
---
The fundamental problem is that the value of real estate is related to the quality of life of someone living there and the biggest driver of quality of life is the demographic characteristics of your neighbors.
My parents moved to a 55+ community. A large one. The locals thought they had the gravy train for the schools. Then the oldsters voted to crush school spending.
The most intellectually credible NIMBY arguments are local arguments. They take local characteristics of a specific place - it's very nice as it is, if there's more development of whatever type it'll cause problems, and so on.
Many of these arguments are, in fact, correct. Zoning regulations are not bad in every single case. Our political system just doesn't have a great way to balance these local arguments with a regional need for more housing.
I think you are misunderstanding a key aspect of NIMBY belief. The NIMBY position is not anti-housing. A NIMBY can be a very strong supporter of building housing. The NIMBY just thinks that housing should be built *elsewhere*.
I believe this is why YIMBYism is starting to succeed in California. Many of the same people who are NIMBYs when it comes to their own neighborhood can agree at a state level that California needs more housing.
It's not the case that neighborhood schools are still mostly funded with local taxes:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/is-the-conventional-wisdom-on-educational
I think many of the claims here could do with some numbers to back them up. If you don’t like to break up the flow of your argument, footnotes would be fine.
the elderly are also cheap in many other ways locally. no crime & police externalities etc etc
I doubt most NIMBYism is that narrowly financial. A lot of it is much like deciding who to let into your club. Making it too easy to join or letting in the wrong people will negatively affect not only your reputation but your sense of identity as a member as well.
In the modern us projecting youth and vitality is seen as desireable and lots of retirees threaten that image. Look at how ppl feel about parts of Florida with large retiree populations.
Coordinating multiple localities to build more housing is going to be painful no matter how good the argument. I’m afraid the only plausible and *fast* solution I see is top-down mandates, coming from state or federal government
Interesting. I'd love to see you discuss this with Matt Yglesias.
In walking distance of my house is a new housing development that is restricted, and was marketed to the community as being restricted, to those 55+ and wealthy.
And if the grandkids are living with the grandparents?