I grew up in a small town, Mt Sterling, Kentucky, and when I was in high school I couldn’t wait to get out of what one of my classmates called Mt Idy, and into the city. After thirty years of living in cities, I finally realized how good I had it in a small town . . . and now, the rural countryside.1 The Editors of The New York Times don’t seem to see it that way:

Americans Need More Neighbors A big idea in Minneapolis points the way for other cities desperately in need of housing. By The Editorial Board2 | June 15, 2019 Housing is one area of American life where government really is the problem. The United States is suffering from an acute shortage of affordable places to live, particularly in the urban areas where economic opportunity increasingly is concentrated. And perhaps the most important reason is that local governments are preventing construction. Don’t be misled by the construction cranes that punctuate city skylines. The number of housing units completed in the United States last year, adjusted for the size of the population, was lower than in any year between 1968 and 2008. And the problem is most acute in major urban areas along the east and west coasts. Housing prices, and homelessness, are rising across the country because there is not enough housing. Increasing the supply of urban housing would help to address a number of the problems plaguing the United States. Construction could increase economic growth and create blue-collar jobs. Allowing more people to live in cities could mitigate inequality and reduce carbon emissions. Yet in most places, housing construction remains wildly unpopular. People who think of themselves as progressives, environmentalists and egalitarians fight fiercely against urban development, complaining about traffic and shadows and the sanctity of lawns. That’s why a recent breakthrough in Minneapolis is so important. The city’s political leaders have constructed a broad consensus in favor of more housing. And the centerpiece is both simple and brilliant: Minneapolis is ending single-family zoning.

There’s much more at the link, but, to summarize — so that I don’t plagiarize by over-copying — the Editors like the Minneapolis solution: allowing multi-family unit construction on what were previously single-family home lots exclusively. Not just changing some existing zoning, but actively prohibiting exclusively single-family zoning, so that any developer who buys a lot can throw up an apartment building in the middle of a single-family home neighborhood.

I do not like to use pictures from newspapers, which present copyright problems, but in this I believe including the photo from the editorial falls under “Fair Use” standards, because it is instrumental to the argument.

The Editors included this photo with their column, and it offers what I see as the most compelling argument against their ideas. On the left is a single family unit, a cottage-style house of some mid-century vintage, surrounded by a board fence that is in need of painting. And now it will have, next to it, what might as well be a three-story apartment building,3 completely obscuring whatever view the residents of the single family home had in the right side of their home.

What, I have to ask, is happening to the value of that single-family home, not exactly a high-end home in the first place, now that it has an apartment building being constructed not only on the adjacent lot, but what appears to be only about six feet from the property line? And what happens to the value of that single-family home if a developer buys the lot on the other side, and throws up another ugly apartment building?

The single family home in the photo is what in today’s parlance would be considered a starter home,4 a lower-cost house for people just starting out as adults, one of the most affordable units available. Yet the Minneapolis ordinance has just taken the value of that house, for which the owners might be just able to make the payments, and stomped on it. If they want to sell it, to get away from a neighborhood being ruined, well, I hope they have some equity built up, because if they don’t, they will be underwater on their mortgage.

The developer of the apartment building? He’s going to make money, at least if he’s estimated things correctly. But the homeowners of the single-family unit? They’ve lost a significant amount of value. Even if the owners are an elderly couple, in their last home, perhaps having bought it in the 1960s, their children’s inheritance has just plummeted in value.

Of course, most of today’s liberals — a group which certainly includes the Editors of the Times — believe in local Historic Commissions, organizations which limit what changes homeowners can make to homes deemed to be historic; in New York City it is called the Landmark Preservation Commission, and it is “responsible for protecting New York City’s architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings and sites by granting them landmark or historic district status, and regulating them after designation.” It’s reach is sizable, protecting “more than 36,000 landmark properties in New York City, most of which are located in 144 historic districts and historic district extensions in all five boroughs. The total number of protected sites also includes 1,415 individual landmarks, 120 interior landmarks, and 11 scenic landmarks.”

But, alas! the single-family home in the Times’ photo, well that’s nobody’s idea of historic or a landmark, is it? the character of the neighborhood in which it sits? Well, everyone knows that the needs of the plebeians do not match the desires of the patricians!

For the Editors, apartment life is the norm, something to be expected. They are urbanites, and see urban living as the epitome of civilization and life. Of course, they are all very well paid, and aren’t stuck in a tenement-sized fifth-floor walk-up on 96th Street; they’re living in million dollar apartments on Central Park West. That there is a constant din from the city is something that their ears hear but their brains filter out most of the time. The quiet of the countryside is completely foreign to them, and the notion that some people might prefer such is simply outside their paradigm. Thus they don’t care about the feelings or desires or pocketbooks of people like the homeowners in the single-family cottage in their Minneapolis photograph.

Americans Need More Neighbors is the title of their editorial, something they apparently see as For Our Own Good. It’s the impulse of Our Betters to tell us what we need, the apparently odd notion that Americans might want fewer neighbors just the wrong thing for us to desire.

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1 – From Rocky Top:

I’ve had years of cramped-up city life

Trapped like a duck in a pen

All I know is it’s a pity life

Can’t be simple again

2 – The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

3 – Though the photo is of an apartment building which appears to be only two residential stories, it appears to have garages being built underneath, at the level of the first residential story of the single-family unit. The second residential story of the apartment building is higher than the roof peak of the single family home.

4 – From Wikipedia: “A starter home or starter house is a house that is usually the first which a person or family can afford to purchase, often using a combination of savings and mortgage financing. In the real estate industry the term commonly denotes small one- or two-bedroom houses, often older homes but sometimes low-cost new developments. The concept originated in the United States during the post-World War II era when entry-level home ownership was a preferred option for young families and regarded as part of the American Dream.”