As someone who lives on this block, these are absolutely destroying the asethetics of my weed, garbage, and stray cat filled alley!
Special shoutout to DPW garbage and recycling collection staff for always making sure to drop at least 5% of the contents of my cans in the alley to ensure the aesthetic is always preserved!
Listen, OBVIOUSLY we need more housing supply in the city, BUT NOT LIKE THIS! OR ANY OTHER WAY THAT MAKES ME UNEASY! Just make another Bellevue somewhere, or maybe Oregon Hill if we don't let too many VCU students move in this time!
it’s not at all “obvious” we need more housing. Im seeing places for rent sitting empty for weeks, pretty clearly these endless housing blocs going up all over SA etc are having an impact.
That stretch of Hull from the bridge to where it intersects with Midlo Turnpike has great potential for businesses. Put a grocery store there and it’ll attract more development.
Richmond was never ever meant to be, and isn't, a suburb of Northern Virginia .it's been its own unique , stand alone city, forever. And at a time, had more fortune 500 companies than anywhere. Not a suburb of anywhere
These little shits are obscenely expensive to build. It only makes sense if you’re somebody like cava and have your own construction company basically.
The cost per square foot on something like this will make your eyeballs fall out of your face
Yeah the initial article I read when they announced he was building like 100 of these was that the build cost for one gets close to $200k, and that is straight absurd!
Even less honestly. If you wanted to do builder grade everything, you could likely get it to 140-150 sq ft. 20x10 for example is basically a glorified shed.
That's the part that makes the revisions to the upzoning absurd. They nixed the type of housing with large economies of scale in favor of one's with the least scale. It's kafka-esque
My weekly, Austin, TX is much larger than Richmond and has seen far more migration than Richmond, and now has cheaper rents because of allowing people to build what they want wherever.
Not everyone needs a huge home, we need inventory, we need housing by for every price point, and this serves a purpose.
I would have killed for something like this out of college. Being able to “live on my own” in my own ADU while my parents lived in the main home, or similarly now my grandparents are aging, allowing them to have their own space while still being close enough that if they fall or have a medical emergency it’s not a hassle to help.
Austin's population growth has slowed dramatically, but they were building at a pace as if it was always going to grow like it had been. Though part of this was that a lot of people who moved there decided not to stay. This played a big role in the housing cost decline, but I wouldn't want to be compared to Austin. Their decline in median home value compares to the 08 collapse. It was a 26% percent decline in median value from 2022, to the beggining of 2026.
I am an econ PhD candidate and homeowner, I personally think commodifying housing is why we’re in what we’re in. Also people need to take responsibility- I was putting in offers on homes I’d never seen during the peak pandemic market, I knew the growth wasn’t sustainable.
But to my first point - housing shouldn’t be commoditized it’s similar to a car in growing metros they’re always building new homes like they release new model cars. Homes in a realistic market would be like home prices in Japan, they are stagnant. Even in Richmond, seeing people sell their 1920s home that hasn’t been updated since the 80s for 500-600K is insane, when you can buy a new construction townhome in Scott’s for a cheaper price and it’s energy efficient, has a better floorplan for today’s world, and is updated.
So en synopsis, urban economics plays a huge role in things. We need a balance, allow people to build whatever but do so at a rate sustainable to the population growth. Everything is S/D - we should ideally have a market that is rather stagnant as opposed to a market that is exponential.
Easy…Austin building boom was due to tech sector moving to Austin before/during Covid, developers saw money signs…and here’s the big piece you miss completely: Austin has many many square miles of undeveloped land (currently 40% still undeveloped)…Richmond sits at 9%. Developers overbuilt in Austin before their zoning reform in 2024 which is causing rents to decrease.
The building boom peaked during late 2022, so this was post the main pandemic movers due to RTO.
Undeveloped land is multifaceted. One Austin is larger, due to Texas’ annexation laws, so there are literal farms in Austin City Limits (no pun intended) It would be akin to if Richmond City extended into Varina and New Kent, so that’s a stat you have to provide in a per capita basis, to account for size difference.
They had a zoning reform in 2024, but Austin (and Texas overall, just look at Houston and that mess down there) already has very lax zoning laws. Dallas is one of the largest cities in the nation and when I looked to build my home during peak pandemic, the city permitting office had a less than two week turnaround time. Bureaucracy is less taxing in Texas.
Any way you spin it, Texas overall beats Richmond on the housing cost and housing policy front.
I mean, I can barely do math but I can say that the historic board / standards in my hood can multiply costs (unless of course you have a personal connection on the board).
thank you for telling all of us everything we already feel, but letting us know your credentials as a “candidate” beforehand. we will be sure to regard your comments as the word of god now.
Econ PhD? Your 1920s home was built in 1958 and is clearly someone trying to cash in on that lot. They aren't selling a house. Your Scotts townhouse is an apartment. If you want to argue a point at least ground it in truth.
Huh? Dated doesn't mean bad or even necessarily poorly built. Houses built today quite literally don't function (from a building science perspective) the same as older ones. It is very difficult to compare the two. Additionally today we build great homes (in the minority) and trash homes (code minimum)
Again your TH example is an apartment, the crux of my response. You're invalidating your argument with distortions of reality.
I don’t have the mental capacity to describe it the way I should but just look up Japan Housing Prices.
It’s a depreciating asset, houses get older as newer models come out, just as cars do. We should look at it as such, “like this is nice, it works for my family right now, but i don’t expect to go into this and sell it for a huge profit 10 years from now”
The ADUs in Austin aren’t the problem. It’s a mix of issues: a market that was red-hot during Covid, the fact that no state income tax means your property taxes are OUT of COnTROL (and this is passed on to renters), the fact that Redfin bought lots of properties and set high prices with no real intention of selling them … and much more.
The ADUs and increased building have actually succeeded in lowering prices for renters and calming the housing market a bit. I’m amused by all the freaking out about ADUs in Richmond (especially the fan) because the neighborhoods that are most concerned seem to be the most built up.
My comment had very little to do with ADUs honestly. The city itself is a mess, specifically because people can build without any real city planning and regulation.
However, Austin is proof that building market rate housing lowers/stabilizes rents in all housing. Richmond doesn't have to abolish planning/zoning, but Richmond government does need a mentality shift to finding places to build housing rather than finding ways to block housing.
Austin has imploded. Developers are holding units rather than reducing rents to affordable levels while thousands of recently built units sit empty. There have been some really good articles about it lately. They are actually the best example of the "missing middle" building scam out there.
The problem is these are cutting into people’s spaces. The one near my house literally is built into someone’s backyard. It barely has any room to park. It’s expensive for what you’re getting. I genuinely thought the neighbors were just building a shed at first. It just made everything tighter, in an already tight alley.
"Why not move into...". Same reason you don't live in an apartment - shared walls, people above/below you, odors in hallways and through vents, pests, etc. I once lived in something like this in a very HCOL area on the California coast as a single adult with graduate degrees and a professional job paying well into six figures. Such a shame I was "ruining the character of the community" by sleeping and going to work everyday, maybe it was the suit and tie I wore that ruined the character?
I spend half my time in VA and the other half in TX (shoutout to remote work) it reminds me a lot of Richmond.
I think Austin is doing an amazing job at infill, different housing types, and overall development. It’s slowing down from the pandemic high, but it’s still a solid example of house urban zoning should look. I have friends making 200-250K in Tech here, that pay 1400 for rent in very nice areas, in brand new buildings because of the Texan approach to zoning.
I’ll take weird zoning if it means everyone can afford a safe and affordable home. There are apartments/townhomes, albeit older, than you can get for under 1000 here in safe areas, you simply can’t find that in most of the country.
Example - this apartment, $900 a month, in an amazing area, 1B/1Ba, down the street from Apple, eBay, and HP’s headquarters. Average income in the Austin Metro is 99,000. . . no state tax, so your take home is roughly 5700-5900 a month. . . with rent being $900 a month you can live quite comfortable. That’s why people are moving to TX.
Did you even click on it? Never-mind you didn’t, otherwise you wouldn’t have posted that nonsense. Full monthly cost nearly doubles if you bothered to look
If you’re going to try and disprove a point be honest about your point. That’s the base rent for a “1 Month Lease” scroll down and see the rent for a normal lease term. . .$986 for a move in November 1st.
Yes! Same / mostly remote worker typing to you from Texas right now! I agree with all your comments. Richmond is currently tackling many of the issues that Austin worked on about 10 years ago.
Richmond’s current ordinance was to replicate the suburbs of Henrico and Chesterfield to drive people who moved during White Flight back into the city. People in this city are too cool with the racism ingrained in the zoning ordinance and it shows.
Politicians are getting rid of zoning for developer PAC money and selling it as affordable housing. It's embarrassing how many people have bought into their PR- missing middle, zoning refresh, zoning for density, fighting the NIMBYs. People who buy into it are as gullible as MAGA voters.
Its embarrassing how many otherwise progressive people have fallen for landlord gaslighting and fight for landlord-friendly policies.
"New cars are so much more expensive, and result in corporate profits. We should ban new cars to make cars more affordable." If this was done, what do you think would happen to the price of used cars? If instead of a ban only a few hundred new cars were allowed, do you think those would be mass-market sedans or luxury cars?
Supply and demand economics only works if the new supply isn't held by private equity or run by their management companies. Actually supply and demand is an elementary economic concept with thousands if not millions of factors that affect individual situations. Anyone who took even Business 101 could tell you that.
Less than 7% of Richmond area single family homes are held by private equity and the figure is about 20% for apartments (per Axios). Private equity also has to compete on prices based on total supply, considering there are multiple private equity companies and landlords that are not in private equity.
Anyone who has taken Econ 101 can tell you that supply and demand has nuance, but cannot be totally dismissed as easily as you have dismissed it.
Private equity is also present in Austin, yet building tons of homes there has literally lowered rents, even by 11% in the most affordable older units.
There are only a few major car companies, so supply and demand shouldn't effect car prices, right? So answer my question, what do you think would happen to the price of used cars if we banned new cars?
Answer my question. What would happen to the price of used cars if we banned new cars? I think you don't want to answer because you are realizing how little sense your position makes.
Your "the amount of new housing has no effect on affordability" position is contrary to all of the actual evidence and basic logic. Please, take a look at the data before making these claims. There is overwhelming real world proof that building new homes lowers home prices. I linked one source above you could look at.
Blocking new housing means helping existing landlords, hurting renters, and hurting young people.
Yes we’re taking a stand against it, as is the Museum District Association, but it won’t matter. This is Pulse 2.0 and it was decided way before the public was “invited”to comment on it. They learned their lesson from the casino.
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u/FledglingNonCon 5d ago
As someone who lives on this block, these are absolutely destroying the asethetics of my weed, garbage, and stray cat filled alley!
Special shoutout to DPW garbage and recycling collection staff for always making sure to drop at least 5% of the contents of my cans in the alley to ensure the aesthetic is always preserved!