I agree with many of the points in Zvi's post. Many YIMBY people, myself included, support a major buildout of low-rise SRO hotels in towns and especially cities across America. These can provide decent basic housing with ~120 sf units featuring insulated windows, light wells, internet wiring, essential furnishings, small appliances, and a sink, with shared bathrooms and kitchens.
IMO the bigger problem with SROs is the difficulty of evicting bad actors. This is a huge problem everywhere for every type of rental development, but it is completely fatal when you are already somewhat selecting for bad actors. Add in communal spaces like kitchens and bathrooms and you need downright draconian ability to respond and probably a strong selection filter as well.
The elevator operator thing is not limited to public sector unions. Most union buildings in NYC have a freight elevator operator, and as a result the freight elevator is only available during certain hours! Because of this, many buildings had a policy that you could not leave with a bicycle after 5 PM.
“Only about a third of two-bedroom renters in Manhattan actually pay over $3k per month”
I’ve been seeing this claim a lot recently, that it’s not actually that expensive to live in Manhattan. But aren’t these mostly people who have won various lotteries or have lived in the same rent-stabilized place for several years? I can’t find a single place below 112th st on streeteasy that satisfies these conditions. I think this data doesn’t really represent the price that you’d pay if you moved to Manhattan today and found an apartment.
Missed opportunity to title this one "You Didn't Build That". Thanks, Obama.
Homeless people dying by very slow (or sometimes not so much) decay in the streets is a lot uglier than so-called ugly buildings. I mean it's one thing to pull a Florence Fang and design something so intentionally outre that it makes national headlines for being a lawsuit-prone eyesore ("the Flintstones house"), but even your basic brutalist Soviet concrete cube I'd take over reeking tents surrounded by piles of trash. Same thing in the other direction for historical preservation: it's nice having the Painted Ladies in SF, I guess, but it'd be a lot nicer having streets, transit, and parks free of needles and feces (and once again having an acceptable density of real benches, trashcans, etc). Otherwise we're effectively subsidizing an amber-locked portion of the past, that not everyone even agrees is particularly nice or interesting, by taxing the present and potential future growth. Seems like a bad trade! I don't want affordability brought about by downward mobility and deteriorating living standards!
Yeah the Official Bins thing is a racket. Here in SF, Recology is pretty happy to push compost and recycle bins for modest fees...but garbage? My unit has the smallest possible bin, and upgrading back to medium was like a whopping extra $85/mo or something years ago, certainly more now in 2026 dollars. Nevermind large, which is hundreds. (Utilities prices are passed along to tenants either way, but renters feel better when it's folded into one base price, rather than broken out separately, even if final total is the same...funny example of the "free shipping effect".) I get the motivation, to direct people towards recycling and composting...but hardly anyone does those correctly, and the excess trash has to go somewhere, so degenerates still dump it into the recycle and compost bins anyway. Which largely ruins any useful value those streams have. So what are we even doing here? And good luck aligning the incentives, no landlord wants the hassle of micromanaging which tenants produce the most trash, and the government/waste management company doesn't want the hassle of nuisance-fining addresses that improperly cross the streams.
There are a lot of insane restrictions on building in the UK, but the leasehold reforms are *positive* for density. Needed to clarify the "expropriating freeholders" thing as I'm pretty sure you don't have the appropriate context here, as I (and many others) would *never* have considered buying a flat (apartment) because of the leaseholder system. It's still not perfect, but pre reform:
- You don't own your flat, you had a lease for, say, 90 years.
- The value of your flat will decline as the remaining lease period goes down. There was absolutely no obligation for the freeholder (owner of the underlying land) to allow you to renew the lease, or to not charge you full price of the flat for it.
- Freeholders also charge a 'ground rent'. This is *not* a service charge, which can be extra. There were essentially no protections from the freeholder jacking up the ground rent on the flat that you thought you were buying.
- There were various other ways your freeholder could make your life difficult.
There's a strong cultural aversion to living in flats in the UK largely *because* you couldn't actually buy a flat in a meaningful sense. The reforms go a ways towards fixing that.
I agree with many of the points in Zvi's post. Many YIMBY people, myself included, support a major buildout of low-rise SRO hotels in towns and especially cities across America. These can provide decent basic housing with ~120 sf units featuring insulated windows, light wells, internet wiring, essential furnishings, small appliances, and a sink, with shared bathrooms and kitchens.
I think we need to describe them as "dorms" to help win over college people, who are well aware that living the SRO life can be entirely decent.
IMO the bigger problem with SROs is the difficulty of evicting bad actors. This is a huge problem everywhere for every type of rental development, but it is completely fatal when you are already somewhat selecting for bad actors. Add in communal spaces like kitchens and bathrooms and you need downright draconian ability to respond and probably a strong selection filter as well.
"At least 40% of your residents must be from the most disruptive segments of society" sounds fun to me.
The ability to evict people is infrastructure
It worked out for Ishmael as he got snuggly with a cannibal.
The elevator operator thing is not limited to public sector unions. Most union buildings in NYC have a freight elevator operator, and as a result the freight elevator is only available during certain hours! Because of this, many buildings had a policy that you could not leave with a bicycle after 5 PM.
“Only about a third of two-bedroom renters in Manhattan actually pay over $3k per month”
I’ve been seeing this claim a lot recently, that it’s not actually that expensive to live in Manhattan. But aren’t these mostly people who have won various lotteries or have lived in the same rent-stabilized place for several years? I can’t find a single place below 112th st on streeteasy that satisfies these conditions. I think this data doesn’t really represent the price that you’d pay if you moved to Manhattan today and found an apartment.
Yes, I'm very sure that's including non-market-rate units.
Missed opportunity to title this one "You Didn't Build That". Thanks, Obama.
Homeless people dying by very slow (or sometimes not so much) decay in the streets is a lot uglier than so-called ugly buildings. I mean it's one thing to pull a Florence Fang and design something so intentionally outre that it makes national headlines for being a lawsuit-prone eyesore ("the Flintstones house"), but even your basic brutalist Soviet concrete cube I'd take over reeking tents surrounded by piles of trash. Same thing in the other direction for historical preservation: it's nice having the Painted Ladies in SF, I guess, but it'd be a lot nicer having streets, transit, and parks free of needles and feces (and once again having an acceptable density of real benches, trashcans, etc). Otherwise we're effectively subsidizing an amber-locked portion of the past, that not everyone even agrees is particularly nice or interesting, by taxing the present and potential future growth. Seems like a bad trade! I don't want affordability brought about by downward mobility and deteriorating living standards!
Yeah the Official Bins thing is a racket. Here in SF, Recology is pretty happy to push compost and recycle bins for modest fees...but garbage? My unit has the smallest possible bin, and upgrading back to medium was like a whopping extra $85/mo or something years ago, certainly more now in 2026 dollars. Nevermind large, which is hundreds. (Utilities prices are passed along to tenants either way, but renters feel better when it's folded into one base price, rather than broken out separately, even if final total is the same...funny example of the "free shipping effect".) I get the motivation, to direct people towards recycling and composting...but hardly anyone does those correctly, and the excess trash has to go somewhere, so degenerates still dump it into the recycle and compost bins anyway. Which largely ruins any useful value those streams have. So what are we even doing here? And good luck aligning the incentives, no landlord wants the hassle of micromanaging which tenants produce the most trash, and the government/waste management company doesn't want the hassle of nuisance-fining addresses that improperly cross the streams.
There are a lot of insane restrictions on building in the UK, but the leasehold reforms are *positive* for density. Needed to clarify the "expropriating freeholders" thing as I'm pretty sure you don't have the appropriate context here, as I (and many others) would *never* have considered buying a flat (apartment) because of the leaseholder system. It's still not perfect, but pre reform:
- You don't own your flat, you had a lease for, say, 90 years.
- The value of your flat will decline as the remaining lease period goes down. There was absolutely no obligation for the freeholder (owner of the underlying land) to allow you to renew the lease, or to not charge you full price of the flat for it.
- Freeholders also charge a 'ground rent'. This is *not* a service charge, which can be extra. There were essentially no protections from the freeholder jacking up the ground rent on the flat that you thought you were buying.
- There were various other ways your freeholder could make your life difficult.
There's a strong cultural aversion to living in flats in the UK largely *because* you couldn't actually buy a flat in a meaningful sense. The reforms go a ways towards fixing that.
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Humans are dull and antisocial.
Less of this, please.