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Michael Wiebe

@michaelwiebe.bsky.social
1.4K followers 455 following 1.8K posts

Economics (PhD UBC), yimby, replication, effective altruism. blog.michaelwiebe.com

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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 12h
When we allow higher-density housing, we create value that can be captured for the public. Then why is Vancouver so reluctant to do this?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 17h
Vancouver folks: it's going to be nice on Saturday, so let's go walk around Shaughnessy before its mansion-only zoning gets turned into apartments! www.eventbrite.com/e/the-yimbys...
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Who's right?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
One argument for development charges is that they can enable more housing supply. When existing homeowners know that the infrastructure costs of new density will not come out of their property taxes, they are more likely to support it. Is there evidence for this?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
When a bungalow is upzoned for apartments, we capture the land value uplift to fund public amenities. But when a bungalow is zoned single-family and the land value increases 10x over 20 years, the landowner reaps a windfall profit when they sell to a mansion developer. Why?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
"New residents need to pay for their own infrastructure. But don't worry, there's actually free money from landowners!" Isn't this puzzling?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Why do we talk about development taxes as making "growth pay for growth", but then also say that the tax will be paid by landowners?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Hard to overstate how crazy this is. Vancouver planners designed the multiplex zoning so that multiplexes would be barely competitive with single-family houses. If we cared about housing supply, we would make them *more* attractive, so they outcompete SFHs.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
When housing supply is fixed, a rich newcomer causes a demand cascade: they bid more for high-end housing at the top of the ladder, pushing everyone else down one rung, until the person at the bottom is priced out.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
When Vancouver legalized laneway homes (ADUs) in 2009, the two guiding principles were “to retain neighbourhood character and minimize demolition of existing houses.” So they forced laneways to be tiny 500sqft garage-shaped homes. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We all agree on substantive policy: 1) allow high-end supply 2) promote low-end market-rate supply 3) build subsidized housing The disagreement is whether 1) should be framed as an "affordability strategy".
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
If you care about housing, you'll find solutions to problems. If you don't care, you'll look for excuses to oppose it.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Strange article from Strong Towns on "filtering". Fundamentally, they do not believe in indirect spillover effects, where adding high-end supply can reduce low-end rents. Instead, we have to intentionally and directly target the low-end. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Vancouver has a housing shortage because it prioritized maintaining its single-family neighborhood character. blog.michaelwiebe.com/p/how-vancou...
blog.michaelwiebe.com
How Vancouver planned a housing shortage
The city put neighbourhood character first and housing supply second
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Why does higher supply reduce prices? There is 1 house for sale and 4 buyers with maximum bids: A: $600k, B: $500k, C: $400k, D: $300k The market price is the highest losing bid, since this means the winner can outbid the losers. 1/
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Steven L. Johnson @stevenljohnson.org · 18/09/2026
👇🏽🏢🏘️🏠🏡
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Josh Krahn @joshkrahn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The ladder is real, people
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New literature review on housing ladder spillovers: When rich tech workers move in, low-end rents go up. So does it follow that adding high-end homes would reduce them? Yes. Changes at the top of the ladder can propagate down and affect prices at the bottom. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
If you think rich tech workers moving in is bad for low-end rents, then you also have to accept that adding high-end supply is good. Supply and demand work symmetrically. www.buildingabundance.ca/p/housing-la...
buildingabundance.ca
Housing ladder spillovers
Rich newcomers can raise low-end rents, and adding high-end homes can lower them
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Damien Moule @damienmoule.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
One thing we've tried to emphasize at @moreneighboursto.bsky.social is Toronto is doing *neither* well. We aren't allowing enough private housing and we are making our affordable housing slow and expensive through our own processes (Housing Now still has produced 0 units in 7 years).
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New literature review on housing ladder spillovers: When rich tech workers move in, low-end rents go up. So does it follow that adding high-end homes would reduce them? Yes. Changes at the top of the ladder can propagate down and affect prices at the bottom. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
More evidence for 'trickle-down' housing economics: Comparing superstar vs other metros over 2000-2019, housing supply growth in superstar metros was lower for high-end housing (left). But prices grew faster at the low end (right)! 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This misunderstands the zoning tax. Zoning creates a wedge between supply and demand, and upzoning would remove the wedge. But it doesn't follow that land or housing prices are increased by the amount of the zoning tax. See my lit review to find out why: www.buildingabundance.ca/p/the-zoning...
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Is it trickle-down economics when rich tech workers moving into the city causes low-end rents to go up? >San Diego couple rents a SF two-bedroom for $5200, sight unseen. >SF couple "hoping to find a two-bedroom since they both work from home, but settled for a larger one-bedroom."
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Can vacancy chains move *up* the housing ladder? Mense (2025) shows a simulation where adding low-end supply can reduce rents across the entire quality distribution, including at the high end. Does new social housing reduce the price of mansions? 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Underappreciated fact: land value capture works only when zoning is a constraint on housing supply. If developers already had enough land zoned for higher density, they wouldn't pay extra for upzoned land, and there wouldn't be any uplift to capture.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Is this "trickle-down" economics? Tech workers moving in bids up high-end rents, increasing competition for mid-tier housing, which in turn pushes middle-income households to drive up low-end rents. If not, how is it different from new high-end supply reducing low-end rents?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
New post: we often hear debates on whether zoning is a constraint on housing supply. Instead of arguing in circles, we can look at the data. www.buildingabundance.ca/p/the-zoning... 1/
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Jens von Bergmann @jensvb.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
One way to understand the restrictiveness of zoning is to look at land price gradients across zone boundaries, @lausterna.bsky.social and check into what that looks like in Vancouver.
doodles.mountainmath.ca
Zoning Constraints and Land Price Gradients – Mountain Doodles
Steep land price gradients across zoning boundaries are an indication of zoning restrictions being binding. We take a look at what this looks like for the City of Vancouver.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
The zoning tax tells us that zoning is a constraint, but it doesn't tell us how much housing prices have increased due to zoning. Glaeser says: $600psf condo prices - $300 construction costs = $300 zoning tax. But this doesn't mean prices would fall by $300 without zoning. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
New post: we often hear debates on whether zoning is a constraint on housing supply. Instead of arguing in circles, we can look at the data. www.buildingabundance.ca/p/the-zoning... 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
"We ended single-family zoning! (But apartments are allowed only in certain areas, subject to restrictions on height, setbacks, and units, plus a large fee.)" "We legalized gay marriage! (But only between 11am and noon in designated industrial areas.)"
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Low-end rents have increased because high-end demand has spilled over from the high-end market. We can reverse that by adding high-end supply. But if you're on the anti-market left, this can't be true, because that's trickle-down economics.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
NIMBYs: impose $1M tax per apartment to deter high-density housing YIMBYs: try to repeal the tax Anti-market left: "nuh uh, that's just trickle down economics!"
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Trickle-down economics: policies that "disproportionately favor the upper tier of the economic spectrum". Does legalizing market-rate housing count as "trickle-down"? 1/
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Emily Hamilton @ebwhamilton.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Insightful post by @michaelwiebe.bsky.social on feasible versus infeasible zoned capacity: www.buildingabundance.ca/p/upzoning?u...
buildingabundance.ca
Upzoning
When zoning constrains housing supply, upzoning leads to more homes
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Vancouver made laneway homes be rental-only, under the thinking that rental housing is more affordable than ownership housing. But this completely misunderstands affordability. If we allowed condo laneways, buyers would exit the rental market, reducing rents. 1/
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GRIDS Vancouver @grids.reillywood.com · 11/08/2026
Belated "who am I?" thread: Hi! I'm Reilly, you might know me from this old tweet: "The majority of Vancouver's land is zoned for residential use but forbids apartment buildings."
2015 map of Vancouver: divided into "Residential but no apartment buildings" (vast majority), "Parks", and "Everything else". 11 years ago but honestly an updated map wouldn't look very different.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
When Vancouver legalized laneway homes in 2009, they explicitly prioritized maintaining the physical neighborhood character over increasing the supply of housing. This is why we have a housing shortage.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Really look at it: onefinaleffort.com/blog/watch-a...
onefinaleffort.com
Watch Auckland transform from zoning reform — One Final Effort
Take a look at the types of housing legalised from upzoning
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Block density in the city, get sprawl in the countryside.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Auckland and São Paulo both upzoned in 2016, and by similar amounts: 31% and 35% increase in density. But Auckland increased the housing stock by 8% over seven years, while for São Paulo we predict only a 2% increase over ten years. What's going on? 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Pop quiz: does the original Jevons paradox imply that improved efficiency increased the price of coal?
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
A common idea is that a land value tax will increase housing supply. But when zoning is a constraint, LVT has no effect on the housing market. (Though it does act as value capture on scarcity rents in land.) blog.michaelwiebe.com/p/a-model-of...
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Supply and demand explainer of Jevons' paradox: Left (AI services): improved algorithms shifts supply, which reduces the price of AI and increases quantity. Right (GPUs): when demand for AI is elastic, the demand curve for GPUs shifts right, increasing GPU usage. Paradox! 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
When does upzoning create land value uplift? Auckland: broad + valuable rights = ⬆️ land values. Vancouver laneway: broad + limited rights = no land uplift. Vancouver Cambie corridor: narrow + valuable rights + assembly premium = ⬆️ land values. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
"Growth pays for growth" means defecting on the urban social contract, where each generation pays to maintain infrastructure capacity for the next generation. Higher property values are caused by growth, so they should be captured to pay for growth.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
A common argument is that rising land values are a cause of higher housing prices. This is true for some contexts, but false in others. Let me explain. 1/
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Vancouver's proposed Villages plan does value capture through a 3% IZ requirement on 4-storey condos. But the plan is facing widespread opposition. Shouldn't we spend that money on paying off local residents, to give them a reason to support it? Eg. a lottery with $10k prizes for locals.
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Michael Wiebe @michaelwiebe.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
A common argument is that rising land values are a cause of higher housing prices. This is true for some contexts, but false in others. Let me explain. 1/
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