Opponents of Blackstone and other finance firms that have been buying up housing are quick to blame them for the housing crisis. But it's the other way around: the failure to plan for and develop enough housing has attracted the firms.
"The 80,000 or so homes in Blackstone’s nationwide portfolio and the few thousand homes in its California portfolio do not drive the 3.5 million-unit Los Angeles market. Blackstone did not create a shortage of 3 million units statewide (give or take). Blackstone did not impose restrictive zoning laws. Blackstone did not kill California’s redevelopment system. Blackstone did not drive up rents in the 2010s when recession-stricken millennials emerged out of their parents’ basements."
"Many homeowners are their own little Blackstones. Many of the same people who decry the purchase of thousands of homes by Wall Street are the same people who protest the development of new homes in their neighborhoods. Why? Sure, some of them care — a little — about “neighborhood character.” But California’s NIMBY movement has not endured the decades, beginning with its Prop. 13 temper tantrum in 1978, because of neighborhood character. It’s because they don’t want to endanger their property values."
Read the full story: The Phony Debate Over Wall Street and the Housing Crisis
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Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
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University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
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