In Defense of Marc Andreesen
Advocating for more city housing while wanting to live in a quiet suburb are consistent
First some background: there’s a housing shortage in many big cities, with the worst offenders being the most progressive cities (San Francisco, Seattle, and NYC). This causes rent and home prices to be extremely high, because demand is high and supply is low. In theory, the solution is simple: increase supply. In practice, it’s hard because we live in a vetocracy, where everyone has a voice when it comes to preventing projects from happening. It’s extremely hard to develop a new multi-housing project in any big city (which is why real estate developers have a reputation of being cozy with politicians and sometimes outright corrupt - it’s the only way to get around the impossible obstacle course of getting housing developments approved). Owners don’t want their property values to go down (which happens when housing supply is increased), and renters don’t want even more traffic, even more noise, even more crime, even more construction, even more congestion, even less parking, and even less sunlight. The people who would benefit from more housing cannot advocate for themselves, because we don’t know who they are until they move to the new housing.
So in the incentive structure makes it hard to get anything built in big US cities. But this is bad because these large cities are where the jobs are — why should we keep the best candidates from the jobs that are best for them? Getting the best people to the best jobs is good for the people, the employers, and the economy as a whole. And we get amazing effects when lots of people live together in one city - more specialization, ideas spread faster, and other agglomeration effects. Along comes a pro-housing movement and starts advocating for building more housing. They call people who oppose new housing projects NIMBYs (not in my backyard). They write opinion pieces. They start nonprofits to get more housing built. Some call themselves YIMBYs (yes in my backyard).
One of the people writing that we need to build more is Marc Andreesen, the inventor of the internet browser and one of the most successful venture capital investors in the world. He wrote a seminal essay at the start of covid called It’s Time to Build, a stirring call to action to change our culture and policymaking.
But now, Jerusalem Demsas (one of my favorite writers) broke a story in the Atlantic showing that Andreesen himself opposed multi-family housing in his neighborhood in 2022. Hypocritical, no?
I will argue no. On factual grounds and on philosophical grounds.
On factual grounds, Andreesen might not have actually written the comment opposing new housing in his neighborhood. The letter was signed by Marc Andreesen’s wife and him, but it was written in the first person (“I” instead of “we”) which means they didn’t write the letter jointly. It seems likely that his wife wrote the comment (her name is signed first, and it’s written in a different style from his) and it’s plausible that she decided to attach his name without asking him.
On philosophical grounds: it is possible to recognize that cities need to build a lot more housing to benefit society while also believing that suburbs should exist. If you want to be where the jobs, culture, and people are (big cities), you should have that right. You shouldn’t be locked out by exorbitant rents. But don’t expect it to be quiet - you are specifically going where the action is.
But let’s say you don’t want to live right in the middle of it all. You should also have the right to live in a suburb, where you can expect your children to have a backyard, a quiet and safe street, and no overcrowding or congestion. So I think it’s totally consistent to say we need more housing built in large cities, but we should be able to maintain the size and character of our suburbs.