> (2) Build more housing units in the city. Eliminate zoning restrictions. Stop worrying about protecting the existing homeowners and pay more attention to ever

> (2) Build more housing units in the city. Eliminate zoning restrictions. Stop worrying about protecting the existing homeowners and pay more attention to everyone else. These three things are not synonymous - or at least, they need not be. For example, New York is building a lot of units. (A lot of them happen to be luxury units which often sit vacant since they are used purely as investment vehicles by foreign entities, but that's a separate problem.) The real issue is that Manhattan is an island, and there's only so much you can cram into 33 square miles (though they're working on squeezing every last cubic inch out of that). They're also, of course, building at an absolutely unbelievable pace in Brooklyn, Queens, and even the Bronx[0]. San Francisco, on the other hand, has been incredibly slow to build more inventory (and also build upwards), compared to the amount that the demand has increased. This may be partly due to zoning issues, but not entirely, and the situation that San Francisco is in is not typical of most cities. Houston is famous for having no zoning code, but New York has a very extensive zoning code[1]. In fact, the market for air rights in New York is quite complicated and fascinating[2]. You can build more housing without scaling back zoning restrictions or removing them entirely; there's just not always enough will to do so in every city. [0] not sure about Staten Island, but... well, let's not talk about that. [1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/subcats/zoning.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/subcats/zoning.shtml [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights