In the cities with massive housing shortages I'm aware of, everyone -- NIMBY and YIMBY alike -- would seize the non-primary houses of the rich (or at least tax

In the cities with massive housing shortages I'm aware of, everyone -- NIMBY and YIMBY alike -- would seize the non-primary houses of the rich (or at least tax the shit out of them) if they could. The problem with this, of course, is that it involves picking an economic fight against rich people, the people who win economic fights. Anyway. A lot of zoning policy is set by people who claim to be middle-class but own fabulously valuable property. They could become rich at any moment they choose because they are lucky enough to live in a home that has become worth about $3 million due to the housing shortage. It's in their interest, of course, to stay where they are and keep the housing shortage going until their house is worth $4 million. If we had a land value tax, maybe people would prefer to have a sensible rate of development that kept their home price stable. But accidentally-wealthy homeowners are a huge voting demographic, on top of the fact that blatantly rich people have a lot of political influence. So the land value tax is politically infeasible.