> The closer I get to purchasing a house the more I find myself pushing against measures like this. NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial asse

> The closer I get to purchasing a house the more I find myself pushing against measures like this. NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial asset. Of course it's rational to push against decreased supply of an asset when you're buying one; but that's not a sufficient argument for making that desire government policy. I'm sure that it's nice to have convinced the state from preventing other people from building dense/tall housing on their own property, since it makes your asset more valuable than it'd otherwise be, but the effects of that policy on non-homeowners are absolutely horrendous. The consequences of limited housing supply/density in US cities have been pretty nasty, between shitty dysfunctional transit systems, pathologically high rents (a complete apartment is cheaper in Tokyo than the cheapest form of housing in this city, namely a room in someone else's house), and a ghastly homelessness crisis. Your overinvestment into certain asset classes doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer the consequences of artificially limited supply in that asset. Other countries manage to have better cities (with cheaper rents!) than US without NIMBY-enabling zoning laws, so it's not like this sort of land-use law is inherently necessary.