6 ms·

How to make housing more affordable: 1) cut red tape 2) relax zoning requirements. Both are politically unpalatable, so around and around we go appropriating mo

How to make housing more affordable: 1) cut red tape 2) relax zoning requirements. Both are politically unpalatable, so around and around we go appropriating money that governments don’t even know what to do with.

halbritt 7y ago
Are there historical instances of 1) and 2)being successful in reducing housing prices in a high-demand area?
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Reducing, maybe not, but stabilizing, definitely. Look at most major cities in Japan, they keep building new apartment towers all the time and prices are more or less stable. Tokyo is an exception right now because of the olympics bubble.
- haroldp 7y ago
  Yes, Tokyo Japan: http://archive.is/pVrex#selection-1755.0-1755.64 http://archive.is/pVrex#selection-1755.0-1755.64
  - halbritt 7y ago
    Excellent example. I was reminded of this video as well when Tokyo was mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w
- jpadkins 7y ago
  https://www.zillow.com/houston-tx/ https://www.zillow.com/houston-tx/ https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/houston/2008/hb0801.pdf https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/houston... Houston is a nice natural experiment on zoning laws impact on affordable housing. I believe Houston has more net immigration that SF or Seattle, but has much more affordable housing.