In my city it's essentially illegal to build higher density residences than exist currently. Not sure how this is a failure of the market. So of course rents an

In my city it's essentially illegal to build higher density residences than exist currently. Not sure how this is a failure of the market. So of course rents and real estate values are soaring and the current landowners do everything in their power to prevent development of anything that would allow people to live in the city cheaply. > recently, the Somerville planning office released a report in which they confided that, in a city of nearly 80,000 people, there are exactly 22 residential buildings that meet the city’s zoning code. Every single other home is too dense to be legal: Either it takes up too much of the lot, or it has too many homes, or it’s too tall, or it’s not set far back enough from the street, and so on. (Note that this calculation actually doesn’t include parking requirements, which might very well do away with those last 22 conforming buildings.) http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/ http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/