4 ms·

It's amazing how much we let city governments get away with zoning restrictions. Almost universally city governments will say they're "pro affordable housing",

It's amazing how much we let city governments get away with zoning restrictions. Almost universally city governments will say they're "pro affordable housing", yet they will never budge an inch and give away some of their zoning power.

abfan1127 6y ago
I agree. I was surprised to hear that Houston doesn't have zoning in the traditional sense. https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20jokes%20like%20that,known%20for%20being%20an%20anomaly https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-h....
meddlepal 6y ago
You're not letting city governments get away with anything, the voters, the ones that actually show up, support these measures.
brudgers 6y ago
The market produces market rate housing. Developers prefer to develop higher priced housing because the effort to develop a housing project is mostly independent of the number of units and the market segment for which they are built...a few low cost units is about the same effort and risk as a lot of high priced units. Actually, it's probably harder to build low cost units because bankers prefer a higher upside and psychologically tend to identify more with wealth than poverty...I mean people usually don't go into banking to alleviate poverty, misery, and suffering...although I have known bankers and they were all pretty decent people. It's just that their day to day work was serving wealth.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  Reminds me of something I read somewhere: the difference between condos and "luxury" condos is usually just the price.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    .. and time
  - imtringued 6y ago
    When you build new housing you want to pay it off as soon as possible, once it is paid off you can afford to compete on price.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  It's much simpler than all that. Since there is a supply cap, demand exceeds supply, so housing is more expensive. Of course developers are going to build for what generates the most revenue.
zozin 6y ago
Home owners and landlords have more sway than renters. Why would they vote for government officials that promise to destroy their asset values?
- dghlsakjg 6y ago
  People in office and writing legislation also tend to be home-owners and landlords. I recently became a home-owner, and while I live in a place that is undeniably in a housing crisis, I don't want 'them' to make drastic changes to housing policy now that I have most of my net worth tied into a home. From a clinically logical perspective, I fully support drastic changes that would make building more and denser housing MUCH easier. Just -ya know- not so close to my back yard.
shados 6y ago
There's a lot of reasons for zoning, not all of them are bad, even if most are. Preventing building a duplex around single family homes? Probably doesn't have fantastic reasons behind it. Preventing building a 50 stories skyscraper in the middle though? Obviously not gonna happen, but if it did, can the infrastructure, the sewers, the streets take it? Is it just going to make thousands of people miserable, can the schools take it? Obviously this is a silly extreme case, but there's plenty of borderline situations that aren't super cut and dry. Having SOME zoning in certain areas makes sense. Of course the ones discussed in this case aren't for these reasons, and they're probably bad. There's still a lot of subtleties to that problem space.

abfan1127 6y ago

I agree. I was surprised to hear that Houston doesn't have zoning in the traditional sense. https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20jokes%20like%20that,known%20for%20being%20an%20anomaly https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-h....

meddlepal 6y ago

You're not letting city governments get away with anything, the voters, the ones that actually show up, support these measures.

brudgers 6y ago

The market produces market rate housing. Developers prefer to develop higher priced housing because the effort to develop a housing project is mostly independent of the number of units and the market segment for which they are built...a few low cost units is about the same effort and risk as a lot of high priced units. Actually, it's probably harder to build low cost units because bankers prefer a higher upside and psychologically tend to identify more with wealth than poverty...I mean people usually don't go into banking to alleviate poverty, misery, and suffering...although I have known bankers and they were all pretty decent people. It's just that their day to day work was serving wealth.

bcrosby95 6y ago
Reminds me of something I read somewhere: the difference between condos and "luxury" condos is usually just the price.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  .. and time
- imtringued 6y ago
  When you build new housing you want to pay it off as soon as possible, once it is paid off you can afford to compete on price.
whimsicalism 6y ago
It's much simpler than all that. Since there is a supply cap, demand exceeds supply, so housing is more expensive. Of course developers are going to build for what generates the most revenue.

zozin 6y ago

Home owners and landlords have more sway than renters. Why would they vote for government officials that promise to destroy their asset values?

dghlsakjg 6y ago
People in office and writing legislation also tend to be home-owners and landlords. I recently became a home-owner, and while I live in a place that is undeniably in a housing crisis, I don't want 'them' to make drastic changes to housing policy now that I have most of my net worth tied into a home. From a clinically logical perspective, I fully support drastic changes that would make building more and denser housing MUCH easier. Just -ya know- not so close to my back yard.

shados 6y ago

There's a lot of reasons for zoning, not all of them are bad, even if most are. Preventing building a duplex around single family homes? Probably doesn't have fantastic reasons behind it. Preventing building a 50 stories skyscraper in the middle though? Obviously not gonna happen, but if it did, can the infrastructure, the sewers, the streets take it? Is it just going to make thousands of people miserable, can the schools take it? Obviously this is a silly extreme case, but there's plenty of borderline situations that aren't super cut and dry. Having SOME zoning in certain areas makes sense. Of course the ones discussed in this case aren't for these reasons, and they're probably bad. There's still a lot of subtleties to that problem space.