> New York ain’t cheap even with high density housing. This wasn’t true in the 50s. Sure a single family townhome in the West Village will always be expensive,

> New York ain’t cheap even with high density housing. This wasn’t true in the 50s. Sure a single family townhome in the West Village will always be expensive, but it was possible for people to own 3-bedroom apartments within a 20 minute train ride from work on a median salary 60 years ago. And this was back when Manhattan had more people living there than do today. NYC made zoning choices that reduced the city’s density, and made building even the same kind of dense housing that was built in the 20s and 40s essentially illegal with zoning laws passed in the 60s. Neighborhoods like Park Slope and the West Village have a ton of demand, but a 2-story single family townhome cannot legally be built into a 6-family 6-story condo building in most cases. That’s what this article is arguing: zoning laws prevent new housing costs from dropping to be near a floor of (cost of land + cost of building) / (number of units on the land).