> If the goal is to lower rents down the chain, why not just build more units at every price point? Because zoning prevents that. This is a highly-idealized th

> If the goal is to lower rents down the chain, why not just build more units at every price point? Because zoning prevents that. This is a highly-idealized thought experiment, but imagine a housing market where there's demand for 100 luxury units, 100 cheaper semi-luxury units, 100 still-cheaper middle-class wage earner units, and 100 cheap working-class units. Then imagine that local zoning regulations will only permit 100 new units to be built, and more that that will prompt voter revolt. Which 100 units will be built? Only the luxury ones, obviously. Nobody's going to build cheaper units if it's a mutually-exclusive choice between building cheap ones and the expensive ones. Zoning is why you only see expensive new housing get built: it restricts how much can be built, so developers respond by only building that which gives them maximum returns. You know how quarterly sprint planning for software takes every feature request, orders them by priority, and then draws a line under how many man-hours worth of work your team can do? Developers do the same thing: they rank development proposals by profitability and then draw a cutoff line under what current zoning will let them do. Loosen these requirements and just let people supply the required demand, and you'll start seeing the units at every price point that you want.